FEBRUARY 21, 2017
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892
VOL. 128, ISSUE 29
Obama’s Presidential Center Could Cost as Much as $1.5 Billion BY HILLEL STEINMETZ ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
Courtesy of the Oriental Institute Oriental Institute archaeologists pictured working at a site in Iraq, one of the countries covered by the order.
Oriental Institute Future Uncertain Under Trump Administration Restrictions on Immigration May Impact Research in Middle East BY JAMIE EHRLICH DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR
The continuation of projects and research at the Oriental Institute has been called into question following President Donald Trump’s January 27 Executive Order banning immigration from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, and Libya. In an interview with T HE M A ROON , Gil Stein, the director of the Oriental Institute, argued that the Institute is the pa r t of the Un iversity “most impacted” by the executive order. A lthough Trump’s initial travel ban was halted by federal courts, a second order is expected to be released this week targeting the same seven Muslim-majority nations. Founded in 1919, the Oriental Institute was envisaged as a “research laboratory for the investigation of the early human career that would trace humankind’s progress
from the most ancient days of the Middle East,” according to the Institute’s website. The Oriental Institute is one of the world’s leading centers for the study of ancient Near Eastern civilizations. “ T he fo cus of ou r re search—we’re an interdisciplinary research institute—is on the Middle East, studying the ancient civilizations of the Middle East and how they developed,” Stein said. “ We do that by combining archaeology, the study of ancient textual records and the study of art history.” As a branch of the University, the Or iental Institute carries out research projects across the Middle East. They hold archaeological digs, perform cultural heritage preservation work, and have employees doing work in museums and studying monuments. The Institute also houses a center for the study of the ancient world where students, scholars, and faculty from around
the globe give lectures, attend international conferences, do research, and work with the faculty at the Oriental Institute. “Every single one of those endeavors and groups of people is attacked by this executive order,” Stein said of those involved in both fieldwork and research. In the amicus curiae brief filed last week, the University of Chicago cited the Oriental Institute as an example of the University facing direct negative consequences of the executive order. According to Stein, the Oriental Institute was going to host a Scottish archaeologist to work for a week in the landscape archaeology laboratory. However, because he had travelled to Iraq and Iran within the last five years and wasn’t able to obtain the visa waiver that is traditionally given to researchers, his trip had to be postponed. Continued on page 2
The Storied Past of the Regenstein
Aumur Shughoury
BY FENG YE AND ALEX WARD SENIOR NEWS REPORTERS
Regenstein Library is one of the University of Chicago’s most distinctive buildings, despite being a relatively new addition to the campus. Built over the course of the late 1960s and into the ’70s, the Reg as it stands today was shaped by an environment of significant political and economic turmoil. The Nixon presidency, the Vietnam War, student arrests, labor conflicts, and financial struggles for the University
Handmade Bazaar
Last Chance Meet
Page 6 “I realized I love doing this, and it’s the perfect outlet for me. I try to make delicate designs, and things that I would really like to wear.”
Page 8 “Overall I think swimming on this team was an integral part of my first year at this school, and the support of the teammates and coaches is incredible.”
Corey in the House Page 4 There. I said it, and you saw it coming. Hitler had opinions too. Big ones. Huge.
Speaking at an award ceremony last Wednesday, the architects of the Obama presidential library speculated that the library could require Barack Obama to raise $1.5 billion. The event, hosted at Lincoln Center in New York, presented wife and husband duo Billie Tsien and Tod Williams with the LongHouse Award for their architectural accomplishments, which include designing the Logan Center for Arts at the University of Chicago. The architects said at the ceremony that the hefty price tag for the library is the result of new federal requirements that expect former presidents to establish larger endowments to accommodate the annual expenses of future presidential libraries. A $1.5 billion cost for the library would be three times the $500 million George W. Bush
Chalking It Up to the College Experience Page 7
raised for his presidential library in Dallas. About half of the money raised for Bush’s library went to an endowment to the federal government to manage operating costs. Williams added that the buildings housing the Obama presidential library could cost upwards of $300 million. Williams and Tsien noted that it might be difficult for Obama to raise the money necessary to construct and operate the library since he did not fundraise while in office. Last week saw other developments for the library. On Wednesday, Obama returned to Chicago for the first time since leaving office in order to start planning the construction of the library. At O’Hare International Airport on Thursday, a plane delivered documents and materials from Obama’s presidency that will be archived in the library. The library, which will be built in Jackson Park, is expected to be completed by 2021.
and the country all influenced the building’s planning and construction, and the library represented a major shift in the University’s development toward a policy of major facilities expansion. The Reg was born during years of expansion for the University. The University struggled in the 1950s, after President Robert Maynard Hutchins restructured the University despite its financial insolvency. President Lawrence Kimpton wrote to his father, “Mr. Hutchins Continued on page 3
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“This is a disaster for our research...”
Goldberg Talks Trump at IOP
Continued from front page
Zoe Kaiser
Goldberg discussed the implications of Trump’s policies on international relationships.
BY LEE HARRIS STAFF REPORTER
On Monday, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, came to the Institute of Politics (IOP) for the latest of a series of talks on American foreign policy under the Trump administration. Throughout the talk, Goldberg argued that President Donald Trump is putting unprecedented pressure on the basic bureaucratic systems that form the foundation of American government. “Our government institutions are the envy of the world. We’re the gold standard,” he said. “There’s a reason that not every country has to have an FDA, for instance. It’s because we have an FDA. There’s a reason that Ebola didn’t murder half of west Africa. That’s the CDC…the reason that we can buy an iPhone is because the U.S. Navy is making sure that the international ceiling between Asia and the U.S. are free of piracy.” “These things work. And we’ll miss them if they’re gone,” he said. Goldberg also linked Trump’s disparagement of government institutions with his nomination of political outsiders with little or no experience in government. “There were a lot of things that we thought were governed by laws that are actually just governed by norms. It has been a norm that we find extremely qualified people to run complicated government departments,” he said. “Why would we possibly need legislation to say that people with expertise in a particular area should be running large, complicated government departments?” Calling the shift away from experts toward outsiders and dissenters “a return to pre-Enlightenment values,” Goldberg argued that another effect of mounting distrust in American institutions is popular support for more isolationist foreign policy. He attributed this, in part, to past presidents’ failure to emphasize America’s centrality to economic and diplomatic concerns on a global scale. “We’re victims of our own success,” he said. “I don’t think past presidents have done a good job of explaining and embracing the
ideas of American indispensability. Obviously, the Iraq War was generally interpreted as being an overreaching, a tragic misapplication of American idealism and American interventionism, and so we’re suffering the effects of that.” Goldberg argued that support for Trump’s brash and unpredictable persona might be a response to Barack Obama’s upstanding demeanor, that reflects a desire for the excitement of reality TV. “The country was tired, in a way, of having such a staid, appropriate, dignified family man president who revered the office.” “There are 330 million or so Americans, and no two Americans are less alike than Barack Obama and Donald Trump, just in terms of personality and disposition,” Goldberg said. But Goldberg identified one similarity between the two presidents he otherwise describes as diametrically opposed. “In some ways Donald Trump finds himself on a continuum with Barack Obama in his thinking on foreign policy,” he said. Referring to his November interview with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Goldberg cited the statesman’s experience with Richard Nixon’s capricious foreign policy. “He would go to world leaders and say, “Look, I know what we need to do, but my boss is crazy, we don’t know what that guy’s going to do.” And it’s a great negotiating tactic.” Goldberg said that Trump’s unpredictability far exceeds Nixon’s, and this creates a “wait-and-see” attitude among foreign statesmen and domestic private sector leaders alike, from the prime minister of Sweden to the president of Nordstrom. “Everybody’s sort of waiting for the attack, waiting to have some weird commentary made…trying to keep their head down. Maybe this is an extraordinarily effective way to go about managing a world. I don’t think so, but this unpredictability has a way of making everyone adhere to rules because they fear the American president won’t adhere to any rules.”
Estelle Higgins
The parents of Trayvon Martin visited the DuSable Museum of African American History on Friday. “Our backs were up against the wall,” his mother, Sybrina Fulton said, recalling her grief during the talk. “All we had was our 17-year-old son dead on the ground.”
As part of an archaeological excavation project in Erbil, Iraq—which is a part of the Kurdish autonomous region of the nation of Iraq—the Oriental Institute has been working to bring the head of antiquities for the Dohuk Governorate in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) to Chicago to work with professors studying Mesopotamian languages. “He can’t come now, because he’s defined as an enemy in the executive order,” Stein remarked. Due to the fact that many scholars studying Mesopotamia or the central part of the ancient Middle East have gone back and forth from at least one of the seven countries, the executive order threatens to dramatically decrease international participation within the Oriental Institute. “Inherently, [the scholars] will end up being viewed as suspicious people or their lives will be made hell,” Stein said. According to Stein, the executive order also threatens to disrupt the Oriental Institute’s plans to resume excavation work in Iran in the near future. Before the Iranian Revolution, the Oriental Institute’s archaeological excavations in Persepolis were the first in Iran by any American university. However, all work was halted after the Revolution in 1979, and the University has not been able to resume work for 39 years. Stein says that “all of the pieces were falling into place,” and he was hopeful that the Oriental Institute may have been able to return to Iran. However, Trump signed the executive order six weeks before Stein planned visit to Iran to lay the groundwork for
performing work there, and he now fears the Iranian government may be more hesitant to allow Americans enter the country to perform academic work. “ This is a disaster for our research and we have to think of ways around it,” Stein said. Stein says that he has been in communication with the Office of Legal Counsel as well as the provost and the head of the Office of Global Engagement. They have been planning to work around the executive order should it become law. According to Stein, both the University’s commitment to global studies as well as its various international centers in Delhi, Paris, Beijing, and Hong Kong provide a hopeful path toward maintaining global partnerships. Stein expects to see an increase of conferences hosted at these locations, rather than in Chicago as a work-around to the executive order. “ If we want to have conferences with major participation with major scholars, and we still want it to be branded to the University of Chicago, we would need to work much more closely with those centers and through those centers,” he said. Though Stein is confident that projects in Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, and other untargeted countries will carry on as planned, the uncertain future of the Institute’s work in the seven targeted areas has many worried. “We’re hoping to start a new collaborative project in Southern Iraq. The dig has been called into question. It’s a totally open question. Nobody knows. We have no idea.”
Hyde Park JCC Receives Bomb Threat BY OLIVIA ROSENZWEIG ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
At around 10 a.m. on Monday, a bomb threat was made to the Hyde Park Jewish Community Center (JCC), according to a spokesperson of JCC Chicago. Elizabeth Abrams, communications manager of JCC Chicago, said that the JCC staff followed protocol and called 911 immediately after the threat was received. The 11 staff members and program participants in the building were evacuated as it was searched by the Chicago Police Department, who determined that the threat was not genuine at 11:45 a.m. Abrams noted that the JCC has established training and protocol for these types of situations. “This is something that we prepare for on a regular basis.” An e-mail written by JCC Chicago CEO Alan Sataloff was released to the JCC community Monday afternoon. “During the school year, Hyde Park JCC primarily serves as an enrichment center for recreation and community partnerships,” Sataloff said. “A School’s Out program happening in Hyde Park today was already on their field trip when the threat was called in, so they did not need to evacuate.” School’s Out is an enrichment program for children grades K–5 when school is out of session. Congregation Rodfei Zedek, a Conservative synagogue in Hyde Park, released a statement announcing that students of Akiba-Schechter Jewish Day School and the Jewish Enrichment Center were also not present that morning because of President’s Day. “While today is another instance of threats directed at JCCs across the coun-
ty, none have been substantiated,” Sataloff said. “This is a difficult time for our community and we assure you that JCC Chicago locations are safe, and that we are open and operating as usual.” This incident is just one of 11 phonedin bomb threats on Monday to JCCs across America. According to a statement released by the JCC Association of North America, calls were received that day by JCCs in Alabama, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. “This comes in the aftermath of three waves of bomb threats in January (Jan. 9, Jan. 18, and Jan. 31), resulting in, through today, 69 incidents at 54 JCCs in 27 states and one Canadian province in total. All bomb threats in both January and today have proven to be hoaxes, and all JCCs impacted have returned to regular operations,” the statement read. One of the threats issued on January 31 was directed at the JCC Apachi Day Camp in Lake Zurich in Northern Illinois. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a prominent non-governmental organization that fights against anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry, released a statement on Monday that it is deeply disturbed by this recent trend of bomb threats being directed at JCCs across the country. “We look to our political leaders at all levels to speak out against such threats directed against Jewish institutions, to make it clear that such actions are unacceptable, and to pledge that they will work with law enforcement officials to ensure that those responsible will be apprehended and punished to the full extent of the law,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in the statement.
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THE CHICAGO MAROON - FEBRUARY 21, 2017
“It is this library which will represent and make available that culture and that tradition.” Continued from front page
very much over-extended the University, and it is my job to contract it…. This is going to be a very tough thing to do and will not gain me great popularity.” After Kimpton left in 1960, the following two decades saw a massive expansion and recapitalization, which would later be paid by doubling the level of tuition income and a new major fundraising campaign. A large part of the campaign was expected to benefit from a huge grant from the Ford Foundation’s Special Program in Education initiative, which eventually supported 16 universities and 61 colleges. To secure funding from the foundation, the University had to forge a long-term plan to show that its goals were serious and realistic. Edward H. Levi, former dean of the Law School, was appointed the first provost of the University in 1962, and brought with him an ambitious vision for “a deeply integrated university with a common culture characterized by scholarly rigor and intellectual meritocracy.” Levi undertook a massive planning process to persuade the Ford Foundation of the University’s great potential as an outstanding academic institution. In 1965, Levi completed the Ford Profile, a two-volume report that detailed the University’s current situation and its future needs, and the Board of Trustees voted unanimously to endorse the plan as the guideline to the University’s future developments. Besides further expanding size of the faculty and the amount of faculty compensation, the plan intended for the University to invest in major capital improvements, the most significant of which was the construction of a research library for the humanities and social sciences. By this time, Harper Memorial Library, built in 1912, had virtually reached its capacity for books. With its first donation
in 1964 and a large fund secured in 1965, the Reg was the cornerstone of the University’s long-term development, and rose to be a high priority of the University. An initial check of $500,000 was presented to the University by the Harriet Pullman Schermerhorn Trust in January of 1964. In October of 1965, the University received a $10 million gift from the Joseph and Helen Regenstein Foundation, whose namesakes also became the library’s. Compared to Harper, which was built at a cost of $820,000 in 1912, the cost of Regenstein totaled $20,750,000. At the cornerstone-laying ceremony in 1968, Levi said, “I cannot imagine an event in the history of the University of Chicago which is more important than this one. Few events can be more symbolically important for our society. We live in a time which needs to find itself. It cannot find itself unless it looks back to the roots of its history, its culture, its tradition. It is this library which will represent and make available that culture and that tradition.” The site for the new library was eventually chosen at the former location of Stagg Field, the University’s athletic field from 1893 to 1939, and the same site where a group of scientists led by Enrico Fermi had conducted the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in 1942 under the stadium’s west bleachers. The Enrico Fermi memorial currently stands right behind Mansueto Library and west of the Reg. By 1964, the University’s Board of Trustees had hired the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) to develop plans for the library and its corollary facilities. President George Beadle expected the number of volumes, which at the time totaled 2,200,000, to double within the next 20–25 years. The new library would require
facilities for 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 books. Built in a way to reduce the impression of its massive size on the outside, the library had 577,085 gross square feet of floor space within. The SOM design team for the new library was led by Chicago architect Walter Netsch, who had previously designed buildings for the University of Illinois and Northwestern University. Netsch was commissioned to build the library out of the same Indiana limestone as the buildings on the central UChicago quad, although the building’s Brutalist design makes the stone strongly resemble concrete from afar. In an October 1970 interview with THE M AROON, Netsch expressed pride that the Reg was “more Gothic” than other new campus buildings, but suggested that the interior could be improved with decorative art or plants. “These are the things that must be brought to every building,” Netsch said. “Otherwise, it’s inanimate.” Although it was scheduled to be finished by the start of the 1969, the project was delayed by scarce building materials, inflation, and shipping strikes; even after the building was initially completed, its early months were troubled. In early October of 1970, the Reg’s first floor opened to students and faculty, but the other six floors remained in the finishing stages of construction. The building’s front doors weren’t used at first, because issues with the construction of the threshold would have caused them to warp from use, and congestion on 57th Street led the University’s planning director to suggest that the street be closed to non-emergency traffic. Internally, however, the Reg had an initial storage capacity of 1.8 million volumes at its completion. The University’s then-president Edward Levi described it as “the greatest facility of its kind in the world” in his 1970
“State of the University” address. As a major campus landmark, the Reg was the site of campus unrest on several occasions during its first few decades. In 1973, protests broke out after the University of Chicago Library system fired six prominent employees including the Regenstein’s coordinator for public services, ostensibly for budgetary reasons. Other library employees contested that four of the employees were fired for being active organizers in the recently formed library union. Library employees went on strike outside the Reg and members of the UChicago student body and National Library Associations called for the employees to be reinstated. The Reg’s grounds were also the site of antiwar protests in the 1970s and antinuclear demonstrations in the 1980s as the site of Fermi’s reactor experiment. Mansueto and its dome were the product of the University’s realization in 2005 that it would be facing a major shortage of storage space for new books. The result was a 3.5 million–volume expansion to the University’s collection size with an additional reading room lit through the wing’s distinctive glass dome. The new storage space under Mansueto holds, for the most part, copies of books formerly stored in the Reg that are now also available online. Besides its automated book storage and retrieval system, the largest in North America, Mansueto is notable for the dome’s use as a shooting location for the 2014 film Divergent. Today, the Reg continues to be a central focus of campus life and expansion. Over the past summer, the A Level of the library was renovated into an open space for group work, with round tables and walls covered in clear dry erase paint that can now be used as whiteboards. According to Library News, the easternmost section of the floor will be the next focus for change.
VIEWPOINTS Stay the Course Federal Pressure on Title IX May Ebb; Strengthened Policies Against Sexual Assault Should Be Retained Regardless As long as the University of Chicago remains a federally-funded institution, it must adhere to the Title IX amendment of 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on sex in education. As administrations change, different Secretaries of Education have had varied interpretations of what constitutes discrimination. These interpretations do not carry the full force of the law, but provide guidelines by which the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will evaluate policies. Under the Obama administration, for example, the OCR issued the current reading of Title IX, which lowers the standard of proof in sexual assault cases. Outlined in its 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter,” the OCR mandates that academic institutions must discipline those who are found to be more likely than not to have committed an offense. With the recent confi rmation of Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos to Secretary of Education, the current interpretation is likely to change, meaning that universities will not be expected to adjudicate on sexual assault changes. If and when this happens, the University should redouble its commitment to sexual assault survivors on campus, who will be directly affected by likely changes to Title IX. To put it mildly, the University has had a difficult history with Title IX, frequently failing to provide sufficient support to sexual assault survivors. In 2014, three years after the “Dear Colleague Letter,”
a student fi led a formal complaint with the OCR claiming that the University of Chicago had mishandled disciplinary procedures when she was sexually assaulted by her partner. The dean of students at the time, Susan Art, allegedly classified the encounter as a “dispute between students” and instructed the survivor to try meditation as a strategy for moving past the psychological trauma she incurred from the assault. Although Art denied the student’s claims, OCR lawyers believed that the complaints from the survivor and other students were grounds for opening a federal investigation into the University. Immediately after, the University pledged to implement a revised disciplinary process. Throughout the next few years, the University made concerted efforts to improve its handling of sexual assault, appointing a Title IX coordinator and instituting UMatter, a website clearly outlining the procedures students should follow when reporting a sexual assault. This progress, however, could be undone at any moment by the current Secretary of Education. DeVos has not directly stated if she would scale back the OCR and issue a different reading of Title IX. During her confi rmation hearing, she refused to answer whether she would uphold the “Dear Colleague Letter,” instead saying “it would be premature” to respond to the question. It’s likely, however, that DeVos will act in accordance with the 2016 GOP platform, which believes that
the OCR letter was an example of the federal government overstepping its bounds. According to the platform, universities should not be responsible for investigating sexual assault claims and the onus should instead be on the court system. Although the Republican Party believes that courts should be the only entity responsible for adjudicating on matters of sexual assault, it doesn’t explicitly say that universities must be passive entities in the matter. If and when DeVos issues a new reading of Title IX, the University should continue its efforts to combat sexual assault. Many survivors are not looking for justice in the courtroom, said Phoenix Survivor Alliance co-leader Megan Dowd in a previous interview with T HE M A ROON. Instead of putting their perpetrator in jail, many sexual assault survivors would rather simply be assured that they will not have to interact with their assailants again. The federal government should not force all survivors to face their assailants in court and go through the trauma of having to recount their assault in detail in front of a jury. If survivors want smaller justices, like banning their assailants from their dorm or class, they should have the appropriate avenue to achieve them. A University spokesperson did not comment on whether the administration’s policy on sexual assault aligns with the GOP platform that will likely be pursued by DeVos. “If anyone chooses to pursue
a criminal complaint, the University will still offer support and resources,” News Office spokesperson Marielle Sainvilus wrote in a statement to T HE M AROON. “We will continue to work with federal offices to ensure compliance with Title IX and relevant regulations, as part of the University’s broader commitment on these issues.” However, this answer, by simply suggesting that the University will blindly defer to federal offices regardless of the policies the Department of Education plans to pursue, is evasive and out of touch with the political realities of the Trump administration. If DeVos no longer forces universities to follow the guidelines in the 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter,” will UChicago change the way it handles disciplinary proceedings around sexual assault? Will we regress to a system where sexual assault is called “a dispute between students” and where survivors will have to face their perpetrator every day in their dorm or in their classes? We cannot let the University backslide simply because the Trump administration would allow such behavior. As we have seen before, the administration has a history of mishandling sexual assault cases and belittling the trauma and hardship of its students. If the government will no longer keep the University accountable for its handling of sexual misconduct, then the University administration must take up that responsibility itself.
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THE CHICAGO MAROON - FEBRUARY 21, 2017
Corey in the House The IOP’s Embrace of Free Speech at All Costs Poses Problems
Jake Eberts I did not attend the Corey Lewandowski event last week at Uncle Axelrod’s Super Happy Playtime Funhouse, not necessarily because I did not want to hear Lewandowski speak—I did not—but more because I had several prior commitments that took precedence. In particular, my fragile-snowflake self-worth is precariously held together by my tri-weekly attendance at our campus’s high-energy core-sculpting Zumba class, which is coincidentally run by a wonderful Latina immigrant from Argentina. It would have been very crass to miss her event for Lewandowski
of all people, and moreover, I want abs. Corey and the Institute of Politics (IOP) cannot give me abs. In other words, I cannot speak to the content of the off-the-record Corey Lewandowski event specifically. However, as a proud, obnoxious liberal undergraduate, I will not let my lack of specific insight stand in the way of having a self-righteous opinion about it all anyway. By now I’m sure that the controversy surrounding Lewandowski and his invitation to the IOP is fairly well understood; in short, Lewandowski helped run the campaign that got Donald Trump, who
is not exactly popular in Hyde Park, into the White House (or at least, theoretical access to the White House, if he didn’t spend all of his time at Mar-a-Lago). Given that the Trump administration has actually acted on the divisive rhetoric used during the campaign, it is worth questioning the propriety of hosting a figure like Lewandowski at any event, let alone an off-the-record one where Lewandowski can be mostly shielded from public accountability. To quote the letter delivered to David Axelrod in protest, should we really be giving a chance for “those who incite hatred and violence against refugees, immigrants and minorities,” to explain themselves? The IOP frames the issue in terms of promoting discussion and debate on campus, which, to be fair, is an end that it is theoretically designed to strive for. Yet the argument for Lewandowski’s presence on campus ends there—we invite him because he has a viewpoint, and viewpoints are nice and good and cool, and we should hear viewpoints
even if we disagree with them. That argument only extends so far— some viewpoints are objectively pretty sucky and are thus hardly worthy of condoning in any setting, even one that otherwise celebrates the free exchange of ideas. You know who else had opinions? Hitler. There. I said it, and you saw it coming. Hitler had opinions too. Big ones. Huge. They were evil opinions. I am going to assume that the IOP would reject inviting the resurrected corpse of Hitler as a speaker to come and tell us why the Poles deserved it and the Jews are evil. I’d also give the IOP the benefit of the doubt and assume people like David Duke or Fred Phelps would be personae non gratae there as well. This is because at some point, the potential benefits of discourse are meaningless when we engage with, and thus legitimize, hateful ideas. The IOP should have responded to criticism with some sort of bright-line that they presumably have formulated, whether explicitly or not, regarding the point at which they consider a discursive point of
no return to have been reached. By providing a clear (as could be reasonably expected) standard, they could justify their invitations without resorting to an overused, case-by-case “we love viewpoints” line. Such a standard could be as simple as “We at the IOP will not host any individual or group whose core doctrine involves the dehumanization and endangerment of other citizens.” Then the argument could at least potentially be made that Lewandowski does not incite hatred and violence as properly understood, and his presence is needed to understand the nuances of his position. However tenuous that argument may be, it at least would ensure that subsequent discussion would be somewhat more productive, and provide a clearer reasoning behind the IOP’s various speaker invitations. The IOP apparently wishes t o avoid such a thing altogether. Jake Eberts is a third-year in the College majoring in political science.
Party of Protest Outrage is Normal, but Democrats Must Also Consider Long-Term Strategy
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In the days leading up to the Institute of Politics (IOP) event with former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, colorful posters were plastered around campus prominently declaring: “BIGOTRY is NOT NORMAL.” The posters urged Chicago residents to join the group UofC Resists in protesting the “normalization of bigotry” that presumably comes with Lewandowski’s presence on campus. The event and protest have already garnered a lot of attention. (For a thoughtful read on the merits of the protest, check out Ashton Hashemipour’s recent op-ed.) That said, the basic premise of the messaging for the protest—that bigotry is not normal—is not only ineffective, it’s ahistorical. And I worry that this type of messaging is becoming the dominant one in liberal, anti-Trump circles—of which, I should say, I am a part. The simple—and shameful— fact is that bigotry is normal. It is what drove Trump, in no small part, to the White House on November 8, and it has characterized much of the history of our nation. The most recent election cycle removed the varnish that has put a shiny gloss on the otherwise ugly dog-whistle politics that have been around since the founding of this country. But this turn toward much more explicit language on matters of race, religion, nationality, sexuality, and gender should not delude us into thinking that it simply didn’t exist before. To pretend that the bigotry epit-
omized by the Trump administration is somehow new in American politics ignores the experience of millions of Americans who have dealt with the effects of systematic bias for decades. Just because much of white America is now confronted with atypically overt displays of bigotry does not mean it is nascent. This intolerance has ensnared racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in unacceptable situations for longer than any of us has been alive. And this prejudice has put invisible hurdles in the paths of those seeking to break barriers, just as the sexism that was pervasive throughout Hillary Clinton’s run exemplifies. It is true that having white nationalists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller in the President’s inner orbit is a jarring departure from political norms of the last few decades. But making “bigotry is not normal” our chief means of expressing well-deserved outrage over this reality does little to progress our cause and gain support from the very people we need to win over. I want to be clear: the Democratic Party and all those opposed to Trump should continue to fight for equality for people of all stripes and colors. We must stand in stark opposition to the offensive words and policies coming out of the highest echelons of our government. In fact, we should redouble our commitment to fighting intolerance and injustice, as our party has a far from perfect record on these issues. The unfortunate reality we must come to grips with, however,
is that expressing anger over the breaking of precedent and offensive rhetoric and policies coming from this administration is fairly ineffective. Outrage is certainly an understandable reaction to Trump. How could anyone vote for a man who bragged about sexual assault and said an American judge couldn’t do his job because of his Mexican descent? My guess is that this question will continue to elude a lot of us in the years to come. But I think we would be wise to understand the sentiment expressed by noted disseminator of untruths Kellyanne Conway (and yes, I understand the irony of such a statement). She has said on several occasions that, “There’s a difference to voters between what offends you and what affects you.” In an ideal world, Americans would vote for candidates based on what both affects them and what is offensive to and affects others. Unfortunately, however, that is not the world in which we live. I often worry that the great failure of the left may be in our unabating proclivity to overestimate the fundamental goodness and empathy of fellow human beings. We should be outraged. But we cannot fail to learn the lessons of last November. We cannot let our well-deserved anger and horror over the shattering of important norms get the better of our efforts to win over those who are no fans of Trump but feel they have no place to turn to. This does not, in any way, mean we cede command of issues of equality and justice. While maintaining our steadfast commitment to fighting intolerance and injustice, liberals should cut back on our public Continued on page 5
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THE CHICAGO MAROON - FEBRUARY 21, 2017
Antisocial Media Refusing to Engage With Trump Supporters Will Only Hurt Liberals Going Forward
Natalie Denby The nascent Trump administration has started a thousand fi restorms in its fi rst month, from the immigration ban to the global abortion gag rule to presidential chiding of department stores. For most of the president’s contentious choices, the reaction has been consistently negative, prompting social media to erupt into a cesspool of sound and fury. But one pattern that has emerged from the discontent is surprising. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen people post things to the effect of “if you voted for Trump, unfriend me.” Or, “If you supported Trump, you’re a racist/sexist/ xenophobe/[insert alternative insult of choice here].” Or, my personal favorite, “If you support Trump after the DeVos confi rmation hearings, I can’t respect you.” (Seriously? Betsy DeVos is completely unqualified to run the Department of Education, but can she really be the last straw in an administration that also includes Stephen Bannon, Jeff Sessions, and Scott Pruitt?) You might think this is perfectly justifi able—isn’t it, after all, simply retaliation? Trump supporters troll the Internet routinely. They’re hardly restrained by rules of civility themselves. The proTrump posts I’ve seen are borderline libelous at their politest. And Trump’s mud-slingers are not only puerile, but they also don’t respond to reason. Why shouldn’t such people be met with contempt in return? Why shouldn’t we cut off all Trump voters? Lashing out at Trump supporters, and their often outrageous prejudices, is always a tempting proposition, but using social media to insult and shame Trump supporters is hardly the solution to our nation’s political woes. When we shame Trump supporters, we tend to insinuate several things: that if you voted for Trump you support everything he does and says, that you are therefore personally responsible for every move he makes, and that you are not redeemable as a human being or worthwhile as a friend unless and until you
renounce Trump categorically. In taking this stance, we confound a massive, heterogeneous pool of voters with the alt-right. To be sure, Trump was a horrible candidate, his election was a national catastrophe, and the altright deserves every bit of hatred it gets. But not every Trump voter is part of the alt-right. Not every Trump voter likes everything Trump did on the campaign trail. Not every Trump voter, for that matter, actually likes Trump. As Jon Stewart aptly pointed out, Trump voters shouldn’t be defi ned by the worst of his rhetoric. The fact is, there is no single Trump voter who adequately captures the entire group. We act like the alt-right forms the entirety of Trump’s base because it’s easy and it makes us look benevolent by comparison, but all we’re doing is disparaging millions of entirely decent Americans with legitimately thoughtful concerns. Insulting the vague monolith of Trump supporters is also implicitly self-aggrandizing, as we #NeverTrumpers glorify ourselves in the process. Plenty of people cast votes for Trump because they’re in dire economic straits and don’t believe they can afford any more of the status quo. Trump won’t be a good president for these people, but that doesn’t make their concerns any less pressing, or their reasons any less real. Plenty of Trump voters saw their insurance premiums skyrocket beyond their means in recent years, yet many liberals are still resistant to any potential changes to the Affordable Care Act. Trump will almost certainly fail to “fi x” Obamacare, but stories about middle class families suffocated by premium rises aren’t conservative conspiracy theories. Plenty of Trump voters were ensnared by fake news; those people genuinely believe that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a D.C. pizza joint, or conspiring to hide other serious crimes, or taking dirty money from foreign governments. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve occupied the
“We cannot let our well-deserved anger and horror over the shattering of important norms get the best of our efforts to win over those who...have no place to turn to...” Continued from page 4 airing of outrage on matters that, as Kellyanne Conway says, offend people. A sizable swath of the American electorate reviles this kind of messaging, as they think it embodies a holier-than-thou attitude. Unfair as the criticism may be, we can’t discount its relevance to many voters. We should, instead, focus our efforts on talking about how Trump’s appointment of Goldman Sachs executives to his cabinet puts the very elite he ran against ahead of the American people. We should talk about how his chaotic White House is failing to bring back the jobs he promised so many. We should point out that every minute he spends tweeting about himself—or weekending at Mar-aLago—is a minute wasted not working on the issues that matter in people’s lives. And we
should talk about how Trump and his children are profiting off the presidency, just as grave questions about his campaign’s ties to Russia are, hopefully, being investigated. I commend UofC Resists for its vigorous advocacy and efforts. Too often those in the arena are the brunt of the criticism, while those on the sidelines slip by unscathed. We need as many people fighting this administration’s appalling words and policies as possible. I simply hope that, as liberals, we can maximize the impact of our energy and messaging. We’ll continue to go high as the Republicans go low. But let’s also focus on the issues that will get us back into power in 2018 and beyond. Only then will we truly be able to affect the change we seek. Dylan Stafford is a first-year in the College.
moral high ground. You can’t pin that delusion on willful mass stupidity. Our media and our newsfeeds are too polarized for these mistakes to be rectified. It’s not like a Trump supporter who reads Breitbart faithfully has been ignoring a banner at the top that reads, “UNRELIABLE.” The sources that identify fake news are precisely the sources many Trump supporters have been told are fake themselves. Additionally, pinning Trump’s success merely on the rise of fake news paints all Trump supporters as homogeneously incompetent, as if the only way someone could legitimately support Trump is if they were spoon-fed deliberate falsehoods. Fundamentally, when we pretend that all Trump voters come from the same toxic moral swamp as their candidate, we’re acting irresponsibly. But it’s not just a misrepresentation of Trump voters, it’s also extraordinarily pretentious. Castigating all Trump voters is nothing more than an attempt to adopt the mantle of moral purity without doing anything to work for it. Consider the ohso-common Facebook post: “If you voted for Trump, unfriend me now.” What? Are we really so pure that we can’t afford the slightest association with the moral hoi polloi? Does the party of inclusion have no better proposal than to wall itself into an island of digital sanctimoniousness? If the dividing line between good and bad is a box you checked in November, then human decency is a politicized label, one largely without substance. Face
it: you aren’t good because you voted against Trump, just as your neighbor isn’t bad because he voted for Trump. Grouping Americans into one of two rigid blocs is a noxious lie. You barely know anything about a person based on their ballot. To argue otherwise is to lend credence to the long-standing complaint that liberals are out of touch, sermonizing elitists. This drives people away from the Democratic Party. It ensures that the moderate conservatives at home today are the extremists flocking to the polls tomorrow. Attacking all Trump voters is not merely an overly simplistic generalization: it’s a strategic misstep. No person ever changed his mind on politics because he was accused of being evil by a college student online. Slinging around personal insults is how you leave people more entrenched in their original opinions. That goes for the over 62.9 million Americans who voted for Trump. Every time we attack Trump voters rather than attacking Trump, we perpetuate our existing political divide. Making an echo chamber on your Facebook newsfeed might not sound like much, but it’s part of the problem. If we liberals refuse to engage with Trump supporters on social media, our United States will be little more than two countries bound in one, each a stranger to the other, each standing for little more than its rabid struggle to dismantle all that the other has done. Natalie Denby is a second-year in the College majoring in public policy.
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THE CHICAGO MAROON - FEBRUARY 21, 2017
ARTS Who Tells Your Story: Fiction Has Its Eyes on You, History BY MAY HUANG ASSOCIATE ARTS EDITOR
Last Wednesday, the Chicago Journal of History hosted a panel discussion entitled “History and Fiction: Narrative, Contexts, and Imagination” to explore the intersection of these two disciplines. Associate Professor of American History Jane Dailey moderated the panel, which featured four researchers who explore how we define the historical and fictional. The first speaker, Paola Iovene from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, described the relationship between the two as an “entanglement.” “I call history the conditions that enable the formation of certain fictions,” Iovene said. She pointed out that the retelling of historical events—depending on the speaker, occasion, and motive—can alter the narrative. A scholar of modern Chinese literature, Iovene focuses on how China’s ascendance as a global power has shaped its literary landscape. She talked about how “reportage literature,” a genre characterized by the retelling of contemporary events observed firsthand, redefines the boundaries of literature by blending fact and fiction. Using the 1939 short story collection One Day in Shanghai as an example, Iovene discussed how various authors— from clerks to dancers—conveyed their eyewitness accounts. The stories gave the work “special status” as a literary text while “disavowing it by claiming commonalities with historical phenomena.” Such a narrativization of history enables a literary retelling of the past. The next speaker, David Perry, shifted away from literary texts to discuss 18th century Venetian paintings. A scholar of medieval Mediterranean history from Dominican University as well as a journalist and cultural critic, Perry is most interested in “narratives of material exchange.” Such narratives line the walls of the Great Council Chamber in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, telling stories about Frederick Barbarossa kneeling
before the Pope after the Venetian fleet “defeated” the emperor and exaggerating Venice’s attack on Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. These narratives, however, are false. In reality, Venice stayed out of the Italian wars of the 1170s; it was a neutral space where peace treaties were later signed. “We could talk about them as lies, but I talk about [them] in terms of fiction….[The Venetians] were interested in the ways in which narrative creation could access deeper kinds of truths that help shape identity and…reality,” Perry said. He compared this narrative creativity to how Italian poet Lucrezia Marinella reimagined the blind and aged Enrico Dandolo as a great epic hero—just as Alexander Hamilton, portrayed in history textbooks as the white son of a Scottish father and British West Indian mother, was an immigrant of Caribbean descent in the musical. Fiction is also used as a tool for understanding the present. Like Iovene, Renaissance historian and science fiction writer Ada Palmer believes that fiction can exceed its historical restraints to offer unexpected solutions to contemporary problems. “One of the great things that science fiction does as a genre is fight our moral battles before we get there,” Palmer said. Books about cloning, for example, provide case studies of a world where clones may integrate into society. In 1943, Japanese writers wrote about the enfranchisement of artificial intelligence as a way of discussing racism in a heavily censored environment. Palmer also described how histories that strive to be more accurate cannot elicit the emotional response necessary for people to understand the actual experiences of history. Referring to the simulation of the papal election that takes place in her popular Italian Renaissance class every year, Palmer pointed out how students had unique reactions to Perry’s description of the Venetian paintings (the “Venetian” in the audience turned
Chicago Journal of History From left to right: Jane Dailey, Ghenwa Hayek, Paola Iovene, David Perry, and Ada Palmer participated in a panel discussion on history and fiction last Wednesday.
red as a cherry). “Fiction helps us understand why fractious city states betray each other every six months,” Palmer said. “Fictions, and narrative history, and attempts at objective history…cross the barrier between us and understanding past peoples.” Professor Ghenwa Hayek spoke last. A scholar of modern society and literature in the Arab Middle East from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Hayek is from Lebanon, a place that she believes has simultaneously “very much and no history.” The Lebanese government cut historical records of all post-1946 events from school curricula in order to smother information about the creation of Israel and the civil war of 1975–1990. As a result, contemporary Lebanese authors stepped in to fill the narrative gap. “The writing of fiction became the cultural resistance,” Hayek said, describing fiction as the “memory of those years.” Scholars now turn to literature to research a rejected history. Hayek concluded her presentation by encouraging the audience to think about fiction, not necessarily in terms of history, but as the future: “What will we archive? How will it be presented?” Such questions are particularly pertinent, as all speakers touched
on the relationship between history and modern day politics. It was inevitable that the discussion would turn political: one could hear the protests over Corey Lewandowski speaking on campus taking place outside the Quadrangle Club during the event, and the speakers referenced the sounds of the protest numerous times. “At this moment of alternative facts, I want to stress the importance of facts,” Iovene said. Hayek, too, asked the audience: “In the era of alternative facts, what do we have to be careful of as we write the history of the present?” Perry wondered whether there might one day be a painting in the
White House depicting President Donald Trump’s inauguration as the most well-attended in history. Palmer even began her talk by noting that all copies of George Orwell’s 1984 had sold out within a month of Trump’s election. The entanglement of history and fiction alters historical narratives in ways that are often unreliable. From 18th-century Venetian paintings to 20th-century Chinese reportage literature, retellings of the past through fictional means encourage us to reconsider why and how we capture the past. Yet in all cases, it is clear that people look to fiction for truth—of the past, and the future.
Chicago Journal of History Professors converged in the South Lounge of Reynolds Club to discuss the relationship between history and fiction.
Monthly Bazaar Keeps Local Culture Close at Hand BY KARDELEN SERTSOZ MAROON CONTRIBUTOR
This past Sunday, the monthly Hyde Park Handmade Bazaar took over the second floor of the Promontory, drawing in many passersby from the sunny weather. While the Promontory’s upper-level bar space typically plays host to concerts and salsa nights, Sunday’s event featured Chicago-area vendors selling a variety of handicraft goods. Visitors packed into the space among 29 vendors, each of whom had to apply to score a booth at the event. The event was the perfect opportunity to grab a small gift or indulgence; offerings included jewelry, leather goods, desserts, clothes, furniture, bath products, decorations, and more. One notable vendor was Handmade by Michelle, owned by Chica-
go school teacher Michelle Keim. Her jewelry designs incorporate natural materials: sterling silver, copper, brass, and various stones. The organic element of the gems complement Keim’s structural, geometric designs, each with a gunmetal polish. “I realized I love doing this, and it’s the perfect outlet for me. I try to make delicate designs, and things that I would really like to wear,” Keim said. Indeed, Keim’s jewelry sticks to a minimalist aesthetic with necklaces of thin circle and hammered brass chains. Some pendants even feature a Chicago skyline motif. Another vendor, Popped Handmade, sold all-natural body lotions. Scents included lemongrass, lavender, chocolate, and more. The owner, Carla Miles, began selling these products as a stay-at-home mother
after realizing that she wanted to use toxin-free products. Sunday was her first time selling at the bazaar. “This gives me so much joy…I love talking about it to people,” Miles said. From noon to early afternoon, visitors shopped, sat at the bar, watched a fashion show, and enjoyed the Promontory’s popular brunch offerings at their leisure. With many vendors selling Chicago-themed products, the bazaar celebrated the unique arts culture of Hyde Park and its residents in a memorable way. Hyde Park Handmade will return to the Promontory on March 12 to showcase the work of new Hyde Park artists and small businesses. Admission is free, and all ages are welcome.
Nikita Dulin The Hyde Park Handmade Bazaar featured several jewelry stalls.
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THE CHICAGO MAROON - FEBRUARY 21, 2017
Chalking It Up to the College Experience
Grace Hauck The Student Alumni Committee (SAC) organized a chalk mural celebration Monday in Reynolds Club, asking students to illustrate what they love about UChicago.
EXHIBIT [A]rts [2/21] TUESDAY 7:30–10 p.m. Logan Center’s Third Tuesday Jazz is back this month with jazz trumpeter Victor Garcia, known for his characteristic blend of bebop and Latin tunes. Come enjoy music by a local artist while sipping on wine, beer, or coffee! Logan Café, Free.
explore the gallery! The Smart Museum of Art, Free. 8 p.m.–midnight Dance your way through 8th week at The Promontory’s monthly salsa dancing event! There will be a beginner lesson for the first hour, followed by an open dance floor until midnight. Come for a little pre-Bar Noche salsa. The Promontory, Free.
[2/22] WEDNESDAY [2/23] THURSDAY 7–8:30 p.m. Travel back in time at the Smart Museum’s opening reception of Classicisms, which features 70 objects from antiquity to the 20th century. Watch a monologue performance from Court Theatre’s Electra, chat with director Alison Gass about what’s next for the Smart, and
Thursday, February 23, through Saturday, February 25, at 7:30 p.m. Matinee on Saturday, February 25, at 2 p.m. If you did not manage to get through James Joyce’s Ulysses, let UT’s Circe take you through the odyssey instead. Directed
by Gabriel Garey Levine, the show will incorporate vivid lighting and circus aerials to entrance and thrill as the protagonists pursue their fantastical quests for self. Theater West, Logan Center for the Arts, $6 advance, $8 door. [2/24] FRIDAY 7:30 p.m. Join the American String Quartet as they perform Paul Cantelon’s suite on The Enchantress of Florence, a work based on the 2008 Salman Rushdie novel of the same name, for the first time in the Midwest. College lecturer in fiction Rachel Dewoskin and the artists will lead a discussion an hour before the concert, which will also feature a Beethoven string quartet in its latter half. And yes, the author himself will be read-
ing his work at the performance. Mandel Hall, $35 general, $28 faculty and staff, $5 students. 8–10 p.m. Come watch your friends showcase innovative designs and strut their stuff at the Drake Hotel. MODA’s 13th annual Winter Fashion Show, complete with a cocktail reception and after-party, is an event worth getting dressy for. The Drake Hotel, $20 students, $30 general. 7:30–10 p.m. If Circe wasn’t enough, head back to Logan for more circus fun at Le Vorris & Vox’s Winter Showcase, which will feature a range of circus skills including poi, acrobatics, and aerials. Come for the flips and the food. Logan 701, Free.
SPORTS East Coast Wins for Chicago MEN’S BASKETBALL
BY MICHAEL PERRY SPORTS STAFF
The University of Chicago men’s varsity basketball team (15–9, 7–6 UAA) went 2–0 this weekend, completing season sweeps of both UAA opponents Brandeis and NYU. The big story of the weekend, however, wassecond-year guard Noah Karras setting a new school record for threes made in a season. Karras poured in eight more three-pointers this weekend to bring his season total to 74. This is the second record Karras has broken this year after he set the single-game record for threes against Case Western Reserve University on February 3. The weekend started in Bostonas the
Maroons traveled to take on Brandeis University (7–15, 3–9 UAA). Despite being down by as many as 10 points in the first half, the Maroons were able to pull out an 82–74 win. Karras shot 7-for-11 behind the arc and had a game-high 25 points, while fourth-year forward Blaine Crawford led the Maroon’s domination of the paint with 22 points and eight rebounds. The Maroons out-rebounded the Judges 30 to 26 and scored 12 more points in the paint. “I knew I was getting closer to the threepoint record but wasn’t sure if I was going to get it this year,” Karras said. “The more important thing is that we beat Brandeis and then NYU. Those are both solid teams, and we were able to win all of our games against
them. Now we just have to focus on Wash U and getting them back from last time.” After Boston, the Maroons travelled to New York City to face the NYU Violets (7– 17, 2–11 UAA). Interestingly, the game was played at Pace University, as the Violets are under going construction on their historic gym. The Maroons dominated, jumping out to a double-digit lead before the Violets could even score, thanks to Crawford and third-year guard Jake Fenlon, and winning with a final score of 80–60. The Maroons played stifling defense, forcing NYU to shoot 33.3 percent from the field and an impressively low 5.3 percent behind the arc. Crawford and third-year forward Collin Barthel both put up double-doubles, and
all 14 Maroons who traveled this weekend received playing time, including three firstyears. “It was a good team win; I’m glad we won my last ever Sunday game,” said Crawford, who scored 13 points and grabbed 12 rebounds. “Any time we can get that many guys in a game is a good thing. Now we need to beat Wash U this weekend.” This weekend will be the last game for Crawford, along with fellow fourth-years Tyler Howard, Waller Perez, and Alex Gustafson. The last time these two teams met, Chicago lost due to a goaltending call on Crawford as time expired. The rematch is scheduled for this Saturday afternoon in St. Louis.
Clean Sweep for Maroons WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
BY JOSH PARKS SPORTS STAFF
In a dead heat atop the UAA going into the weekend, the first-place Maroons headed east on Friday for the final time this season to take on conference opponents Brandeis University and NYU. After picking up two more victories and extending their win streak to seven games, the Maroons now stand just one victory away from capturing the UAA Championship and automatically qualifying for the NCAA Tournament. In Friday night’s battle, foul trouble forced Chicago to look to the bench early. In
a first half that featured thirteen different Maroon scorers, the visitors adjusted to the adversity and carried a 36–30 advantage into halftime. Picking up key points in the paint during the 13–2 second-quarter Maroon run, fourth-year Michelle Dobbs paced the visitors with six points at the break. The Maroons found an offensive spark coming out of the locker room, pushing the lead to nine points by the middle of the third frame. After a 12–2 run by the hosts that quickly closed the gap, first-year Miranda Burt converted from deep to give Chicago a two-point edge heading into the fourth quarter. After trading buckets for most
of the frame, Chicago found a way to pull ahead in the closing minute. Capturing its sixth straight conference victory, Chicago defeated Brandeis with a final score of 69–66. Returning to the hardwood, the Maroons traveled to the Big Apple on Sunday to take on the Violets of NYU. Showing no signs of fatigue, the Chicago defense imposed its will on the hosts, limiting NYU to just thirteen first-half points. Fourth-year Stephanie Anderson, third-year Elizabeth Nye, and second-year Ola Obi also led the way offensively, each scoring double figures for the Maroons. In a rather low-scoring
game, Chicago cruised to its seventh consecutive victory with a score of 59–37. Chicago’s seven-game win streak sets the stage for a winner-take-all matchup in St. Louis next Saturday against archrival No. 7 Wash U (22–2, 11–2 UAA). The Maroons and Bears have accounted for all but one conference championship since the turn of the millennium, with Wash U tallying a remarkable twelve UAA championships in that span. Said fourth-year Stephanie Anderson, “We have put ourselves in a great position this year. I’m so excited that this final game has the opportunity to mean so much more than just a rivalry match.”
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THE CHICAGO MAROON - FEBRUARY 21, 2017
SPORTS Last Chance Meet for Maroons SWIM AND DIVE
BY NATALIE DEMURO SPORTS STAFF
The Chicago men’s and women’s teams placed second and fi rst, respectively, as hosts of the annual two-day Midwest Invitational this weekend. On the men’s side, No. 7 Washington University led the fi eld of six teams with 827.5 points, while the No. 11 UChicago men tallied 469.5 points. For the women, the No. 8 Maroons topped the overall standings with 601.5 points. Runner-up Case Western Reserve University ended the weekend with 405 points, while UW– Milwaukee was third with 335 points. At the conclusion of the meet, the men garnered 11 top three fi nishes, including a victory in the 200-yard butterfly. First-year Aaron Guo won the event with a time of 1:50:61 for the Maroon’s top fi nish on the men’s side. The women’s dominating performance included 17 fi nishes in the top three and five fi rst-place showings. The Maroons started the meet off strong on Friday night with a win in the 200-yard freestyle relay. The team of fi rst year Yifan Mao, third-year Maya Scheidl, second-year Hannah Eastman, and fourth-
year Abby Erdmann fi nished in 1:37:95 to edge out UW–Milwaukee for the victory. In the 200-yard butterfly, Erdmann again found herself with the fastest time, taking fi rst place in 2:05:34. In three different events—the 100yard breaststroke, 200-yard breaststroke, and 100-yard butterf ly—the Maroon women went 1–2. First-year Sydney Grube led the competition in both breaststroke events, finishing with a time of 1:08:07 in the 100-yard breaststroke and 2:26:83 in the 200-yard breaststroke. Third-year Emma Madden was runner-up in the 100-yard breaststroke, while second-year Kristen Such placed second in the 200-yard race. In the 100-yard butterfly, fi rst-year Nicole Garcia’s time of 57:27 proved to be the fastest of the day, just edging Eastman’s 57:96. The Invitational marks the end of the regular season schedule for the Maroons, serving as both a championship meet and an opportunity for swimmers to time trial events, either in hopes of earning a new personal best or achieving a specific time for nationals. Grube, who recorded three top-three fi nishes over the weekend, said of her champion-
First-year Sydney Grube races down the lane.
ship meet, “Not making the conference team last week made me feel like I had something to prove so I used that motivation when swimming my events.” UChicago now awaits the release of the NCA A DIII Selections that will finalize the list of swimmers attending the NCA A Championships. With a strong regular season in the books, the Maroons are hoping to qualify a number of athletes. While the swimmers wait for the list of official times, the divers continue to prepare for the NCA A Diving
University of Chicago Athletics
Regional Meet, a two-day competition this Friday and Saturday at Calvin College. The meet will determine which divers will also travel to Shenandoah, TX, for nationals next month. For many swimmers, the long season has come to an end. Refl ecting on her fi rst year, Grube said, “Overall I think swimming on this team was an integral part of my fi rst year at this school, and the support of the teammates and coaches is incredible.”
Home Dominance Continues TRACK & FIELD
BY SIDDHARTH KAPOOR SPORTS EDITOR
The University of Chicago track teams maintained their dominance this weekend on home turf at the Henry Crown F ield House. Indeed, the dominance is so telling that the South Siders have not finished outside the top two in team standings in the past 16 home meets at Henry Crown. This week, the Maroons captured the team titles at the Margaret Bradley Invitational. The women’s team scored a whopping 262 points to coast to the title. The difference in quality was so much that the second place Carthage College could only muster up a relatively meager 107 points. The men’s side was closer, but the Maroons were able to take first place with 177
points, beating out second placed Aurora University who scored 138.5. The women’s team had eight wins during the meet. The highlight was undoubtedly the performance of first-year pole vaulter Isabel Garon. Garon broke her own school record during the meet, reaching a height of 3.67 meters. In addition, third-year Cassidy McPherson won two events on the night: the 800 meters (2:17.97)and the 4-by-400 meters relay alongside second-year Jenna McKinney, third-year Megan Verner-Crist and first-year Shelby Smith. The relay team ended up with a time of 4:13.61. The men’s team also did really well, clinching six of the events. Third-year Nathan Downey won both the 200 meters (22.72) and the pole vault (4.56 meters). Second-year Owen Melia also
won two events, namely the 800 meters (1:58.08) and also was a part of the victorious 4x400-meter relay (3:35.20) with third-year Jacob Amiri, fourthyear Jeremy Ferguson and first-year Joe Previdi. In addition, second-year Jacob Gosselin grabbed the 3,000 meters (9:01.11) and third-year Patrick LeFevre captured the 60-meter hurdles (8.72). Next week, the South Siders look forward to the UA A Championships in what will be a much sterner test. W hile the Maroons have been very strong at home, they have not had the same success on the road. As a result, it will be interesting to see how the squad copes as the meet is at Waltham, M A. However, fourthyear Charissa Newkirk was optimistic of the team’s chances. “ The meet this
weekend was a good way to polish up our conference roster. I think a lot of people were pleased with their performances this weekend. We had many personal bests, including myself, andit really was a good way to end our last indoor meet at Henry Crown,” she said. Indeed, this meet was the last indoor meet at Henry Crown for several Maroon fourth-years, and Newkirk ref lected this nostagia. “I have spent a good portion of my college career in that building, and so it was a bittersweet feeling having our last home meet there, however I’m excited about conference this coming weekend and how our team will perform,” she said. The meet is set to start next Saturday at 12 p.m. Eastern T ime at Brandeis University.
South Siders Stay Undefeated TENNIS
BY BRITTA NORDSTROM SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR
The No. 10 women and No. 5 men of the UChicago tennis program continued their hot streaks this weekend as they took on two top-35 teams in Indianapolis. Both teams defeated Denison and DePauw in blowouts; the women finished 8–1 against both No. 22 Denison and No. 25 DePauw, while the men took down the No. 33 Big Red and No. 34 Tigers 9–0 and 8–1, respectively. Defeating two ranked opponents bodes well for the remainder of the season for the South Siders, as the ITA Championships quickly approach in the coming weeks. After that tournament, the squads will begin their spring campaign. The Maroons started their dominant weekend against Denison on Saturday.
The men jumped out to a 3–0 lead during doubles play and never looked back, downing every single Denison player in singles. Indeed, only two games of 12 were decided by less than a three-point spread. Third-year Nick Chua spoke on the team’s doubles performance, saying, “Historically, singles have been our strength because of the level of singles talent that we’ve had as a team. Doubles, however, requires a lot more team practice and drilling than individual talent. There’s still a long way to go, but I think we’re getting a lot better and the results show.” The women, on the other hand, started out slow, at least compared an incredibly high standard considering they were undefeated in doubles play during 2017. After dropping the No. 1 doubles match-up, they rattled off two doubles wins and then swept
singles play, with only one game going to extra points. Second-year Rachel Kim said, “Growing up, we all played a lot of competitive singles matches, so we all come from a strong singles background. It helps that we are solid from top to bottom in singles, if we ever do need to pull through after a tough doubles round.” Moving forward, the squad is looking to start the matches strong with a 3–0 doubles win. Both squads had to make a quick turnaround, as they faced off against DePauw just the next morning. The men again dominated doubles play, as they finished with scores of 8–3 in all three match-ups. Although they dropped the No. 1 singles spot, it was a solid match-up for All-American Chua, as it went to three games with one ending in a tie-break. After this defeat,
however, they rebounded by sweeping the next five singles games. Mirroring their performance from the day before, the women’s side went 2–1 in doubles play but then swept the singles games. DePauw put up a bit more of a fight than Denison, as the games ended more closely: two of the match-ups went to a third game instead of ending with a clean 2–0 sweep. Next week, the women face off against two unranked opponents, Principia and John Carroll, before they head to Murfreesboro, TN for the ITA DIII Team Indoor Championships. The men, on the other hand, do not have another opportunity to tune up before the ITA Championships, as they head to Cleveland to face No. 9 Pomona-Pitzer next weekend.