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FRIDAY • OCTOBER 17, 2014

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ISSUE 5 • VOLUME 126

Star-studded group opens Innovation Exchange Uncommon Interview: CeCe McDonald

Mayor Rahm Emanuel (center) introduces the Chicago Innovation Exchange (CIE) to the Chicago startup scene on Thursday at the CIE campus, along with Dean of the Booth School of Business Sunil Kumar (right) and Executive Director of the CIE John Flavin.

FRANK YAN | THE CHICAGO MAROON

Kelly Zhang News Staff The University unveiled its new start-up incubator at the grand opening of the Chicago Innovation Exchange (CIE) at Harper Court.

Speakers at the event includ-

ed President Robert Zimmer, Governor Pat Quinn, Senator Mark Kirk, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Quinn announced at the opening that he will invest $1 million into the CIE to promote new businesses and job growth in the technology and innovation sectors across

Illinois.

“This investment will pay dividends for our state by giving students, faculty, and local community entrepreneurs the opportunity to grow in Illinois.

While we have more work to do, Illinois is making a comeback, and it couldn’t happen

without the creative and motivated start-ups that are taking root right here at the Innovation Exchange,” Quinn said.

In an interview, CIE Director John Flavin emphasized the opportunities available at the University that the CIE complements. “[The] motivating factor for opening up the Chicago Innovation Exchange was to bring the success of the [Booth School’s] Polsky Center [for Entrepreneurship and Innovation] across campus, so not only to the business school but connecting it to the other great things that are happening in the innovation landscape,” he said.

The space, which was funded by the University, comprises a total of 32,000 square feet divided among three buildings.

The central CIE hub is located on the second floor of the Harper Theater complex and has multiple types of spaces like incubation space for start-up work, classrooms, conference rooms, and a large event space that doubles as a working space.

CIE continued on page 4

Ankit Jain News Editor In June 2011, CeCe McDonald, a transgender woman, was attacked while walking to the grocery store. In the ensuing fight, she killed one of her attackers, Dean Schmitz. McDonald was arrested and sentenced to 41

months in prison. Her case drew international attention, and after being released from prison earlier this year, McDonald has been touring the country talking about transgender and racial justice. She sat down with the Maroon to discuss issues faced by trans people, liberalizing drug and CECE continued on page 2

Aramark workers negotiate new contract Jeffrey Chin Maroon Contributor A new contract signed between Aramark and its employees came into effect last month, bringing changes in both wages and health insurance plans to workers in the University.

The contract provides for wage increases of 3 to 5 per-

cent each year, which is a larger gain from what had been negotiated in the previous contract. The contract also calls for improvements in employees’ health insurance plans.

The contract was negotiated

by Debra Simmons-Peterson, the president of Teamsters Local 743, who represents the DINE continued on page 2

Workday to move HR to the cloud SG president creates new executive cabinet Quang Tran & Elle Rathbun Maroon Contributors A new online system for Human Resources and Payroll will launch in January, affecting all faculty, academic appointees, staff, and student workers.

Workday, a human resources information system that relies on the Internet cloud, aims to replace the old payroll system while offering users better access to and management of their personal information.

The move was announced this past July.

Workday will allow more transparency of data shared between employees and administrators by centralizing all specifics regarding payroll schedule, benefits, and employer information within one website.

Both employers and administrators will have easy access to this data. UChicago Time, the current payroll system, only reports work time, records absences, and tracks accruals.

The new system hopes to replace “paper-driven processes” with a digital system. “Work-

day is a robust HR system used by many educational institutions across the country,” Rich Iorio, University vice president and chief human resource officer, wrote on the Workday website. “It will ensure that the University is providing the latest technology to support core human resources for our faculty and staff. Workday also gives us the ability to add functionality over time as we learn what will most effectively support our work.”

Lewis and Clark College implemented the Workday system in January 2014. Isaac Dixon, director of Human Resources at Lewis and Clark College, said the system has made things smoother for workers. “Students can now report times and get paid through the system. It’s a lot easier because it’s cloudhosted, and the system is electronically time-processed. This system seems a lot faster and easier for the students to pick up,” he said.

The University will transition to Workday in several stages. In January, the system

will replace the current Employee Database and Employee Self-Service. In later stages, Workday is set to replace UChicago Time, which will affect employees’ records and the University’s recruiting systems. The University also looks to eventually implement Workday’s talent and performance module.

Human Resources and Payroll administrators have already had training and education opportunities concerning the new system, and those opportunities will continue for other University personnel throughout this year and into early 2015.

In a recent report by Forrester Research, Workday received high scores in a finances and human resources evaluation regarding management systems.

Other institutions who have transitioned, or are on their way to transitioning, to the Workday system include Brown University, Cornell University, Georgetown University, Yale University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Ancestry .com, among others.

Katerina Hoskova Maroon Contributor College Council (CC) voted in favor of appointing students slated for five new executive committee positions yesterday. Student Government (SG) President Tyler Kissinger established the positions through an executive order power he established for himself this year. Though CC voted at Assembly, not all of the Graduate Council has been seated, so the appointments will not be finalized until Graduate Council votes on Monday.

The new positions and students slated are Miguel Ortega for chief of staff, Geoffrey Wang for director of finance, Alita Carbone for director of communications, Daniel Chen for director of new ventures, and Jeremy Archer for director of technology. The council passed the appointments with 13 votes in favor and four absent.

Kissinger established the power of the SG president to

issue executive orders over the summer and then released a series of unprecedented orders creating these five new positions. Though the constitution does not explicitly give power to the president to create executive orders, Kissinger says that each one “cites from the bylaws what in the bylaws gives me the authority to do that.”

Kissinger said he decided to implement these reforms after his experience in SG last year, drawing inspiration from the organizational structure of Northwestern University’s student government. Each position will receive a small stipend that comes from the administrative budget, which Kissinger said is also found in other schools.

The positions of the chief of staff and the director of communications existed unofficially in the past, but their duties were only officially established with the executive orders. The chief of staff will act as the liaison between the president and the executive committee, as well as aiding the president in

other projects as needed. The executive orders placed the director of communications in charge of general communication and SG’s social media.

Each of the other three positions has a number of responsibilities enumerated in the executive orders. What Kissinger calls “looking at new sorts of revenue streams” is among the responsibilities of the director of new ventures, who will work jointly with the director of finance.

The director of finance is charged with organizing a database that catalogs the financial expenditures of SG and dealing with SG finances in general. The responsibilities of the director of technology include oversight over the SG website and developing technological resources for the use of students and RSOs. The power to appoint these executive committee positions belongs solely to the SG president. As such, the appointees are held accountable by the president, who can remove them from office.

IN VIEWPOINTS

IN ARTS

IN SPORTS

Getting a rise out of RISE » Page 5

String quartet opens strong schedule for UChicago Presents

Chicago hosts second Round Robin

The Sketch » Page 9

Maroons to face final test at UWOshkosh before UAAs » Page 11

An education in Teach for America

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | October 17, 2014

“I want people to take action.... It’s definitely a revolution coming,” McDonald says of LGBT movement CECE continued from front

sex laws, and the difference between herself and George Zimmerman.

To read the extended version, visit chicagomaroon.com Chicago Maroon (CM): Can you talk about the indignities you’ve faced as a transgender woman and the indignities faced in general by trans people?

CeCe McDonald (CCM): I wouldn’t say that it’s just being trans alone, because a lot of trans people have certain privileges that trans women of color don’t have. But there is definitely a significant unacknowledgment [sic] of trans women in society today. And it seems like we’re starting to get the momentum and the acknowledgment that we deserve and have the right to, but there are definitely still certain tribulations that trans women face.

CM: What do you think needs to be done to stop society from treating trans people as less than, as lower on the totem pole?

CCM: There has to be acknowledgment of who we are as people.…

I feel like once people kind of attach our humanity back to us and see us for more than props or sex objects, to see that we deserve and want loving and caring partners, and that we need housing, and employment, and education to be progressive in this society.

CM: Can you talk about the psychological effect on trans people that society puts on them?

CCM: ...with people of color in general. We’re always stereotyped as the welfare recipient or the drug dealer or so on and so forth. I feel like people tend to internalize that and not know that there are opportunities that are out there, but also not having all the opportunities and same resources that other privileged people get. And that is definitely a psychological manipulation in a way where people kind of don’t know how to deal with that or unintentionally don’t know that it’s happening, and that kind of keeps this cycle

going that it’s okay to be this way, which is fine too, but there are also ways that we can better ourselves…. I feel like it’s not just a trans issue, it’s an everybody issue.

CM: What did you have to do to survive after you left home?

CCM: Like I said, there weren’t real resources up here that are beneficial for trans women of color. And that led me to have sex with people if I didn’t want to, but I knew that it was good money. Or sell drugs and risk getting in trouble doing that.

But those were all lessons learned, and I still don’t see anything wrong with those things today, it’s just because of criminalization of those things that made it immoral or unfit for society by other standards.

CM: Are you saying that we should liberalize drug laws and laws around sex work?

CCM: Definitely. I feel like what one does with their body shouldn’t be the choice of other people....

The liberalization of those things not only gives people personal freedoms and not have to deal with the criminal injustice system and police in militarized environments, and be able to breathe more easily and let people decide how they want to deal with those situations by themselves.

CM: If you liberalize those laws, wouldn’t it become more prevalent, and wouldn’t more people get caught in that trap of drugs or the sex trade?

CCM: I feel like there’s always a safe way to do it… that’s a lot of the work that I do, teaching people about safe sex, and it doesn’t necessarily have to go in that route. It goes in that route because it’s criminalized, and once it’s criminalized it becomes a criminal activity. So sex trade becomes a criminal activity because people aren’t allowed to do it safely or freely, and they get caught up in this system where it’s unsafe.

CM: You talked a little about the societal problems trans people face.

So do you think the societal conditions that are faced by trans people as a whole are relevant to acts commit-

ted by individual trans people?

CCM: Yes. CM: How do you think that? Because a lot of people say that even if a group of people faces a problem, isn’t it the individual that’s at issue right here?

CCM: For me, and this is from my own experience, a lot of the times I can meet a trans women that I’ve never seen a day in my life, and have went through so many of the same things together. And I feel like, with trans misogyny and the violence that trans women face, there are a lot of excuses that people use to get away with the things that they do and how they treat trans women.

CM: Some people were comparing your case to that of George Zimmerman. What would you say to those people who compared you to Zimmerman?

CCM: Depending on how it’s compared, if they’re referring to people of color being attacked and then criminalized, then yeah there’s

After a months-long process of improving options for students who cannot eat gluten, campus dining halls have received gluten-free certification.

After the site inspection last Wednesday and Thursday, the Gluten Intolerance Group (GIG), a respected arbiter of gluten-free standards, gave the University a perfect rating of 100 percent. Cynthia Kupper, the executive director at the GIG who helped conduct the audit, said that the score was the result of the thorough implementation of a set of strict standards.

Kupper and a colleague inspected the dining hall site and discussed gluten-free food handling with workers at the station.

“We see [that score] when time has been taken to make sure that it’s done well. But it is not common that everyone gets a 100 percent,” Kupper said. “The certification…allows [students] the confidence that somebody is watching to make sure that the cafeteria or the food service is doing a good job,”

she added.

Over the last several months, the GIG consulted with Aramark, the contractor running food services at the University, and University Dining, on their standards for handling gluten-free food. The GIG will also investigate and try to rectify student complaints about gluten handling in the dining hall.

A main feature of efforts to expand and secure gluten-free options was the launch of a new station in Cathey Dining Commons. Within the next two weeks, executive director of dining Richard Mason expects the station to be certified as one of the only gluten-free stations at a university dining hall in the country. The University of Chicago is the only university in Illinois certified by the GIG, according to Kupper.

In preparation for the audit, the station was deep cleaned and employees were educated about preparing and serving gluten-free food.

As part of the certification process, the GIG reviewed and made suggestions about employee training and studied the training logs.

University Dining and Aramark

nitely it has garnered some spotlight on the violence that trans women face. Fortunately, I’m one of few that get to live and talk about it, one, and one of few who aren’t in prison for half their lives because they defended themselves. And that in itself has given me a platform to talk about this, and talk about those issues, because like I said, a lot of trans women don’t live….

I want people to take action. I want people to not just hear me, but to live through me, to live through this experience to give themselves a platform. To talk about what they face, and so many beautiful, strong trans women now that are coming forward, and it’s definitely a revolution coming and I’m glad that I am here for that, that I’m alive for that, that I lived through that situation, through that incident, and can share this so that people can kind of build themselves up, build momentum, and move forward with this revolution.

CeCe McDonald discusses her challenges with race and gender at the Law School Auditorium Wednesday night. McDonald was imprisoned for what she says was defense against a hate crime.

FRANK YAN | THE CHICAGO MAROON

Dining halls deemed gluten-free friendly Adam Thorp Maroon Contributor

definitely connections in that. But I would never want anybody to actually compare me to George Zimmerman. His idea of self-defense was him chasing someone and then attacking them. I was someone who was actually attacked, minding my business walking down the street, and my self-defense is unequal to his, which wasn’t really self-defense, because you can’t initiate something and then.… Like I said, I wouldn’t mind people comparing me to the actual idea of people of color being criminalized and how the system favors certain people, certain privileges, other than people of color. And I really don’t like that. I get angry just thinking about it.

CM: What do you hope will be the end result of that tragic incident?

How do you hope it will galvanize a change in the way that trans people and people of color are treated?

CCM: I know my incident is one of millions, since the beginning of time. That’s nothing new. But defi-

decided to pursue the certification as the growing number of students who needed to avoid gluten outpaced the options available.

“Unlike other allergens, when we looked at our program there wasn’t an adequate availability to satisfy those students,” Gary Arthur, senior resident district manager at Aramark, said.

“Year after year, the number of students with gluten sensitivity has been growing. That’s certainly a market we don’t want to ignore. They’re obligated to have a meal plan with us, and we’re obligated to meet that nutritional need,” Arthur said.

Carol Shilson, executive director of the Celiac Disease Center, located at the University of Chicago Medical Center, suggested the GIG to Aramark and University Dining.

The GIG will provide campus dining halls with what Arthur called a “tremendous amount of marketing materials” alerting diners of the certification.

The University plans to incorporate gluten-free stations into Bartlett Dining Commons and the planned dining hall in Campus North.

New three-year contract was approved in a 135–0 vote DINE continued from front

dining hall and academic café employees. The three-year agreement was approved unanimously by union members with a vote of 135 to 0 on May 24, 2014.

“Health insurance is more affordable for members and is now provided through [Teamsters Local’s] health and welfare plan, which includes short term disability and dental insurance,” Catharine Schutzius, a business agent for Teamsters Local 743, said.

Aramark provides services to healthcare institutions, universities and school districts, stadiums and arenas, and businesses around the world. It has been operating both the University dining halls and academic cafés since 2011, and its chairman, Joseph Neubauer, is vice chairman

of the University’s Board of Trustees.

Besides wage and health plan improvements, the new contract also calls for a “new, aggressive training program,” according to Eric Young, a manager at Cathey Dining Commons.

One employee in Bartlett Dining Commons commented that she was pleased with the new contract, although she also requested anonymity.

“I think it’s great. It’s much different [from the old contract]. We got a decent raise. It’s a lot better,” she said.

According to the employees, most workers are satisfied with Teamsters Local 743 and how the contract was negotiated. In terms of voter participation for the latest contract, one worker remarked, “I know I voted, and everyone voted that I know of.”

Write for the Maroon.

editor@chicagomaroon.com

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | October 17, 2014

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“Intermediate-Hanging Fruit:” PayPal founder Thiel talks contrarianism at Booth Isaac Stein Associate News Editor More than 1,000 members of the University community congregated at the Polsky Center at the Chicago Booth School of Business to hear Peter Thiel speak about the future of entrepreneurship, Bitcoin, and business practices Wednesday evening.

Thiel, a German-American entrepreneur, is best known as the co-

founder of PayPal and the benefactor behind the Thiel Fellowship, which provides 20 people under the age of 20 with a $100,000 stipend to pursue an entrepreneurial venture each year. The talk was hosted by Booth’s Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics Randy Kroszner.

Thiel began the talk by criticizing what he calls as a pervasive, pessimistic worldview that there are very few fields in the modern

PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel spoke on Wednesday about making a successful company out of an idea at the Booth School of Business as a part of an event by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

PETER TANG | THE CHICAGO MAROON

world in which discovery that leads to entrepreneurial success can be made.

“Basic geography and chemistry are two examples of areas in which there is nothing left to discover, but most fields are not like that.

However, if we believe that there are no ‘secrets,’ we’re never going to find out,” he said.

He elaborated that there is always more to discover, even if it is more difficult. “There is a common belief that all of the lowhanging fruit has been picked. I’m telling you that it has always been intermediate-hanging fruit, and it is up to us to find it and pick it,” he added.

Thiel followed with the provocative suggestion that aspiring entrepreneurs who uncover a “secret” and desire fortune should seek to establish a business monopoly.

“I think that capitalism and competition are antonyms— ‘capitalism’ being defined as a system which results in the accumulation of capital. Go for the monopoly. All happy companies are different. All unhappy companies are essentially the same as their competitors,” he said, parodying Tolstoy.

Kroszner asked Thiel to elabo-

rate, as “most University of Chicago students are taught that pure competition is capitalism.”

Thiel qualified his statement by saying that monopolies should be considered to be “bad” when they artificially reduce the supply of a particular good; Thiel cited the Apple iPhone and PayPal as two instances in which monopoly did not reduce supply. Thiel also said that the existence of U.S. patent and copyright laws are evidence that innovation can be rewarded with monopoly, with benefit accruing to both the inventor and the public.

“When Apple released the iPhone, there was no reduction in the supply of smartphones, because it was the first one,” Thiel said.

“With PayPal, which was built on the idea of combining cryptography and currency, we were the first to come up with a product among maybe 200 people in the world who were working on the idea.”

Over the course of describing his vision of good business practices, Thiel suggested that once an entrepreneur has uncovered a “secret,” finding a good name for the enterprise is nearly as important as the idea behind the business.

“Look at Napster, the music

[sharing] company. What are you napping? You nap music, you nap the kid. That one got sued. Or the difference between MySpace and Facebook. MySpace is narcissistic self-expression; Facebook is about learning about other people around you,” Thiel said.

Thiel also addressed the subject of Bitcoin, which is a digital encrypted currency. Thiel characterized Bitcoin as a product which was founded on the same set of ideas as PayPal, but which was developed in an entirely different direction.

“Bitcoin is the opposite of PayPal, in the sense that it actually succeeded in creating a currency,” he said. “However, its payment system is lacking, and it is often used to make illegal transactions, such as to buy heroin. Until Bitcoin is used to make more legal transactions, I am a bit skeptical.”

In the Q&A section of the event, Thiel responded to an inquiry concerning his opinion of his alleged archetype in the HBO series Silicon Valley.

“I would never drive a car as small as that. Also, if there was a toga party at the office, people would get really nervous about that, too.”

science in brief

Sen. Durbin talks U of C study: Loss of scent can indicate death campaign Caroline Hutton Maroon Contributor In a students-only session presented on Tuesday by the Institute of Politics (IOP) and the College Democrats, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) spoke about his party’s efforts to mobilize voters in the upcoming midterm elections, the problems with self-funded campaigns, and his efforts to reduce student loan debt.

Durbin has served in the U.S. Senate since 1996, and is currently the majority whip.

With midterm elections approaching on November 4, Durbin is in the final stages of his current campaign. He faces Republican candidate Jim Oberweis (M.B.A. ’89), a businessman who has served in the Illinois State Senate since 2012. Although most polls show him leading by double digits, Durbin still expressed concern over the average 1.5 million–person drop in voter turnout in non-presidential midterm elections—1.2 million of which he said are Democrats. Thus, a major emphasis of Durbin’s campaign has been mobilizing Democrats to participate via vote-by-mail ballots.

“We have called out a list of 920,000 of these 1.2 million, and we’ve mailed them three times with these vote-by-mail ballots…. Results are starting to show up. In downstate counties, we are seeing as many vote-by-mail ballots as we did in a presidential year,” Durbin said.

Durbin said that he has

tried to run a positive campaign, but blamed Oberweis for forcing him to change his tack. “I ran all positive ads… and then my opponent put in a million dollars of his own money and went on the attack this last week. Once that’s happened, you really have to create an answer, a response, to those. I wish that were not the case.”

This issue of personal spending in campaigns is particularly timely in regard to this year’s gubernatorial election, which Durbin called “very close.”

Republican candidate Bruce Rauner has been chastised

by Democrats for spending millions of dollars of his own money on his campaign. “Illinois voters don’t look kindly on self-funding millionaires,” warned Durbin. “We’re doomed politically. I think what the Supreme Court has done is set us on a course that is going to continue to escalate the expenditures on this. My fear is that there will come a moment when mere mortals will not even consider running for office.”

Durbin also spoke about his efforts to renegotiate student loan interest rates. A bill Durbin co-sponsored with Senator Elizabeth Warren (DMA) would allow students to refinance their loans at lower rates, but is currently being blocked by Senate Republicans.

Durbin specifically called out for-profit colleges, referring to them as “a failure in higher education, virtually DURBIN continued on page 4

Maggie Loughran Maroon Contributor

A team of UChicago doctors and researchers recently published a study suggesting that olfactory dysfunction is a harbinger of death. The team’s two “scents”: Doctors need to pay closer attention to their patients’ snouts.

Olfaction and brain disease have long been linked, according to Dr. Jayant Pinto, lead author of the study and associate professor of surgery at UChicago. The study was aimed at testing the idea of scent as an indicator of overall health, not just an indicator of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The study, a facet of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), used “Sniffin’ Sticks,”

scented felt-tip pens which were developed in Europe for clinical usage, to evaluate the olfaction of 3,005 American adults aged 57–85. In 2005–2006, participants were asked to identify peppermint- fish- orange- roseand leather- scented sticks.

Five years later, the researchers followed up on their subjects and found that 12.5 percent of participants had died in the interim. Of those who died, the majority had performed poorly on the “Sniffin’ Sticks” test.

Even those who missed only one or two scents were more likely to have died than those who missed none at all.

“The most surprising finding for me was that this effect was seen in all age groups…. Having a poor sense of smell was just as predictive of death at 5-year

follow-up for people 57–64 years old as for people 75– 85 years old,” graduate student and researcher David Kern wrote in an e-mail.

Kern emphasized that people are not dying because of scent loss. Rather, scent loss is an indication that the body can no longer maintain regular stem cell regeneration. This results in the body no longer being able to maintain its normal functions and keep itself healthy.

Pinto predicts that the study will lead to further research and the development of much-needed treatments in the field of olfaction. Immediately, Pinto hopes it will encourage doctors to inquire about older patients’ capacity to smell.

“This is a three-minute test that gives you a pretty good idea of whether some-

one needs more attention or doesn’t need more attention.

We can use it to screen people for further medical testing and scrutiny, and that I think can be pretty useful,” Dr. Pinto said.

Tyler Lorig, expert on evolutionary olfaction and chair of Neuroscience at Washington and Lee University, lauded the study but cautioned that it would be hard to operationalize. “[Smell testing] will be harder to do than it sounds since one’s ability to smell declines with age. The findings made by this group show that predicting mortality requires an even greater loss than would be expected by a person age.

While the research team was able to see this in their large sample, it will be a challenge to see it in individuals,” Lorig wrote.

New allergy research isn’t peanuts Isaac Easton Maroon Contributor New research conducted by the University of Chicago pathology department on peanut allergies may be closing in on an answer to what causes human allergies to the burrowing legume.

The research by Andrew T. Stefka, Taylor J. Feehley, professor Cathryn R. Nagler, and others suggests that peanut allergies are in large part caused by lack of a specific microbiota, a type of bacteria, that plays a large role in protecting

against potential allergens.

Nagler and her team’s research was based on trials with mice. It builds upon another set of research from other labs, which has shown that there is bacteria near the epithelial barrier (a part of the colon) that generate regulatory T cells, which are cells that control immune response.

This new research shows that these specific bacteria are multi functional. Not only do they produce T cells to block allergens, but they also actively block the same foreign invaders from entering the

bloodstream by creating a barrier between the inside of the colon and the bloodstream.

This dual role heightens their importance and means the lack of these cells inside the body can be especially detrimental.

Although these studies were done in mice, Nagler said that “we already have data… that hasn’t been published yet, from healthy and allergic children that shows that their microbiota is quite different.”

There is already work being done by researchers on humans with severe peanut

allergies to “desensitize allergic kids with small amounts of the allergen that they’re allergic to,” Nagler said. “It works but not very well. What we’re suggesting is that if you pair that with barrier fortification that [these bacteria] provide, we might be able to do a better job at desensitization.”

Nagler suggested that the reason people have peanut allergies and thus have fewer of these gut bacteria is a feature of the developed world; genetics cannot explain the rapid rise in peanut allergies over the last few generations.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | October 17, 2014

4

UCMC doctors hope to spread awareness with 100-mile bike ride Haojia Li Maroon Contributor A group of surgeons from the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) recently took part in a 100-mile bike ride to spread awareness of urological cancer and diseases.

Cycling together were Arieh Shalhav, Greg Bales, Vivek

Prachand, Greg Zagaja, and Mohan Gundeti. The surgeons planned the bike ride to reach out to fellow doctors and patients in the northwest Indiana region.

They embarked on Thursday, October 9 from Benton Harbor, Michigan and made stops at different cancer centers, including Franciscan Woodland Cancer Center in

Michigan City and Memorial Regional Cancer Center, in order to strengthen ties with these facilities. Their journey concluded the next day at Cancer Health Treatment Center of Valparaiso.

Gundeti, a pediatric urologist, stressed the importance of his field and the need for greater awareness. “[I] take care of children born with urological

CIE to offer workshops, speeches, meeting rooms, mentorship programs for students CIE continued from front

The CIE also has a location on the 11th floor of the new Harper Court tower, dubbed the “CIE Skydeck,” that is designed to provide conference space and host outside speakers. A third location, which will open in the spring of 2015, will become a fabrication lab for making prototypes and will offer 3-D printers, mini-mills, and laser cutters.

Flavin emphasized the importance of incubating all the resources needed to grow the ideas of CIE participants.

“We have a lot of faculty, students that are interested in exploring entrepreneurship that have got a great idea, but they don’t really know what to do next with it,” he said. “So we’ve directed our programming around that first year of life for

a venture and concentrating on all the challenges that go with that—we’re bringing in the right parties, whether that’d be companies, venture capitalists, mentors, service firms, like a law firm or an accounting firm, experts in residence that can provide connections or knowledge to the entrepreneur.”

The CIE also has a $20 million Innovation Fund that was raised by outside donors to support new ventures. Startups must go through a selective process in which they must demonstrate a proof of concept, or that their idea will work. Ventures that are funded will get investments that range from $50,000 to $200,000.

More than 100 companies have applied, and the CIE anticipates incubating 20–30 companies at a time once the third

location opens.

To encourage students to visit the CIE, a new CIE shuttle route was created that goes to and from campus every 30 minutes from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

In addition to workshops and events by outside speakers that are available to any University of Chicago student, the CIE also offers membership, which is free for students for this academic year. As members, students can access working space, conference and meeting rooms, and attend mentor office hours.

“I would advise any student that is interested even in exploring whether entrepreneurship is for them, this is the place to do it,” he added. “We hope that CIE is a place where you can explore, you can take risks—you can even fail and come back and do it again.”

abnormality as pediatric urological tumors are rare—prostatic and bladder rhabdomyosarcomas,” he said.

According to Gundeti, the tri-state area was selected as the location for the bike ride due to its existing relations with the UCMC. “We draw [a] lot of patients within this region and it is important to know our referring physician[s] and

put a name to face and build partnership for better caring of patients from this area,” he said.

Even though the surgeons’ trip has ended, this will not be a one-time activity. According to Gundeti, the doctors hope to spread the idea of biking for awareness to different specialties at the UCMC. The trip also aimed to fundraise for the

Fritz Duda Foundation, a fund used for cancer research and prevention.

Gundeti said the trip also created a special bond between the doctors.

“In the difficult part of the rides we were making sure that we do not lose the path and [are] looking out for each other—that’s the best part in this team riding,” he said.

Durbin blasts “self-funding millionaires” talk DURBIN continued from page 3

worthless.” According to statistics presented by Durbin, forprofit colleges receive 20 percent of federal education aid and constitute 46 percent of defaulted student loans. “Congress is to blame—we’ve been complicit in this—and I think the administration should be a

lot tougher on these for-profit schools,” Durbin said.

Durbin also touched on the issue of immigration. He spoke of his weekly visits to a transfer facility in nearby Broadview, IL, where he meets with people who are about to be deported and their families.

“Half of them are there for

technical immigration violations. Many of them have been in the country for years; many of them have families here. I think we should draw the line,” he said. “At some point, I think the president has a responsibility as a leader to use the powers given him, to solve the problems the Republicans ignore.”

Senator Durbin discusses his campaign at an IOP-sponsored discussion on Tuesday. Durbin attacked his opponent, Jim Oberweis, for “going negative” first.

FRANK YAN | THE CHICAGO MAROON

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However, to get the rebate, riders must sign up for American

Express Serve, a reloadable prepaid e-card. The mobile wallet app will offer this promotion through December 10.

The app allows users to hold pre-paid e-cards from American Express, Wells Fargo, or Chase bank on their phones.

In order to use the system, riders tap their phone on the Ventra card reader on each CTA bus and at every El station. The app is compatible with all Android phones and all iPhones except the iPhone 6. Riders must have $5 on their account

to begin and first pay the full fare, but later receive 50 percent of the cost of all rides as credit on their Serve accounts.

The credit can take up to 30 days to appear on the user’s account, though the transaction will appear shortly after being processed.

Those with Wells Fargo or Chase e-cards can still use the app but will not be eligible for the discount. The maximum credit per month is $25, which allows up to 10 rides.

—Eileen Li

VIEWPOINTS

Editorial & Op-Ed OCTOBER 17, 2014

Running ahead of schedule First-year representative election cycle should be pushed back to the end of fall quarter Two weeks into school, on October 10, election results for first-year College Council representatives were announced. The short time between O-Week and elections disadvantages first-years from developing a nuanced perspective of campus before campaigning. Newly elected representative first-year Michael Meng said in a news article that advertising might have made more of an impact on the results than a substantive platform. In order to give both the candidates and their constituents more time to understand issues pertaining to campus and take the emphasis of elections away from name recognition, Student Government should delay elections for firstyear representatives until the end of fall quarter.

Currently, elections for first-year representatives take place at the end of second week during fall quarter, and petitions to run must be completed by the end of first week. This means first-years are expected to understand—or at least recognize—the school’s problems after only a week

of classes. Many campaigns will focus on fixing problems with the dining hall and the shuttle system—both worthy causes, but ones that only pertain to a small fraction of Student Government’s role on campus. This inevitable lack of awareness results in platforms that are well-intentioned, but also narrow in scope, as they often overlook some of the larger problems on campus—including long-term controversies such as the University’s relationship with the surrounding community. First-year candidates should have the opportunity to engage with campus and their community before they have to put forth a campaign platform.

Delaying the elections could also allow for a more diverse candidate pool. Currently, first-years must know that they want to run for SG pretty much as soon as they set foot on campus in order to build up a strong campaign. The tight timeline inadvertently excludes those who were unaware of SG or did not see themselves running for a position before O-Week. The idea of run-

ning for SG might not even occur to many first-years until they gain a familiarity with the campus.

Granted, later elections would prevent first-years from having a voice in the RSO funding allocation process. 10 weeks is a long time for a quarter of the College population to be excluded from College Council.

One solution to this problem would be to appoint an upperclassman SG representative to advocate for firstyear funding interests during fall quarter. This representative would be responsible for engaging with the first-year community and acting as a temporary liaison for the class. The intent of delaying elections is not to exclude first-years from SG, but to give them an opportunity to develop a more informed perspective when they are able to serve.

The Maroon congratulates the newly elected representatives and believes their voices will be a valuable contribution to the student community. First-years bring a fresh perspective, and it is essential that we don’t stifle their enthusiasm for

political participation on campus.

However, as it stands, the current system should be changed to offer more first-years the opportunity to run and to allow those who do

ALICE XIAO

choose to run to build a platform that benefits from an understanding of a wider range of issues.

—Maroon Editorial Board

| CHICAGO MAROON

Getting a rise out of RISE Campus diversity initiative unknowingly reveals pervasiveness of ableism in our culture

Kiran Misra

The Human Experience The first sentence of an e-mail from the campus diversity initiative RISE about upcoming speaker Blake Leeper, a Paralympian athlete, reads, “Blake Leeper was raised to believe

that the only disability in life is a bad attitude.” Seems harmless right?

Complimentary even? Not so fast.

Such statements bring with them a number of complex implications for

The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892 Emma Broder, Editor-in-Chief Joy Crane, Editor-in-Chief Jonah Rabb, Managing Editor The Maroon Editorial Board consists of Eleanor Hyun, Harini Jaganathan, Kristin Lin, Kiran Misra, and Jake Walerius.

Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Grey City Editor Kristin Lin, Grey City Editor Ankit Jain, News Editor Sarah Manhardt, News Editor Christine Schmidt, News Editor Eleanor Hyun, Viewpoints Editor Will Dart, Arts Editor James Mackenzie, Arts Editor Tatiana Fields, Sports Editor Sam Zacher, Sports Editor Marina Fang, Senior News Editor Ajay Batra, Senior Viewpoints Editor Liam Leddy, Senior Viewpoints Editor Kristin Lin, Senior Viewpoints Editor Emma Thurber Stone, Senior Viewpoints Editor Sarah Langs, Senior Sports Editor Jake Walerius, Senior Sports Editor Natalie Friedberg, Associate News Editor Alec Goodwin, Associate News Editor William Rhee, Associate News Editor Isaac Stein, Associate News Editor Kiran Misra, Associate Viewpoints Editor Andrew McVea, Associate Arts Editor Evangeline Reid, Associate Arts Editor Ellen Rodnianski, Associate Arts Editor Helen Peterson, Associate Sports Editor Zachary Themer, Associate Sports Editor

Megan Daknis, Copy Editor Katie Day, Copy Editor Jacqueline Feng, Copy Editor Hannia Frias, Copy Editor Erin Horning, Copy Editor Kyra Martin, Copy Editor Rebecca Naimon, Copy Editor Julia Oran, Copy Editor Morganne Ramsey, Copy Editor Hannah Rausch, Copy Editor Erica Sun, Copy Editor Katherine Vega, Copy Editor Amy Wang, Copy Editor Michelle Zhao, Copy Editor

ples of victim-blaming in the form of a micro-aggression that serves only to perpetuate inequities in society.

And that’s what makes this such a problem—ableism is complex and often carefully hidden behind a layer of apparent harmlessness. It is very often not ill-intentioned. And this is true of all other -isms as well—sexism, racism, and ageism to name a few. Discriminatory and demeaning behavior isn’t restricted to violent hate crimes, outright slurs, and genocide.

This sort of media that exploits disability to prove a fallacious point about optimism has a name, albeit a colloquial one—inspiration porn.

Inspiration porn typically consists of an image of a person with a visible physical disability, emblazoned with a quote like the aforementioned “the only disability in life is a bad attitude,” or, “your excuse is invalid,” or, “before you quit, try.”

This inspiration porn only exists

so that nondisabled people can put their worries into perspective. It exploits the assumption that no matter how bad something is in a nondisabled person’s life, it could not possibly be as bad as having a disability.

These feel-good tools, as “inspiration,” are based on the assumption that people with disabilities have terrible lives, and that it takes extra courage to live them. In fact, it is rare to find any representation of disability in popular media that doesn’t use the derogatory language: “suffers from,” “victim of,” “defying the odds,” “wheelchair bound/confined,” or the ever-misleading “overcoming disability.”

But the fact of the matter is that oftentimes people physically can’t “overcome” their disability. When people use the phrase “overcoming disability,” what they are actually referring to is overcoming the societal barriers put in place by an ableist soABLE continued on page 6

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The opinions expressed in the Viewpoints section are not necessarily those of the Maroon.

Mara McCollom, Social Media and Multimedia Editor

the view nondisabled people have of disability.

This is not admiration. This is not empowerment. Quotes like these, plastered across pictures of people with disabilities, are a demonstration of nondisabled people dismissing disability as a matter of attitude, which means they can avoid addressing the real problems—inaccessibility and discrimination. There are barriers for people with disabilities that extend far beyond “attitude,” because this world was literally built by nondisabled people for nondisabled people. The world is, in fact, very inaccessible, and smiling at a steep set of stairs isn’t going to turn it into a ramp; thinking optimistically about troubling and deep-rooted attitudinal barriers, which cause employers to underpay and under-hire people with physical and mental disabilities, isn’t going to erase these conceptions and get you a job. This quote and many others like it are prime exam-

The Chicago Maroon is published twice weekly during autumn, winter, and spring quarters

© 2014 The Chicago Maroon, Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637

SUBMISSIONS The Chicago Maroon welcomes opinions and responses from its readers. Send op-ed submissions and letters to: The Chicago Maroon attn: Viewpoints 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 E-mail: Viewpoints@ChicagoMaroon.com The editors reserve the right to edit materials for clarity and space. Letters to the editor should be limited to 400 words. Op-ed submissions, 800 words

6

THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | October 17, 2014

“People with disabilities are worth more than being objectified to spur action in their nondisabled peers” ABLE continued from page 5

ciety. This occurs in such a way that it removes the burden from the parties responsible for this discriminatory behavior and foists it upon those being discriminated against. It removes a person’s humanity and individuality. This is not a compliment. This is using the extraordinary achievements of a few people with disabilities to shame other people with disabilities who need accommodations. People with disabilities are not here to serve simply as living, breathing models of inspiration. This sort of behavior is reductive and objectifying.

Using a snapshot of people with disabilities as a tool to convey a message to, primarily, non-disabled people, involves playing on stereotypes and assumptions. Few people portrayed in these pictures are ever labeled with their name.

And that is exactly the point.

It does not matter who the people in these photographs are, as long as their representation is enough to guilt nondisabled people into action.

These pictures create a pressure that asserts that disabled people are not ever allowed to be mad or frustrated, because that would no longer be “inspirational,” would no longer be “overcoming.”

That’s why I don’t think that people with disabilities are inherently “inspirational” by merit of existing. For the same reason that I don’t think that all Asians are smart, that all black people are good at basketball. Because these are

stereotypes. These are dehumanizing. They force an entire group of people to conform to one characteristic imposed on them externally and punish them if they fail to meet the impossible standards. This is apparent in cases even as recent as the media portrayal of Mike Brown’s murder—because he wasn’t white, one small transgression in his past landed him in the “no angel” category, whereas people from privileged groups would be given free passes for falling within the human realm of mistakes and limitations. The same applies to people with disabilities and their apparent duties as inspirations. One small step out of line and harsh criticism and labels abound. This is the privilege of being an “unmarked” person, a privilege from which many of us here at the University of Chicago benefit.

We get to define how people see us, largely free of assumptions based on certain combinations of race and gender as well as ability. It is time we see all minority groups for what they are—diverse, complex, and multidimensional people.

Not an inspiration. Not an idea. People with disabilities are worth more than being depicted as objects to spur action in their nondisabled peers and it is mere exploitation to think otherwise.

The fact of the matter is that until people with disabilities have the same rights and access that nondisabled people do, it’s not only patronizing and objectifying to assert that

their only barrier to full participation in society is access, it’s actually a severe barrier to any sort of societal equality.

Until we stop pretending that disability is just a matter of attitude, there is no pressure for anyone to address with the real human rights violations that occur when people with disabilities are denied access to

ANDREW KOSKI

participation in society. This is a right that is violated every day, all around the world, a hundred times over. It’s time we stop sugar-coating it.

DISCLAIMER: A current debate within the disability rights activism community is the usage of person-first versus identity-first language (‘per-

son with a disability’ versus ‘disabled person’). Many activists prefer person-first language, because it asserts that someone isn’t defined by any single qualifying characteristic. However, how each person chooses to identify is up to them and my use of personfirst language in this article in no way asserts it is the unani-

mously right thing to do. It needs to be considered individually by the person being described individually on a case-by-case basis.

Kiran Misra is a secondyear in the College majoring in public policy and comparative human developement.

| CHICAGO MAROON

An education in Teach for America TFA’s apparent mission to address education inequality conceals problematic premises Spencer McAvoy Maroon Contributor Over the course of the last several weeks, many students (mostly, but not only) in the Class of 2015 have received e-mails from one Emily Fitch of Teach for America (TFA).

Fitch wants to convince us, apparently, to meet with a TFA rep to discuss “education inequality,” and, as the students I talked with and I can attest, she’s very persistent. As for selection criteria, it seems participating in any RSO from Doc Films to the UChicago Debate Society to The Midway Review will suffice.

Though I’m not sure my “involvement with The Midway Review” is evidence of this, I do care about educational inequality. But I also happen to think, along with many people with more education experience and better information than me (including many TFA alums), that Teach for America, in its current iteration, is a pretty terrible way to go about combatting it. This isn’t the place, though, to go into a lengthy explanation of why, or to make the point that what goes on inside classrooms is clearly not the root cause of the disparities that exist in educational “achievement” in America.

As David Omenn pointed out in the recent—congratulatory, in-

sipid—interview in the Maroon, TFA is at least aware of the numerous, valid criticisms that have been made of the organization in recent years. They’re working to reduce turnover, get young teachers invested in the places they teach, improve the socioeconomic diversity of their recruits and to do more advocacy work in other areas that might affect the lives and/or performance of their students. They have, it appears, accepted the (obvious) role poverty plays in creating “educational” disparities, and are, it seems, no longer explicitly supporting the toxic prescription of cuts, closings, layoffs, “accountability,” and charters that’s been passing as “education reform” in this country for a depressingly long time.

What hasn’t changed, though, clearly, is their basic premise—that introducing young people with an elite education into low-income classrooms is a good way to improve “educational outcomes.” Never mind that accepting the data-driven standard of teacher performance is itself a concession to the destructive neoliberal trend in public education, the fact is that this most basic tenant just isn’t practically true. Again and again, peer-reviewed studies have shown that TFA’s recruits produce little-tono improvement in educational outcomes for their students.

And regardless of the talents or intentions of the individuals involved, the effect of TFA as an organization isn’t just neutral; it’s actively harmful. The steady influx of young, cheap, non-unionized teachers into low-income areas is a huge help to any of the myriad public and private forces pushing the destructive, profitdriven, anti-labor agenda of charter schools and privatization. Both ideologically and practically, the existence of TFA lubricates the already rapid process of layoffs, school closures, and proliferation of charter schools of the sort we’ve seen here on the South Side this past year.

When TFA promised 700 new teachers to Los Angeles (funded by the highly progressive Walton Foundation, of course; TFA has also received large donations from J.P. Morgan and Exxon Mobile) just last year, it was expected that roughly 90 percent of them would go to charter schools. Whatever else they might do, no matter what they claim, TFA’s strategy implicitly blames teachers for the “achievement gap” (itself a ridiculous phrase) in American public schools. You see this in Omenn’s strange phrase about the “content area knowledge” of the other teachers at his school. (Code: “I went to a better college than them.” The technocrat language is a clue that he’s being

a dick.)

I don’t claim to have all, or even any, of the answers—that’s exactly my point. It’s hard to believe that the organization is doing any serious soulsearching after the recruitment strategies I’ve seen unfold on this campus over the last few weeks. How could it possibly advance the agenda of education reform to round up a group of “elite” students whose demonstrated interest in “education inequality” amounts to participating in (it seems) literally any RSO on campus (the vast majority of whom have no experience teaching and don’t study education) to sit down and chat? Why not, instead of paying to recruit and train college students with vaguely do-gooder instincts, put TFA’s $301 million (in 2012) yearly operating budget—a quarter of which comes from the public—toward increasing the resources available to teachers who already have training and experience, who have demonstrated their “interest” in education inequality by teaching for decades and not by volunteering for a student film society, resources that they need and we know can have more impact than anything TFA has done?

Whatever reforms may be in the works at TFA, though I’m skeptical of the capacity of any organization founded—in the words of Wendy

Kopp, its creator—on a belief in “yuppie volunteering spirit” to ever produce real change; as it currently operates the organization harms both teachers and students. Given the fact that our University refuses to divest from companies that are quite literally destroying the planet, it’s probably too much to ask for a ban on on-campus recruiting. At the very least, we should demand that UChicago Careers in Education Professions (UCIEP) stop hosting TFA events, presenting them as progressive reformers and funneling talented students–those who really do care about inequality of all kinds–away from less snazzy but more responsible approaches to public service.

As long as its ethos and recruiting strategy continue to reproduce the brand of casual, naïve, dangerous exceptionalism already endemic among students here, TFA will continue to make the same mistakes as sentimentdriven, top-down reform organizations everywhere. Part of what makes its flaws so hard to see is that they are, in many ways, mirror images of our own. To fix them we both have a lot of unsexy, incremental, difficult work to do.

Spencer McAvoy is a fourthyear in the College majoring in English.

7

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String quartet opens strong schedule for UChicago Presents

Members of Canadian orchestra Tafelmusik show off the tools of their trade. They'll do so in person in early November of this quarter.

SIAN RICHARDS

Evangeline Reid Associate Arts Editor UChicago Presents has presented its 71st season, and it’s stellar.

When the executive director, Amy Iwano, was asked which shows in the 2014-2015 series she was most excited about, she paused. “Everybody asks me that. It’s like choosing my favorite child! When you do what I do, you have to really believe that everything you program is the best thing in the world.” But any bias aside, the content brought to campus theaters by this program is not only undeniably world-class enter-

tainment, but also carefully curated to cover a broad spectrum of musical styles through unique and tactile performances, often preceded by pre-concert lectures. Yet even given that, the price is right. All tickets are relatively affordable, but students of the University can snag seats for just $5 or use the Sponsor Students program for free tickets.

The 71st season opened on October 10 with a performance by the Danish String Quartet, a group that has been performing together since 2002 but is just now beginning making waves in the string-music world. After rave reviews follow-

ing their arrival in New York, their Chicago premiere in UChicago’s own Mandel Hall was hotly anticipated, and they did not disappoint.

Their performance was full of energy—they never shied away from using the full scope of the dynamics their strings could produce—while still being incredibly intentional and well balanced. The result was an engaging and beautiful performance of classical pieces by Schubert and Haydn and an equally engaging U.S. premiere of “The Extinguishable,” a contemporary piece written

by Danish composer Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen and dedicated to their

group. They closed with a brief encore performance from their most recent album of Danish folk tunes that rung with joy and left a lasting impression. They were just the first of a long lineup of artists set to grace campus stages this season, and if they were any indication, it’s going to be a very good year.

Following the Danish String Quartet performance, students were invited to a surprise pizza party with the quartet itself. Not sure what to expect, they arrived in Hutch Commons to find a feast catered

by Medici, and four incredibly talented, rugged Danes. Iwano laughed when asked about it: “It was an experiment.” Though not concrete yet, there are plans to find more groups willing to participate in similar events. “One of the joys of going to the concerts is you find like-minded people. We want to build a support community around these concerts for students.”

Despite her initial hesitation, Iwano was particularly excited about the impact of a few of the performances this year. She enthusiastically described a one-man retelling of the English classic Beowulf—complete with a medieval harp and translations—set for May. “He [Benjamin Bagby] is incredibly compelling.”

She was also particularly excited about a mandolinist and pianist who will be performing together in February. “I’m in love with Avi Avital,” she said. “He has great stage presence…and the pianist has a great talent for putting together programs….

Each piece affects the next one in a really surprising way.”

On the horizon are two unique evenings Iwano is also excited

about. On November 1 a group in residency at the University, Third Coast Percussion, will be presenting a powerful exploration into the intersection of politics and music, featuring the voices of students in the College. The group typically draws a good percentage of younger audiences and decided they wanted them to participate in this new creation. During Orientation Week the group recorded student readings of letters and documents relating to the Attica Correctional Facility riot in 1971 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which will be used within two of the pieces they perform. A third piece reacts to the El Salvador massacre in 1981 and the U.S. government cover-up that followed.

The following Friday, Tafelmusik, an award-winning period instrument orchestra from Canada, will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of the telescope with their performance. “[Tafelmusik] is really super creative about putting together content. This is not just a straight concert,” Iwano explained. The show will include poetic narration, music from Galileo’s time period—Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, and Monteverdi— and a backdrop of mind-blowing celestial images taken by the Hubble telescope. Coincidentally, the images come from a telescope named after a UChicago alumnus.

The amount of care put into this season is evident, and as students with such ready access to it, it seems obvious what our course of action should be. One: pinch ourselves.

Two: get tickets. There’s just so much to look forward to.

UChicago Presents’s full calendar and box office can be found online.

Yusho shows Hyde Park a tastier version of a college staple Sammie Spector Arts Staff Hyde Park’s most recent addition to the block, Yusho, is making waves out of their skinny ramen noodles as a trendy and tasty dining option. This is primarily because Yusho is not your typical neighborhood go-to; the restaurant is a baby branch off of the Avondale hotspot on the North Side. Esteemed chef Matthias Merges, specifically of Charlie Trotter fame, created Yusho as a way to challenge himself after 17 years in fine dining by focusing on Japanese street food. After colossal success in Avondale, he brought what has been adoringly nicknamed “Baby Yusho” out of the city and into the heart of Hyde Park, right on East 53rd Street.

Yusho has been a hot topic recently because it has ruffled the locals as the first establishment on East 53rd Street to take advantage of the recent raising of the dry ban, and in fact, was the catalyst for the petition that made that change. Take a break from BYOB; Yusho is proud to say they have a fully stocked bar in a formerly dry area. But aside from that, perhaps

Yusho has become such a buzzword simply because the food is good, the seating is trendy, and it’s this month’s novelty. It's always busy from Thursday nights on.

Last weekend I popped in out of curiosity to find the place packed. Then, without reservations about the wait or the new food venture, my boyfriend and I decided to make it a date night.

Evidently his Econ professor and his wife had a similar idea. We sat in the midst of a crowd: this lovely couple, other friends catching up, and some local families relaxing with an early Sunday night dinner—quite a coming together of the Hyde Park residential neighborhood, all in the hopes of discovering a new haunt. Lowlit, yet bright and welcoming, Yusho’s small pops of color burst with modern minimalism, yet this modernity is countered with some rustic, wooden flair and simplistic taste. The booths are long and the two-tops are intimate but casual enough for platonic bun sharing.

It’s almost too put-together and trendy. Perhaps this makes it more of a welcome addition in the neighborhood, giving it a unique advantage to the Asian food scene around East 55th Street and East

57th Street.

We started off with some light indecision served with a side platter of confusion: ramen is cheap, but Yusho is not. One of the entrées is indeed called “12-buck ramen,” and I must say after ordering the dish, which turns out to be an Asian fusion take on matzo ball soup, I was impressed. However, impressiveness is not always worth $12. If we had stuck with just ramen bowls, I think it would have been a deal. Although the advertised "small plates" sounded so tantalizing, it ended up being quite pricey. My one regret, all in all, to a very nice dinner, was getting the fries instead of the buns.

The poutine-esque fries came recommended, and my boyfriend is all about gravy, but they weren’t as memorable as first advertised.

Buns, however, are forever my favorite, and one of the staple menu items of Yusho. Our other appetizer was grilled chicken satay, served with the perfect blend of spice and flavor. One interesting thing to note was the cold ramen bowl—an odd choice, but proven worth the risk. It was just as hearty despite lacking the comfort of warmth. It also included an interesting twist: salmon-roe pop-

ping bubbles. They taste and look like your favorite bubble tea copout of tapioca, but they’re pretty fishy, and completely delicious.

You can’t go wrong with ramen bowls; that’s a fact known by all

college students. Whether you’re willing to spend over $12 plus tip for this dish is up to you, but Yusho is the place to try it with a little bit of unique flair and a lot of cool ambience.

Yusho attempts the difficult task of selling $12 ramen to college students.

COURTESY OF YUSHO HYDE PARK

THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | October 17, 2014

9

theSketch Arts, Briefly.

Sci-fi writer John Scalzi visits the Sem Co-Op

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a crime reporter in the new film Nightcrawler, which will have a preview screening at Doc Films this Wednesday.

COURTESY OF OPEN ROAD FILMS

Doc Films hosts two special events This coming week, Doc Films is hosting two very special screening events for the film aficionados of this school. On Tuesday, at 12:15 p.m., filmmaker Justin Simien will be holding a Q&A session on his feature film debut, Dear White People. The film, a satire of racial politics in contemporary college life, was one of the surprise hits of this year’s Sundance Film Festival and earned Simien the festival's Breakthrough Talent award.

Clips of the film will be shown during the discussion. The film itself premieres in theaters today. Then, at

6 p.m., Simien will host a secondary discussion and dinner at OMSA (5710 South Woodlawn Avenue).

The very next day, Doc will hold a special preview screening of the upcoming film Nightcrawler, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. The film, written and directed by veteran screenwriter and first-time director Dan Gilroy, is not in fact about the teleporting XMen regular with whom it shares a name. It instead follows the exploits of a young crime reporter named Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal), who will go to dangerous and possibly illegal lengths to break into the mainstream journalism circuit.

The film is set for wide release on October 31, but thanks to Doc, students will have a chance to see it 10 days early. The screening begins at 9 p.m. on Wednesday and runs just under two hours, but you’ll probably need to line up early if you want a seat.

Dear White People Discussion: October 21, 12:15 p.m., free with UCID Nightcrawler preview screening: October 22, 9 p.m., free with UCID —James Mackenzie

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db.com/careers/events

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We read a lot of very old, very heavy books at this school. But sometimes it’s nice to hear from an author who is not only alive but still very active.

Next Tuesday at the Seminary CoOp bookstore, students will have the chance to do just that. Noted science fiction author John Scalzi will be there for a Q&A session and reading of his latest novel, Lock In. Scalzi has been active on the sci-fi circuit for about 10 years now, gaining fame for the popular Old Man’s War trilogy and other works. The first of those novels, which shares its title with the trilogy itself, was nominated for the extremely prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2006. He finally won the coveted award in 2013 for his novel Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas.

Lock In concerns a virus in the future that renders its victims incapable of movement while still retaining all of their mental faculties and sensory abilities. A mysterious crime leads two FBI agents to investigate the strange virtual world that allows victims to interface with each other and the world online. The novel is available in bookstores now, including at the Seminary Co-op.

October 21, Seminary Co-Op, 6 p.m., free —James Mackenzie Beer at the Oriental Institute It was a night of fun, philanthropy and 5,000-year-old booze at Thurs-

day night’s Wine and Beer through Ancient History Scavenger Hunt at the Oriental Institute. Think beer and priceless Sumerian statuary don’t mix? Great Lakes Brewery, which partnered with the OI for the event, says otherwise.

“A lot of people thought it was gonna be undrinkable,” said Great Lakes’ resident Sumerian beer specialist Mike Williams, referring to their limited-run recreation of ancient Sumerian ale. “But, the way I see it, they wouldn’t have been drinking it for a thousand years if it wasn’t good beer.” And it is: light, very sour, with a nice, frothy head; a nice all-day beer, perfect for a lazy Uruk afternoon.

The brew, which was on tap for the event, is the drunken brainchild of Great Lakes’ co-founder Pat Conway (M.A. ’78) and Ph.D. candidate Tate Paulette, who wanted to recreate an ancient beer from scratch using authentic materials (in this case, historically accurate clay vessels constructed by University students). They used clues from recent excavations and The Hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian ode to the goddess of beer, to recreate the ale, “and us brewers filled in the details,” said Williams, details which included coriander, cardamom, grains of paradise, “a ton of dates”, and an authentic, horse manure fed brewing fire.

The result is a truly epic beer, and one that Gilgamesh would almost certainly have chugged gladly. I certainly did, anyway.

—Will Dart

THE CHICAGO MAROON | ADVERTISEMENTS | October 17, 2014

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | October 17, 2014

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Maroons to face final test at UW–Oshkosh before UAAS Cross Country Russell Mendelson Senior Sports Staff This weekend, both the men’s and women’s teams will head to Oshkosh, WI ,for their final meet of the month and last competition before the UAA Championships on November 1.

This season, the men’s team has yet to finish below third place in a meet. Similarly, the women have not fallen below fourth, with Maroons taking the top seed in three of their five meets.

Despite Chicago’s having two very high-performing teams, neither one is under any illusion that this weekend’s competition should be taken lightly.

“Except for the national championship meet, the race at Oshkosh this Satur-

day is going to be the country’s most competitive meet of the entire year,” thirdyear Michael Frasco said.

“The field is stacked with a dozen nationally ranked teams. Performing well and beating teams from other regions to improve our chance of earning a bid to the national meet is extremely important to our season.”

Frasco, who has led the Maroons across the finish line in every race this season, also noted that the team was focusing on the meet at hand and not looking ahead towards UAAs yet.

Fourth-year team leader Kevin On shared similar sentiments about this weekend’s competition and also discussed the obstacles through which the team has

had to persevere in order to get to this point.

“I am proud of my team for coming together and overcoming setbacks to our team in the form of injuries,” On said. “Everyone has given their best effort each race and I am glad to see such motivated and inspired runners.”

Additionally, reflecting on previous years’ experience, On believes this team epitomizes a passion that was not necessarily present in the past.

“I think the way our team has changed this year is in its intensity. I feel that we are very committed to our sport and it has definitely transferred to many of the freshmen,” On said.

“I think that this will have long-lasting implica-

tions as some of them run in championship meets, but also in the identity of the team. The intensity that has really blossomed this year will make the team better and hungrier for many years to come.”

The women’s side has a fire burning as well with the team gearing up for an exciting championship run.

“The first couple of meets of the season are definitely less competitive and more about building together as a team,” third-year Catherine Young said on the team’s chemistry leading to a collective motivation.

“Now that we are past that beginning, I think the team is mostly excited and anxious to show how fast we

can really be and to get some personal bests in races. The championship part of the season is almost here, and we are ready to compete.”

Each team will have the opportunity to exhibit its abilities this weekend starting at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 18, at the University of Wisconsin– Oshkosh Invitational.

Chance to climb conference standings with weekend slate Men’s Soccer Eirene Kim Sports Staff Chicago (7–4–1) hopes to come out of this weekend with two wins ag ainst Rochester (6–3–2) and Case Western (7–4–2) in order to bolster its UAA standing.

The Maroons defeated No. 9 Emory 1–0 last weekend and aim to carry their focus and mentality through to this tough UAA weekend.

“Our mentality is one of focus and confidence,” said fourth-year forward and team captain Kyle Kurfirst.

“We were able to get a great result at Emory last weekend and hope to use that as momentum and a confidence builder.”

Chicago has been focusing mainly on its first upcoming game against Rochester. The Yellowjackets have come off of a huge UAA win of their own over No. 7 Brandeis.

Chicago is a huge target for them, as the Maroons are currently tied for first place with Carnegie Mellon. To prepare for the weekend, Chicago has watched film

and identified a game plan.

“We have reviewed film of Rochester to familiarize ourselves with their tactics and identify where they might be vulnerable,” said fourth-year central midfielder Conor Goodwin.

“Rochester tends to play more direct, so we have schemed up a game plan to try and mitigate their effectiveness of their style,” fourth-year central midfielder Michael Choquette said.

“Rochester is a very physical team and plays with high pressure and a lot of intensity. Our goal is to exceed their level of energy while also maintaining the composure needed to break down their first line of pressure,” Kurfirst said.

After Rochester, the Maroons travel to Cleveland to face off with Case Western, but Chicago is not looking too far in advance as they prepare for their second UAA game of the weekend.

“We are taking the weekend one game at a time, so we haven’t thought about Case yet,” said fourth-year

defender Kevin Matheny.

Chicago expects and embraces the tough competition this weekend. With good preparation, the Maroons know what they have to do to get the two wins: be patient.

“We can’t concede cheap goals on set pieces. We know Rochester and Case both thrive on these opportunities, and limiting their success in these situations will be key. Offensively, we need to be patient in possession and have confidence that we can break down our opposition,” Goodwin said.

Confidence is also on the Maroons’ side.

“We know our next two UAA games are at home, and we always believe we can win every game on Stagg, so a good weekend at Rochester and Case would put us in a very good position to have a high league finish,” Goodwin said.

Kickoff against the Yellowjackets takes place at Rochester tomorrow at 4 p.m. before Chicago takes on Case at 10 a.m. on Sunday.

GET IN THE GAME. WRITE FOR SPORTS. editor@chicagomaroon.com

A group of runners from the UChicago men’s cross country team turn a bend during the Elmhurst meet in August.

COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS

SPORTS

IN QUOTES “Guys, my Chinese name is not “Panda Friend,” its “The Panda’s Friend” –Former L.A. Lakers forward Metta World Peace on his new name in honor of the giant panda.

Chicago hosts second Round Robin Volleyball Katie Anderson Maroon Contributor The Maroons (19–8) look to continue their conference dominance this weekend at the second UAA Round Robin tournament of the season.

After earning a 3–0 record at the first UAA Round Robin and defeating rival and No. 7 Wash U, the team is eager for its next conference opportunity. Despite high anticipation, the women recognize the importance of focusing on one game at a time, especially after a disappointing split record (1–1) at the Tiffany Robinson Memorial Tournament last weekend.

“It is important for us to go into this weekend without thinking about our wins at the last Round Robin two weeks ago,” said fourth-year outside hitter Morgan Barry.

“As great as it was to go 3–0 in conference, we need to focus on winning our upcoming matches.”

First-year middle blocker Taylor David, who has 78 kills on the season, provided a more optimistic outlook.

“The team is excited for this weekend. We had a solid and focused week in practice, which puts us in a good place for going into a tough weekend of UAA play,” David said.

In addition to consistent performances from veterans such as Barry, third-year outside hitter Maren Loe, and third-year outside hitter Jasmine Mobley, the team also has noteworthy contributors in David and first-year setter Stephanie Sinnappan, providing a depth that will be key this weekend.

“The younger players on the team have really stepped up physically,” Barry said.

“Their confidence has increased, which has helped them play with more poise and composure.”

Chicago is also looking forward to playing conference rivals at home, an opportunity that only comes once every four years.

“We have an intense weekend ahead of us, and we are very excited to be hosting the second Round Robin,” Barry said. “Having four matches on our home court is a huge

The UChicago women’s volleyball team gathers after a game against Wisconsin Lutheran last September.

COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS

plus for us, and we are definitely looking forward to having some of our peers support us.”

The Maroons will play

Unbeaten South Siders to face toughest opponent yet Football Helen Petersen Associate Sports Editor Following their victory over Trinity last weekend, the Maroons are off to a 5–0 start for the first time since 1929. However, Chicago heads to Minnesota this weekend to face off with its toughest opponent yet, No. 11 Bethel (4–1).

“It feels amazing to be 5–0. If I had to describe the atmosphere in one word it would be hungry,” said fourth-year running back Zak Ross-Nash. “Although we are 5–0, we believe our best football is yet to come.

Not being satisfied with our past drives us to become the team we believe we are.”

Bethel has yet to drop a game since losing its season opener to No. 6 Wartburg.

The Royals are undefeated at home this season. The Maroons have received eight votes to be ranked in the top 25 in the country but have yet to break onto the list.

“Our goal, just like every week, is to win,” Ross-Nash said. “However, I’d like to come away from this week-

end having shown the rest of the country that the University of Chicago Maroons are a legitimate competitor at the DIII level and that the sky is the limit for this program.”

Bethel is one of the largest, most physical teams the Maroons will face this season. They will also give the South Siders their second game on a natural grass surface, something the team struggled to deal with a bit last week in San Antonio.

“Bethel definitely will be one of the toughest matchups we face. They’re a solid team, but so are we. We prepared for them just like we prepare for any other team, and that is practicing with a lot of intensity and a hunger to win,” Ross-Nash said.

The game should prove to be a battle of two of the best defenses in the country. Chicago has the No. 4 ranked defense in DIII, while Bethel boasts the No. 21 ranked defense. Neither team is ranked offensively, however.

Third-year center Brock Appenzeller echoed those defensive stats with some sentiments of his own.

“Our defense has carried us all season. To win this game, it’s going to take the same top-20 caliber performance out of our offense that our defense gives every week,” he said.

Last week, second-year linebacker Jackson Garrey anchored the Chicago defensive unit, collecting 14 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, and one sack. He was named to the D3Football. com Team of the Week.

This has been a historic season for the Chicago squad, marked by comeback victories, hard-fought wins, and teamwork-minded play.

In his two years at Chicago, head coach Chris Wilkerson has fostered a program atmosphere players are excited to get behind.

“This team and coaching staff have been incredible to play for,” Ross-Nash said.

“In all of my career I have never been a part of a team that cares about each other and the team as much as we do, and I honestly believe that has a lot to do with our recent success.”

Chicago faces off with Bethel at 1 p.m. on Saturday in Arden Hills, MN.

on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. against Carnegie Mellon, followed by a 2:30 p.m. match against Case Western. Sunday will be just as intense,

with a 10 a.m. match against Rochester followed by a 2 p.m. match against Emory.

With free Chipotle and Potbelly for fans with a stu-

dent ID, it is sure to be a fun and exciting weekend. All matches will be held at the Gerald Ratner Athletic Center.

No. 13 Maroons face doubleheader Women’s Soccer Zachary Themer Associate Sports Editor Last Saturday, the 10–2–0 Maroons put the biggest notch in their belt thus far this season, as they took down the then– No. 7 Emory Eagles in Atlanta.

While a huge win for the South Siders, one that drove them up a spot into the NCAA Division III rankings to No. 13, the team has had little time to rest on their laurels. Instead, they have spent this week readying themselves for two critical games: Rochester in New York later today, and Case Western in Ohio on Sunday.

For the Maroons, the importance is not limited to overall record, but conference record as well. Currently, the team is 1–1 in conference, as a result of a tough loss against Carnegie Mellon two weeks ago and Chicago’s triumph over Emory last weekend.

The players know how critical this weekend is to fulfilling their goal of winning a UAA Championship, and they are not letting that mission go unstated.

“This weekend is our first doubleheader in UAAs, so we’re really looking to get two more strong wins. Coming off a huge win last weekend, we need to keep our focus and treat each game with the same im-

portance,” second-year defender Lily Wolfenzon said.

The first of those games will be against the Rochester Yellowjackets later today. The Yellowjackets enter tonight’s match-up with a 5–4–3 record but the same 1–1 UAA record as Chicago after beating Brandeis last weekend.

To beat Rochester, the Maroons will have to contain the likes of Yellowjacket midfielder Laurie Cowie-Haskell, a firstyear who has taken control of the Rochester’s offensive attack, leading the squad with four goals this season.

To stop Cowie-Haskell, and the rest of the Rochester offense, the Maroons will turn to a stacked defensive line stacked with fourth-year team captain Katie Shivanandan, third-year Ryann Hanley, and a multitude of others. With such a staunch defense and a high-powered offense led by the likes of fourthyear forward Meghan Derken, third-year forward Mary Bittner, and fourth-year midfielder and team captain Sara Kwan, it’s going to be a tall order for the Yellowjackets to knock off the South Siders tonight.

Following their game against Rochester, the Maroons will get a break on Saturday, which will ultimately be nothing more than a travel day as they make their way to Ohio on Sunday to

take on another conference opponent in Case Western.

The Case Western Spartans enter the match with a 7–3–2 record, but they remain without a win in conference play as they have lost tough matchups to Brandeis and NYU to stand at 0–2 in UAA play.

Against Case, Chicago will face perhaps the toughest defense it has seen all season.

While the Spartans have struggled to put up goals this season, sitting at only 11 through 12 games, they have managed to put together one of the strongest defenses in the country, allowing just six goals in their twelve matches. To overpower that Spartan defense, the Maroons will look towards Derken, Bittner, and first-year Kaitlin Price, who leads Chicago with five goals this season.

Wolfenzon mentioned the importance of quick ball movement in the Maroons’ attack.

“One thing we are focusing on is to switch the field as much as possible in order to break their line of defense quickly,” she said. “Most importantly, we will win these games as a team working hard for each other on every single play.”

The Maroons will take on Rochester tonight at 7:30 p.m. before heading to Ohio to take on Case Western at 1 p.m. on Sunday.