TUESDAY • APRIL 7, 2015
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892
ISSUE 35 • VOLUME 126
Anonymity not guaranteed on UChicago Crushes and Secrets Ankit Jain Senior News Writer A recent change to the AnonyMonkey submissions platform for the popular UChicago Crushes and Secrets pages has left students concerned that their IP addresses and Facebook user IDs are being tracked. The changes came after a spam attack on the Crushes and Secrets
A new urban project hopes to make major improvements to the 57th street corridor in order to improve business in the area. MARTA BAKULA | THE CHICAGO MAROON
New urban renewal project seeks to revamp 57th Street Isaac Easton Associate News Editor Recently, progress has been made in the ongoing effort to create a “Cultural Commerce Connection” on East 57th Street. The aim of this project would be to make the street’s stores and museums more accessible to visitors and Hyde Park locals. Leslie Hairston, the alder-
man of Chicago’s Fifth Ward, describes one of the goals of the project as improving to the street’s landscape. “[W]e are looking to put up sustainable planters... so that 57th Street can have identity of its own.” An online survey recently released by the South East Chicago Commission polled Hyde Park residents on the changes they would like to see on 57th and
what “identity” they wish to cultivate. The survey shows pictures of possible options for painted sidewalks, new lighting similar to that on the Midway Plaisance, and, as Hairston said, “sustainable planters.” One of the most significant improvements will leave the street running both ways from Stony Island Ave to Lake Park. 57th continued on page 2
Annie Nazzarro Associate News Ediotr On Tuesday, March 31, the Council of the University Senate discussed divestment from fossil fuels, an initiative that the UChicago Climate Action Network (UCAN) is pushing the University to adopt.
Illinois House gets input from University on bill concerning UCPD
American journalist and author David Satter spoke Monday night in the I-House Assembly Hall about Russia’s role in the Ukrainian conflict. The event was sponsored by the International House Global Voices Lecture Series; the Center for International Studies; the UIUC Russian, East European and Eurasian Center; the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore; and the Center for East European and Russian/ Eurasian Studies at the University of Chicago. Before the lecture, Satter sat down with The Chicago Maroon to discuss the course of his career and journalistic lessons he has learned along the way. Now one of the world’s leading commentators on Russian affairs, Satter’s roots in journalism lie here at the University of Chicago, where he served as editor-in-chief of The Maroon as a third-year undergraduate.
tween the city police force and a private university. He said, “[the conversation] is just a matter of deciding where the line is, insofar as [the UCPD] is acting as a public institution.” In explaining why the co-sponsors sought the University’s input, O’Leary said: “there are some things that a public police force would be forced to disclose that, because [UChicago] is a private university, it wouldn’t make sense for them to make public [such as] high- level communications.” O’Leary said the earliest the bill could pass would be next week, but he does not expect it to pass so soon.
—Lorentz Hansen
CRUSHES continued on page 2
UCAN hopes that this will motivate the Board of Trustees to discuss divestment as well. Bruce Lincoln, professor of the history of religions and member of the Council of the University Senate, originally encouraged the Council to discuss divestment. He found that the attitude toward divestment
was generally positive. “There wasn’t a lot of controversy; I think the Council was very responsive to the notion that climate change was a big issue and we’ve not addressed it adequately… I think there was very little disagreement,” he said. However, Lincoln noted UCAN continued on page 2
Journalist banned from Russia discusses career at I-House event Tamar Honig News Staff
mation about its practices. H.B. 3932 aims to hold the UCPD accountable to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The bill, drafted largely in response to requests for UCPD policing data, has gained broad support from community and University members; however, its details are still awaiting discussion in the Illinois House of Representatives. Barbara Flynn Currie (D25), Christian Mitchell (D-26), David McSweeney (R-52), and Monique D. Davis (D-27) of the Illinois House of Representatives have co-sponsored the amendment. Ryan O’Leary, Currie’s chief of staff, said the current conversation with the University is intended to clarify the distinction be-
submit posts without logging into anything. This change was quickly posted on the popular Facebook group Overheard at UChicago. The post claimed that UChicago Crushes and Secrets were now not fully anonymous, as AnonyMonkey could be storing Facebook user IDs, access tokens, or IP addresses. IP addresses are
Council of the University Senate discusses divestment from fossil fuels
NEWS IN BRIEF Sponsors of House Bill (H.B.) 3932, seeking to increase the transparency of university police forces in Illinois to their surrounding communities, have asked for input from the University regarding disclosing information about responses to student protests, police routes, protection at speaker events, and other issues related to campus policing. The sponsors are consulting the University on what information they think is appropriate to require the UCPD to disclose, according to standards of what other private police forces usually make available. The bill was introduced to the Illinois House of Representatives on February 27 in response to repeated requests for UCPD to release infor-
pages paralyzed them both. About a month ago, AnonyMonkey started requiring all submitters to log into the AnonyMonkey app with their Facebook profiles to submit posts on the pages using its app, which include UChicago Crushes and Secrets. AnonyMonkey is a submissions portal that is used to moderate posts on Facebook pages. Previously, users could
Satter first gained national attention with an article he wrote as a college journalist about slum conditions on the West Side of Chicago. The piece was published in the Maroon magazine and appeared in a revised version in The New Republic. Satter credits the article with earning him a Rhodes Scholarship that allowed him to attend Oxford University, where he studied political philosophy. Satter explained that while the article was an important stepping stone in his career, its content was not indicative of his future trajectory. “That was never really where my chief concern was–it was just something I had lived through and experienced. I was always interested in the broader world,” he said. This interest evolved into a particular focus on Russian affairs. Satter has written three books to date on Russia and the Soviet Union and has more in the works. A recent development in
Satter’s relationship with Russia is that he has been banned from entering the country. His ban from Russia is the first expulsion of a U.S. journalist since the Cold War. “The difficulty is that many journalists, in order to protect their visas and their access to Russia, censor themselves without making it clear that that’s what they’re doing,” Satter said. “That’s what the Soviet authorities tried to get people to do–they wanted people to be afraid and to look over their shoulder every time they were writing–and I always refused to do that.” Despite his expulsion, Satter remains undeterred from his work of trying to bring a truthful understanding of this nation to the outside world. “Nothing has changed in that regard as a result of my expulsion,” Satter maintains. “I cannot go back to Russia, at least for the time being. But I’ve been persona non grata before.… I believe I will go back.”
IN VIEWPOINTS
IN ARTS
IN SPORTS
Give the people what they want: Ego and online activism » Page 3
Ebert’s legacy still felt At the Movies» Page 5
Best high school players in the country descend on Ratner» Back page
“Die With You” receives a Beyminus » Page 5
THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | April 7, 2015
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New exhibit showcases LGBT life at UChicago Shelby Lohr Associate News Editor On March 30, the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center unveiled its latest exhibition, Closeted/Out in the Quadrangles, a set of images, oral histories, ephemera, and personal documents chronicling LGBTQ life on campus. The exhibition builds upon a previous Special Collections project called On Equal Terms: Educating Women at the University of Chicago. These projects were sponsored by the gender and sexuality studies department and Special Collections, as part of an effort to chronicle women’s history at the University of Chicago. Mich Elliott, an intern for the preparation of the LGBTQ exhibit and recent University of Chicago graduate (A.B. ‘14) said, “I think it’s a really incredible opportunity to bring light
to narratives of different experiences that people have had over the history of University of Chicago [and] the struggles and success that they had.” The exhibition also highlights some of the often unacknowledged same-sex relationships among female administrators and faculty, including former Dean of Women Marion Talbot, former Dean of the School of Social Service Administration Edith Abbott, and former professor Sophonisba Breckinridge. Fourth-year Danielle Wilson described how she heard about the exhibit years ago while it was in its incipient stages. She enrolled in courses with two of the directors of the project, Monica Mercado and Lauren Stokes. “Now that I am a fourthyear, seeing it come to fruition
is really exciting…I remember when they didn’t even know what to call it,” Wilson said. The exhibit’s opening gala last Wednesday drew some of its financial supporters and exhibition contributors. In a speech at the event, Julia Gardner, a University librarian specializing in gender and sexuality, said that the exhibit will have a lasting impact for both students and researchers within the archives. “The exhibit is not only valuable, but I think it’s also a reminder that…the world has an enormous capacity to see the good of all… [The University is] the first to tell these stories, and many of them are new… They are doing a wonderful job,” said Dean of the College John Boyer in a speech at the gala. The exhibition is free and will remain open until June 12.
New cultural corridor would “help to market local culture to a broader audience” 57th continued from front
Currently, the street only runs east underneath the Metra tracks, and visitors driving west on 57th from Lake Shore Drive or the Museum of Science and Industry are confronted with a large “Do Not Enter” sign. East 57th Street has been closed between South Lake Park Ave and South Stony Island Ave since the early 1960s. It was initially closed as a part of one the city’s many urban renewal programs. The aim then was to streamline traffic and help business. However, closing the street hurt local businesses, according to an article published by the
Chicago Tribune in 1961. Skip Hampton, a hair designer at 57th Street Hair Salon who has been working on East 57th Street since 1984, thinks that running the street both ways would bring new clients to the salon and improve the businesses around the neighborhood. Hampton said in an interview, “To get on 57th Street now you have to do a lot to get here—if they open it up, it will bring us more traffic. It will probably bring more business into the area, in terms of the museums, the restaurants, and the salons.”
Wallace Goode, director of the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce, dislikes the sign. Goode said in an interview, “When you’re driving toward 57th Street and you see a big sign that says, ‘Do Not Enter,’ that’s definitely going to be bad for business.” According to Goode, one aim of opening 57th would be to create a Cultural Corridor, “helping [to] market [local culture] to a broader audience.” This Cultural Corridor would link the Museum of Science and Industry to the DuSable Museum of African American History in Washington Park.
NEWS IN BRIEF Construction to begin on Vue53 development next month Construction on Vue53, a large luxury apartment and retail complex located on 53rd Street, is slated to begin next month. When the project was initially presented to a community development group in 2013, the anticipated start of construction was January 2014. A lawsuit filed by nearby property owners delayed building at the Vue53 site for more than a year. The building is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2016. The project has been
backed by the University as part of an effort to push development west along 53rd Street. James Hennessey, the Associate vice president for commercial real estate operations at the University, responded to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, as well as to those worried about the project’s size. He maintained that the University held meetings with community members in advance of the development. According to a statement sent by Hennessey, most people at
these meetings supported the project. Hennessey described changes prompted by community input at these meetings, including a height reduction by one story and an increase in the availability of affordable housing offered in conjunction with the project. However, Michael Scott, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, expressed concerns about how those meetings had been conducted.
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—Adam Thorp
“Here’s the thing with anonymity — nothing’s anonymous in cyberspace.” CRUSHES continued from front
unique identifiers for devices on the Internet, though they cannot be linked to individual people. Facebook access tokens are unique strings of characters that allow an app to identify individual users. Facebook user IDs are unique strings of characters that appear at the end of the URL of a user’s public profile. Zihan Xu, the creator of AnonyMonkey, said that the app does not actually allow human access to posters’ personal information. “We purposefully avoid asking them to do that,” he said. Second-year Connor Soltas, who has worked professionally in front-end coding over the past two summers, says it’s possible that AnonyMonkey has set up their service in a way that no human would have access to any personal information even if the computer system gains access to it, but that there’s no way to prove this. “They actually create the objects that would be necessary to store it,” Soltas said. “If AnonyMonkey records Facebook user IDs…then the AnonyMonkey platform obviously has access to that information. But it would definitely be possible to design a platform that makes use of those IDs, say to send notifications, without ever revealing them to humans,” he said. It seems, however, that while by default AnonyMonkey does not report posters’ personal information, it’s possible for the app to do so. A former editor of UChicago Secrets who wished
to remain anonymous showed The Maroon a Facebook chat from one of Secrets’ editors in which the editors were discussing how to discover who had sent several personally threatening submissions to the page. One of the editors wrote: “I know the guy that owns the submission form website. He says he can’t track who submitted them retroactively. But he’s saving the logs.” When asked about this, the quoted editor wrote in an email, “Web applications normally have the ability to log the IP addresses of anyone who connects to them—whoever submits a post, in this case—but don’t for a variety of reasons: the actual text file can get quite big, etc. In this case I imagine that they turned on some ‘save connection log’ feature so as to see if we could identify the person.” It is impossible to know how often AnonyMonkey turns on this feature. Xu said the only reason that the Facebook verification system was added to AnonyMonkey was because someone had spammed UChicago Crushes and Secrets with thousands of submissions over the course of a weekend. In order to stop this bot, Xu said he put in a Facebook verification requirement. While instituting a required Facebook login rather than using less intrusive methods such as a reCAPTCHA may seem somewhat heavy-handed, Soltas believes that there is likely no malicious intent behind the changes. “It doesn’t seem like any
of the protocols that they have introduced to prevent spamming are intentionally against students’ interest as much as quick and dirty solutions to problems a lot of third-party Facebook add-on applications would be facing,” he said. “It seems like it was done in good faith after someone spammed them with thousands and thousands of posts that makes for a terrible user experience on the part of the page manager when they have to say ‘reject, reject, reject’ to every single spam post.” Xu admitted that, as an Internet app, AnonyMonkey cannot be fully anonymous. “Here’s the thing with anonymity—nothing’s anonymous in cyberspace. Even Yik Yak claims to be fully anonymous [and] actually tracks individuals’ device IDs…. I really want to create this. It’s not an anonymous space, but a more comfortable space, because when we think about this, when people talk on Yik Yak and people are talking on Secrets and Crushes, people really just try to find a comfortable space where they can express themselves. I don’t think people care about being anonymous that much, but being comfortable, and anonymous is really a medium to help them express themselves. That’s what we’re trying to do.” This article will be followed on April 10 by a second investigative piece covering spam attacks on UChicago Crushes and Secrets. Additional reporting by Forrest Sill.
Council is “very responsive to the notion that climate change is a big issue” UCAN continued from front
that the Council did in some cases disagree on whether or not divestment was the best way to address the issue of climate change. One faculty member, the second speaker in the open discussion, opposed divestment. “She thought it ‘disingenuous’ for us to claim moral high ground by divesting when we had done so little to reduce carbon emissions on our own campus or in our personal practice,” Lincoln wrote in an e-mail. Other faculty members supported different moves to combat climate change, such as making the campus “greener,” but “no one (save the second speaker) was opposed to divestment and nobody thought it was inappropriate for us or the Board to be seriously considering the issue,” Lincoln wrote. The Council was unable to make a motion or vote on the issue because decisions about the financial management of the University are officially under the jurisdiction of the Board of Trustees. However, the Council can give its advice or share its opinion with the Board on such matters, which it was able
to do in this instance. According to Lincoln, President Robert Zimmer has committed to transmitting a summary of the discussion to the Board. The discussion is part of UCAN’s overall goal to bring the issue of divestment to the attention of the Board of Trustees. As part of the group’s continuing strategy to raise oncampus support, UCAN will hold a teach-in on Thursday, April 9 to explain divestment and its importance. According to second-year Johnny Guy, a UCAN organizer, the group has also planned a “walkback” for Friday of third week, from the Booth School of Business to the administrative offices, to protest the fact that the administration did not follow through on a promise it made to the UCAN. “Last year, the administration made a commitment to us that they would set up a meeting between our campaign and one of the members of the Board of Trustees,” Guy said. “In a meeting this year, they subsequently redacted that promise.” “We’re trying to get them to follow through or acknowl-
edge publicly that they didn’t honor their commitment,” Guy added. According to Guy, last May, UCAN met with Darren Reisburg, secretary of the University, who gave the group a commitment “in writing” that it would get a meeting with a member of the Board of Trustees. But winter quarter of this year, UCAN was told that the meeting would no longer happen. “[Reisburg] said that at the time that he had made that promise he didn’t understand the capabilities of his position, and after consulting with the president and the provost, he decided that it was an ‘inappropriate form of engagement,’ to use the administration-speak,” Guy said. The Board of Trustees had already considered and dismissed the idea of divestment at one point, according to Lincoln, but that doesn’t mean UCAN’s efforts have been for nothing. “I doubt that the faculty’s discussion is going to change their mind on [divestment],” Lincoln said. “But it will have the effect of putting the issue in front of them again and showing them that it’s not going away.”
VIEWPOINTS
Editorial & Op-Ed APRIL 7, 2015
Give the people what they want Online social activism creates a culture in which activists say exactly what their followers want to hear in order to gain fame Nina Katemauswa Maroon Contributor There are two shared beliefs that exist within most activist circles— both on and off campus—regardless of our respective causes or the specific goals we’re focused on: One, “we’re all in this together,” and two, “we’re all in this for the right reasons.” Increased discourse and writings centered around the importance of intersectionality (ways in which different social issues influence each other and intersect within broader social structures) have rendered the first unspoken sentiment readily observable these days. Even on our own campus, activist RSOs from across various spectrums of the social justice movement have begun to frequently team up with each other to host mutual events and panelist-style discussions. However, the latter assumption has begun to be regularly called into question, at first by the historically critical (and often conservative) voices outside of these communities, and now, more surprisingly, from voices within these movements like myself, who have found themselves either frustrated or disillusioned with the nature of on-campus activism and social justice movements overall. As a society, we laud certain figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harvey Milk primarily for their dedication and service to each of the civil movements they were at the forefront of, noting their longstanding legacies and commendable reputations as the fitting results—not the sole aim—of their lives’ works. Certainly the way we think of these people—as histori-
cal figures and cultural paragons of a certain humanitarian aspiration—echoes the idea that, when it comes to social justice overall, the best leaders are the ones who manage to achieve the highest level of influence for all the right reasons. Chiefly, the supposed betterment of The People (that nameless mass of oppressed individuals whose characteristics may vary depending on the vision of the person invoking their image) or, more loftily, The World. Right. But what if MLK or Milk had been around in today’s age of cult-like social media presences and their internet “followers?” Would we have been more suspicious of their intentions or more critical of their charismatic tendencies then? We don’t need to be skeptical of the individuals who reach celebrity status for their activism but we—regardless of our feelings about Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) overall—should all be skeptical of the kind of culture that encourages celebrity or fame as its own end and the potential implications of that culture among the backdrop of our current sociopolitical movements. Beyond this skepticism we, as activists, need to be more critical of our own actions and motivations to make sure that they are truly in line with what we
The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892. Eleanor Hyun, Editor-in-Chief Sarah Manhardt, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Stephen Moreland, Managing Editor The Maroon Editorial Board consists of Eleanor Hyun, Alan Hassler, and Lear Jiang. News Natalie Friedberg, editor Alec Goodwin, editor Marta Bakula, deputy editor Isaac Easton, associate editor Raymond Fang, associate editor Shelby Lohr, associate editor Maggie Loughran, associate editor Annie Nazzaro, associate editor Isaac Stein, senior writer Viewpoints Sarah Zimmerman, editor Nina Katemauswa, associate editor Kiran Misra, senior editor Arts Andrew McVea, editor Evangeline Reid, editor Ellen Rodnianski, editor Hannah Edgar, associate editor Grace Hauck, associate editor James Mackenzie, senior editor Sports Helen Petersen, editor Zachary Themer, editor Ahmad Allaw, associate editor Katie Anderson, associate editor Tatiana Fields, senior editor Sarah Langs, senior editor Grey City Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Editor-in-Chief Kristin Lin, Editor-in-Chief Design Annie Cantara, head designer Copy Sophie Downes, head editor Alan Hassler, head editor Sherry He, head editor Morganne Ramsey, head editor
Multimedia Forrest Sill, editor Photo Marta Bakula, editor Frank Wang, editor Yeo Bi Choi, associate editor Video Amber Love, editor Social Media Emily Harwell, editor Online Ryan McDowell, web developer Business Nathan Peereboom, chief financial officer Ananya Pillutla, chief operations officer Nicolas Lukac, chief marketing officer Zac Gunther, chief innovations officer Theresa Peng, chief statistics officer Lenise Lee, business manager Harry Backlund, distributor Kay Li, director of data analysis This issue: Copy: Megan Daknis, Kyra Martin, Rebecca Naimon, Erica Sun, Sam Zoeller Design: Stephanie Liu, Elle Rathbun, Kaitlyn Shen Editor-in-Chief E-mail: Editor@ChicagoMaroon.com Newsroom Phone: 773.702.1403 Business Phone: 773.702.9555 Fax: 773.702.3032 For advertising inquiries, please contact Ads@ChicagoMaroon.com or 773.702.9555 Circulation: 6,800. © 2015 The Chicago Maroon, Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
ALICE XIAO
say we stand for, and not merely for what we want others to believe we do. We currently live in a society where more often than not, people follow ideas because of individuals, not the other way around—that is, individuals because of ideas. More than ever, the type of public persona a person is capable of crafting is more important than the actual content of their message. Many people frequently express the same opinions about contemporary social justice issues (e.g. incidences of police brutality, racial discrimination, or perceived failures in governmental policy); but the public judges the statements of people with larger followings on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter as somehow having more validity or value than the voices of others. While a person’s greater societal influence can definitely be evaluated based on their social media following, the nature of that influence as either positive or negative is more difficult to determine. Supposedly, if we are to deem raising awareness as one of the chief responsibilities of social activists in today’s age, then certainly each retweet, reblog, and like has the potential to go a very long way in terms of increasing the visibility of certain social issues and ideological beliefs. …Unless our social media circles are not as ideologically, politically, or socially diverse as we like to think they are. Unless our internet-based personas are part of an ever-expanding vacuum of like-minded voices who
already agree with the majority of our opinions before we even begin the laborious task of attempting to then distill them into politicallycorrect sound bites of 140 characters or less. Unless we’re also in the midst of a so-called “call-out culture” where opportunistic screenshots can wholly misconstrue or misrepresent the nature of our true beliefs in a sensationalist wave of excessive media coverage and echo chamber think pieces. Unless the visibility we’re aiming for leads to greater misunder-
“We should all be skeptical of the kind of culture that encourages celebrity or fame as its own end”
standings and divisiveness both within our affected communities and within the larger communities where our voices find opposition. When the focus of our social efforts begins and ends with “raising awareness” through social media, we can’t help but become sucked into the general “me” or ego-based nature of internet politics in general. The internet has helped to create a space for many to find solidarity and community where there might not have been any before, but it has also become a place where we can literally transform ourselves into different people overnight and the nature of identity is simultaneously transient and political. It’s
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THE CHICAGO MAROON
all about “my” page, “my” online community, and “my” followers— while things like “our” cause, “our” struggle, or “our” progress take on a more rhetorical significance for when we want to engage more people in our individual expressions. In this type of egocentric cultural climate, it can be easy for activists to completely lose perspective or become entirely disheartened with our bigger, overarching ideals when someone makes a nasty comment anonymously on places like Yik Yak, or when someone points out something “problematic” on a particular online status or post of ours. With the nature of interactions today being so public and all of us having some obsession with the way others perceive these invented internet personas ours, everything becomes that much more personal—that much more “targeted.” As social activists, however, it’s our role to do our best to stay above the fray and keep our focus on the communities we serve and the larger issues at play. When we get too caught up in the reblogs, retweets, and ‘likes’ not only do we set ourselves up to be more sensitive towards things that can be perceived as ‘personal attacks’—we risk the content of our messages being overshadowed by the perception that people have of us as individuals who happen to be outspoken about these matters. After the faux-hacking debacle of last quarter, I had time to reflect upon my role as a self-identifying social activist on campus, as well as on my relationships with many ACTIVISM continued on page 4
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THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | April 7, 2015
“It’s time to separate the ego from our activism and realign ourselves with the core issues� ACTIVISM continued from page 3
of the individuals who had been by my side, spearheading certain social justice initiatives and groups such as S.A.C.R.E.D - Students Against on-Campus Racial and Ethnic Discrimination.  I saw first hand the ways in which social media, perceived public personas, and differing egos can combine and result in less than desirable outcomes for all parties involved—especially when it comes to bringing about necessary change in challenging environments, regardless of how well meaning the majority of the main
actors are. One positive thing to come out of that situation, however, was that it did
“...Our social media circles are not as ideologically, politically, or socially diverse as we like to think.�
spark some much-needed dialogue within our community about on-campus activism in general, and some of the pitfalls we face in at-
tempting to navigate these issues in light of changing technologies and evolving cultural priorities. More than ever, perhaps, it’s time to separate the dominance of ego from our activism and realign ourselves with the core issues at stake. Let’s set aside this focus on individual personas and reputations, in order to develop a renewed dedication to the things that really matter: like more universally equitable policies and increased resources for the marginalized and historically oppressed in our communities. No matter your thoughts
on the people who purport to represent these groups publicly, it is the nature of the causes themselves—not the prominent individuals—that actually matters. Taking the ego out of movements aimed at social justice is about bringing clarity to the causes themselves and shifting the nature of the dialogue from the inevitable shortcomings of select individuals toward the specific issues and concerns their actions may address. It’s about transcending so-called identity politics and arriving at a place of universal solidarity and compassion for all. It’s
about moving away from the perceptive level of “you� or “me� and bringing back the full concept of “we�. As
“It’s time to separate the dominance of ego from our activism�
meaning not from a place of desiring more recognition, fame, power, or any other self-serving concern. Only in truly practicing what we preach can we maintain authenticity and clarity amidst unexpected tragedies and events. Only in letting go of our individual concerns and prejudices can we attain the highest level of progress for the benefit of all society.
self-identifying social activists, we must be sure that our intentions as well as our actions are always in line with our ideals and our values—
Nina Katemauswa is a third-year in the College majoring in philosophy and political science.
assume we know everything just because we read it in a book. Apart from the practical side of learning through experience, there’s also something fulfilling about getting out and experiencing the world. It’s very hard to get that “been there� feeling from reading a book. For me, spending every night with only my sleeping bag between me and the stars was just as valuable as everything I learned. There’s a lot to life outside of learning and knowing things,
and I know that can be hard to remember while trudging through the academic quarter. Just don’t be afraid to put the book down and go do something every once in a while. This world is an endlessly spectacular place, no matter your interests, and it would be a shame to think you can fully appreciate it based simply on what you can glean from a page.
Live in full color For a geophysical sciences major, rocks feel better with a little dirt under your fingernails
Ryan Manzuk
Rocks for Jocks Last spring break, I was lucky enough as a geophysical science major to participate in a field course at the Salton Trough in southern California with the department. The trough has been the site of a diverse set of environments over the last 20 million years, so this course gave me an opportunity to learn about a myriad of rock types and sedimentary structures. Before the trip, the class spent the entirety of winter quarter reading papers and book chapters that would apply to the various rocks we would see in the field. As the quarter progressed, I gained a broad knowledge of the geology of the trough, and so I was ultimately under the impression that the bulk of my learning would come from those 10 weeks of readings and discussion. I could not have been more wrong. At last, spring break was upon us, and we were California-bound. At the end of a long day full of travel and errands, we finally arrived at our campsite just before sunset. I leapt out of the SUV to stretch my legs
and found myself standing in the perfect serenity of a desert evening. The geology of the Salton Trough that I had so frantically reviewed on the plane completely escaped my mind as I gorged my eyes on the mountains in the distance with the sunset glancing off their peaks. This visual bounty was accompanied by a concert of aromas emanating from the numerous desert plants that welcomed us to our home for the week. As my sense of smell was awakened from its winter-induced dormancy, I recalled a quote from Good Will Hunting: “If I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written ‌ But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.â€? At that moment, as well as countless other times throughout the week, I realized that the previous quarter of reading and preparing for the trip would be minuscule in my education and development compared to the actual experience of being in the Salton Trough. My geologic knowledge and
intuition made strides in a single week that dwarfed those I made in any 10 week class. The facts and terms that I read about were certainly a necessary foundation, but they would have been meaningless without the clarity I gained from actually seeing the things described in the textbook in the field. Simply put: what I learned in class makes a lot more sense now, and I have the confidence to actually apply it on my own. By the end of the trip, I was pointing out features in rocks that I would have blankly stared at only a few days earlier. As students at the University of Chicago, this is a lesson all too relevant. We have come to take pride in our theory-over-practice priorities and endless hours spent in libraries. We readily engage with the works of prominent social theorists, but we often lack experience with many elements of society that we hypothesize about in discussion sections. It’s very easy for us to become blinded by piles of reading, problem sets, and midterms, but in the process we forgo opportunities to experience the world that we so tirelessly study. I am not calling for any
Wednesday, April 8, 6:00 pm Sarah Staudt, an Equal Justice Fellow at Lawndale Christian Legal Center, will offer reections on our criminal justice system, and invite a conversation about a Christian response. Staudt is an alumna of the College and the Law School, heads up Lawndale Christian Legal Center’s juvenile court division for youth. For more information or to RSVP, contact us at: 773-947-8744, ofďŹ ce@brenthouse.org, or the Facebook event.
BRENT House:
The Episcopal Center at the University of Chicago
5540 South Woodlawn Avenue • Chicago, IL 60637 www.brenthouse.org • www.facebook.com/brent.house.chicago • 773/947-8744
major changes in the philosophies of the University or any shifts in regime; in many ways I am exceedingly grateful for the way UChicago has taught me to think. However, I do think we need to be reminded of the context of our education. We have acquired extensive knowledge of vast subject areas through our readings and classes, but that isn’t an entirely fulfilling end. We are an incredibly intelligent group of young adults capable of playing major roles in the world, but we shouldn’t
Ryan Manzuk is a third-year in the College majoring in geophysical sciences
ARTS
What is art? APRIL 7, 2015
Camaraderie and crowd interaction electrifies SASA show's Journey Eleanor Hyun Editor-in-Chief I attended SASA Journey on Saturday for the same reasons that most people do—a good friend of mine was performing, and I was aware of the show’s reputation for a good, raucous time. I had never seen the show before, so I can’t comment on its quality in comparison to past years, but I can say that I left the show this year with a goofy grin and without my voice. Among performances on campus, cultural shows have a unique feel to them. I can most closely describe it as nostalgia. Sitting in the audience, I felt joy that resonated so purely and simply that it felt like it was from childhood. Maybe this doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I think it has something to do with this: I’m not South Asian (I’m Korean) but I know that expressing my own Asian culture hasn’t exactly been rewarded in America. And as I’ve grown older, I’ve become more and more aware of this. But on Saturday night, I watched the members of SASA celebrate themselves and their culture in a way that seemed completely unrestrained by the fears I felt growing up. Even if this wasn’t
the intent of the performers, I felt a vicarious catharsis watching them perform. One thing that makes the SASA show singular to me is its attitude. It seems particularly resistant to pandering to an audience which can only be coaxed into South Asian culture if every serious moment is doused with a heaping serving of self-deprecating humor and served on a plate of easily accessible references. There is a certain amount of fusion that naturally comes from representing a South Asian–American experience. For example, Bhangra (directed by Benita Glamour, Shreya Kalva, and Maggy Liu) transitioned into its next set of dancers to the beat of Kanye, to the delight of the audience. But this was only a few seconds amidst a soundtrack of largely South Asian songs, and when Bhangra quickly returned to dancing with an athleticism that I could only envy, the audience was just as deafening. Even the seemingly less high-energy performances such as those of SASA Classical (directed by Swathi Krishnan and Mythili Vinnakota), were captivating. But credit for SASA Journey’s fearlessness must also go to scriptwriters Dave Thomas,
The SASA Bhangra team shakes their stuff at the end of their routine Saturday evening. FRANK YAN
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THE CHICAGO MAROON
Paras Mehta, Andrew Yang, Jyotsna Soundararajan, Meera Mody, and Sahiba Borisuth, as well as to their decision to place some nods toward more political issues in the show. The show chronicles the story of four University of Chicago students on a road trip through South Asia. Having the protagonists of SASA Journey introduce themselves with their pronouns at the beginning of the show may seem simple, but when included in a show representing the col-
"Die With You" receives Bey-minus Andrew McVea Arts Editor In a recent Saturday Night Live sketch, Andrew Garfield casually drops that he’s “not a huge fan of that one ‘Drunk in Love’ song” while at a friend’s birthday party. This initiates a series of events that culminates in his imprisonment by the Beygency—a secret service dedicated to preventing slander against Beyoncé. With this in mind, I feel it necessary before commenting on Beyoncé’s new song to mention my ardent devotion to all things Beyoncé. I listen to Destiny’s Child like it’s still the late ’90s. In my opinion 4 was the best album of 2011. My schedule is dictated by a Beyoncé calendar on my desk. With that out of the way, I can say with confidence that her new song “Die With You” comes as a bit of a disappointment. That’s not to say that “Die With You” is a bad song, it’s just odd. But not in an interesting way like the feminist interlude by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in “***Flawless” or the crazy sex-hallway from the music video of “Haunted.” “Die With You” is Beyoncé’s anniversary gift to Jay Z, and the music video is essentially a single-take
home movie made by Jay Z on a camcorder showing Beyoncé singing and playing a piano in an echoey room in their home. Musically, “Die With You” didn’t blow me away. There are no highflying vocals or irresistible hooks like those typically heard in her biggest hits— but it is a pleasant ode to her hubby, and the strippeddown sound is an interesting departure from her usual music. “I don’t really need to be if I can’t be with you,” she coos over a minimalist piano accompaniment, and while she doesn’t exactly tread new ground with “Die With You,” it is suitably sappy for the anniversary gift that it is. What truly bothered me about “Die With You” more than the song itself was how it was packaged. The song was released “exclusively” (I personally listened to the song on YouTube as a music video) on the new music streaming website Tidal, along with Rihanna’s “American Oxygen.” Tidal is being touted as the high-quality version of Spotify, and various artists have started adding exclusive content on the website so people will purchase a monthly membership. Releasing “Die With You” on a “high-fidelity music stream-
ing site” like Tidal seems like an odd choice, especially considering that the audio is almost completely unedited. It sounds almost like Beyoncé is singing in a middle school gymnasium, and while Beyoncé’s vocals still shine through, they deserve so much better. The song simultaneously debuted with a new Rihanna song that I predict will be the younger artist’s next number one hit. “American Oxygen” is catchy and political, and the music video is a powerful compilation of images of present-day immigrants and the history of the United States. Essentially, all of the places where Beyoncé’s song fails, Rihanna kills it. “American Oxygen” honestly blows “Die With You” out of the water in every regard, and although they are being given about the same amount of press by Tidal—because come on, it’s Beyoncé—Rihanna’s song is worth more of a listen. Only time will tell if a studio version of “Die With You” will hit the airwaves, or if there is another album in the works right now, but for now Yoncé fans will have to be content with what little they can get. After all, even low-fi, somewhat derivative Beyoncé is still Beyoncé.
lective collaboration of over 200 performers, it makes a powerful statement. The same can be said for a brief, anecdotal reflection on the portrayal of Pakistan in American media in a later scene. These messages are incredibly strengthened by the collection of a community around them. The same can be said for SASA Journey itself—SASA is not just a show, it’s an interaction. It’s the interaction between the performers and how they cheer each other on with
the same contagious energy they display during their own performances. An example: In the opening moments of the show, the protagonists introduced themselves. One of these protagonists is Raj Kumar, portrayed by Rishabh Agarwal. Rishabh: “Hey, I’m Raj.” Muffled voice from the audience: “YEAH, YOU ARE!” Rishabh: “Fourth year. He him his. Honestly, I’d like to see what’s fun and meet some new people.”
Muffled voice from the audience: “MEET ME!” But beyond the performers, one of the most entertaining parts of the SASA show was the interaction with the audience and the way the show feeds off of the crowd’s energy. There is something to be said for a show that so vigorously celebrates its own kinship and sisterhood that, for a night, the audience members feel that they are part of it too. It’s not easy to do, but SASA pulled it off with a smile.
Ebert's legacy still felt At the Movies Robert Sorrell Arts Staff “Movies do not change, but their viewers do,” Roger Ebert wrote in 1997, 16 years before he would watch his last film. The famous critic and public figure passed away two years ago this past Saturday, April 4. As memories of Ebert slide into the past, we find ourselves devising new ways of remembering and commemorating the critic. Steve James’s documentary on Ebert, Life Itself (which takes its title, but not necessarily its content, from Ebert’s memoir), is now widely available on online streaming services. The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) plans to build a film center in his name. His website, RogerEbert.com, publishes scores of reviews, thinkpieces, and blog posts by critics from all over the world each week and compiles his past writings on film. His film festival, Ebertfest in Champaign, IL, will begin its 17th year this April with a program that includes Jean-Luc Godard’s Adieu au langage, and Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood. Ebert was a figure who in many ways reflected the extreme complications of the American film world. His writing combined enter-
tainment, intellectualism, art, business, and marketing. Movies, or so they are mythologized, are the art of the masses. And as such, Ebert was a critic for them. He turned out his reviews with a fierce reliability and wrote in a newspaper style free of jargon and technical terms, addressing the people in a way that was widely accessible. He spoke of the way films affected him, and the ways in which he thought they could affect others. At the center of Ebert’s approach to film was the belief that everyone should be able to “get” a good movie. As shown in James’s documentary Life Itself, Ebert’s rise to becoming essentially the voice and face of not just American film criticism, but the American film world, was full of accidents. Ebert started as a features writer for the Chicago Sun-Times and was named its film critic in a period when film criticism was not widespread in newspapers; at the Chicago Tribune, for instance, reviews were written by any number of different writers and then all published under the pseudonym Mae Tinee (matinee). Ebert, who had been editor-in-chief of the Daily Illini, the newspaper at UIUC that published five days a week and often included Eb-
ert’s own feature stories and political commentary, set to work on reviewing with the mindset of a journalist. He churned out review after review, hitting deadlines and travelling to interview directors, actors, and producers and to cover film festivals. As the film Life Itself argues, Ebert saw himself as a kind of Chicago guy, a la Studs Terkel, Nelson Algren, or Saul Bellow; someone successful enough in their field to head for the coasts who instead decides to stick it out in the Windy City. His decision to stay was part of the reason Ebert was able to become such a popular figure. He wasn’t an academic from the East Coast or an insider from Hollywood, and therefore he was one of us, someone we could trust, who had our backs and wrote from the point of view of the audience member in towns across America, not the director or the film studies professor. At the same time, Ebert’s criticism exuded a wily intellectualism and strength of argument straight out of an academic journal. At a certain level, he didn’t care about those people who went to the movies to escape. “What does it mean to love the movies?” Ebert asks in an introduction to Awake EBERT continued on page 6
THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | April 7, 2015
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"...he was one of us, someone we could trust..." ies every day, it sometimes seems as if movies are more mediocre than ever, more craven and cowardly, more skillfully manufactured to pander to the lowest tastes,” Ebert wrote in 1992. “Then you see something absolutely marvelous,” he adds. “and on your way home…you look distracted, as if you had just experienced some kind of a vision.” There will never be another Roger Ebert—the time and place and culture which allowed his persona to exist and thrive are now gone. Yet each day seems to welcome a new film critic to the fold. Lively debates crackle across the Internet, and if this university is any indicator, film studies as an academic endeavor is gaining more and more popularity. A multiplicity of voices are crying out, championing their own views on films, on film criticism, and on Roger Ebert. Unlike Ebert, many struggle to be heard, but like him, what they share is the belief that films should be taken seriously; that, in Ebert’s own words, “it is not important to have a ‘good time,’ but it is very important not to have your time wasted.” And that is something worth holding onto.
EBERT continued from page 5
in the Dark, a collection of his work. “It does not mean to sit mindlessly and blissfully before the screen. It means to believe, first of all, that they are worth the time.” Throughout Ebert’s later years and around his death, debate flew constantly about the end of some aspect of the movies. Existential fear exploded around the switch from celluloid to digital, concretized in Godfrey Cheshire’s 1999 “Death of Film” and “Decay of Cinema.” Worries about film reviewing in general were articulated by Richard Corliss in “All Thumbs, or, Is There a Future for Film Criticism?” in 1990, and when Ebert himself passed in 2013, many American film-lovers registered with a sigh that there would probably—no, definitely—never ever ever be another critic like Roger Ebert. Ever. And they were probably right. Yet, it’s a bad habit humans have to predict the end times, to believe that the time they live in now is in some way worse than all the others that came before. That things are only heading down. “When you go to the mov-
The Good Book makes good theater, conversation Hannah Edgar Associate Arts Editor The words of Ecclesiastes 1:9 were sprinkled throughout the first act of The Good Book, which opened at the Court Theatre last Friday. Be it the title of a perpetually-deferred book penned by one of the play’s protagonists, the hollow utterances of a distraught Jewish scribe, or the same protagonist’s existential rants, all of them intoned the weary, ageold lament: “There is nothing new under the sun.” They are also words that can very neatly write off the play’s premise. When it comes to ontological debates pitting the secular against the spiritual, there indeed seems to be nothing new under the sun, and the same goes for The Good Book. The two main characters are tropes of the highest order: There’s Miriam (Hollis Resnik), a jaded, middle-aged Biblical scholar whose militant atheism too often asserts itself in the lecture hall, and Connor (Alex Weisman), a devoutly Catholic teen coming of age in the mid1970s who struggles to reconcile his homosexuality with his faith. Though an attractive formula, The Good Book carries with it a whiff of déjà vu. Yet The Good Book is more than the sum of its parts— much, much more. By interweaving these characters’ stories
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Alex Weisman defies time and space in The Good Book. COURTESY OF THE COURT THEATRE
am’s contempt of organized religion came off as caricaturish, as did Connor’s mannerisms and naïve zest for all things ecclesiastical. Thankfully, smart and sympathetic writing saved these characters from devolving into full-fledged stereotypes. Miriam’s botched attempt to Skype her Syrian husband (ensemble member Kareem Bandealy) was a crowd-pleaser. Connor’s scenes were framed through his obsessive habit of chronicling his life on a tape recorder—yet another clever decision, lending era-appropriate timeliness and introspection to his narrative. As though to temper what was, at times, a convoluted script, The Good Book’s staging was sleek and minimalistic: Act I was executed on an allblack set, which transformed to all-white for the second act. Supporting roles were played by an impressive ensemble
that flexibly cycled through a relentless stream of character and costume changes. For Friday’s performance, a post-show discussion was led by Dean of the Divinity School Margaret Mitchell, providing a soapbox for audience members to critically respond to the play. The conversation which followed was engaged and inquisitive, not unlike the spirit of the show itself. Like any good play, that is what The Good Book is sure to do best: incite hearty dialogue within member of its audience, be they religious, nonreligious, or something in between. The Good Book continues at the Court Theatre through April 19. Tickets are $15 for students with a valid UCID, $25 for faculty, and $35–65 general admission. Student rush tickets are available for only $5 within an hour of the performance. Visit courttheatre.org for details.
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with a mélange of historical scenes that trace the compilation of the Bible, writers Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson— who last teamed up at the Court to present another fresh interpretation of an old text with 2011’s An Iliad—cleverly present The Good Book itself as something of a third narrative. And, as the play is quick to remind us, it’s a narrative that is still very much evolving. Miriam’s Nietzschean assertions withstanding, The Good Book’s thesis is that the word of God is anything but dead: it is still very much a living, breathing text. That’s not to say that it’s a straightforward one. However, instead of glossing over the inconsistencies plaguing both biblical scholarship and the Scriptures themselves, the play embraces these contradictions, even thrives off them; it approaches a tale as complex and ideologically mired as the Bible’s creation with a blitheness that is refreshingly natural and unforced. The scholarly conclusion that Pentateuchal authorship is not Mosaic, but rather lowercase-M mosaic— the result of multiple authors as opposed to Moses solely—is spotlighted, but blessedly lacks the stiffness of an educational aside. Miriam and Connor’s dual narrative threads were engrossing, though not without their melodramatic excesses. Miri-
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THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | April 7, 2015
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Maroons kick off season Squad improves over weekend to with first-place finishes grab first home victory Track and Field
Softball
Third-year Michael Frasco runs at the Windy City Track and Field Invite this season.
Fourth-year Tabbetha Bohac throws a ball during a game against Wisconsin-Whitewater last season.
COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS
COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS
Russell Mendelson Senior Sports Staff In their first meet of the outdoor season—and their only home meet this spring—both the Chicago men and women finished on top at the Ted Haydon Invitational. Despite some rough wind and delays, the women totaled 292 points to give them a margin of victory of more than 150 points. The men found similar success, ending the afternoon with 264 points. “For me personally, the hardest part was the wind,” first-year Olivia Cattau said. “There was a huge south wind that went against you in the last straightaway. So finishing races was difficult although we did flip the track for the 200 and 100 events to go with the wind instead of against it.” Cattau overcame these difficulties to take first in the 400-meter hurdles and placed fifth in the javelin throw. “I think for a lot of people on the team, the most challenging aspect of the meet was just the length of the meet and the delays caused by technical difficulties with the cameras,” second-year Andrew Maneval said. “For the most part, the predetermined schedule was not followed for the majority of the meet either because of the delays, or that some events were running faster than expected.” The technical difficulties with the cameras, which help determine the placing and finish times for track events, were mainly caused by the frequent gusts of wind that carried on throughout the meet. Some re-
sults were spotty enough that at least one event needed to be redone. “Our team goal for yesterday was just to go out there and get a good start to the season, which I think we accomplished,” Maneval recounted. “A lot of the schools in our conference had already had multiple chances to compete this outdoor season and we were, as a team, really excited to get our first chance outdoor to compete.” Both the men and women made strongimpressions to kick off the outdoor season, combining for 14 total event wins. Maneval, for example, claimed the top spot in shot put with a distance of 13.77m. “My personal goals were just to get some quality marks that would put me among the top marks in the conference in each of my events,” Maneval said. “Not only did I iron out a couple of technique issues in my three events [hammer throw, discus, and shot put], I also became more comfortable since last year’s outdoor season in handling three significantly different events.” Part of the team’s early success, Cattau acknowledged, comes from its versatility in different events within its meets. “Even though you have an event that you might not like as much as others, it is very important to realize that we have an excellent team and everyone needs to do their part in order to have success,” Cattau said. The Maroons will get a chance to continue their dominance this Friday and Saturday at the Chicagoland Championships in Glen Ellyn, IL.
Olivia Cattau Maroon Contributor Returning to Hyde Park from this spring break’s 12-game marathon with an 8–4 record, the Maroons had a pair of doubleheaders this past Thursday and Friday to welcome them back. While the Maroons dropped three of their four games during the two days, they showed a great deal of improvement as they garnered their first home victory of the season in the process, and they ultimately finished the weekend with a 9–7 record for the season. On Thursday, the Maroons traveled to Lake Forest for a pair of games. The Maroons got off to a hot start in the first game as third-year Kathleen Kohm drilled a ball to left field for a one-run single, driving home third-year Devan Parkison in the process. However, this was the only run support the Maroons would be able to muster for first-year starting pitcher Molly Moran. Over the course of the six-inning game, the Lake Forest Foresters went off for nine runs, aided largely by a home run by Lake Forest outfielder Alex Hemmer. After the dust settled on the diamond, the Maroons had fallen by a score of 9–1, but still had a second game in the afternoon to redeem themselves. For the Maroons the second game was as much about getting the win as it was fighting through the adversity that has haunted them in this still budding season.
“Our team has been doing a good job of handling adversity this year as we’ve been faced with multiple injuries and are continuing to welcome new players to our small roster,” secondyear Maggie O’Hara said. “We’ve been doing a really good job of battling in every game, out hitting almost every team we’ve played but we’ve fallen just short.” In the second game of the Lake Forest doubleheader, the Maroons sent third-year Jordan Poole to the mound. While Poole gave up an early two-run home run, she was able to shut down the Foresters during the rest game, not allowing another run for the rest of the six-inning game. Meanwhile, the Maroons made some noise of their own as O’Hara stole second in the third inning , and was later brought home via a single by Parkison. However, while O’Hara, Kohm, and Parkison were all able to get two hits on the day, the Maroons were never able to score another run, and they ultimately fell to the Foresters by a score of 2–1, dropping their record to 8–6 in the process. While the Maroons may have dropped a pair of games on Friday, they were hungry for a win heading into their home opener on Thursday against the Lawrence University Vikings. In the first game, the Maroons sent Poole to the mound once again, and she certainly put on another impressive performance as she struck out five Vikings over
the course of the afternoon. On the offensive side, the Maroons were able to scramble together a couple of rallies as O’Hara drove home a pair of runs, and fourthyear Tabbetha Bohac contributed a home run in the fourth inning. In total, the Maroons scored five runs, which was good enough to best the Vikings, and the Maroons took the game by a score of 5–4, improving their record to 9–6. In the second game, the Maroons had Moran on the mound, who replicated Poole’s success with five strikeouts of her own. However, despite a strong outing from Moran, the Maroons were not able to get the offense going. Their two runs were not enough to top the six-run outpour from the Vikings. In the end, the Maroons split the double-header with the Vikings but still had some positives to take away from their four games. “Both were well fought games,” second-year Anna Woolery said. Coming off of their long series of games from last week, the Maroons had little time for rest as they played a second pair of games last night at Hope College. The Maroons dropped both games, the first by a score of 5–3 and the second by a score of 11–3. With their record now standing at 9–9, the Maroons will look to improve to the right side of .500 when they play host to Illinois Wesleyan this Thursday in a double header beginning at 3:30 p.m.
SPORTS
IN QUOTES “The roof will remain open here at @MarlinsPark! It’s a beautiful day for #OpeningDay.” – An announcement made by the Marlins Park Twitter account two hours before a torrential downpour
Chicago snaps four-game slump South Siders fall short on the road Women’s Tennis
Max Hawkins Maroon Contributor
After losing four consecutive matches over spring break, Chicago went 2–1 this past weekend in Madison, WI, to improve its overall record to 8–8. “I think we learned a lot from our spring break trip in terms of mental strength. It really showed in our doubles against Hope,” said second-year Tiffany Chen, who played No. 2 doubles and No. 4 singles. It certainly did show as the Maroons, led by first-year Ariana Iranpour and fourth-year Megan Tang at No. 1 doubles, started the Midwest Invite with a decisive sweep on their way to a quick 8–1 victory against No. 22 Hope (12–4, 2–0). “We realized what a huge difference it makes to get an early lead on doubles and how much confidence it gives us. In both matches we won this weekend, we were ahead after doubles,” said Tang. However, the Maroons were unable to carry this momentum into their next match, losing to No. 11 Wash U (12–4), a team the Maroons had beaten earlier in the season. Singles play began before doubles play, and this, according to Chen, may have “changed the momentum of the match.” In their previous encounter, the Maroons took four of the singles matches against the Bears. This time around, they split the singles matches 3–3, with first-year Jasmine Lee winning at No. 3, third-year Lucy Tang winning at No. 5, and third-year Sruthi Ramaswami winning at No. 6. “They capitalized in doubles more than we did and played smarter points when the matches were close,” said Megan Tang. Wash U got off to quick starts and held on to win all three doubles matches, winning 6–3 overall, reversing their 3–6 loss to the Maroons
Baseball Michael Cheiken & Bobby Butler Sports Staff
Second-year Tiffany Chen prepares to return a ball to an opponent at a practice this season. COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS
earlier in the year. In the last match of the Invite, the Maroons faced a second rematch against rival No. 23 Case Western (96), who had beaten Chicago 5–4 earlier in the season. “[We were] keen on avenging our 5–4 loss to them earlier, so we were really mentally locked-in, and it paid off in our results,” said Chen. Megan Tang echoed Chen’s thoughts, saying, “We were all mentally locked in, especially in singles. We were confident that we could make more balls and play cleaner points,
which is what gave us the win.” The Maroons fought for a 2–1 lead in doubles thanks to Chen and Courtney Warren winning 8–5 at No. 2 doubles and Ramaswami and Lucy Tang winning 8–5 at No. 3 doubles. This momentum carried over to singles, where the Maroons won 12 of 13 sets for an emphatic 8–1 victory to conclude the weekend. The Maroons won’t have much time to rest with an exciting few matches coming up, including another rematch against rival No. 11 Wash U on Saturday.
After two close wins on April 1, the Maroons (4–10) prepared for a brief trip up north to take on UW–Platteville (9–7). The Saturday games gave the Maroons a chance to prove that their spring break woes were anomalies. The Pioneers, though, had other ideas in mind. Chicago threatened from the start. A leadoff single for first-year Max Larsen, a passed ball, and a sacrifice left Chicago with a man on third and only one out. However, the Maroons couldn’t capitalize. First, fourth-year Kyle Engel struck out. After Pioneer pitcher Bormann walked fourth-year William Katzka, the Maroons’ designated hitter, fourth-year Andrew VanWazer, stepped to the plate. He flied out to center and the relieved Pioneers prepared to switch fields. The remainder of the afternoon was a pitching duel. Both third-year Maroon pitcher Lucas Friss and Pioneer first-year Bormann had splendid outings: Each gave up only six hits. It was the Pioneers, however, who were able to link their hits together to do damage. In the bottom of the sixth, the Pioneers played some small ball after a leadoff single to put Casey Schroeder on third with two outs. Evan Greco, who’s batting .397 on the year, stepped up to the plate and he did what he’s been doing all year. The driven single into right-center brought Schroeder home, and the Pioneers took a 1–0 lead. Friss was able to close out the inning, but the Maroons were unable to put any runs on the board in the top of the seventh. The Chicago
squad gathered itself and prepared for the second game of the doubleheader. On the impact of doubleheaders on the Maroons, third-year Nick Watson said, “In a few instances this season, the mistakes in the first game carried over psychologically into the second game, and we’ve tried to acknowledge this and focus on starting the second game fresh, focused, and confident regardless of the result of the first one.” Saturday proved to be one of those instances, as second-year Thomas Prescott took to the mound for the Maroons. He gave up five through six innings, and the Maroons went into the top of the seventh inning down four runs. The Pioneers brought in Eric Curtis to finish the game for them. He forced the leadoff batter into a fly-out but started to falter thereafter. After a walk and two singles, the Maroons had the bases loaded with only one out. First-year Dean Christakes came to the plate, but Curtis took him down for the second out. However, the rally caps were on, however, as Engel stepped to the plate. He ripped a double, driving in two runs. The go-ahead run was on third. An error by the Pioneer shortstop allowed the Maroon rally to continue. They sent in second-year Robert Scherl to pinch-hit for VanWazer. Down just one run, he flied out to center, ending the Maroon rally. The loss brought Chicago to 4–10 on the season. Chicago will compete against Hope College on the road today at 3 p.m. They will then play host to Edgewood on Wednesday at 3 p.m.
Best high school players in the country descend on Ratner Bobby Butler Maroon Contributor Last Monday night the Powerade Jam Fest returned to UChicago for the fourth consecutive year, preceding the McDonald’s All American Game. With it came the best high school basketball players from across the country. The event was a chance to showcase some of the players’ specific skills in a fun environment. It included a skills competition, a threepoint shooting competition, and the fan-favorite dunk contest to finish off the night. As usual, some big stars were present to comment on the proceedings for ESPN, including former college and NBA talents Jalen Rose and Jay Williams, as well as Chicago Sky broadcaster Brooke Weisbrod. Before the TV broadcast started, the first round of the boys’ and girls’ three-point and skills competitions were completed. Moving on to the finals on the boys’ side in the threepoint competition were southpaws Luke Kennard and Jalen Brunson,
who will be attending Duke and Villanova respectively, along with LSU commit Antonio Blakeney. Finalists on the girls’ side were Sophie Cunningham of Missouri, Kyra Lambert of Duke, and Asia Durr, a Louisville signee, who dropped in an astounding 24 out of 30 possible points—the best round by any shooter all night. In the finals, the silky-smooth Kennard and the pure-shooting Durr pulled out victories. They were subsequently pitted against each other in a duel between sexes, with Kennard emerging the overall three-point champion, never turning in a round of less than 20. Coming in, Kennard was certainly the favorite, having recently broken LeBron James’s high school scoring record in the state of Ohio. In a frankly less exciting skills competition, two of the female finalists were the familiar faces of Lambert and Durr, joined by Napheesa Collier of UConn. Finalists for the boys were Brunson; Carlton Bragg, who is Kansas-bound; and Isaiah Briscoe,
who will be joining John Calipari’s perennially young supersquad at Kentucky. Brunson, a fan favorite due to his Chicagoland roots, was crowned champion, alongside Collier. During commercial breaks and between events, several short pieces of entertainment were provided for the crowd. The Bulls’ Stampede drumline joined the fun, and there were several fan competitions, including a hotly contested dizzy race between a father and son and a skills relay race involving some of the youngest ballers in the bleachers. A cool addition to the festivities were Poweradeprovided hoodies and shirts for each All American—which they seemed to enjoy greatly— reading “Just a Kid From [that player’s hometown].” Finally, the main event came: the slam-dunk contest. This year, only five players entered, but, as in 2014, one was a girl: California signee Kristine Anigwe. She took several attempts, with the last coming ohso-close, but couldn’t quite jam one in. The four boys involved were 6’9”
Bragg, 6’6” Dwayne Bacon of Florida State, 6’6” South Carolina signee PJ Dozier, and the undecided sevenfooter Stephen Zimmerman Jr. Though three of the four dunkers moved on to the finals—all but Dozier—it was immediately clear that it was a two-horse race between the mega-athletic Bacon and the big man Zimmerman. Bacon’s first dunk was a right-hand smash off the sideof-the-backboard assist from Isaiah Briscoe. Zimmerman’s may have been the dunk of the entire night: a between-the-legs backward bounce off the backboard into a windmill. Insanity. In the latter half of the first round, Zimmerman replicated the future Seminole’s first dunk with the added fury of a windmill. When asked about the dunk after the round, Zimmerman said, “I had to one-up Dwayne Bacon…he’s a crazy athlete.” In the finals, Carlton Bragg was quickly eliminated through his inability to complete his planned dunk. He was forced into a simple two-handed
flush reminiscent of an especially mellow Tim Duncan. Meanwhile, Bacon was able to pull off a bounce lob into a 180 behind the back slam. Zimmerman threw it down over West teammate Jalen Brunson, a feat seldom seen from such a giant. However, the second dunk of the finals proved to be his demise. He pulled the bystanding Ronald McDonald into the action, asking him for a lob in front of the rim. Zimmerman perhaps should not have been so confident in the size 25 shoewearing clown; he was never able to make a slam. Mr. Bacon was able to coax a tentative Jalen Rose out from behind the broadcaster’s desk. Bacon soared over the 6’8” Fab Five member with a graceful ease that turned into nastiness as he rocked the rim. Thus the champion was crowned. Upon watching the replay from a safer perch, a relieved Rose quipped, “I can’t front, I was scared to death!” The main event, the McDonald’s All American game, was held at the United Center last Wednesday night.