Chicago-Maroon-10-04-23

FRIDAY APRIL 23, 2010

CHICAGO

AROON

VOLUME 121

IN VOICES

IN SPORTS

Never Tire

Tough shot

» Page 7

» Back page

John Greenfield describes biking across America in search of beer.

Men's tennis must finish in top three at UAA Championship to make NCAAs.

ISSUE 39

CHICAGOMAROON.COM

The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892

STUDENT GOVERNMENT

DISCOURSE

Students vote to In talk, Gates tackles poverty, disease change sexual assault By Michael Lipkin M Staff policy, Next Gen wins AROON

By Carolanne Fried News Staff Sexual assault policy reform received a strong endorsement from the student body in the Student Government (SG) elections. Announced Thursday night, the election results affirmed that Next Generation will serve as executive cabinet next year. First-year Frank Alarcon will serve as Undergraduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees.

Students voted largely in favor of reevaluating the sexual assault policy—78 percent of returns were in support of the referendum. The Provost Committee appointed earlier this year to reevaluate the policy will consider the vote in its decision-making process, fourth-year and SG President Jarrod Wolf said. Currently, sexual assault issues are addressed within the department of the person accused, a policy the Working Group on the Sexual Assault Policy has lobbied for years to change.

“I think that the policy will change.

It has to change,” Wolf said.

Next Generation won the executive slate election with 68 percent of the vote. The slate consists of third-year Greg Nance as President, second-year David Chen as Vice President for Administration, and first-year Patrick Ip as Vice President for Student Affairs.

STUDENT GOVERNMENT continued on page 2

Bill Gates had a big question on his mind Tuesday night: Are the world’s brightest minds working on its most important problems? He described the work of his charity to improve world health and education, and how those efforts could be improved by focusing more intellectual resources on philanthropic endeavors.

The co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft and head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation addressed about 1,700 students, faculty and administrators in Rockefeller Chapel.

Gates contrasted the number of people working on non-profit research with those developing new financial tools or cosmetic techniques.

“How do you get people focused?

Why doesn’t that happen naturally?”

Gates said. Gates compared superficial efforts to address the world’s problems to Rogaine: “I know a lot of people who would look better with baldness drugs. But if we had some shift in these things we’d make a lot of progress.”

Gates said there is no cure-all solution to divert intellectual capital, but hoped that his talk, part of a fivecampus tour, would raise awareness about his foundation’s efforts and expose people to the progress being made around the world. His foundation, one of the largest non-profits in the world, spends most of its money on improving the health and educa-

Bill Gates speaks in Rockefeller Chapel on Tuesday about addressing issues of global health and poverty. The University of Chicago was the third stop on his five-college tour.

EMILY LO/MAROON

tion of the world’s poorest citizens, because work on those issues can change the most lives.

“We have a number of problems in the world, but not a large number,” Gates said, citing health, education and energy concerns among the top five. “You could pick a dozen or so and the progress we make on those would determine the improvement

in the human condition almost entirely.”

One of the best metrics for world development is childhood mortality rate, he said. “As time goes on, how many children under five survive?”

Gates said. The dramatic improvement in those numbers—20 million deaths in 1960 versus 9 million today—gave Gates hope for the suc-

cess of his foundation’s work. “We can make progress with a very small amount of resources.”

Only a few diseases account for those deaths, mostly ones that can be cured with fairly inexpensive vaccines like smallpox. His foundation provides polio and measles vaccines and sponsors research to cure roto-

GATES continued on page 2

ADMINISTRATION

ADMINISTRATION

Teamsters rally to demand better contract

New development director appointed to oversee financial growth

By Asher Klein News Editor Campus clerical and maintenance workers from Teamsters Local 743 held a two-site rally Wednesday denouncing a University-offered contract the union rejected April 16.

In front of the administration building, around 30 union members and the 15 or so faculty and students who joined them

chanted, “They say contract, we say fight back!” Another group protested in front of the University Press building for the rally, which was also held in recognition of National Secretary Day. Gloria Isabel Rodriguez, a project assistant at the University and a union steward and negotiator, said union members were upset and insulted by the University’s recent contract offer.

She and other union members said the

Melvin Rothenberg, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, speaks on behalf of Teamsters Local 743 at a protest in front of the administration building on Wednesday.

MATT BOGEN/MAROON

offer consisted of a four-year contract rather than the usual three, and offered a 35-hour work week—rather than the 40 hours the union wanted—to service and maintenance staff at the dormitories.

Ninety-five percent of the union voted down the contract last week with sixty-three percent of members voting, according to a union press release.

“They have not listened to our concerns about job security and fair wages,” union representative Joe Sexauer said of the negotiations, “and when [University President] Zimmer said they had balanced the budget due to budget cuts, a lot of that came out of members’ wages, and we’ve lost a lot of people.”

In a December letter, written before negotiations began, the University said it hoped the union would join it in “a fresh approach to these discussions, to be open to a balanced process, and to move forward with a common purpose to sustain our University,” that might serve as a “new national model” for labor negotiations. Sexauer said the University had not lived up to that standard: “Balancing the budget on the back of Teamsters—that’s not a new national model.”

University spokesman Jeremy Manier said in an e-mail, “We believe there has

UNIONS continued on page 3

By Adam Janofsky Associate News Editor U n i v e r s i t y o f Pe n n s y l v a n i a administrator Thomas Farrell was appointed Vice President for Alumni Relations and Development, the University announced yesterday.

Farrell will oversee University fundraising and encourage philanthropy starting July 1.

Farrell, who has 22 years of university development experience, has held similar positions at two Ivy League universities and a law school. In a letter written to deans and senior administrators and quoted in a Thursday press release, President Robert Zimmer said Farrell would develop the alumni network.

“We are confident that Tom’s experience and qualities will make him an effective leader in building on this history [of loyal alumni and friends] to further the University’s essential missions and goals,” Zimmer said.

Farrell’s first experience with university development was at the University of Rochester, where he received his B.A. and M.S.

in education. After overseeing a major gift program at Rochester, he moved to Dartmouth, where he helped structure the college’s $1.3 billion fundraising campaign.

He also filled a similar position at University of Buffalo Law School.

His current role as Associate Vice President for Undergraduate and Individual Giving at the University of Pennsylvania has made him a leader in the university’s $3.5 billion fundraising campaign.

Farrell will be joining the development office after a period of significant growth—the University finished a $2.4 billion fundraising campaign in 2008. “I am excited to be joining a University that not only has a distinctive academic culture, but is in the midst of a remarkable period of achieve ment and growth,” Farrell said in the press release.

Fa r r e l l i s r e p l a c i n g i n t e r i m Vi c e P r e s i d e n t f o r A l u m n i Relations and Development, Michele Schiele, who will return to her old, full-time job as Vice President for Development in the Medical Center. Farrell’s position takes effect July 1.

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CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | April 23, 2010

DISCOURSE

Sen on Smith

Stone speaks on role as law clerk during Roe v. Wade

By Crystal Tsoi News Staff

A

martya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, spoke on Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations at a lecture in Swift Hall Tuesday. Sen's work focuses on poverty and welfare economics.

SHANE COUGHLAN/MAROON

New slate will buy passenger vans, organize pub crawl in first month, Nance says STUDENT GOVERNMENT continued from front page First-year Frank Alarcon was elected Undergraduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees, defeating second-year David Akinin and thirdyear Rafael Menis. Booth School student Daniel Kimmerling, who ran uncontested, was elected Graduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees.

College Council positions were also filled.

Isabel Hujoel, Namita Gupta, and Jason Cigan won spots as Class of 2011 representatives in another uncontested category. Joseph “Tex” Dozier, a write-in candidate, was elected with 33 votes, surpassing write-in candidate Joe Tomino, who received 23 votes. Write-in candidates must submit a statement in order to be appointed to the position.

Pamela Villa, Sohrab Kohli, and Nakul Singh were elected for the Class of 2012. At press time, votes for Edward James and Youssef Kalad, practically tied, were being counted by IT Services (formerly NSIT), and the winner had yet to be determined.

Class of 2013 representatives Neil Shah, Sam

Scarrow, Travis Benaiges, and Nelson Zhu will round out the Council.

1,847 undergraduates and 509 graduate students voted in the elections, about 16 percent of the student body as a whole and 38 percent of the College.

78 percent of students who voted on the referendum supported creating the SG position of Community and Government Liason.

Next Generation, whose only opponent on the ballot was the satirical Moose Party slate, is already working on its future plans: “small projects that make a big impact on student life,” according to the slate’s statement on the SG website.

“We worked with the Student Government assembly to secure funds to get outlets in Hutch and C-Shop,” Nance said.

Next Generation’s platform for its first 30 days in office includes plans to improve the RSO experience through greater access to SG Funding Committee information, the purchase of passenger vans to lower the cost of transporta-

tion, and a spring pub crawl to raise school spirit and build campus community.

The slate has also begun conversations with students at Tufts University regarding the text alert and GPS system they employ for campus transportation at their University. “In the next few weeks, we will be in conversations with UChicago’s Transportation Student Advisory Board and other administrators to see how we can bring the best components of all the universities to create the most equipped and efficient student body here at the University of Chicago,” Ip said.

“We’ll be around and we want to hear what people have to say,” said Nance, who plans to use C-Shop office hours, weekly tabling in the Reynolds Club, and four-square games on the Max Palevsky Quad to generate greater SG accessibility.

“I’m very confident in the Next Generation’s ability,” Wolf said. “They are in a very good position to engage the student body and build a stronger bond with the student community.”

Professor and former Law School Dean Geoffrey Stone ( J.D. ‘71) discussed his time as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in a talk held at the Law School Tuesday.

Stone clerked for the liberal Justice in the early 1970s. “This was a period of very dramatic change in the makeup of the Court,” said Stone, who witnessed the transition from a liberal Court under Earl Warren to a more conservative court under Warren Burger.

Stone was one of Brennan’s three clerks, taking the position after getting his law degree from Chicago. “It was the first term in which justices began self-consciously selecting their law clerks with an eye on their ideologies.”

One of the cases that stood out to Stone was Roe v. Wade. After its ruling, hundreds of thousands of boxes of letters were delivered to the Supreme Court Justices. “The court was inundated with hate mail, much of which were orchestrated,” said Stone, who is now an editor of the Supreme Court Review. “There was no mechanism for opening these letters because there was no one at the Court with that job,” he joked.

Stone, who observed firsthand a more personal side of the Justices, said the ruling was especially difficult for Brennan.

“Brennan was a Catholic, so this for him was a real issue — how to think about his religious values and also his responsibility as a Justice.”

But Brennan wasn’t the only Justice shaken by the Roe v. Wade case. Stone saw conservative justice Harry Blackmun under a green reading light going through thousands of the letters in the middle of the night. “This [had] to have a real impact on Blackmun,” Stone said, calling it an “absolutely fundamental” moment in Blackmun’s political education. “That experience would begin the transformation of Blackmun from being a conservative justice to a liberal justice [because] at that moment, he understood what it meant to be an outcast.”

Recalling the late Justice, Stone said, “Brennan was quite a remarkable individual.

He was a beloved person by everyone who knew him. He was warm, genial, goodnatured, generally upb eat and always interested in the clerks’ personal lives and professional activities.” Brennan’s ability was finding a common ground and working with his fellow Supreme Court, Stone said.

Gates Foundation to spend on current issues, leave future problems for next generation GATES continued from front page virus. Once you improve health, “ Gates said, “a country can escape the poverty trap and not be a recipient of aid, but contribute [like South Korea].”

Most of the foundation’s international work is well received in the countries receiving aid, but some projects — like research into genetic engineering in agriculture and creating systems for teacher compensation — get criticized at home. “Reproductive health is controversial, more with religious people back in the United States,” Gates said in an interview after the talk.

Sometimes the foundation also has to battle misinformation. “We did have a thing in Nigeria where the polio vaccine was claimed to be a plot to sterilize Muslim women,” Gates said. “I went up with the head of the Muslim church…

and talked about polio and gave drops to children. We’re trying to be very smart about those constraints.”

After his talk, Gates fielded questions about his charity’s governance, technology’s effects on society and the responsibility of being one of the richest non-profits in the world.

One student asked Gates to explain why his foundation is required to spend all of its resources within 50 years of both its namesakes’ deaths, while most foundations are meant to continue indefinitely. “Being perpetual is a mistake,” Gates said, because the issues a charity addresses may not be relevant in the future. “There will be rich people after I die, and they should be alive and direct their money to out of control robots or terrorists, or the problems of the day that my will won’t anticipate.”

Hyde Park Administration Student Government Campus Life Discourse

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CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | April 23, 2010

Uncommon Interview

Mark Carhart quit Goldman Sachs to found his own business.

COURTESY OF MARK CARHART

WITH

» Mark Carhart

M

ark Carhart earned his Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Chicago in 1995, and was soon at Goldman Sachs, where he served as a co-Chief Information Officer of Quantitative Investment Strategies. In 2009, after he’d run Goldman's Global Alpha Fund, Reuters called him “a star hedge fund manager.” He quit last April and founded a new company this month called Kepos Capital LP, where he’s the CEO. The MAROON caught up with him to discuss academics, finance, and being a rabid quant.

C HICAGO M AROON : How did you fi rst get interested in finance?

Mark Carhart: In junior high school, I opened a brokerage account and started trading on my own. The second stock I purchased was a company called Birdview Satellite, which went bankrupt about six months after I purchased it. Instead of discouraging me, that actually increased my interest in the stock market.

CM: What did you learn from your time at the U of C? MC: Chicago taught me to be skeptical, to learn through critique, and to appreciate the importance of empirical analysis. Probably the most important skill I carry with me every day is how to look at data and infer useful patterns, but also avoid the pitfalls in seeing relationships that are more likely to be coincidental.

CM: Can you describe your investment strategy?

MC: I’m a die-hard quant. Some would say rabid. By quant I mean that I use the scientific method to build an investment strategy. The objective of this method is to remove emotion and behavioral biases from the decision-making process. This is quite different from traditional security selection where there is a lot of storytelling but not much critical testing of ideas. In addition, the quant approach gives a framework through which to evolve an investment strategy over time as you gather new insights and data.

CM: How important are academics in your strategy?

MC: My business is very research-intensive. Therefore my colleagues and I have traditionally managed it not unlike how an academic department would run at the University of Chicago. Our faculty are our senior researchers—many of which are former academics—and our students are our junior researchers. For example, we have held regular research seminars where we critique each other’s research and have always sought to make our decisions in a

collegial and consensus-oriented way. The fact that I was trained at the University of Chicago and spent two years as an academic significantly informed how I have managed our business.

CM: What did you learn from the economic crisis?

MC: Probably the most important lesson was the magnitude of commonality in the investment approach we followed across the broader investment community. Success in quant investing in the future will hinge on developing unique ideas that are differential from competitors. The second lesson is that models and approaches need to be more dynamic. When evaluating long-term historical price patterns, it’s hard to appreciate how quickly the models needed to evolve.

Having lived through 2007 and 2008—and the earlier LTCM crisis and the Internet bubble—I better appreciate the need for dynamic models which will have more variation in risk and signal composition.

CM: Where do you think the economy is headed?

MC: The honest truth is that although I have been trained as a financial economist, the macro economy is incredibly difficult to forecast. But given that, I’m optimistic about the global economy’s resilience to the recent liquidity events and downturn.

CM: Investing can be stressful. How do you handle the pressure?

MC: Successful investors need to be capable of managing stress. This is because there is so much noise in asset prices that, whatever happens on a day to day basis, there’s not a lot of information revealed about true value.

I believe you need to train your brain to largely ignore shorter-term movements and focus on longer-term trends. In addition to this, I spend a lot of time doing intense aerobic exercise like cycling or skate-skiing.

That’s my meditation.

—Al Gaspari

DISCOURSE

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PATH TO PROGRESS for a brain tumor cure!

Saturday

May 22, 2010

Inquisition edicts shaped Crypto-Judaism, Gitlitz says

By Carolanne Fried News Staff Jews in 15th century Spain turned to edicts from the Inquisition to learn about their faith, Professor David Gitlitz at the University of Rhode Island said at a lecture on Monday. Gitlitz’s book, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the CryptoJews, explores the identity of Jews in Spain during the Inquisition.

Spanish Crypto-Jews, or converts to Christianity who continued practicing Judaism in secret, lost their models of faith after the expulsion of the Jews during the Spanish Inquisition. “Until 1492, CryptoJudaism was very close to normative Judaism, both in practice and in belief,” Gitlitz said.

Over time, the Judaism of the Crypto-Jews

began to morph. “The edicts became a Judaism for Dummies published by the Inquisition. Instead of suppressing Jewish practice, it was a sort of textbook for them,” said Gitlitz, who also said oral tradition and the Old Testament were sources of knowledge for Jews in Spain.

The changes were a result of exposure to Christianity, the fear of detection, and the problem of transmitting that culture to the next generation, he said. “They were legally Christian in an overwhelmingly Christian environment,” he said.

“Whether or not they believed it, they all memorized Christian doctrine.”

Eventually, the hidden Jewish identity of the Crypto-Jews began to fade. “By the 1700s, the discovery of Crypto-Jews in Spain and Portugal was increasingly rare,” Gitlitz said.

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Graduate Students United supports Teamsters at rally UNIONS continued from front page

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been positive movement during the negotiation process. It’s not unusual to need more than one vote before reaching an agreement.”

Manier said negotiating four- and five-year contracts has become more common during the recession. “In this time of economic uncertainty, a longer contract would lock in a guaranteed increase for union members even in the event of an economic downturn,” he said.

Negotiations will begin again soon, Manier said.

“The University remains committed to negotiating a contract that is fair, market-driven, and economically sustainable.”

Pegg Anderson, a secretary at the James Franck Institute and a union member, said she commutes two hours a day. She is unhappy with the contract because “it doesn’t keep up with the cost of living...I need to be able to take care of myself and still work here,” she said.

The University has lately spent a lot of money on landscaping, Anderson noted, but wondered why that money wasn’t spent on campus workers.

“Why can’t they just be a little more fair?” she said.

Representatives from Graduate Students United (GSU) attended the rally; the group is hoping to become the first private sector union in the country, according to 743 representative Joe Sexauer. G S U is currently looking to partner with a larger union organization.

GSU member Toussaint Losier, the graduate liaison to the Board of Trustees, addressed the crowd at the administration building. In an interview afterward, he said there were similarities between the negotiations graduate students and campus workers have had with the University, and that he was there to recognize the union’s support in the past “We do see a connection” between graduate students and campus workers, Losier said. “The Provost is deciding on not cutting back on AR [Advance Residency] tuition and what the campus workers have seen in terms of cutting their hours down to 35 per week and the poor contract offer that the administration has given them. In both instances the excuse is that there’s not enough money.”

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CHICAGO MAROON

|

VIEWPOINTS | April 23, 2010

VIEWPOINTS

EDITORIAL & OP-ED APRIL 23, 2010

EDITORIAL

CHICAGO MAROON

The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892

JORDAN HOLLIDAY, Editor-in-Chief JAKE GRUBMAN, Managing Editor ASHER KLEIN, News Editor ELLA CHRISTOPH, News Editor EVAN COREN, Viewpoints Editor HAYLEY LAMBERSON, Voices Editor BLAIR THORNBURGH, Voices Editor AUDREY HENKELS, Sports Editor WILL FALLON, Sports Editor A. G. GOODMAN, Sports Editor VICTORIA KRAFT, Head Copy Editor MONIKA LAGAARD, Head Copy Editor HOLLY LAWSON, Head Copy Editor CAMILLE VAN HORNE, Photo Editor MATT BOGEN, Photo Editor JACK DiMASSIMO, Head Designer ABRAHAM NEBEN, Web Editor ADAM JANOFSKY, Assoc. News Editor LIAT SPIRO, Assoc. Viewpoints Editor PETER IANAKIEV, Assoc. Viewpoints Editor JUDY MARCINIAK, Business Manager VINCENT McGILL, Delivery Coordinator

Professors without borders To support open education, the U of C should offer selected courses online On Tuesday, during his lecture before a packed house in Rockefeller Chapel, Bill Gates spoke about the need to improve access to quality education. In addition to citing our Urban Education Institute as an example of efforts that improve the availability of educational resources, Gates mentioned another important means of spreading the knowledge and intellectual energy found in communities like our own: providing videos of class lectures online. With many of our peer institutions already using the Web to share popular courses with the public, it’s time that the U of C embrace what has become known as the open educational resources movement.

Not every lecture would b e appropriate for distribution, and cost constraints would keep the

University from uploading the bulk of our offerings—Yale spends $30,000 to $40,000 for each online course. However, much of the cost could be defrayed by existing grants that support open education—including an $8 million donation from the Gates Foundation for institutions that make courses available online.

Whatever percentage of the cost the University shoulders, online offerings present one of the most cost-effective means of increasing access to education. If the University were to offer lectures online, anyone with an Internet connection could potentially learn about American Grand Strategy from John Mearsheimer or tune in to the latest in Freakonomics direct from Stephen L evitt. A system is already in place for distributing course lectures: the

U of C participates in iTunes U, through which it provides a number of special lectures and videos for free. This is a good beginning; now the University should significantly increase its online catalog to include lecture sequences from classes that regular U of C students attend.

Beyond the potential to ameliorate wider access problems, joining the open education movement would benefit the U of C. Allowing people worldwide to watch lectures online would give well-deserved exposure to our b est professors, and raise the University’s profile in the bargain. Faculty may even find that opening up lectures to the Web improves their teaching; one Yale physics professor whose lectures are online pointed out that “any mistake [he makes] would

OP-ED

affect larger numbers of students online.” And while the online offerings wouldn’t change the experiences of U of C students— the great majority of those watching online would do so simply out of curiosity, and not in pursuit of class credits or a degree—regular students would be able to make up missed classes or shop for courses with ease.

Over 100 years ago, the University adopted as its motto, “Let knowledge grow from more to more, and so be human life enriched.” If we are to continue dedicating ourselves to the calling found in those words, then it’s time we fully embrace the movement towards open education.

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

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

DOUGLAS EVERSON, Designer ANDREW GREEN, Designer IVY PEREZ, Designer

Point-Counterpoint: To give or not to give? “Why we Organize”

over-simplifies grad funding tradeoffs

CHRISTINA SCHWARTZ, Designer JESSICA SHEFT-ASON, Designer MATT TYNDALE, Designer ATHENA JIN XIE, Designer ANNA AKERS-PECHT, Copy Editor

Matt Barnum and SCG co-chair Jessie Reuteler debate the merits of donating to senior class gift

it—I needed to blend in with the crowd. I wore my Adam Smith t-shirt. I carried a sign with a classy side (the Revolutionary War–era Gadsden flag saying “Don’t Tread on Me”) and an un-classy side (“Don’t Steal: The Government Hates Competition”). I decided to go an hour before the event started to talk with people.

And what I saw surprised me.

At 11:00, there was only a small crowd. But Daley Plaza gradually began to fill, until the crowd was

I found Joe Feinberg’s article arguing for more graduate student funding (“Why we organize,” April 16th) to have such ridiculously over-the -top and flawed arguments as to be a parody of itself.

I t i s i n e x c u s a b l e f o r M r.

Feinb erg to compare his selfstyled “banal poverty” of “wine and cheese receptions” to the true difficulties of the working poor. Mr. Feinberg, a seventhyear anthropology student, has the benefit of eleven years of post-secondary education, which puts him in a substantively different category.

An even greater flaw in the article, though, was that it failed to grapple with the biggest problem of a grad student pay raise—that somebody has to pay the piper. Just as above -market wages in a unionized industry must ultimately be borne by consumers and shareholders, somebody would have to pay for an increase in graduate student pay.

As we’ve learned in the past year, University budget cuts tend to most hurt those at the bottom of the pay scale. So, if Mr. Feinberg would like to finance his pay raise through cuts elsewhere, he will likely take money out of the pockets of those who are truly living off of a minimum wage.

Of course, the other way to pay for an increase in pay is to r a i s e m o r e m o n e y. G r a d u a t e students’ pays come essentially from tuition-paying students in the College and professional schools. Since grad students are not actually producing anything,

TEA PARTY continued on page 5

LETTER TO THE EDITOR continued on page 5

HUNTER BUCKWORTH, Copy Editor MARCELLO DELGADO, Copy Editor JORDAN FRANKLIN, Copy Editor DANIELLE GLAZER, Copy Editor LAUREN LARSON, Copy Editor

By Matt Barnum Viewpoints Columnist and Jessie Reuteler Viewpoints Contributor

MIRANDA LI, Copy Editor LAUREN MAKHOLM, Copy Editor

» DEAR JESSIE,

SAALIKA ABBAS MELA, Copy Editor ALEX WARBURTON, 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.

©2010 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

SUBMISSIONS The CHICAGO MAROON welcomes opinions and responses from its readers. Send op-ed submissions and letters to: Viewpoints CHICAGO MAROON 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 E-mail: Viewpoints@ChicagoMaroon.com The editors reserve the right to edit materials for clarity and space.

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I received an e-mail the other day from the Senior Class Gift (SCG) Committee, tempting me to go to the Reynolds Club with an offer of a free bagel and coffee. I like bagels and I like coffee, so indeed I was tempted. But I decided not to take advantage of the appealing offer. Not just because of the inevitable snakelike lines and frenzied incompetence of the C-Shop employees, but also

because I don’t know if I support the SCG, and I don’t know if I plan to give any money to it.

The SCG website’s attempt to persuade me hasn’t worked so far. In answering my main question of why I should donate, it says, in whole: “… because the Senior Class Gift supports the College Fund.”

Okay…then why should I give to the College Fund? Well, the website lists a bunch of pretty cool things that the Fund supports—ranging from financial aid to funding study-abroad programs—and yet I’m still unconvinced. I still don’t understand why I should pay for some future student to do many of the things I just got

done paying for myself. I know this, or some form of it, is an all-too-common argument—one I’m sure you personally hear all too often—but I still think it’s an important one.

Look, come to me with your free bagel and coffee in twenty years. Maybe then I’ll feel in a position to help out students at my alma mater. But right now I’m not. Yes, $20—oh, sorry, I mean $20.10—won’t break my bank account; but then, my $20.10 donation to the U of C isn’t going to make a big difference either. In fact, I would venture that I need my $20.10 more than the U of C needs it.

So why the Senior Class Gift?

SENIOR GIFT continued on page 6

OP-ED

Tea Partiers: Not all whackjobs Encounters with Tea Partiers reveal movement’s authenticity

By Hannah Koch Viewpoints Contributor I have a confession to make.

I skipped Sosc class to go to the Tax Day Tea Party downtown.

The irony did not escape me. In that same class I heard Glenn Beck called crazy, heard my left-leaning professor subtly praise Marx, and heard criticisms of the free market.

I got varying reactions when I admitted I was going. A friend said, “They’re all whacko.” Others gave me strange looks. One said, “Well,

hopefully they’ll be more reasonable than the ones at home.” My Sosc professor wryly stated, “I’ve failed in my duties as a Marxist.”

But if the U of C has drummed one thing into my head, it’s this: Don’t trust secondary authorities.

Find out for yourself. Use primary sources. Make your own interpretations.

So I decided to see for myself if the Tea Party was as full of whackjobs as everyone says it is.

I decided if I was going to go, I was going to be hard-core about

CHICAGO MAROON

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| VIEWPOINTS | April 23, 2010

EDITORIAL CARTOON

Increasing grad student funding would likely require higher undergraduate tuition

RAISING ELLE

By Elle Opitz

LETTER TO THE EDITOR continued from page 4 their livelihood is essentially a grant from their tuition-paying fellow students. If Mr. Feinberg wants more money from this source, he had best do a better job explaining why undergraduates should take on more student loans to give him a raise.

I suspect that most undergrads would balk and encourage Mr. Feinberg to complete his dissertation and find a job. After all, his continued “banal poverty” is a matter of choice. To be sure, the academic job market is a brutal affair. Though it offers a life of comfort and respect to the most successful, it offers few consolation prizes— especially to students in disciplines without private sector applications. Of course, unlike those who work for minimum wage because they have no alternative, Mr. Feinberg and his compatriots knew the risks going in and willingly chose to play academia’s version of Russian roulette. He also knew what kind of financing he was going to receive while studying, and that has only improved since he began his tenure at the University.

If G S U wishes for a raise, it cannot treat higher pay as an entitlement. It isn’t.

Instead, it has to explain to its tuition-paying fellow students why higher pay would in fact better achieve the aims of the academy and would be worth the sacrifices that would be imposed on others. Until GSU does so, the rest of the University’s students should applaud the administration for holding the line and protecting their interests.

Ben Field Class of 2010

CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO CHICAGO

MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON MAROON

Despite charges of homogeneity, twenty-somethings, Asian-Americans, and African-Americans represented among protesters TEA PARTY continued from page 4 more than a thousand strong. The event opened with the singing of the national anthem. I thought it was amazing that Tax Day could be reminiscent of the Fourth of July. It was pretty powerful, to be standing there with a thousand people, flags waving, all united in love of this country. One woman behind me said she got goosebumps.

All of the signs had to do with fiscal restraint and personal responsibility, and they ranged from “Fiscal Responsibility is the Corollary of Freedom” to Obama-as-Gollum saying “Your profits are my precious.” By far the most popular sign was “Don’t Tread on Me.” The majority of people were white, over age 50, although there were quite a few exceptions. I saw some families (with the kids carrying signs saying “Don’t Tax My Allowance”), twenty-somethings, AsianAmericans, and African-Americans. The speeches focused on changing Illinois politics, rather than national politics (most likely

because a change on the national scale is rather far-fetched in Obama’s home state).

I began talking with the alleged racist, bigoted whackjobs. A young man, well-versed in history and political thought, complimented my t-shirt and asked if I was a classical liberal. His family owns a small business near O’Hare, and he was campaigning for a candidate for Cook County Board President.

Is he a whackjob?

I ran into a middle -aged couple, the man holding a sign that said, “Smoke the Pork.” His wife had rented two school buses to ferry anyone who wanted to come from their suburb. I asked if they were an organized group. “Nope,” they said. “Just friends of ours.” I asked them why they were here. The woman said it was nice to know that other people believe the same thing she believes, so that she knows she’s not alone. Her husband put it more succinctly: “It’s group therapy.” Are they whackjobs?

I met a 75-year-old woman from Wilmette who said it was her first time at a political rally. After I told her that I was pre-med, she admitted that she was a retired physician. She had graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1944 (“long before you were born!” she said). She said very few medical schools were accepting women, which is why she went to Hopkins. Because of the war, med school was only three years. After she graduated she got married and had eight kids, so she only worked part-time. She was an incredible lady. Any feminist organization should be celebrating women like her: gutsy, forward-thinking, and independent. Is she a whackjob?

What struck me was the non-hierarchical nature of the participants. Yes, there was a central organization that got the speakers and officially ran the show, but none of the participants belonged to any official organization. Most people (including myself ) had never been to a political rally before. They

were simply a group of ordinary Americans.

The ideals I saw represented were not radical: fiscal responsibility, personal liberties, concern for economic growth. Most signs claimed to be harking back to the Founder’s principles—a laudable goal. It showcased a broader, mainstream concern that big government and big taxes will crowd individual freedom.

In the taxi ride home, we drove past Daley Plaza, and my taxi driver asked what the rally was for. I summed it up like this: “It is people protesting for less government spending and more personal freedom.” He said, “Those are good things.” Later, he said, “I wish I could do stuff like that.”

If even my taxi driver is inspired, it shows that the movement is not a bunch of racist bigots, but much more widespread.

The Founding Fathers would be proud.

—Hannah Koch is a second-year in the College.

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CHICAGO MAROON

|

VIEWPOINTS | April 23, 2010

Senior Class Gift donations fund programs typically not covered by tuition SENIOR GIFT continued from page 4 Why not just have a good young-alumni outreach program, and then, down the road, tap into those of us who are prepared and able to give back?

Best, Matt

» DEAR MATT, First and foremost, you’re crazy not to take that free bagel and coffee. Free lunches may not exist, but free breakfasts do. At least (on Aramark’s dime) for seniors, they do. Better get on that last one in May, Barnum.

As for why the College Fund, you’re right, it does cover some pretty cool items—small class sizes, student activities, and internships, to name a few more. The College Fund covers the best aspects of our undergraduate experience—the very things that make up, for many of us, what it means to “go to UChicago.”

However, your tuition doesn’t pay for all these core experiences on its own. Frustrating as it may seem, just “paying for yourself ” does not cover the most memorable features of our undergraduate experience. Alumni donations and the entirely alumni-supported College Fund do. Truthfully, our opportunities are the result of generations of alumni support—not spiraling tuition rates.

Moreover, these College alumni put forth this money to provide us with experiences they never had. We’ve all met alumni at Taking the Next Step or CAPS who have drooled over the internship, study abroad, travel, and research opportunities we’ve had.

Finally, why does your $20.10 matter now?

Because you are here now. As a graduating senior, you know exactly what the College has done for you. And after learning about the College Fund, you know exactly what you need to do for the College. Make that first gift while the experience is fresh, and ensure that you’ll be a responsible and engaged member of the larger Chicago community that is 400,000 affiliates strong.

Reppin’ that sen10r pride, Jessie

» JESSIE, Maybe you’re right—with your blessing I might just take SCG up on its offer of a bagel and a coffee.

As for supporting the College Fund, I genuinely appreciate alumni who have helped fund my time here. I’m not sure, though, that this implies any sort of obligation on my end. My view is that alumni gave me a gift, not that it was some sort of pay-it-forward deal. (And that’s holding aside the idea that some donations come for selfish reasons, like improving the value of a U of C degree.) But I do understand where you’re coming from: If I value some of my experiences at the U of C, then I should consider trying to help other people have those same experiences. Fair enough. I also think it’s fair to say that we should consider donating while our experience is fresh.

On a separate point, I’d like to add my distaste for the notion that some alumni will only donate money if students achieve a certain donation level.

I understand the point of it, but doesn’t it make you feel a little uncomfortable that James Crown will withhold money if we don’t reach some (arbitrary) total donation amount? Obviously, I appreciate his generosity, but I’m personally a little turned off by the gimmicky nature of this.

Yours, Matt

» MATT, As the cute-back-when-he-was-prepubescent Haley Joel Osment once said, “When someone does you a big favor, don’t pay it back...pay it forward.” It’s entirely up to you if you want to help out future UChicagoans, but the Trustee Challenge you mention is what makes any gift you do make a lot more productive.

As for your dubbing Trustees’ Crown and Fyfe’s participation challenge (i.e. to engage 85% of seniors—and not some arbitrary dollar amount) as “gimmicky,” I think you’re looking at it all wrong.

Quite to the contrary, I think instituting a challenge that incrementally contributes up to $60,000 to our Gift as more seniors participate, makes my gift a lot more exciting than it would be in isolation.

Here I am, having just spent all that money on tuition, but after finding out some of my favorite

AND DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING?

aspects of the College were paid for otherwise, I go to make a gift towards that great cause...and I contribute $20.10. Yeah, it’s a sizable amount of money for me (one less round of the classy beer at the Pub tonight, guys), but it’s no $50,000.

Crown and Fyfe, two admirable guys who are probably bringing in more money than I could ever dream of, have made this conditional offer such that my $20.10 gift becomes a lot more than it seems. Both financially—should we hit 85% participation, for every gift a senior makes, their gift (no matter its size) is amplified by $50.50 in Trustee Challenge money—and symbolically—we can’t get to 85% without nearly every single senior going online or up to the Reynolds Club table and making whatever gift is meaningful to them.

After all, how satisfying is any goal without recognition for crossing the finish line?

Yours in philanthropic debate, Jessie

» JESSIE, I gotta admit: You kind of won me over about the Trustees’ contribution. It does seem like a good way to make students’ gifts more meaningful.

So I have one last question for you: How would you pitch SCG to someone, like me, who perhaps feels ambivalent about his experience at the U of C? Obviously, I got a great education and had a lot of great moments here; but there were bad moments.

I don’t want to make this a litany of my grievances against the U of C, but there was the Core, for one.

(I just want to shout it from a rooftop, or something: I hate the Core.)

I know that that’s not quite the point. But for me, somehow, it is. This isn’t really a fair argument to ask you to respond to—you can’t refute my feelings—but at the same time I see it as one of the fundamental obstacles to a successful SCG. So even if you’ve out-argued me—and you have—what this comes down to is not argument, but instinct. My instinct says, “meh” to SCG; yours says “woooh!”

I guess that’s what I’ve been forced to resort totrying to win a debate by rejecting the validity of the debate itself.

Sheepishly yours, Matt

» MATT, I appreciate your kind words. It’s true, I doubt that many students leave Chicago on a train of euphoric bliss, thinking, “There was no way this experience could have been any better!” But there’s a good reason for that. It’s not that we haven’t had a meaningful time, it’s that we’ve been trained too well to uncritically embrace everything thrown at us. After all those years (in the CORE, I ight add, sheesh) of developing our critical thinking skills, we’re renowned for not letting any situation go unanalyzed.

It’s for this reason I don’t think a senior should think that healthy skepticism towards certain aspects of the University automatically negates a motivation to contribute to SCG. Your instinct doesn’t have to say OMG YES towards the College or to SCG. All you need to do is take a moment and hone in on what aspect of your time here you really did appreciate and enjoy. Was it an arts grant you received that helped you fund a project? Was it the people and resources an RSO provided? Was it a new professor who outperformed all the tenured ones?

Don’t read this list as a check-list; everyone has his or her own meaningful memories as we go towards graduation. SCG is a chance to do justice to those experiences. I’d expect every senior to have a unique reason for giving.

After all, when you think of mini-Matt-Barnum, worrying four years ago over which college to attend, you’d probably want him to have as many chances as he could to find his niche and to justify his decision to come here. You cannot deny that better funding makes those sorts of experiences possible.

Say “meh” to those experiences you’ve had here that deserve it; chip in as little as a dollar towards SCG to pay tribute to those that made your time here worth it.

Sincerely, Jessie —Matt Barnum and Jessie Reuteler are fourth-years in the College m a j o r i n g i n P s y c h o l o g y. J e s s i e Reuteler is co-chair of Senior Class Gift Committee.

Hey seniors, Grey City Journal—the CHICAGO MAROON’s quarterly magazine—is asking for your reflections on your time here at the University of Chicago. What was your best experience here? What was your worst? How has the U of C changed you? How was the U of C different than what you expected? Tell us how you feel about your experience at Chicago in 500 words or less, and you could win a $50 gift card from Calypso Café. The best several reflections will be printed in Grey City at the end of the quarter, and everyone who submits a reflection will be entered to win the gift card.

The deadline for submissions is Monday, May 3. Please submit all reflections to GreyCity@ChicagoMaroon.com under the subject “Senior Reflection.” Direct any questions to the same address.

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CHICAGO CHICAGO MAROON MAROON | VOICES | VOICES | November | April 23,20, 2010 2009

VOICES

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT APRIL 23, 2010

BOOKS

Grand Strand

Alum puts new spin on “biker bar”

By Madelyn Freed Voices Hell's Angel John Greenfield (AB ’93) has not always been a part of the Chicago bike and beer scene. But now both his work and play revolve around cycling, drinking, and the promotion of both. An avid long distance cyclist for years, John decided to make a grand trip across the United States and write about his experiences. In keeping with his beer-y ways, he stopped and supported the local bars and pubs that are quickly becoming a rarity. The Maroon caught up with him to discuss his book—Bars Across America—his book launch party (free tonight in Logan Square starting at 9 p.m.), and being mistaken for a hobo.

BARS ACROSS AMERICA John Greenfield Pint Size Press

S

herry Poet-in-Residence and former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand read his work on Wednesday in Classics Hall. The Sherry Memorial Poetry Reading and Lecture honors the life and work of former University of Chicago student, Pearl Andelson Sherry (X. ’20).

CLAIRE HUNGERFORD/MAROON

Chicago Maroon: What inspired you to take this trip?

John Greenfield: My brother did a trip like this a couple years ago.

He hurt his knee after he got back

so he can’t really ride any more, but I thought it was really cool. Really impressive. So I decided to do it.

The book is part guide book, part travelogue, part ode to the vanishing local tap. If there’s a message to take from the book it’s that unique, mom-and-pop, local stuff like local bars and taverns should be cherished and shouldn’t be taken for granted. As society gets more and more homogenized, they’re going to be less common.

CM: You’re part of beer appreciation in Chicago—can you explain that a little?

JG: You’re referring to the Draught Beer Preservation Movement, which is more of a tongue-in-cheek venture. Once a year I would put on a pub crawl, checking out bars on side streets and places people might not have noticed before or it might not have occurred to them to stop in, like, for example, that tavern on the side street that doesn’t even have a name, just an ‘Old Style’ sign on the outside. Bars are one of the few local businesses that encourage mingling among strangers.

BIKING continued on page 9

SHORTCUTS

By Ruben Montiel Voices Jazzy Jeff Christian Scott’s latest album, Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, is intended to provoke. Not only in the visceral way—the kind that comes from kicking off an album with a piece called K.K.P.D. (Ku Klux Police Department)—but in more cerebral ways as well. We are called upon

by Scott to consider the album in regard to the ’60s, both with the brevity characteristic of that decade’s jazz recordings and the social and political agenda which that music attempted to address. So come song titles like “K.K.P.D.,” or “American’t,” or “Jenacide,” all in some way challenging current conceptions of U.S. race relations.

YESTERDAY YOU SAID TOMORROW Christian Scott Concord Jazz

Though only 26, Scott is in the business of producing serious music drawing from serious social ills. Yet even if Scott’s social message seems highfalutin, his music surely isn’t. It was with a great deal of pleasure, then, that I enjoyed listening to YYST, which is Scott’s most fully realized, lis-

tenable, and mature record to date.

Scott so far has garnered acclaim for what critics perceive as genre bending. I don’t buy this so much.

True, you will often hear sideman Matthew Stevens’ guitar strum a little too aggressively to be at home on a Marsalis record, or hear the excellent Jamire Williams break into the tastiest of beats that would be welcome in many funk and hip-hop records.

Likewise, you will often hear of Scott’s comparison to Miles Davis because of the former’s heavy use of Harmon mute and his so-called “whisper” technique, which is glorious to listen to, and produces a diaphanous, fuzzy sound, the musical equivalent of dipping a sponge in paint and grazing the canvas, leaving streaks of color with bubbles of white. But Harmon mute does not a Miles make, and neither do traces of hip-hop or rock (which have been done in jazz for a while) make a new genre (check out Robert Glasper’s “J Dillalude” or Brad Mehldau’s covers of Radiohead or Oasis). Instead, I was happy to engage Scott’s record on its own terms, equal parts hip-hop and cool jazz.

The leadoff, “K.K.P.D.,” is an aggressive number, channeling Scott’s own experience with police, that is highlighted by Williams’ skipping on toms and snare and punctuated by Minguslike grunts in between pauses on

Scott’s screeching solo. The group’s cover of Thom Yorke’s “The Eraser” has been heralded as a highlight, and rightly so. It is a verbatim cover of the original, but with the group’s dexterous treatment sounds like it was written for a jazz combo. Particularly good is when Kris Funn jumps on bass from high timbres on the verse to low, meaty support on the chorus.

Milton Fletcher is good here on piano, but really shines on “Isadora”, where he does his best Bill Evans impersonation, introducing the piece with shimmering blocking (where the player harmonizes using rich chords rather than single notes) and then delivering a soulful, technically perfect solo.

Guitarist Matt Stevens is the source of much of the group’s characteristic sound. On “The Eraser” he doubles with Scott so that the melody rings a bit longer and a bit rounder.

Throughout the record, he often adds harmonic depth with few overtone chimings while letting Fletcher handle the chordal foundation of the song. On “Jenacide,” he lays down an alternately beautiful and off-kilter solo over Williams’ fat beat, not unlike Pat Metheny, and one is thankful here to also hear Scott’s own funk chops.

And on the plaintive “Angola, L.A. & the 13th Amendment” he produces the brittle, crunchy strumming that is characteristic of rock recordings.

“Angola,” which invokes the Louisiana state prison/working farm as a reminder that the 13th amendment still allows for slavery as punishment for a crime, is the longest and most ambitious composition on the recording. On it, Scott gives his own type of solo: not overly showy, plenty of space, cognizant of the fact

that a note or two can say a lot—some might say like Miles. But more than emulating the masters, Scott and his quintet with Yesterday have instead done something that doesn’t happen as often in jazz today as you might think: produce an authentically original album of music, one with some real feeling to it.

Cover art for Christian Scott’s new album, Yesterday You Said Tomorrow.

COURTESY OF CONCORD JAZZ

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CHICAGO MAROON | VOICES | April 23, 2010

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

With Christine Yang

Friday | April 23 Although Semi Precious Weapons’ cameo in Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video ended in death, the glam rock band and reigning queen of the charts have quite an amicable relationship in real life. The occasional guests on Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball tour will be in town headlining their own tour with Nico Vega and Breedlove.

(2011 West North Avenue, 8 p.m., $12)

Saturday | April 24 Just because Blink-182 is “on hiatus” doesn’t mean that you can’t hear Tom DeLonge’s voice, as he also fronts the space rock band Angels and Airwaves. The group just released its third studio album Love and is currently making a science fiction film of the same title based on the album. (1106 West Lawrence Avenue, 7 p.m., $25) Dance the night away at the Chicago Swing Dance Society’s exchange, Ida’s House of Lindy and Blues. Saturday night’s blues dance will feature a performance by the Shirley King band (whose father, B.B. King, is also in town). There will be a late-night dance afterward at the Checkerboard Lounge. (Ida Noyes Cloister Club, 9 p.m., $8)

Sunday | April 25 Blues and jazz saxophonist Red Holloway will be appearing with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra in its tribute to Eddie Johnson. Holloway will be performing arrangements of “Ben Webster with Strings,” while trumpeter Art Davis will play arrangements of “Chet Baker with Strings.” (International House, 3 p.m., $8)

Monday | April 26 Much to the chagrin of middle -class parents in the ’50s, filmmakers exploited the growing popularity of rock and roll among teenagers by marketing rock films to encourage more widespread acceptance of the new sensation. Such was the case with Don’t Knock the Rock , starring Bill Haley and the Comets and disc jockey Alan Freed. This follow-up to Rock Around

the Clock also exposed Little Richard to a mass audience. (Max Palevsky Cinema, 7 p.m., $5)

Pulitzer Prize winners

Tuesday | April 27 Since Icelandic (or is it better to call it Hopelandic?) band Sigur Rós announced its indefinite hiatus at the beginning of the year, lead singer Jónsi Birgisson has been busy with the release of his new album Go and its promotional tour. He will be appearing at the Vic Theatre with neotraditional folk band Death Vessel. (3145 North Sheffield Avenue, 7:30 p.m., $34)

Eclectic performances

Provocative art

Wednesday | April 28

DAYS OF

While Baskin-Robbins may not be as generous as its free-cone–loving Vermont competitor, the ice cream chain will be hosting 31 Cent Scoop Night. In addition to dishing up cheap sweets, Baskin-Robbins will also be accepting donations for the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

(500 East Roosevelt, 5 p.m., free)

Thursday | April 29 Ever since the English Bedford-Lorry truck was introduced to Sudan in the late ’50s, local craftsmen have been modifying the truck to transform it into the ideal vehicle for both regular and off-road driving. The history of the “Sifinja”—so dubbed because of the truck’s malleability—is documented in the German film Sifinja: The Iron Bride . The screening is a part of the Politics in Africa conference sponsored by the Committee on African Studies. (Cobb 307, 7 p.m., free) The U of C chapter of the National Organization for Women will be sponsoring a Take Back the Night Rally this Thursday. Take Back the Night is an internationally held march and rally against rape and other forms of sexual violence against women. (Bartlett Quad, 6 p.m., free)

UCHICAGO

ART APRIL 6 – JUNE 4

APRIL HIGHLIGHTS 4/23

Liber Ensemble: “Crowned with Laurels”, Chicago Presents Rockefeller Chapel, 7:30 P.M.

4/24

University Symphony Orchestra: Liszt into Spring Concerto Night Music Department, Mandel Hall, 8 P.M. Newberry Consort: Music of William Byrd, Music Department Rockefeller Chapel, 8 P.M.

Have an event you’d like to see in STD? E-mail STD@ChicagoMaroon.com

4/25

Chicago Jazz Orchestra: Tribute to Eddie Johnson, Passport to Jazz,

The Despres Family Memorial Lecture Series

International House, 3 P.M.

Presented by Friends of Blackstone Library

Central Javanese Gamelan Celebrating Poetry: New Poets Emerging Presenting new poets from the University of Chicago Creative Writing Program. Hosted by Suzanne Buffam (Past Imperfect, Interiors). Featuring Andrew Chen, Thade Correa, Noah Diamond, William Larsen, Matthew Lemoyne (1st place Heart of Chicago, Fall 2009), Sean Pears, Hannah Walser (Annan Award 2009). Co-sponsored by The Committee on Creative Writing, University of Chicago April 28, 2010 • Wednesday • 6:30 pm

Last Words of the Executed Author Robert K. Elder will talk from his forthcoming book Last Words of the Executed (UC Press, June 2010). The book is a collection of final statements displaying the ways in which the condemned meet death. It paints an unforgettable portrait of crime, punishment, and a dark side of American life.

May 26, 2010 • Wednesday • 6 pm All events are FREE and are held at: Blackstone Branch Library 4904 S. Lake Park Avenue For more information call 312.747.0511 or visit http://friendsofblackstone.wordpress.com/ The Despres Family Memorial Lecture Series presented by Friends of Blackstone Library. The series honors the contributions to civic and cultural life made by the Despres Family by encouraging civic discourse and cultural engagement.

CHICAGOMAROON.COM

and Friends of the Gamelan, Music Department, Hyde Park Union Church, 5600 S. Woodlawn Ave., 6 P.M. Hip-Hop at the Rock, workshop and concert, Rockefeller Chapel, 5 P.M.

For a complete calendar of events, visit arts.uchicago.edu

9

CHICAGO MAROON | VOICES | April 23, 2010

Greenfield takes local beer background on the road

CLASSIFIEDS

BIKING continued from page 7

Classified advertising in the CHICAGO MAROON is $3 for each line. Lines are 45 characters long including spaces and punctuation. Special headings are 20-character lines at $4 per line.

Classifieds are not accepted over the phone, and they must be paid in advance. Submit all ads in person, by e-mail, or by mail to the CHICAGO MAROON, Ida Noyes Hall, Lower Level Rm 026, 1212 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL 60637 attn: Classified Ads. Deadlines: Wednesdays and Fridays, 12 P.M., prior to publication. The CHICAGO MAROON accepts Mastercard & Visa. Call (773) 702-9555.

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C M: Can you explain the connection between biking and beer?

JG: There’s a lot of tie-ins between the rise in recent years of a bicycling boom and there’s also been a boom in beer appreciation, particularly draught beer and beer pubs.

For example, there’s the Handlebar, a bar in Wicker Park that was founded by a couple of my friends who met during the Critical Mass bike ride.

CM: Were you involved in the UChicago bike scene when you were an undergrad here?

JG: When I first came to college, it didn’t even occur to me to bring a bicycle along. I went to college in the early nineties and the scene was a lot quieter then. That was before Chicago added bike lanes or installed bike racks. I think I only really got into bicycling when I worked as a bike messenger for the first time, in my junior year of college.

CM: Is that as dangerous a job in Chicago as it is in, say, New York?

JG: There are obvious dangers—you’re dealing with live traffic. If you’re riding, say, a brakeless fixed gear, they tend to get into crashes and break something once a year. But you know I don’t think there’ve been a whole lot of on-the-job deaths of bike messengers in Chicago.

CM: What was the most surprising part of the trip?

JG: I was kind of surprised how much I liked riding in Iowa. Maybe it was because I had just finished riding through Nebraska and that was pretty hellish. But as soon as I crossed the Missouri River into Iowa, it was like night and day. Immediately the people were friendly, the scenery was lush and green.

Instead of being Monstanto factory farms and monoculture, it was family farms.

CM: You joined with the annual bike ride across Iowa (RAGBRAI) for a couple of days and seemed a little shocked by the debauchery. Were you expecting such a spectacle?

JG: I kind of knew what I was getting into.

I knew that RAGBRAI, in some respects, is kind of a rolling frat party. I was a little disappointed, because I thought people would think it was really cool that I was going across country with four front and back panniers, but instead I felt like a little bit of an outsider riding by myself. I think I’d like to go back and do RAGBRAI with a group of friends. I think that would be really fun.

CM: You say a couple of times in the book that you were mistaken for a hobo. Is that a danger in a cross country trip?

JG: [laughing] I’ve decided that when you’re bike touring you should shave. Every day.

That way it’s clear to people that you’ve taken a bath.

CM: What do you do now?

JG: I write freelance for some of the weeklies and I help edit a bicycling magazine called Momentum. I also work a little bit at a friend’s bike shop. I think bicycling is a theme that’s run through my life for a while. A lot of stuff I do is bike related. I play music too, and I’ve written some songs about bicycling.

It’s great to do a big trip like this, but people should keep in mind that there’s lots of bicycle adventures you can have without leaving the Midwest or the Chicago area.

Even if you can’t get away for two months, you can get away for a weekend.

A book I would recommend is Chicago’s Best Dive Bars to check out some interesting local taps. I’m trying to think if there are any Hyde Park bars in there—The Cove and Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap are in there... although, to be honest, he doesn’t give very

Liszt Into Spring!

University Symphony Orchestra Barbara Schubert, Conductor featuring piano soloist Alice Chen, first place winner of the 2010 Concerto Competition

Saturday, April 24 • 8 pm VOICES: ALMOST ALMOST FAMOUS

Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th Street Donations requested: $10 general /$5 students

MEETINGS ARE SUNDAYS, 3 P.M. BASEMENT OF IDA NOYES

Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, and more! event hotline: 773.702.8069 • music.uchicago.edu Persons who need assistance should call 773.702.8484.

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CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | April 23, 2010

SOFTBALL

Chicago fielding better after defensive improvements

By A. G. Goodman Sports Editor In a doubleheader marked by dominant pitching and strong defensive performances from both teams, Chicago and Aurora each came away with a win last Tuesday, in the Maroons’ penultimate home outing of the season.

Th e M a r o o n s t o o k t h e o p e n e r 6 - 1 , although for a long period the game was much closer than the final score implies.

Going into the bottom of the fourth both teams had yet to score, but with the bases loaded, fourth-year third baseman Lauren White stepped up to the plate and singled up the middle, bringing in Chicago’s first run.

The Maroons then took fi rm control of the game in a breakout fifth inning. Fourthyear first baseman Kathleen Duffy got things started with a single to right field before fi rst-year shortstop Vicky Tomaka blasted a two-run homer. Singles from first-year Jacqueline Ryan and second-year Julia Schneider brought in three more runs, giving the Maroons a 6-0 lead.

Strong pitching from second-year Sarah Nehaus, who gave up only six runs and shut the Spartans out over six innings, and strong relief by first-years Melissa Collins and Ryan, secured the win for the Maroons.

In the second game, the Maroons’

NCAA should rethink tournament selection process END OF THE BENCH continued from back page it’ll be less about their own failed season and more about a system that continues to keep strong teams out of the NCAA tournament.

Let me break it down: There are three pools from which teams can reach the tournament. Pool A consists of the champions of conferences with automatic bids, Pool B draws independent teams and those without auto bids, and Pool C offers atlarge bids to the next best teams.

Chicago doesn’t belong to Pool A this season because of the good people over at Wash U (ranked second in the country) and Emory (ranked third). That shouldn’t take away an NCAA bid.

The issue is that Pool C doesn’t have enough spots. Six at-large bids, more than six very good teams won’t win their conferences this season.

Oh, and I lied: This isn’t breaking news.

Chicago had the same problem last season.

They were ranked 17th at the end of last year, just outside the NCAA picture. At the time, I thought it was just a case of “Someone had to be left out.”

Things have come into focus this season.

Throughout the year, chatter on the internet has surrounded that one loss to Kalamazoo. Chicago has gone 13–5 (two losses to D-III teams), and it’s still been a nearly-foregone conclusion that Chicago wouldn’t make the tournament.

This weekend, the Maroons have a chance to rectify things. If they can find a way past Wash U and into the finals, an NCAA ticket will be theirs.

If they win the third-place match (likely against Carnegie), their tournament hopes will still be alive, although the team will still be teetering on the edge of NCAA contention. The NCAA calls Chicago the 15th-best team in the country, but teetering is probably still their best hope this weekend.

People tell me the college football BCS is biased.

From where I stand, the D-III tennis tournament is the definition of an unfair system.

The NCAA needs to strongly consider a change in the tournament, whether through expanding the field or shifting bids between fields. There will be 27 automatic qualifiers this season, many of whom aren’t even in the top 30. I’m all for regional fairness, but why call it a national tournament if the best teams in the nation aren’t playing.

41 teams will compete in the NCAA tournament this season. The 15th best might not be among them, even though it doesn’t have to be that way. Some kind of fair.

offensive never got off the ground, as they were held to a mere three hits and shut out by the Spartans’ second-year pitcher Lindsay Decker, who went the distance for Aurora. A single run in the fourth inning was enough for Aurora to walk away with a victory.

“It’s always tough to lose a one-run game, especially when we won the first 6-1,” White said. “We struggled with hitting in the second game, because we didn’t make adjustments fast enough. We fell behind 0-1 or 0-2 too often.”

Despite the tough loss, the Maroons are confident of their recent form. In particular, Chicago’s pitching and defense have improved greatly over the last couple of weeks, holding their opponents to a total of just seven runs in the past six games.

“Our pitching and defense has been great the past few games,” White said. “We’ve changed our thinking defensively to be playing in a more offensive manner which has made us more solid and aggressive on tough plays.”

Chicago hopes to continue with this tenacious defense as it seeks to close out the season strongly and climb up the D-III regional rankings, where it currently sits at the bottom of the Great Lakes Region.

“With three teams that we have yet to play (North Central, Illinois Wesleyan, and

Fourth-years Saltarelli and Brinker will set tone for Maroons M. TENNIS continued from back page against North Central.

In practice, the Maroons played an inter-squad match of a singles set and doubles pro-set Tuesday evening.

“They did a good job – everyone played really hard,” Perry said. “They pushed each other and gave each other tough competition; it had to come from within this week.”

“We haven’t had any tough matches since spring break,” second-year Troy Brinker said.

Heading into the UAAs, Perry’s goal for Chicago is to stay loose and let fourth-years Garret Brinker and Steve Saltarelli set the tone. “[Brinker and Saltarelli] make up our number one doubles team, so they always set the tone for the first part of the match,” he said. “They’ve both been with us four years and have a high level of commitment to the team.”

“They do a lot of supporting off the court and set the tone with their great enthusiasm and a lot of energy,” he continued. “This is really important, especially in a tournament [like the UAAs] where every match will be heated and will be competitive.”

Overall, the team is psyched for the conference championships.

Troy Brinker explained his pre-match routine, which we can only assume other players on the team adopt as well: “Most of my game revolves around the proper infliction of mind games, but I can’t do that unless I reach the proper zen beforehand. This is usually achieved through listening to only the best trance beats, and of course, DJ Splash.

He always gets it done for me.”

Going into the tournament, the Maroons are fired up. “Going into the UAAs, we are one sport out of the NCAAs, even though we’re 15 in the nation,” Troy Brinker said. “We had a bad loss to Kalamazoo, but we also had a very close 5–4 loss to Wash U. Being jipped out of the rankings, we have a bit of a chip on our shoulder and we feel like we need to prove ourselves.”

“If we can get past Brandeis, we will be looking forward to re-playing Wash U,” head coach Perry added.

Chicago will face Brandeis at 9 a.m. at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, PA, in their first challenge at the UAAs.

First-year Vicky Tomaka, shown against Hope, hit a two-run homer to lead the Maroons to a 6–1 win over Aurora in the first game of Tuesday’s double-header.

DARREN LEOW/MAROON

Carthage) currently ahead of us in region, we are looking to really gain some ground in the standings” White said. “It’s exciting that our schedule is giving us a chance to do this.”

The Maroons will travel to Wisconsin this weekend to play doubleheaders against Carthage and Beloit before closing out the home season next Thursday against North Central.

Jackson: If you can get net, you can dunk JACKSON continued from back page triple jumper in high school?

DJ: I was a hurdler. I definitely started with hurdles. I didn’t start triple jump until the end of my junior year.

CM: How did you get into jumping in the first place? Was there anyone who inspired you?

DJ: My coach suggested jumping to me. It’s funny because when I went out for track freshman year, I was just trying to stay in shape for basketball. I really just ended up in throwing.

But my brother, who was on the team, and the coach really encouraged me to get into hurdles.

CM: As a dude with serious ups, are you going to win the dunking competition tonight?

DJ: Man, I don’t even know if I am going to do it tonight. I gotta conserve my legs.

CM: Can you teach me to dunk?

DJ: How tall are you?

CM: 5-foot-10.

DJ: You got any ups?

CM: Yeah, tons of them. I can almost touch net.

DJ: Shouldn’t be a problem then. Just go grab a ball and see what you got.

CM: Chariots of Fire, White Men Can’t Jump, or Space Jam? DJ: Haha. I’ve gotta go with Space Jam. CM: How have the fly honeys been treating you?

DJ: I don’t even know, I haven’t even been trying to focus on that right now. Just trying to focus on nationals and wrapping up the school year.

North Central puts Chicago away with 10 runs in the sixth BASEBALL continued from back page three runs.

“Yesterday, we simply could not hit with runners in scoring position,” assistant coach Scott Budeselich remarked. The Maroons stranded a total of 18 runners.

The offensive torpor was banished in the sixth inning when the Cardinals’ inchoate hitting matured into an offensive onslaught. Three separate Maroon pitchers faced 15 batters, surrendering five walks, seven hits, and ten runs and giving North Central an ineluctable 13–0 lead. Cardinal shortstop Nick Robinson racked up two hits and four RBIs during the inning.

The Maroons struck back in the seventh inning, after first-year Toni Logli smacked an RBI single down the right field line. Logli, one of the team’s trio of promising first-year talents, collected three hits in the course of his five at-bats.

After a scoreless bottom of the seventh, first-year John-Reynold Lopez singled up the middle to drive in two Chicago baserunners.

Although too little too late, Lopez extended his hitting streak to 18 consecutive games, one of the few bright spots of the day.

Explaining his consistency at the plate this season, Lopez observed, “I feel that I have been able to be successful due to sitting on the right pitches and taking quality swings, working the count and just putting the ball into play.”

After an eventless ninth inning, the Maroons left Naperville having been outscored by opponents in their previous two games 35–8. With just a quarter of the team’s regular season games left, coach Budeselich remarked, “Our expectations for the rest of the year are to give our best effort each game and finish above .500.”

Speaking of the team’s inconsistency this season, third-year second baseman Nick Fazzari noted, “It’s tough being 14–12 when we expected to be in a better position at this point in the season.”

The Maroons will try to shake off their twogame losing streak this weekend against their rival Wash U. Noting their upcoming opponents, Fazzari added, “We play a four game series against Wash U coming up, and regardless of records going in it is always an intense rivalry.”

Chicago will face host Wash U Saturday at noon.

11

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SPORTS

—Danica Patrick, who lent her voice to a newly-released racing video game, explaining the advantages of the game’s multi-player mode.

MEN’S TENNIS

TRACK AND FIELD

The NCAA tournament is within reach. But as third-year Will Zhang and the men’s tennis team head to UAA this weekend, they’re on the

outside looking in

Chicago looks to pull tournament upset

By Audrey Henkels Sports Editor Fifteenth-ranked men’s tennis gears up for the UAA Championship this weekend, which should prove to be quite a battle.

“The UAA men’s [tennis] tournament is really competitive,” head coach Marty Perry said. “If you look at the national rankings, you can see how deep the conference is. It’s probably one of the tougher conference championships.”

Wash U and Emory, for instance, are in the top ten.

The rankings may not even reflect all of the top competition in the conference, however. “Brandeis and Case aren’t even in the top [thirty] but they

are great teams,” Perry continued.

The Maroons will face Brandeis first on Friday morning.

“Brandeis is very good,” Perry said.

“Their one and two singles, and their number one doubles are strong; just right there, those are three points that will be hard for us to get.”

Chicago has been sailing through their past few meets, but this hasn’t been ideal in terms of getting the team ready for UAAs. “We’ve had easy matches [recently],” Perry explained, “so we’ve tried to push ourselves in practice.”

The team has been scrimmaging to try to get into the mode of competing since their last meet, a 9–0 home win

M. TENNIS continued on page 10

Ranked 15th, men deserve nationals bid End of the Bench

By Jake Grubman MAROON Staff

Breaking news: The best men’s tennis teams in the nation don’t actually play for the men’s tennis national championship.

Ok, maybe I’m being a little bit dramatic. But that will be the case if the Maroons don’t pull off an upset and finish third or higher in the UAA tournament. Chicago is still in the hunt for a bid to the NCAA tournament.

But with the season the Maroons have put together, they shouldn’t have to be “alive”; they should be in.

The real news is that a broken selection system has the Maroons’ postseason in question. When the Maroons head to UAAs in Pittsburgh this weekend, they’ll be playing for something bigger than a higher finish in the conference; they’ll be playing for their postseason lives. As the 15th-ranked team in the country, that shouldn’t be the case.

I should say now that they could have avoided this situation if they had taken care of business throughout the season. A loss at Kalamazoo in March put Chicago in an early-season hole, and without that loss, you wouldn’t be reading this column.

But if the Maroons find themselves mourning on tournament selection day,

END OF THE BENCH continued on page 10

BASEBALL

North Central delivers cardinal loss to Maroons

By Nick Foretek Sports Staff Capping their five game road trip, the Maroons lost for the second time in a row on Wednesday, losing to 30th ranked North Central 14–3 at Zimmerman Stadium in Naperville.

Coming off his dominating complete game performance only a week ago against Benedictine, fourth-year starting pitcher Joe Pankow surrendered seven runs in five and a third innings. Followed by a bullpen continuing the theme, the three subsequent pitchers brought on in relief allowed another seven runs on the way to recording just eight outs.

After two scoreless innings, in which Chicago collected not one hit, the Cardinal’s bats finally emerged, spurred on by leadoff man Nick Robinson, who picked up the first of his five RBIs of the evening with a double down the right field line.

He extended his hitting streak to 13 games. After scoring on a sacrifice fly from designated hitter Joe Turek, the Cardinals grabbed a 3–0 lead after

Q&A: Going further with Drew Jackson

By Will Fallon Sports Editor To a good part of the UAA, Drew Jackson is a man who needs no introduction. In the past two weeks, he has twice been named UAA Athlete of the Week for track & field. Recently, he’s been on fire. Last weekend in the triple jump, he jumped one of the top three lengths in D-III and the secondbest distance in U of C history. This would be enough for most people, but he is also an accomplished hurdler, long jumper, and slam dunker.

We recently had the chance to talk to him about all of this.

CHICAGO MAROON: How’s it feel to be the best jumper ever, two times in a row?

Drew Jackson: What? I wouldn’t say I’m the best jumper ever. Still got some work to do to get there...But it feels good to improve and finally be making some big marks.

CM: Well, your 14.67 at the Wheaton Invite might not be the best ever, but it is top two in Maroon history.

DJ: Is it? I wasn’t aware. That’s great.

CM: Not only did your jump at Wheaton win the meet, but it was third in the division. Are you looking to climb up those two spots?

DJ: Yeah. I’ve still got a couple weeks until nationals. I’ve got a little time to fine tune everything, and at nationals, make some noise.

CM: What else are you looking to accomplish this quarter, both at UAAs and nationals?

DJ: This weekend we’ve got UAAs and it would be nice to get an outdoor team championship. I’m going to try to do my part in long jump, hurdles and triple jump. But just to get a team championship in outdoor would be great. We haven’t done that before so that would be nice.

CM: Were you more of a hurdler or

JACKSON continued on page 10

CA LEN DA R Friday

4/23

•Men’s Tennis @ UAA Championship vs. Brandeis, 9 a.m

Saturday

4/24

•Baseball @ Wash U (DH), noon •Softball @ Carthage (DH), 1 p.m.

•Men’s Tennis @ UAA Championship, Opponent and Time TBD •Men’s and Women’s @ UAA Championship, All Day

Sunday First-year J.R. Lopez, shown against Dallas, extended his hitting streak to 18 games against North Central.

CLAIRE HUNGERFORD/MAROON

three.

Through the fifth, the score remained unchanged with the

Maroons continually failing to hit with runners in scoring position.

While Chicago mustered 11 hits and

benefited from five North Central errors, the team could score only

BASEBALL continued on page 10

4/25

•Baseball @ Wash U (DH), noon •Softball @ Beloit (DH), 1 p.m.

•Men’s Tennis @ UAA Championship, Opponent and Time TBD •Men’s and Women’s @ UAA Championship, All Day