FRIDAY • APRIL 17, 2015
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892
ISSUE 38 • VOLUME 126
Prospective student reception varies widely from division to division Cairo Lewis News Staff
Students cross through Bartlett Quad, enjoying the recent warm temperatures. YEO BI CHOI | THE CHICAGO MAROON
SG announces RSO Stipend Proposal Katherine Vega News Staff On Tuesday, Student Government (SG) President Tyler Kissinger and College Council Chair Hamid Bendaas announced a proposal for a new Student Leadership Stipend (SLS) Program. This program would allow leaders of student groups to apply for $250 stipends every quarter
to offset some of the costs of working so that they will be able to devote sufficient time to their organizations. A student leadership stipend will be awarded following an application process. Leaders of all RSOs will be eligible to apply for an SLS award. Applications will be reviewed by a committee consisting of RSO leaders, Students-At-Large, and the College and Graduate Coun-
cils. After a list of SLS award recipients has been drafted, the Office of College Aid will ensure that at least half of the students who receive an SLS have demonstrated financial need. Kissinger and Bendaas estimate that 20 students will receive an SLS award in the program’s first year. The new proposal was drafted in the wake of student SG continued on page 2
UChicago Dining elicits student opinions through online survey Zeke Gillman maroon Contributor If you have walked into a dining hall or café on campus recently, you have most likely found small piles of business cards and flyers reading, “You talk, we listen,” or “Talk to us.” These advertisements refer to a survey initiated by UChicago Dining Services at the beginning of this quarter. The survey is located on campusdiningvoice.com, a site powered by the customer experience company Medallia. The short survey asks students to answer questions relating to their dining experience in their respective dining hall. Questions include, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your experience at [Bartlett or South] Dining?”
and “How satisfied are you with the following aspects of the service you received?” referring to friendliness and speed of service. Another question was “How satisfied are you with the following aspects of the food you purchased?” referring to appearance and taste. “This is an ongoing survey that Aramark conducts. It is just one of the many ways in which UChicago Dining receives feedback from students throughout the year, and as we do with any input we hear from students, we will evaluate how we can incorporate their thoughts to better the UChicago Dining experience,” UChicago Dining Services wrote in a statement. “It is also an important part of Aramark’s employee recogni-
tion program and helps them reward staff for outstanding customer service.” The employee recognition program refers to an achievement award Aramark grants to those employees who generate significant advancements in “safety, customer service, community, innovation, wellness, etc.,” according to Aramark’s website. If, on the survey, one responds positively to questions about the staff, the survey will then prompt them to “describe anything related to service that made your experience special, including any employees’ names so we can thank them.” To incentivize students, dining is entering participants who elect to provide their contact information into a sweepstakes for a $50 gift card.
The University of Chicago’s College and graduate schools have reached one of their busiest times of the year between planning events for prospective students and orientation in the fall. The departments plan visiting and orientation events differently to fit students’ academic responsibilities and interests. Campus and Student Life News Officer Mary Abowd said that each graduate division has their own orientation events and information sessions, apart from the University-wide orientation. “[E]very
division does things differently when it comes to student visits to campus,” she said. “Many potential graduate students approach a particular department or school directly.” The College Admissions Office works with the College Programming Office (CPO) to welcome prospective and admitted students. Generally, the Admissions Office schedules student visits and tours for students of all ages and grade levels and the CPO is responsible for planning and executing Orientation Week, which welcomes the incoming class of undergraduate and transfer students before the start of the
fall quarter. Although incoming graduate students may schedule visits with graduate divisions through the College Admissions Office, the graduate schools have separate admissions programs that are not affiliated with the College Programming Office. The Booth School’s Evening and Weekend MBA Programs (E/W), for example, have their own orientation program called LAUNCH. This program was specifically built to accommodate the division’s rolling admissions system, which admits students before PROSPIES continued on page 2
CERN physicist gives talk on metaphysical mystery novella Maggie Loughran Associate News Editor Tote Hughes (AB’11), returned to campus on Wednesday to read selections from his metaphysical mystery novella, Fountain, at the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore. Hughes answered questions about his literary career, studies in high-energy physics, and his time at UChicago. Fountain, which Hughes began to write in the spring of 2013, is his first novella. It was published by the Miami University Press this past November and has since won the Miami University Press 2014 Novella Contest. Hughes’s novella is a work of fiction that blends philosophy, mystery, and humor. The protagonist is a columnist named Pinson Charfo who finds a note by his bed one morning written by one stranger and addressed to another. The ensuing plot is what Publisher’s Weekly calls an “absurdist, episodic quest” that involves plagiarized manifestos, narcotized cultists, the search for pornographic prints, and a fountain whose runoff forms an underground lake. The Publisher’s Weekly review concludes: “This is an intelligent, perceptive novel, but
it leaves the reader adrift.” At the event, John Wilkinson, Associate Chair for Creative Writing and Poetics in the English department, spoke briefly about his experience teaching Hughes in his core class on creative writing. Hughes’s unique anti-realist style made an early impression on Wilkinson. “It is unusual for an undergraduate to present for their first creative writing class something that has nothing to do with his or her family or miserable or ecstatic love life or any other autobiographical stuff,” Wilkinson said. “This unusual student seemed engaged by what fiction alone might make possible in the way of thinking.” Writing is secondary to Hughes’s main pursuit— physics. He lives in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and pursuing a Ph.D. in high-energy physics. “I’ve always written a little as a thing to do outside of science and other things… But at one point I decided I needed to write a novella because I had written short stories and somehow I accidently promised my dad I would write a novella,” Hughes said. “Once it was
done I think it was better than other stuff I had written and that’s why I wanted to get it published.” Hughes admits he had to force himself to write Fountain. He committed four hours every day to writing about 1,000 words. Regarding his process, he said, “If I had said, ‘okay I’ll wait for something to come,’ I would never write anything.” Hughes credits UChicago with instilling in him an appreciation for logic that is evident in both his writing and his chosen field of study. “I think that’s one of the reasons I study physics. It’s really logical. And I think that shows up a lot in my writing. People having theories that they try to defend logically even if they don’t make sense. I wouldn’t have written something like that if I hadn’t gone to UChicago or a school similar.” The Chicago alumnus has already begun on his next work, a novel called Bend, about a boy who inherits a town in the West after his father elopes with a Chinese laundress. “The narrative is simpler and easier to follow and the language is different, but I think it will be quirky and whimsical as well. I’m like a sixth of the way done… but it ends in disaster.”
IN VIEWPOINTS
IN ARTS
IN SPORTS
Editorial: True transparency requires the law» Page 3
Survivor’s account: Fire Escape’s 48-hour filmmaking adventure» Page 5
NBA and NHL playoff previews
Food for thought» Page 3
» Page 7 and back page
Baseball: Heavy hitting earns Chicago 2-1 record on the week » Page 7