CHICAGO
M AROON The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892
Summer? please Although Summer Breeze was moved inside, bands (and Bulls) made do with Mandel Hall.
Voices, page 7
TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2011 • VOLUME 122, ISSUE 48 • CHICAGOMAROON.COM
SPIRITUALITY
CAMPUS LIFE
Mandala today, gone tomorrow
Rain blows breeze inside Summer Breeze relocated to Reynolds Club By Sam Levine Associate News Editor
V
eser and Gendun, Tibetan monks from the Gyuto Vajrayana Center in the Bay Area, create a sacred sand mandala Monday afternoon at Rockefeller Chapel. The creation of the mandala, which is part of a weeklong festeval devoted to spiritual life, is intended to show the impermanence of beauty. It will take three days to complete the mandala, and will then be ceremonially dispersed at Lake Michigan Thursday morning. DARREN LEOW/MAROON
What is often considered one of the days students look forward to the most at the U of C quickly cooled down after an unwelcome rain this weekend. The rain and heavy wind prompted the Major Activities Board (MAB) to relocate the Summer Breeze concert into Mandel Hall last Saturday, limiting one of the most popular events on campus to 1,000 students. “I think that we made the right decision,” fourth-year and current MAB chair Marie Joh said. “We at least wanted people to be able to see [the concert].” MAB organizers began precautionary preparations for an indoor concert nearly a week before Summer Breeze. Third-year and incoming MAB chair Sam Abbott said that they considered holding the concert outside in the rain, but decided to move the concert into Mandel Hall at 7 a.m. on Saturday due to safety concerns
of having electronic equipment outside in the rain. The strict capacity of Mandel Hall meant that only the first 1,000 students to purchase tickets would be allowed to enter the concert, leaving between 400 and 500 students with void tickets that they can receive a full refund on next week. Joh noted that the fountain in Hutch Courtyard was flooded after the concert and that there was nearly an inch of water on the stage that had been set up outside in case Saturday’s rain held off. It would have been impossible to reschedule the concert, which featured performances from The Walkmen, Milkman, Wale, and Crystal Castles, because all of the acts are booked months in advance for one particular day. The rain also took a toll on MAB financially. In addition to the tickets that will have to be refunded, the Board was also unable to sell any tickets at the door, usually one of the Board’s biggest marketing opportunities.
SUMMER BREEZE continued on page 3
STUDENT LIFE
ARCHITECTURE
Out of the A-Level, DealPuncher rises
Library like no other opens to crowds
By Jessica Sheft-Ason Maroon Staff Jacob Rabinowitz and Kaushik Vasudevan are trying their hand again at creating a website with a punch—this time for profit. The two first-years launched DealPuncher last Tuesday as a Groupon-like site where users print coupons and redeem them at local businesses. So far their clients include Asian-fusion restaurant Noodles Etc. and student-run coffeeshop Hallowed Grounds. Vasudevan said the idea for the site came up in a discussion about Groupon, explaining that he wanted to make the model, with its tens of millions of subscribers around the world, more specific to U of C students. “We wanted to keep it local, so we’re not going to be promoting deals that are irrelevant,” Rabinowitz said. “The deals we line up are deals we would want.” While Groupon tailors its deals to the customer’s current city and has no restrictions on the email addresses it accepts, DealPuncher can only be used by those with a U of C e-mail address and does not offer deals outside of Hyde Park. Instead of money being exchanged through the website, users print out coupons and bring them into the store.
DealPuncher is not the first website on which the pair have collaborated. Earlier this year, they launched The A-Level, a now-suspended forum for students to discuss problem sets, quizzes, and professors. When their first site failed to generate the usership the two had hoped for, they took it down to allow for greater server space for DealPuncher. Because the DealPuncher coupons are not individually marked or coded, an unlimited number of them can be printed, but shopowners will only honor a limited number of coupons. Rabinowitz and Vasudevan hope that this will cause competition among customers. “Students should feel that there’s a rush to the business,” Rabinowitz said. Rabinowitz presented his plan for DealPuncher to the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce in April. He said that while some businesses expressed interest, only Noodles Etc. created a deal with the site. Rabinowitz and Vasudevan selffinanced the website and maintain that they stand to profit, but declined to elaborate on their business model. Instead, Rabinowitz commented on the aspects of business they’re straying away from: “I met with a lot of local businesses that have been
DEALPUNCHER continued on page 3
The sun goes down over the newly opened Mansueto Library. After opening at 8:30 a.m., the library was completely filled with students, faculty, and visitors wanting to study and tour. JAMIE MANLEY/MAROON
By Crystal Tsoi Senior News Staff Few seats were empty in the Grand Reading Room of the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library yesterday as students poured in to see the finished outcome of the $85 million project that began over two years ago. During a tour yesterday,
Director of the University Library Judith Nadler demonstrated the library’s Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) in the Mansueto’s basement levels, which can hold 3.5 million volumes. When the rest of the University’s 8.5 million-volume collection is moved in to its permanent home on campus from its current stor-
age site in Indiana, the Mansueto and Regenstein library complex will be the third largest collection of books under one roof in America. Central to the ASRS’s design and function is the efficiency of its b ook retrieval mechanism. Five automated cranes plumb the 55-foot depths of the library’s
MANSUETO continued on page 2