Chicagomaroon033018

MARCH 30, 2018

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

VOL. 129, ISSUE 35

MAN SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN DRIVE -BY AT 61ST & ELLIS

BY LEE HARRIS NEWS EDITOR

A 23-year-old male was in serious condition Tuesday after he was shot around 4 p.m. outside 6115 South Ellis Avenue, police said.

The man was walking on 61st Street when he was shot from a vehicle, the victim told police. University students at Granville-Grossman Residential Commons, less than a block away, reported hearing gunshots.

The area was roped off for several hours after the incident, and at around 7 p.m. police towed a white Hyundai from the scene.

A neighborhood resident witnessed the event and told The Maroon that after being shot, the victim went to the white car and spoke to the driver.

“He got something out of there, so I know that car is part of what happened earlier,” the resident said.

The victim, who is unaffiliated with the University, then self-transported to the University of Chicago Medicine emergency room. He was transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital on the West Side, according to the Chicago Police Department (CPD).

The University security alert said the victim sustained a gunshot wound to the abdomen; a statement from CPD said the victim was struck in the groin.

Pauline Beasley, who lives on the block where the shooting took place, told The M aroon that she was coming home with her grandchild from a shopping trip and was walking into her building when shots were fired just a few feet away.

She ran inside the building, afraid for her young grandchild.

According to CPD, no suspects have yet been identified in the shooting, and the vehicle described above has been held for investigation.

Lee Harris

The scene at 61st Street and Ellis Avenue after a 23-year-old male was shot in a drive-by on Tuesday.

CBA Coalition Protests Rent Increase

BY ELAINE CHEN NEWS REPORTER

The Obama Library South S ide C om mu n it y B ene f it s Ag reement (CBA) Coalition protested rent increases for tenants living across from the Obama Presidential Center on

Tuesday.

The Coalition claimed at the protest that the proposed Center in Jackson Park has incentivized property owners to increase rents. The groups demanded that the city pass a CBA ordinance to protect residents from displacement.

They first protested outside 2 0 th Wa rd A lderma n Willie Cochran’s office, where Cochran did not make an appearance. They then rode to F i fth Wa rd A lderman L eslie Hairston’s ward meeting, where Hairston denied their Continued on page 5

Elaine Chen

Parish Brown, an activist with the CBA Coalition, is pictured outside Alderman Cochran’s office.

World’s Fair Artifacts Uncovered at Obama Center Site

BY CAROLINE KUBZANSKY SENIOR NEWS REPORTER

Archaeologists working on the proposed Obama Presidential Center site have uncovered artifacts from the 1893 World’s Fair, but according to state officials, they are not important enough to merit an addition to the National Register of Historic Places.

Jackson Park is already on the Register as the site of the 1893 World’s Fair, which is also notable for its association with the Fair’s head architect, Frederick Olmsted.

The discoveries are part of a federal land survey in preparation for the construction of the Obama Center, expected to open in 2021. Most of the artifacts are small, white fragments of building material, but the artifacts also include animal bones, shards of building material thought to be from Louis Sullivan’s Transportation Building, and miscellanea left behind by the Fair’s 27 million visitors.

In order to be added to the

An Enemy of the People Gets Disillusioned Revival

National Register of Historic Places, an object must be associated with important historical events or people, represent distinguishing features of a particular era of architecture or builder, or provide important historical information.

Although the artifacts are related to Frederick Olmsted, the head architect of the World’s Fair, as well as the Fair itself, they do not provide significant new information about Jackson Park. Therefore, the artifacts are not eligible to be added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Had the site been added to the Register, construction on the Obama Center could have been stalled or threatened. The City of Chicago is still reviewing the Center’s construction plan, the timeline of which has not changed.

In wake of the artifacts’ discovery, the University is hosting a meeting on Thursday to discuss the findings.

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Rosemarie Ho draws attention to the “inevitable failure of performative ‘wokeness’ without specific critique.”

Students to the Front Page 2 Denby: Independent student activists have proven crucial to reforming gun violence in America.

Baseballers Don’t Rest Over Break Page 8

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Events 3/30-4/2 Saturday UChic ago Cr y pt ocu r renc y a nd Blockchain Educational Event Polsky Exchange North, 10 a.m.

Event by Midway Ventures in collaboration with Edge Entrepreneurship and Asynchronous A nonymous, on the future of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

Monday

U.S. Senator Mark Warner at the Law School Ida Noyes Hall, Max Palevsky Cinema, 2:30 p.m.

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) discusses economic policy, the future of work, and capitalism in the 21st century in a Law School event.

61st Street Streetscape Mast er Plan Logan Center, 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Alderman Willie Cochran, the University, and the department of transportation are holding a meeting about improv ing public infrastructure on 61st Street between Cottage Grove and Blackstone—an area where a number of major development projects are planned. RSVP to 61stMP@burnsmcd. com.

Tuesday

Sherry Memorial Poet Lecture by Cecilia Vicuña Neubauer Collegium, 6 p.m.

Poet, artist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña, whose artwork is on display at the Neubauer Collegium gallery this spring, will deliver the Pearl Andelson Sherry Memorial Poet Lecture.

Based in Chile and New York, Vicuña uses her work to explore broad social concerns, from ecological destruction to human rights to cultural homogenization.

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Grace Hauck

MARCH FOR OUR LIVES: U of C students with Gather Activism marched to protest gun violence on Saturday in the West Loop.

Alumni, Students and Staff Celebrate Reg’s “Unsung Hero”

BY ANANT MATAI NEWS REPORTER

Raymond Gadke (A.M. ’66), reading room manager of the Regenstein Library, who passed away on February 26, was an iconic presence with his Hawaiian shirt and moustache. Gadke’s responsibilities involved oversight of the reading room collections, the microforms collections, and periodicals in the library.

When a group of alumni and former colleagues raised over $75,000 to create a Metcalf internship in Ray’s name in 2015, Dean Boyer called Ray an “unsung hero of the university” upon presenting the check at a dinner.

A story in The University of Chicago Magazine’s Winter 2018 edition highlights Ray’s unusual hobby of collecting religious statues, which began when a closing church in the ’80s asked him whether he knew anyone interested in their statues.

In a Facebook post sharing the obituary for Ray written by the University of Chicago Library, student Lewis Page writes, “It was a gift to see someone so dedicated to making the space work for others, and to doing it with warmth.”

David Larsen, director of access services and assessment at the Library, reminisces on his work ethic and dedication.

“He was here often before I would get here, and here long after I left,” Larsen said of Ray. “He had this intellectual curiosity that just spanned almost everything.”

Ray sometimes gave tours of campus to Library staff, leading them through the quad and sharing stories and meanings behind smaller facets of campus, like the gargoyles.

“He had sort of an institutional knowledge that obviously went back to the sixties, because he had his master’s degree here in the sixties,” Larsen said. “He remembered when Regenstein was built, and when it opened, and it’s amazing, he’d pretty much been in here every day since Regenstein opened!”

Having joined the Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji) Fraternity during his time at Knox College in the mid ’60s, Ray continued to support members during his time here. In an e-mail thread among Fiji alumni forwarded to T he M aroon, several members shared their favorite memories.

Frederick Rayfield (A.B. ’74, A.M. ’77, Ph.D. ’80) wrote, “While I see 48 years of friendship with Ray through Fiji, I am

well aware of his tentacles of concern and information reaching broadly through the whole University of Chicago community.

He was a different Monster of the Midway, aiding and encouraging so many of us, lighting fuses and suppressing fires.”

Brett Lambo (A.B ’95) chimed in, saying “If you tried to gather the 30+ years of people who could say ‘Ray really helped me through _____ when I was in school,’ you’d fill Stagg Field. Ted Fogarty reflects on how Ray supported him during a difficult time in his life. “He was there, just as he was for so many of us—took a great weight off my shoulders when no one else in the world probably could have.”

Owen Moore, a fourth-year student in the College and member of Phi Gamma Delta, shared his experience in getting to know Ray. “I got to know him pretty well just by stopping by his office every once in a while and talking about anything you could think of,” Owen said, referring to Ray’s comprehensive knowledge of history. “I would stop in and chat with him for hours at a time and loved every second of it.”

The Hyde Park Union Church held a memorial service for Ray on Wednesday, March 14.

Page Seven: Lumen Christi is hosting an event on Early Modern Catholic Social Teaching and World Order next Thursday.

Online: Hyde Park Property Management is now leasing apartments in Hyde Park with a University of Chicago discount.

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Ray Gadke stands in front of his collection of religious figures.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - MARCH 30, 2018

An Interview With Iraqi Refugee and UChicago First-Year Hazim Avdal

BY MADELEINE ZHOU NEWS REPORTER

23-year-old Hazim Avdal is an Iraqi refugee and member of the University of Chicago’s Class of 2021. In 2014, he and his family were forced to f lee their hometown due to an ISIS attack.

Avdal’s story reached George and Amal Clooney, who helped bring him to the United States through the Clooney Foundation for Justice. T he M a roon spoke with Avdal to hear more about his story.

C h icag o M a ro on : Tell me about your background.

I was born in 1994. I grew up and went to school in Herdan, a small town in the Shingal (Sinjar) region of northern Iraq. In 2013, I graduated from high school with honors as the seventh– highest scoring student in the entire country with a GPA of 100.17 percent, and I was accepted to the University of Mosul’s College of Medicine. Before I could attend college, Yazidi students were purged from the college by al-Qaeda; I, among around 2,000 other Yazidi students, was forced to drop out under threat of death. I then volunteered to teach chemistry at my local high school temporarily and took other jobs, hoping to be able to continue my studies next year. But the very next year, 2014, the Yazidi genocide started, and my dream of pursuing a college degree vanished.

After working with Yazda for two years, I was brought to the U.S. with the help of the Clooney family. I arrived in the U.S. in January of 2017, after which I moved to Augusta, Kentucky, and resettled with the Clooney family.

I applied to the University of Chicago in April of 2017 and was accepted in May. I moved to Chicago for school last September.

Most of my family went to Germany as refugees after the genocide, and I am the only one from my family here in the U.S. (and the only Yazidi I am aware of in Chicago). I still have a brother and a sister living in a refugee camp back in Iraq.

CM: Where were you when ISIS attacked your hometown? What was the aftermath of the attack?

I was working in Sulaymaniyah, which was about a six-hour drive from my hometown, at the time ISIS attacked. My hometown had a population of around 2,000 people, out of which over 530 individuals were unable to escape from the Jihadists in time.

My family was very lucky to manage to escape the town only 10 minutes before the arrival of the ISIS jihadists.

CM: What kind of work did you do for Yazda? Can you elaborate on their mission?

After the genocide, my family and I went to a refugee camp in southern T urkey. A fter spending about four

months in the camp, I left my family and returned to Iraq alone to become a full-time volunteer with the newly-established humanitarian organization Yazda, a multinational, global organization established in the aftermath of the Yazidi Genocide in 2014 to support the Yazidi ethno-religious minority and other vulnerable groups.

Over the next nine months, I designed and programmed a database management software to keep client records of female Yazidi sexual gender-based violence survivors who had escaped ISIS captivity. I created another database system that enabled the doctors and medical staff in Yazda’s primary health center to record the medical history of the patients, to generate reports, and to track the prescription medications of all patients in a camp of nearly 16,000 internally displaced persons.

CM: What do you think can be done to raise awareness of Iraqi refugees in the U.S.?

When I first arrived in the U.S., I was shocked to learn how most people were unaware about what people were going through because of ISIS, and the refugee crisis in general. If I, a student, can’t singlehandedly stop a war, then the easiest thing I can do would probably be letting as many people as possible know about how many lives that war is destroying and has destroyed. If

we all do the same and spread the word, hopefully that will encourage our world leaders to take action.

CM: How has your transition to the U.S. been so far?

Overall, it has been a smooth transition in terms of adjustment although the first few months were challenging and getting used to a new culture was by no means easy. The Clooneys did everything they could to make sure the transition was as comfortable as possible for me, and therefore I felt I was home the moment I arrived in Augusta.

But the real difficulty lies in making a balance between two lives. I live here in a relatively calm and peaceful environment here in Chicago now, but my heart is still with my people whom I left behind in Iraq. They have been living in camps for well over three years now, lacking virtually everything. People are desperate, and many have given up on life altogether.

CM: What do you want to do in the future?

I have just started school and still have a few more years to go for my B.A. I may want to get a Master’s or Ph.D. after that, but that’s far in the future.

I am hoping to be able to help other students get their college degrees from good schools like ours and become future leaders in their communities.

An extended version of this interview is available on the M a roon website.

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Alderman Hairston warns CBA not to “deceive the public” Continued from front

claims that the Center is causing rent increases and refused to support a CBA ordinance. “[The protestors] cannot try to deceive the public,” Hairston told T he M aroon in an interview, stating that there are tenants who live alone in two-bedroom apartments but have not paid the full price of a two-bedroom.

“If you’re one person, you gotta be in a one bedroom; if you’re in a two-bedroom, you gotta pay the difference.

There were some people that didn’t want to do that. They wanted to mix it with the Obama Library stuff.”

The Coalition, an alliance of South Side community groups, has long asked the Obama Foundation, the University of Chicago, and the City of Chicago to sign a CBA, a legally binding agreement that would require those developers to provide amenities such as guaranteed employment and housing to local residents. However, the developers have refused to do so. Michael Strautmanis, the Foundation’s vice president of civic engagement, previously told T he M a roon that the Foundation believes a CBA is not inclusive enough of local community members.

Outside Cochran’s office, the Coalition demanded that the city pass a CBA ordinance that would potentially

bind the city to agreements about employment, housing, and education, and urged Cochran and Hairston to introduce the ordinance in City Council.

“We have a right to not be displaced out of our communities, and it’s unreasonable for black people to not get the permanent and construction jobs when the Obama library comes,” Parrish Brown, an activist with the CBA Coalition, said at the protest.

Alex Goldenberg, an organizer from Southside Together Organizing for Power, stated that tenants living in Jackson Park Terrace, an apartment building across the Center, are facing rent increases of between $100 and $300 that will go into effect April 1. He said that although the building’s tenants do receive housing vouchers from the Chicago Housing Authority (CH A), “the voucher program does not protect them against this rent increase.”

One tenant is “literally buying boxes and planning to move because her rent is going up over $250,” he said.

According to Goldberg, Leon Finney, a well-known reverend and community leader, owns the apartment building and is “trying to profit from the attractiveness of the Obama Center.” Deed records show that the University of Chicago originally owned the building but leased it in the early 1970s for long-

term affordable housing efforts. Jackson Parkside Partners LP, a for-profit organization run by Finney, has held the lease since 2003.

In the past, the city has labeled Finney as a scoff law landlord, after the nonprofit that he founded, the Woodlawn Community Development Corporation, amassed code violations for the buildings that it managed. T he M aroon has reached out to organizations that Finney leads, but could not reach Finney for comment.

At Hairston’s monthly ward meeting, which the CBA coalition has interrupted before, one protestor directly asked Hairston to pass a CBA ordinance. After Hairston denied the request, the protestors collectively left.

In response to Hairston’s claim that tenants are experiencing rising rents because they have not paid the full price of their apartments, Goldenberg said that while one tenant does indeed live by herself in a two-bedroom, the tenant has always lived in the apartment by herself and is only now experiencing a rent increase.

Hairston additionally told T he M aroon that rents in the Jackson Park Terrace apartments are also rising because the building is being “refinanced.” Goldenberg responded that it is possible that “the CHA is giving out less to business

owners because of periodic redistribution, but the owners [Finney] are passing all increases onto tenants.”

Hairston said that she is open to collaborating with the Coalition: “I’m into rent control, I’m into neighborhood stabilization. I’d be happy to work with them on that.”

When asked whether she would support any form of a CBA, Hairston replied, “I was elected to represent the people, and I am representing the people. There are still some things that you all have not seen yet that are coming….

Stay tuned.”

Gabriel Piemonte, who will be running for Fifth Ward Alderman against Hairston, has expressed support for Jackson Park Terrace tenants on Twitter in the past few days. Piemonte previously told the M aroon Editorial Board in a meeting that Hairston’s refusal to endorse a CBA has disillusioned him of Hairston’s commitment to local residents.

According to Brown, the CBA Coalition plans to demand a CBA ordinance at the next Chicago Plan Commission meeting on April 19, in which Commission members will vote on zoning changes requested by the Obama Foundation to build the Center.

VIEWPOINTS

Students to the Front Independent Student Activists Have Proven Crucial to Reforming Gun Violence in America

Natalie Denby If you’ve been paying any attention at all for the past few decades, you probably thought the gun lobby was invincible. Even the most horrifying of mass shootings—Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, and Orlando among them—

proved no match for the NRA. It didn’t matter what the number or age of the victims was, no tragedy was too much for a population that was simply insensate to carnage. A reckoning on gun violence was impossible. So

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when the survivors of the Parkland shooting began aggressively lobbying for gun control, you could have been forgiven for some initial skepticism. And then, of course, you would have been proven (at least partially) wrong.

In the wake of the Parkland shooting, student activism has proliferated on a national scale unseen since Vietnam. While the post-shooting norm is usually a sea of condolences and prayers, the post-Parkland marches, town halls, and vigils were no small feat, and the sheer scale of the March for Our Lives was a welcome shock. None of us had considered corporate disentanglement from the NRA, raised age requirements on gun purchases, and bump stock bans as realistic possibilities.

These changes, of course, are nowhere close to enough. But they probably struck you as improbable only months ago. While most of us find post-Parkland changes to be insufficient thus far, we’re also amazed that they’ve happened at all. If the success of this activism is welcome, it’s a bit puzzling. How did a national movement grow out of this particular tragedy, and why did it manage to quickly accomplish more than any before it?

The answer has less to do with the substance of the activists’ speeches than it does with the speakers. Previously, the gun control advocates to emerge in the wake of shootings were also people who had been deeply affected by those shootings: victims like Gabby Giffords, family members like the parents of Sandy Hook victims, teachers, and so forth. These advocates, crucially, were usually adults. But after Parkland, it was the

students who took the reins.

That, it turns out, might have made all the difference. It also revealed quite a bit about the strength and scope of student political power.

It’s clear to anyone with ears that students—and the young in general—occupy a strange place in American politics as a population that is both vulnerable and largely disenfranchised. The youth of America have limited ability to dictate their own circumstances: They make up a political minority in most jurisdictions, and many can’t vote in any case. Moreover, they are usually someone else’s financial dependents, and most are required to be in schools. That confluence of dependence and constrained political influence makes the young feel like a uniquely collective responsibility, which voters generally feel obligated to consider.

But this collectivist feature hardly guarantees that youth interests are a force in American politics. Part of the reason that the United States has historically abdicated on addressing gun control, in spite of gut-wrenching body counts, is rooted in the nature of political advocacy on behalf of the young. When youth interests are constructed by other groups (i.e. when adults make arguments about youth issues), every side claims to have the best interests of the young at heart, making those interests a meaningless political dud. Liberals claim to represent the interests of the children by restricting the weapons that routinely kill them, while gun advocates somehow also claim to repreContinued on page 6

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - MARCH 30, 2018

“But after Parkland, it was the students who took the reins.”

Continued from page 5 sent their interest, by calling for teachers to be armed as well. In the melee over guns, “youth” is a political keyword bandied around so often and so shamelessly that it has effectively lost its potency as a political mover.

Enter the angry student. You might be able to dismiss the gun control advocacy of a politician or even a grieving parent as misguided partisan theater. Political operatives are dismissed as disingenuous, and grieving relatives are offered condolences and prayers—and then nothing happens.

But what about a march of thousands of students asking not to be murdered? They can’t be politely told to shut up. They aren’t candidates or demonstrators working for candidates. They don’t represent a political party, even if you can guess which one most of them belong to. They’re there in their capacity as students, and the confrontational question they pose (how little do you care about my

life?) can’t be comfortably ignored when most adults readily accept that youth welfare is a shared political responsibility.

Parkland students and others across the country have found success precisely because they insist on doing the actual advocacy for themselves, loudly and continuously. Their physical presence in the debate transforms youth interests, from an empty buzzword everybody can use to an active force most would rather not confront head-on.

The post-Parkland activism is instructive for students in a climate where political engagement is on the rise. Parkland offers two lessons and an implicit warning. The first lesson is that who is speaking is critically important. Student voices are only compelling when they’re just that: student voices.

The prototypical advocacy effort, when the politically-inclined take predictable stances on one of a dozen pet issues, lack the political punch of a student speaking. That might

seem obvious, but in the past, students have only joined or supported larger political initiatives about student issues; they haven’t formed their own predominantly student demonstrations.

The second lesson from post-Parkland activism is that how we speak is also important. Showing up matters. Anyone who’s been watching the marches and town halls in recent weeks understands the visual impact of the crowd itself. Students advocating exclusively online are easier to write off as words on a screen, and the scale of activism doesn’t feel as impressive when it’s limited to social media. On the other hand, the physical presence of thousands of students lends credence to the notion of a representative voice: You look at the crowds of students walking out of their classes or marching on D.C. and you stop thinking of them as a group of partisans wrapped up in a partisan cause. Progun advocates have a more difficult time

claiming they fight for student safety when the students themselves are just down the street, with a very different take on the issue.

The post-Parkland success ultimately tells us that a coherent “student voice” is a matter of scale and presence. It also serves as a warning. Come November and the next round of midterm elections, student gun-control advocates can’t become just another partisan constituent group. They’ll be seen as just another knee-jerk Democratic subgroup, and that will give them license to be ignored.

Students have made remarkable progress in the past few months, but to keep that momentum going we have to keep showing up,as an independent, student-led force that is not beholden to parties or candidates—the sort of movement that politicians court but cannot claim.

Natalie Denby is a third-year in the College majoring public policy studies.

ARTS An Enemy of the People Gets Disillusioned Revival

BY ROSEMARIE HO ARTS STAFF

The greatest dramatic irony in the Goodman Theatre’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People is its staging: Director Robert Falls stages a liberal adaptation of Eleanor Marx’s (yes, the daughter of Karl Marx himself) pointedly socialist translation. Irony thrives on inconsistency and hypocrisy, which is often revealed in pursuit of political ends. Falls’s production highlights the political dimension of An Enemy of the People but misses the irony.

The play’s main merit is its actors; Aslaksen, played by Allen Gilmore, delivers pathos and comedic gold while Lanise Antoine Shelley plays a warm-hearted and generous Katherine Stockmann. With all of its historical baggage, the play could have been a poignant critique against an administration that is clearly corrupt and incompetent. Further, it could have leveled criticism against a body politic that has lost its grasp on what democracy looks like. Though the play had a talented cast and a well-crafted script, its political message was muddied with an undermined political agenda at every turn.

First published in 1882, An Enemy of the People depicts the plight of Dr. Thomas Stockmann (Philip Earl Johnson), who finds that his town’s baths are contaminated and unsafe to use. His warnings fall on deaf ears, because the town desperately needs income from tourists who frequent the baths, and no one is keen on having their taxes raised to fix the infrastructural problems.

Dr. Stockmann’s brother Peter, the mayor (played by a compelling Scott Jaeck), has no qualms covering up the contamination scandal for “the sake of the people.” Aubrey Deeker Hernandez, as leftist newspaper editor Hovstad, channels the current president, ordering Dr. Stockmann to “grab [the establishment] by the balls and make [it] squeal” and promising the press’s full support, yet backing out when push comes to shove. Dr. Stockmann’s dilemma is neatly represented when he is confronted by endless rows of faceless townspeople. He yells to them—and the audience—that “stupid people put stupid people in charge.” The doctor, unsurprisingly, ends up being the eponymous enemy of the people.

While the costumes (Ana Kuzmanic) and set (Todd Rosenthal) are colorful plays on the 19th-century setting, the dialogue is redolent of our age, with winks and nods to “fake facts,” “deplorables,” and other such gems.

I am sympathetic to the impulse to reference Trump and the crises of living in America today. Any piece of art that mentions politics is laden with potential for critique or as a performance of solidarity for the downtrodden among us. But the gestures here do not a critique make, nor do they make for good theater. Falls’s adaptation shortchanges the play’s emotional import and skips over its greater questions in attempt to twist Ibsen’s work into an allegory for our current political situation.

None of this is to say that the play is not worth seeing: I am only drawing attention to the inevitable failure of performative “wokeness” without specific critique. There

is more to theater than hot takes—we can look to Facebook comments for those (“We’re all a bunch of worthless hacks,” newspaper editor Hovstad notes). Go see An Enemy of the People for the acting. Don’t go for the blithe, self-congratulatory moments when you laugh at the play instead of with it.

An Enemy of the People appears at Goodman’s Albert Theatre through April 15. Tickets are sold at Goodman Theatre. org/Enemy or by calling (312) 443–3800.

Students are eligible for $10 day-of tickets with a valid student ID (promo code 10TIX), subject to availability.

Courtesy of Liz Lauren Lanise Antoine Shelley (Katherine), Jesse Bhamrah (Billing), Aubrey Deeker Hernandez (Hovstad), and Philip Earl Johnson (Thomas Stockmann) in An Enemy of the People.

Courtesy of Liz Lauren Dr. Stockmann (right) becomes the eponymous enemy of the people as his pleas fall on deaf ears.

CSO’s Savior Pays Tribute to Joan of Arc

BY HANNAH EDGAR SENIOR ARTS STAFF

This Monday night at Harris Theater, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO)’s contemporary music series MusicNow will continue its 20th anniversary season celebration. To commemorate this milestone, it’s undertaking one of its most ambitious projects to date: Savior, a world premiere work about the life and execution of Joan of Arc. Savior is best described as a piece of “composed theater” in the lineage of Mauricio Kagel, Peter Maxwell Davies, and George Crumb—not quite chamber opera and not quite musical theater. The musicians become actors, directed not just to interpret, but also to embody the music: speaking, emoting, aspirating, and even screaming while playing.

The genre is a niche that Amy Beth Kirsten—Savior’s composer, librettist, and director—savors. After being trained as a jazz vocalist and gigging around Chicago as an alt-pop singer-songwriter, Kirsten pursued a master’s degree in composition at Roosevelt University. While studying under Stacy Garrop, she was exposed to the world of avant-garde composition and works like Crumb’s Vox Balaenae—whose musicians perform masked—and Davies’s virtuosic monodrama Eight Songs for a Mad King.

“I saw a concert of the International Contemporary Ensemble, [which was] just down the street at the time, at Columbia,” Kirsten said in a phone interview. “That concert changed my life, because I saw and heard some music that night that really opened my mind to the possibility of combining music and theater together.”

In 2012, encouraged by subsequent collaborations with Chicago-based contemporary ensembles, Kirsten co-founded Howl, an ensemble of musicians and creatives dedicated to performing and premiering evening-length pieces of staged theatrical music. Kirsten aims to embrace the more collaborative, flexible compositional process afforded by theatrical pieces, compared to regular commissions, which can sometimes call for more hermetical writing. “[Often] you get a commission, hide yourself in a little composer cave for however many months or years, and deliver a score,” Kirsten explained. “[But] composed theater can be a long process—we can have five or six weeks of layered feedback and expresContinued on page 7

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - MARCH 30, 2018 Continued from page 6

sion. You have to compose the piece on the bodies of the vocalists and instrumentalists who are going to be playing and performing the piece.”

Luckily for Savior, Kirsten knows the canvases she’s working with. Joan of Arc is musically embodied by a vocal trio of two sopranos and one mezzo-soprano; her “Joans”—respectively, Molly Netter, Eliza Bagg, and Hai-Ting Chinn—are HOWL ensemble members. Flutist Tim Munro, who plays a stag that represents Joan’s divine visions, has been a collaborator since his 2010 performance in Eighth Blackbird, though he left the ensemble in 2015.

“She struck all of us as a totally original voice—somebody who was completely themselves in whatever they did,” Munro said in a phone interview. “That, I think, has always been attractive to me as a musician: to find someone who hits you in the solar plexus.”

According to the Joan of Arc legend, a stag rushed into an English regiment at the Battle of Patay, sending troops into disarray and helping cinch a French victory. Kirsten uses the symbol as a greater metaphor for Joan’s communal with the Divine—and Its eventual silence. Munro’s stage presence will be appropriately striking, with the flutist donning an illuminated, antlered mask.

“I’ll be elevated on the stage, and I’m already a pretty tall bloke. It’s going to be a pretty physically imposing presence,” Munro said. “It feels like I’m unknowable—the mask helps with that.”

Also worth noting is that another character never appears onstage: the Chronicler, a fictional English commander voiced by William “Sandy” Smillie Chicago Fire. Smillie’s narration of the Chronicler’s war diary will be pre-recorded and manipulated as part of the score. The character is loosely based on John Talbot, a real military commander during the Hundred Years’ War; Kirsten, who assembled the libretto mostly from period texts, wrote the Chronicler’s text herself. “[Joan and the Chronicler] are on opposite sides, but they both suffered, they both wanted to be victorious,” she said. “It’s a reminder of all these things that we have in common when we’re on the opposite side of something.”

As is de rigueur for MusicNow concerts, CSO musicians also participate. Cellist Katinka Kleijn and percussionist Cynthia Yeh sometimes provide what the libretto calls the “music of Joan’s divine visions,” but they also embody other symbolic roles—for example, joining the chorus of interrogators during Joan’s trial and, later, representing the sound of Joan’s labored breathing when her prayers are met with silence just before her execution.

“When I compose, I’m thinking of a character and a story, and how these approaches to music and the expression of sound actually mean something for a character and a story,” Kirsten said. “We are in the mind of Joan of Arc, and that’s what that is.”

When asked about how she interpreted that perspective—and her thoughts on being

part of a lineage of female composer-pedagogues in Chicago, like her mentor Garrop— Kirsten affirmed that she felt a kinship with Joan of Arc, albeit one that eschews labels.

“I don’t think of myself as a female composer. I just think of myself as a composer, and there are a lot of reasons for that. Mostly, it’s because I want the conversation to be about the art and not about me…. That’s not to take away from anyone who identifies as a female composer. I think we all have to deal with that thing in the way that feels natural to us, and for me, it’s trying to minimize that aspect,” she said.

“Actually, one of the things that resonated with me about Joan of Arc is that I

don’t think she would consider herself a feminist.… She was moved by humanitarian impulses that had to do with her spirituality and what she thought was right.... It was such a pure intent, and I love that about her.

I sort of feel the same way in a sense; I want to keep art as pure as I can.”

Savior premieres at Harris Theater on Monday, April 2, at 7 p.m. There will be a free pre-concert talk between composer-director-librettist Amy Beth Kirsten and CSO Mead Composers-in-Residence Samuel Adams and Elizabeth Ogonek in the Level 1 Lobby at 6 p.m. $15 student tickets are available for this program (service fees may apply).

Courtesy of Gennadi Novash The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed the world premier of Amy Beth Kirsten’s Savoir.

Red Sparrow: Red Hot or Up in Flames?

BY ANDREA LI MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

Set during the Cold War, Red Sparrow is a haunting story about a broken ballerina-turned-Soviet-spy who must choose between her love for her country and her love for an American agent. The film is based on a novel written by former CIA agent Jason Matthews and stars Jennifer Lawrence as Dominika Egorova. Dominika is a part of a government spy group called the “Sparrows,” made up of young women cultivated to become spies who use seduction and manipulation.

Directed by Francis Lawrence, who also directed three of the four Hunger Games films, the spy thriller certainly stands out for its cinematography. The most stunning shots of the film include an overhead shot of the city of London, a lone car in a valley of snow, and the framing of the airport runway at night.

The film also deserves praise for its actors’ performances. Matthias Schoenaerts’s character is so convincing in his manipulation of Jennifer Lawrence’s character that it is difficult not to feel repulsed by his actions.

Jennifer Lawrence portrays Dominika with a quiet strength. Throughout the story, Dominika grows from an unassuming pawn in her uncle’s game to someone who takes control of her own narrative. In the film, Jennifer Law-

rence demonstrates the cunning and clever mind games that Dominika plays with ease, revealing a new angle in her acting skills.

However, this film is not Francis Lawrence’s best. Red Sparrow reveals not only the manipulation and mind games agents use, but also the dirtier side of undercover work. It shows a different side to intelligence training, but the plot is a slow burn with the exception of sudden scenes of graphic violence and a few insinuations of incest thrown in.

While Francis Lawrence’s goal is to portray the Sparrows as a group that empowers women through using sex and their bodies, this point fails to come across. Instead, the film’s nude scenes seem awkward and at times vulgar. There is no buildup for the shock factor of the nudity and extreme violence that take place in the film. Jennifer Lawrence’s character uses her body and the promise of sex to manipulate emotions and gain intel, but she does so in a way that has no empowering connotations.

The Sparrows’ use of their bodies to gain intelligence makes the act of sex feel insignificant and flippant in the film; it is perceived as a means to an end. While everyone places different values on sex, the casual way it is shown in relation to scenes of rape hints at the problematic nature of the Sparrow program. Instead of promoting female em-

powerment, Dominika’s sex scenes show an insensitivity to the emotional effect of her interactions with her targets.

Red Sparrow is a mixed bag. It’s not a film I would recommend, given the other

powerhouses still in theaters, such as the widely acclaimed Black Panther. Regardless, I’ll allow you to form your own opinion on this film—after all, Red Sparrow is all about subjectivity.

Early Modern Catholic Social Teaching and World Order THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 5pm Swift Hall Common Room Free and open to the public. Registration is requested at www.lumenchristi.org. Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute. Cosponsored by the the Center for Latin American Studies and the Ethics Club at the Divinity School.

Western distrust in liberal internationalism offers an opportunity for renewed theological reflection on the moral foundations of world order. This lecture retrieves early modern Spanish theological voices to expose the coloniast underbelly of Westphalian rights discourse, typified by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

Courtesy of Murray Close Jennifer Lawrence stars at Russian spy Dominika Egorova in Red Sparrow.

David Lantigua is Assistant Professor of Moral Theology and Christian Ethics at the University of Notre Dame.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - MARCH 30, 2018

SPORTS

Baseballers Don’t Rest Over Break BASEBALL

BY ANNA ROSE SPORTS STAFF

The University of Chicago baseball team did not rest over spring break. In fact, their spring break was filled with action-packed games, including a trip to Texas to take on the University of Mary Hardin–Baylor, Southwestern University, and Texas Lutheran University.

Before traveling to Texas, the Maroons travelled to Indiana to challenge UW–Platteville on Saturday, March 17, and Rose Hulman on both Saturday, March 17 and Sunday, March 18.

The Maroons had an excellent weekend, reigning victorious and furthering their winning streak to five games. Fourthyear outfielder Max Larsen led the team to victory against UW–Platteville with a walk-off two-run hit to end the game.

Third-year outfielder Connor Hickey, third-year catcher Ian Bohn, and firstyear infielder Brian Lyle led the team’s offense in the games against Rose–Hulman to capture a pair of wins with respective scores of 14–6 and 5–2.

Although the games in Indiana were just the beginning of a long week of games, the wins helped fuel the team as they pushed forward. “It was big that we were able to win all three games in Indiana to have momentum going into the games in Texas, especially because most of the teams we played were already halfway through their seasons,” said Larsen.

Following their impressive weekend, and looking to continue their winning streak, the squad travelled to Texas.

Their spring trip games began on Tuesday, March 20, against the University of

Mary Hardin–Baylor in Belton, Texas.

The squad captured the win with a score of 13–6, furthering their winning streak to six straight games.

The next day, on Wednesday, March 21, the Maroons took on the Southwestern University Pirates. The squad continued to prove themselves, capturing their seventh-straight win with a score of 6–4, and furthering their record to 7–3.

The Maroons finished up their trip with three games against the Bulldogs of Texas Lutheran University. The Bulldogs are nationally ranked No.12 overall, so the squad knew they were in for quite a challenge. The Maroons first took on the Bulldogs on Friday, March 23, where they suffered a 2–0 loss that snapped their winning streak. The next day, the Maroons suffered a pair of losses in a double-header with respective scores of 8–3 and 8–5. Larsen once again led the team with two RBIs and a double in the first game, and two RBIs and one run in the second.

Although the trip didn’t end the way the Maroons wanted, they are still happy with their performance. Third-year infielder Max Brzostowski commented on the weekend: “The trip was a great experience for the whole team, especially the younger players,” he said. “We played some talented teams and showed up, giving us the confidence and experience necessary to perform at a high level through the rest of the season.”

Larsen echoed his teammate’s sentiments. “We had contributions up and down the lineup, and a lot of big pitching performances from our starters and relievers all week,” he said. “Although

Zoe Kaiser

Second-year Payton Jancsy follows through on a big swing. we lost those last three games, we battle back a lot and played competitively against a top ranked team, which is big for us as we continue our season.”

Hickey is also proud of the team’s performance. “The team is happy with how we played over the break. We continued some of the momentum we had going into the trip, rattling off five straight wins after the first two wins of the season.

Coming out of the trip above five hundred, and also being above five hundred for the season as whole sets us up nicely for the rest of the year,” Hickey said.

The spring trip in its entirety was a great experience for the Maroons both on and off the field. “Spring trips are a

high opportunity for teams to bond and develop strong chemistry, and this trip did just that,” Brzostowski said. “Playing eight games over a seven-day span gives a lot of our players an opportunity to show what they can do and how they can impact the team on and off the field.”

“The spring trip is when you really see what kind of team you can be, and I definitely think we have the potential to be great”, said Hickey.

The Maroons’ season continues Saturday, March 31, when they take on Illinois College.

Softball is Successful Over Break SOFTBALL

BY ALYSSA RUDIN SPORTS STAFF

The Maroon women’s softball team had an eventful spring break, playing 12 games in a week and going 7–5. The games were the first of the team’s season, so the team needed to quickly adapt to the competition.

The team faced off against Calvin, Tufts, SUNY Fredonia, Oberlin, Williams, Carroll, Hamilton, Carleton, Wellesley, UW–Oshkosh, Farmingdale State, and D’Youville.

On their first day of competition, Chicago took two tough losses, both of which came down to the wire. In their first game against Calvin, the Maroons were up 3–1 in the final inning with only one out away from the win, but Calvin battled back, loaded the bases, and tied things up with a two-run single.

Level at 3–3, the game went to extra innings, where the Calvin momentum continued with a two-run homer to make the game 5–3. The Maroons earned another run thanks to second-year shortstop Emma Nelson, but Calvin was able to close them out. In a low-scor-

ing complement to their high-scoring game earlier in the day, the Maroons lost a tough battle to Tufts 1–0. Fourth-year pitcher Molly Moran stumped the Tufts offense, but the Maroon offense was similarly stifled by the Jumbos’ pitching. The game came down to the bottom of the seventh, when Tufts loaded the bases and batted in a run with a walkoff single. In her six innings, Moran held the Jumbos to one run, three hits, and one walk.

Day two fared much better for the team, with wins over SUNY Fredonia and Oberlin College. The first game of the day was another close one, with the Maroons making a huge late comeback to earn a 7–6 win.

Fredonia led 4–0 after three innings and 5–1 after four, but the Maroons would not be swept aside. Third-year Maeve Garvey batted in a run in the fifth to bring the game to 5–2. Then third-year Carly Schulz scored on an error and Nelson earned another RBI. Third-year Serena Moss came in clutch with a homer to tie the game up. Fredonia went up 6–5 briefly, but their nerves got the best of them, and their pitcher walked two batters

UPCOMING GAMES

second game, the Maroons fell behind 6–3 quite quickly and, despite their best efforts, could not quite mount enough of a comeback to overcome the deficit and lost 7–5. Despite the earlier disappointments, the Maroons fought back in their final game of the day to defeat Hamilton 8–5. Moran earned the win and third-year Jordyne Prussak got the save, striking out the final batter. Five different Maroons had RBIs during the game.

After coming out on the losing end of a big comeback by Williams the day before, the Maroons turned the tables and came back from a six-run deficit against Carleton to win 8–7. Jones was the catalyst for the Maroon comeback, hitting a clutch three-run double and later scored when first-year Abby Hayes hit a double. Prussak earned another save, striking out the final three Carleton batters in succession.

In their final games of the trip, Chicago took a beating from UW–Oshkosh but rebounded and defeated Wellesley, Farmingdale State and D’Youville colleges.

M AROON

SPORT

DAY

Opponent

Softball

Friday

Wash U

12 p.m.

Friday Saturday Saturday

Wash U Illinois Col. Illinois Col.

2 p.m.

1 p.m.

3:30 p.m.

Softball Baseball Baseball

with the bases loaded, giving the Maroons the win. Schulz went 4–4 with three runs and Nelson finished 1–3 with three RBIs. After such a close fight, the Maroons came out ready to play and blew Oberlin out of the water 10–2. Moran was too much for the Yeowomen, holding them to three hits and earning six strikeouts. Moss led the offense, going 4–4 with three runs scored. Schulz, Nelson, and first-year Gabi Angellotti all had multiple RBIs. Day three appropriately brought three games for the Maroons, and the team went 1–2 for the day. In their first game of the triple-header, Chicago faced off against Williams, and the Ephs barely escaped with a 5–4 win. The game, tied at 2–2, headed into the eighth, and it seemed the Maroons would take the win after second-year Holli Jones batted in two runs to give the Maroons a 4–2 lead. Unfortunately, Williams would not quit and earned two runs in the bottom of the eighth and finally won it with a twoout walk off home run. Schulz was consistent as ever, going 3–3 and Garvey 3–4. In their

TIME

SPORT Baseball Baseball Softball Softball Softball

SCORE BOARD W/L Opponent L L W W L

Texas Lutheran Texas Lutheran D’Youville Lake Forest Lake Forest

Score 3–8 5–8 4–0 3–2 4–6