ChicagoMaroon042216

APRIL 22, 2016

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

CC Considers Transparency Bylaw After Divestment Debate

Resident Masters Announced for Campus North, I-House

BY PEYTON ALIE ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR

On Tuesday, College Housing and Residential Services announced the Resident Masters who will join Campus North Residential Commons a nd I nt e r n at i o n a l H o u s e ( I-House) beg inning in fall 2016. Two new Resident Masters will be succeeding Scott and Laura Stern in I-House, while four Resident Masters will move into Campus North in its inaugural year.

Steven Rings, an associate professor of music theory and chair of the Society of Fellows,

which focuses on liberal arts teaching and scholarship, and Gretchen Rings, a reference and interlibrary loan librarian at the Field Museum, will be Resident Masters in Campus North. They have two sons.

“Not only is community very important to us as a family, we also look forward to fostering that sense of community within the residence halls—to make them a genuine home away from home. The opportunity to do that while at the same time bringing the intellectual life of the University into the residence halls excites me very Continued on page 3

Spring 2016 Campus Climate Survey Released via E-mail

BY ALEX WARD SENIOR NEWS REPORTER

On April 18, the University of Chicago’s Climate Survey Project released the Spring 2016 Campus Climate Survey in an e-mail to the entire campus community from Provost Eric D. Isaacs.

The survey, which focuses on the experience of underrepresented and potentially marginalized groups, is the follow-up to another survey sent out in spring quarter of 2015. Both surveys are part of the University’s ongoing response to complaints about the safety of UChicago campus life raised in fall of the 2014–15 academic year.

The Spring 2015 Climate Survey asked mainly about issues of sexual misconduct on campus. Responses to the survey prompted the University to alter the 2015 O-Week programming and develop mandatory sexual misconduct prevention and awareness trainings for all members of the campus community, which will begin on July 1 of this year. The survey also led to the creation of umatter.uchicago.edu, a website intended to consolidate information about University resources and policies regarding harassment.

BY EMILY FEIGENBAUM SENIOR NEWS REPORTER

Christina Cano

The Quiz Bowl Team practices last week. The team competed in two national tournaments over the last two months.

UChicago College Bowl Team Breaks National Title Drought

BY HAOJIA LI MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

The University of Chicago College Bowl Team won one nationa l championsh ip and placed second in another over the last two weeks, brea king a five-year national title drought.

Ch icago’s team came i n second place at the Academic

Competition Federation (ACF) Nationals this past weekend.

They won both DI and DII at the Intercolleg iate Championship Tournament (ICT) the weekend before last, their first national win since 2010.

The ICT, held by National Academic Quiz Tournaments each year, is a collegiate level quiz bowl tournament. Accord-

From January 7 to February 16 this year, the University hosted a series of public forums to gather community suggestions for the content of the Spring 2016 Campus Climate Survey. The material Continued on page 6 of the survey was ultimately developed by a steering committee made up of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates.

According to the UChicago Campus and Student Life website, the responses collected through the survey are not anonymous, because the survey is accessed Jagoda, Coleman, and Kristen

BY ANNIE NAVARRO through an individualized link.

Schilt, which is funded by an ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR However, information that could award from the Neubauer Collepotentially connect particular stu2017’s O-Week activities will gium for Culture and Society. dents to their responses will only include an alternate reality game Jagoda, who has run ARG be available to select members of (ARG) that will run throughout projects before through the the survey’s steering committee. the week. Students in the course Game Changer Chicago Design The website also emphasizes that “Alternate Reality Games: Theory Lab, started discussing an Oresponses to the survey do not and Production” will help plan Week ARG with Schilt over the constitute official misconduct re- the game. past summer, and he, Schilt, and ports.

An ARG is a game that uses Coleman applied for a Neubauer After the survey ends on the real world as a platform but award this past fall.

April 29, the University will be- has its own interactive narrative “I became excited by the possigin to process the data gathered and uses outside methods of com- bility of creating a game for 1,500 and will provide updates on the munication. Humans vs. Zombies students that would help prepare Campus Climate Project website. is one familiar on-campus exam- them for university life and give According to the e-mail sent out ple. them they kind of literacy they

by Isaacs, “The results of this surThird- and fourth-year stu- need to succeed at the University vey will foster much needed dia- dents in Patrick Jagoda and Heidi of Chicago,” Jagoda said. “I also logue and action that will help the Coleman’s ARG course, which is became excited by the possibility UChicago community to create an running in autumn 2016, will of working with social scientists… environment where all members help create the O-Week ARG. to create this game in an interdiscan participate fully and freely.”

This is part of a project run by Continued on page 3

2017 O-Week Activities To Include Alternate Reality Game

Bigotry Isn’t a Right

Continued on page 2

If you want to get involved in THE M AROON in any way, please email apply@chicagomaroon.com or visit chicagomaroon.com/apply.

Page 10 The performance provided the audience with its fi rst taste of Clarice Assad’s vocal talent.

Religious liberty laws misunderstand constitutional rights.

Transparency and transportation were at the foreground of discussion at this week’s College Council (CC) meeting. Representatives considered a bylaw that would always allow recording and photography in CC meetings and discussed how to capture representatives’ votes that were not recorded during the previous week’s divestment debate.

In response to the upset regarding CC’s decision to prohibit the recording of last week’s U of C Divest vote, CC Chair Eric Holmberg introduced a new transparency bylaw that would be added as Section 8 to Article IV of the CC Bylaws: “College Council shall not prohibit photography or the use of recording devices at its meetings.”

Debate ensued as CC members pondered the limits that photography and recording may impose on the free exchange of ideas and safety of non-CC participants at weekly meetings. Some were concerned that the language of the proposed amendment would not allow flexibility in extraordinary circumstances.

Class of 2016 representative Holly Rapp expressed concern that the presence of recording devices could limit the discussion of sensitive topics, citing conversation about sexual assault policy as an example.

Arguing for a more “nuanced” approach to addressing the need for CC transparency, Rapp described the introduction of a transparency bylaw as reactionary.

Cosmo Albrecht, second-year representative, agreed with Rapp.

Conceding that photography and recording are beneficial to “real world” politics, Albrecht emphasized that CC was not part of that realm. Albrecht added that a noholds-barred transparency policy is “ridiculous” and CC should be allowed to decide if recording is an

Contributing to THE MA ROON

Assads’ Classical Guitar Concert at Mandel a Family Affair

Page 8

VOL. 127, ISSUE 41

Criticism of Criticism: A Conversation with A.O. Scott

Women’s Squad Looks to Defend UAA Crown Page 14

Page 10 “We are capable of thinking against our own prejudices, of balancing skepticism with open-mindedness...”

The Maroons will look to defend their UAA title this weekend at conference championships in St. Louis.

Excerpts from articles and comments published in T he Chicago Maroon may be duplicated and redistributed in other media and non-commercial publications without the prior consent of The Chicago Maroon so long as the redistributed article is not altered from the original without the consent of the Editorial Team. Commercial republication of material in The Chicago Maroon is prohibited without the consent of the Editorial Team or, in the case of reader comments, the author.

All rights reserved. © The Chicago Maroon 2016

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

CC Chair Introduced the Bylaw Following Controversy at Last Week’s Meeting on Divestment minutes from the meeting, the names of those representatives were not. option ahead of time.

Cottrell suggested the minutes from the Fourth-year representative Mark Sands questioned the phrasing of the proposed bylaw, meeting on April 12 be amended to reflect the suggesting that it be framed in the affirma- votes of each CC member. This, he argued, tive. Sands furthermore stated that upset over was important for increasing CC transparthe previous week’s lack of transparency was ency.

There was hesitation among CC members a reaction to the failure to adequately discuss as some members expressed concern about permitting recordings at the meeting.

Audience members in the back of the the practicality of retroactively voting. Howroom voiced concern over the legality of pro- ever, Rapp argued that by not recording who hibiting recording at meetings, questioning voted, CC was violating its own bylaws.

Article II Section 11 of the General Assemwhether there was an expectation of privacy at CC meetings and whether it is a matter bly Bylaws states: “Any and all minutes must of state law. Fourth-year and active debater reflect how each Assembly member voted in Nick Saffran recorded the entire meeting on any and all votes taken, and all Assembly members must be listed by name.” his camera.

Shariyf proposed a motion for all CC Saffran told THE MAROON that though he has never attended a CC meeting in the past, members to recast votes for Viola and he will “absolutely” be at all future meetings Cottrell’s amendment proposals. If the vote count matched, this information would be pertaining to increasing transparency.

“I recorded it first and foremost because added in an appendix to the minutes. If the the students have the right to know exactly numbers were inconsistent the minutes would what is done and said at the meetings of those be approved regardless. This motion passed who supposedly represent our moral voice.... 15–0–0.

In addition to proposing measures to So, in short, I recorded it simply because I increase transparency, CC discussed the have every right to record it,” he stated.

Fourth-year representative Mike Viola University’s plans to upgrade transportation questioned the timing of the bylaw’s intro- services with Director of Transportation and duction as election season begins. Describing Parking Services Beth Tindel.

Tindel stated that the University aims to the timing of the discussion as “politically motivated,” Viola argued that this bylaw was a award a new shuttle service provider by July. means to pressure CC members into making The current company operating the campus a reactionary decision regarding the trans- transit system, First Transit, remains a viable contender. The deployment of a new fleet parency controversy in last week’s meeting.

“We have to table it until after the election,” of shuttles is dependent on which company is chosen in the Request for Proposal (RFP), a Viola stated.

A motion requesting to table the discus- bidding process in which the University will sion until next week’s meeting, which will solicit companies to compete for its business. take place after the Executive Slate debate Tindel stated that the RFP would be posted on Tuesday, was proposed by Class of 2019 by next week.

Changes to the current shuttle system representative Qudsiyyah Shariyf and passed include the introduction of new vehicles, the 14–0–1.

In addition to the introduction of a new decision to not idle shuttles in front of the Retransparency bylaw, concern over why the genstein Library, and the posting of signage names of CC representatives were not at- at existing CTA stops for University shuttles. tached to “substantive” amendment proposal Also discussed was the initiation of the Uvotes were not included in the meeting min- Pass program in the fall.

In response to questions regarding the job utes, as they were tallied by counting hands.

At last week’s meeting, Viola proposed security of University shuttle drivers, Tindel that five paragraphs pertaining directly explained that the drivers are not barred to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions from working at the University because of (BDS) movement be removed from the reso- their affiliation with the current service prolution. The motion to pass the edited version vider. Tindel stated that the next contracted failed 4–10–0. Class of 2018 representative company will be encouraged to hire back the Calvin Cottrell proposed that an amendment drivers currently employed. be inserted into the resolution stating “Let it Clark Halpern, Class of 2016 representabe further resolved that the College Council tive and member of the Committee on Camof the University of Chicago affirms the right pus Sustainability, was eager to discuss susof Jewish self-determination and the contin- tainability with Tindel. Tindel suggested that ued existence of Israel.” This motion failed the University is seeking a way to fund a more 4–6–5. While the number of representatives sustainable fleet and expressed consternation in support or opposition was reported in the at the potential costliness.

Continued from front

#FLASHBACKFRIDAY

Alexandra Davis

Cooks in action at the newly opened Hyde Park Taco Station.

Hyde Park Taco Station Opens at 53rd and Dorchester

BY CAIRO LEWIS ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR

With the opening of the Hyde Park Taco Station at 5300 South Dorchester Avenue, University students no longer have to wait until Tuesdays to get their fix. The restaurant opened about two weeks ago in the former Ribs ’N’ Bibs location.

The Mexican restaurant, which is open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, features tacos with a variety of fillings, including grilled chicken, vegan tofu, and chipotle shrimp with bacon. In addition to tacos, customers can purchase a variety of salads. In the future, owner Edgar Vasquez hopes to offer an outdoor patio and offer dessert, margaritas, catering, and delivery.

In a Hyde Park Herald article from this month, Vasquez said he decided to open a restaurant of his own after years of experience at other Chicago eateries, including Ja’ Grill in Hyde Park and Moonshine in Wicker Park.

He added that he was inspired by in-

teractions with the neighborhood’s diverse population of residents.

“I was hooked to Hyde Park when I saw the clientele,” he said in the article. “I saw smart people, I didn’t see people that were lost, I saw people that were aware and dynamic and that got me excited.”

The first-time owner’s main advice to new restaurant owners is to embrace their passion and to build a business that offers something different. For example, Vasquez noticed that despite Hyde Park’s diverse population, there were not many Latin American restaurants to choose from.

According to Vasquez, his biggest concerns right now are serving authentic Mexican food to his customers and honoring the reputation that Ribs ’N’ Bibs had spent years building for itself. “ The goal was to match the authenticity of food associated with the Ribs ’N ’ Bibs location, but merely adapt the culture from which the food originates,” Vasquez wrote on the company’s website.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

Four Faculty Members Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship Richland is a linguistic anthropologist and law scholar who researches DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR topics such as the anthropology of law Four UChicago faculty members are and contemporary Native American among the 178 scholars, artists, and law, politics, and art. He plans on usscientists who received the John Simon ing his fellowship to complete Open Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fel- Fields: Aesthetics, Ethics and the Very Idea of Natural History, a project that lowship this year.

The Guggenheim Fellowships are explores the changing role of Native grants awarded to “men and women who American exhibitions and collections in have already demonstrated exceptional natural history museums. The project capacity for productive scholarship or is undertaken in collaboration with the exceptional creative ability in the arts,” Neubauer Collegium for Culture and according to the Foundation’s website. Society and the Field Museum, where Often called “midcareer” awards, the Richland is the adjunct curator of North grants aim to give established profes- American anthropology.

Berlant, a literary critic, studies sionals the time and creative freedom to pursue projects of their choice. The fel- the relationship between aesthetics, lowships have been awarded every year attachment, and affect, especially in since 1925 and over 3,000 applicants ap- the context of citizenship and history. plied to the annual competition this year. In particular, she writes about public The faculty members are Justin B. spheres as realms of emotion and affect Richland, associate professor in anthro- rather than of rational and deliberative pology and the social sciences; Lauren thought. She will use the Guggenheim Berlant, George M. Pullman Distin- fellowship to work on the Matter of Flatguished Service Professor in English ness project, which seeks to help scholLanguage and Literature; Anthony Che- ars of political emotions explore better ung, assistant professor in music; and tools to think about the social, political, Theo van den Hout, Arthur and Joann and aesthetic realms.

Van den Hout, whose research is Rasmussen Professor in Western Civilization and in Hittite and Anatolian primarily focused on writing and literacy in ancient Anatolia, directs the ChiLanguages.

BY EILEEN LI

cago Hittite Dictionary project at the Oriental Institute. With the fellowship, he hopes to finish his book, Writing and Literacy in Hittite Anatolia, which covers the Hittites’ adoption of cuneiform script, their own development of a hieroglyphic system, and the nature of working with tablet collections.

“Hittite society is a particularly interesting case in the sense that it shows a society that…if they don’t feel ready for a certain innovation, even though they are acquainted with certain technical developments in other societies, they might just ignore and say eh, we don’t need it,” van den Hout said. “And that was the case with Hittites for a long time because we know that they witnessed writing, perhaps even on a daily basis.”

For van den Hout, the fellowship will run from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017. During this time, he will not teach classes and will work solely on the dictionary and book projects.

“With the dictionary, classes, committee work, just the usual stuff you do as a faculty member, there’s not much time left,” van den Hout said. “You can write articles, et cetera, but to write a book, a comprehensive monograph, you need some time off or some time alone….

And that’s what the Guggenheim will enable me to do.”

Cheung, a composer and pianist, said that the fellowship, which coincides with his first faculty research leave, will allow him to record a new CD focusing on his chamber music work played by the Spektral Quartet, an ensemble-in-residence here at the University.

“One of the things we composers have a hard time dealing with sometimes is just documenting our work,” Cheung said. “A lot of the times we’ll just get an archival recording, it won’t be commercially available, we’ll put it on Soundcloud or something. But to have a studio-made, vinyl, beautifully edited recording is a rare thing.”

Cheung will also use the opportunity presented by the fellowship to focus on writing several new pieces of music. Chief among them will be a new large-scale piece for the full ensemble of the Cleveland Orchestra, where Cheung is currently the composer-in-residence.

“I...continue to be able to have a voice and [to] have that voice heard and supported just means a lot, and this is just one of those fellowships that allows for that,” Cheung said.

Students in “Alternate Reality Games: Theory and Production” Will Help Plan the Game Continued from front

ciplinary way.”

Jagoda is the co-founder of the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab and an assistant professor of English and New Media studies. Coleman is the Director of University Theater and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Theater and Performance Studies, and Schilt is an associate professor of sociology. Graduate students from multiple departments are also already involved in the planning.

They will be working on elements of game over the summer, including writing the narrative and identifying different parts of O-Week that they’d like to target, but much of the planning will ultimately be left up to students in the course.

“I can’t imagine making this game with-

out students. Students are the group who of Chicago is the best fit for this kind of tive. “Coming from a place of performance, know Orientation best,” Jagoda said. “With “learning as play and play as learning” ex- broadcasting is not the way that we work,” any game you’re constantly playtesting and periment, despite the University’s some- Coleman said. “So I’m really fascinated by iterating and making changes throughout times austere reputation. “‘Where fun goes the problem of how to create something the process. Working with a unique group to die’ has continued to circulate widely that allows those skills, those possibilities of students in the fall will change a great as the University’s informal slogan, but I to develop. That’s not about 1500 people think…the actual culture of the University sitting listening for a week.” deal of what we have planned.”

Coleman said that they hope to eventuThough the storyline and form of the celebrates play, quirkiness, and experimengame have yet to be determined, the tation as key aspects of intellectual life,” he ally create a framework for use in future orientations, both at UChicago and at other course’s description states that one goal said.

Coleman agreed: “I think that if we can universities. of the game is to discover “how interactive In choosing students for the class, and participatory learning methods might do [Scav], we can create a new approach to Jagoda said they’d like to have students help University students discuss and better orientations,” she said.

In Jagoda and Coleman’s opinions, from a range of backgrounds and disunderstand complicated issues of inclusivity, diversity, and safety.” Jagoda is also college orientations have been much too ciplines, while keeping the class on the considering the use of apps and alternate focused on presentations in which one per- smaller side.

When asked what kind of students media in the game, and the idea of small son broadcasts a message to many people.

They hope to make experiences like these Coleman was looking for, she simply said, group challenges.

Jagoda stated that the University more interactive, and therefore more effec- “Fearless ones.”

Two RMS Will Succeed Scott and Laura Stern in I-House, While Four RMs Will Join Campus North Continued from front

much,” Steven Rings said.

Rings, a music professor currently working on a book about Bob Dylan, hopes to organize trips to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and evenings to listen to and discuss classic records from a range of genres. T he Rings family also plans to work closely with the nearby Smart Museum and Court Theatre and invite some of Gretchen Rings’ colleagues at the Field Museum to speak to students.

“It’s so exciting to be moving into a new residence hall, which gives us an opportunity both to develop new traditions and to incorporate traditions from the four houses that will be moving into the new hall. We will have a range of new and returning students, and we very much look forward to developing Campus North’s culture with them,” Steven Rings said.

James Evans, an associate professor of sociology, director of the Knowledge Lab, and a senior fellow at the Computation Institute, and Jeannie Evans, a trial lawyer and founding

partner of Agrawal Evans LLP, will also be Resident Masters in Campus North. They have four children. “ We are excited about living right in the middle of the campus community, sharing our lives, play, and work with the students of the University, and helping to build an environment where recreation, intellect, activity, and organizing will all mix together, stimulating and enriching each other,” James Evans said.

T he Evans family plans to organize events around themes of connection and innovation by inviting artists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and professors to speak and engage with their students. They also hope to support student- orga n ized nonprof its, ventures, and technologies, drawing on their own experience starting a business. “[Campus Nor th’s] un ique a rch itectu re, the communa l spaces and views, proximity to the art museum, theater, and gyms, and direct access to the wonderful Washing ton Park, in addition to its natural connection

to the University make this an environment that reaches out beyond campus, while still remaining within it,” James Evans said.

Craig Futterman, a clinical professor at the Law School and campaigner against police abuses, and Kenyatta Futterman, the youth program coordinator for the Department of Safety and Security’s Office of Risk Management and a former academic adviser in the College, will be Resident Masters in I-House. They have two daughters. “ We relish the opportunities to get to know students outside of the classroom and clinical settings and have the kinds of informal supportive conversations that might not otherwise occur. We are particularly honored to become a part of the International House community. We are different in I hope the good sense of the word. As a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith family, we hope to build a home that is welcoming to all students,” Craig Futterman said.

The Futterman family will work with I-House students to preserve old tradi-

tions and create new events and programs.

Though he is excited to be a Resident Master, Craig Futterman objects to the title “master,” which has been the center of controversy at universities with similar roles because of its associations w ith slaver y. L ast December, House Masters at Harvard unanimously agreed to change their title. “ I have real discomfort with the title for obvious reasons, particularly given who we are. I hope to engage the administration and broader campus community in fuller conversations about what we call our faculty residents. Folks can simply call us: ‘Kenyatta, Alijah, Asha, Craig, and Tuffy,’” said Craig Futterman.

Campus Nor th was desig ned t o house 800 students in part in order to be large enough to accommodate Resident Masters, which the four closing residence halls are too small to do. In the long term, the University plans to streng then the R esident Master model and house more undergraduate students on campus.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

Three Undergraduates Earn Prestigious Goldwater Scholarship

BY MAX MILLER MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

Three UChicago undergraduates—thirdyears Seth Musser, Jonathan Sorce, and Benjamin Lowe—were recently selected by the nationally renowned Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation for the coveted Goldwater Scholarship.

For the 2016–17 academic year, only 252 applicants received the award. The scholarship recipients are awarded one- or two-year scholarships worth $7,500 per year to assist with their studies in science, technology, engineering, and math-related fields. Recipients of the award are selected based on merit, from a pool of 1,150 faculty-nominated applicants in the United States. The award is aimed at students who intend to eventually complete a Ph.D., which explains the rigor-

ous academic qualifications of its applicants.

Many of the undergraduate applicants have already co-authored publications in their fields, and the scholarship seeks to recognize these students for going above and beyond their scholastic requirements.

Award recipient Sorce intends to pursue a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in order to study interdisciplinary problems in fundamental physics. Lowe intends to complete a Ph.D. in mathematics in order to conduct research in topology. Finally, Musser intends to complete a Ph.D. in physics to research high-energy theory. All of the recipients of the award intend to teach and conduct research at the university level.

Musser, a physics and math double major, based his application on his desire to study string theory. For the Goldwater scholarship, Musser was competing with students at institutions like MIT, who already had publications to their names. “I reached out to a

few professors, to work on high energy theory, [particularly] string theory, and most of them said…there is no work for undergraduates,” Musser said. However, in his second year, Musser contacted doctoral students in order to learn about fluid dynamics in high-energy circumstances. “Basically, I wrote a thousand or so lines of code in Mathematica, and I did about a thousand P-sets to learn the theories behind it,” he explained. “I think [the Goldwater scholarship] opens up a lot of doors for me.”

All potential Goldwater scholars are nominated by faculty at their respective universities, and are required to submit a two-page document exemplifying their research, including graphs and figures. In addition to his research, Musser submitted a personal essay to better contextualize his passions in higher education. Musser wrote about his mother’s childhood as an Old Order Mennonite, and how she was shunned from

the community for attending college. “She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in education, even though she only had an eighth-grade education in a one-room schoolhouse,” Musser explained.

The federally endowed Barry Goldwater Foundation was created in honor of the late Senator Barry Goldwater, and is currently chaired by Senator Goldwater’s daughter, Peggy Goldwater Clay.

From the time of its fi rst award in 1989, the Foundation has distributed approximately $48 million over 7,680 academic scholarships.

“I think that UChicago does a very good job of [STEM education]. I know that when I wanted to get involved in a professor’s research, sometimes they didn’t e-mail back, but other times, I get more responses and I have to choose which person to work for,” Musser said. “I don’t think that that would happen at every university.”

Uncommon Interview: Booth School Donor Eric Gleacher, MBA ‘67

BY TIM CUNNINGHAM MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

Eric Gleacher, M.B.A. ’67, is a retired financier, chairman, and founder of Gleacher and Company, an investment banking firm based in New York City. Prior to founding his own company, Gleacher headed mergers and acquisitions first at Lehman Brothers and later at Morgan Stanley. A longtime supporter of the Booth School of Business, Gleacher has recently donated $10 million to establish a scholarship fund for veterans seeking an M.B.A. from Booth. He spoke with The Maroon about the scholarship and his experience as a veteran in business school, and gave advice for current students interested in finance.

CHICAGO MAROON: Could you tell me a little bit about your mindset when you established the scholarship?

Eric Gleacher: Well, my mindset was that I’ve been involved with helping veterans get admission to Booth for a long time, going back to the dean before Sunil Kumar, somebody named Ted Snyder…. I always felt that it was a privilege for me to come to the business school after serving.

I started a week after I was discharged from the Marine Corps and, as the press release said, it gave me tremendous direction. I learned about business. I didn’t know anything about business and I decided what I liked, which was finance, and I established my career in finance. If I hadn’t gone to Booth, there’s no way on earth that that would have ever happened, so I feel an obligation and a debt. Financially, it’s obviously very expensive to go to Booth, and the government has a pretty generous G.I. Bill and there’s the Yellow Ribbon program to provide additional money, but it’s still expensive, so having additional scholarship money at the discretion of the dean of the business school just makes it more attractive for, number one, military veterans to choose Booth and, number two, somebody like myself who’s been fortunate to do something in a mode where I’m giving back to others who’ve served.

CM: What was the business school like when you attended?

EG: It was great. There were almost no women, that was the main difference…. But it was a very exciting time, particularly in finance, economics, and econometrics. Gene Fama and Merton Miller had just started teaching their theory of finance course that I took which was fantastically interesting and stimulating. It was a very strong school. It was the leading business school

in finance, which I think it certainly still is, and it was rigorous. One big difference I think is there were many required courses back when I went and I get the feeling now that that’s not quite the same. There’s much more freedom of choice in what you take, which I think is a good thing because a number of the courses which were required probably weren’t as relevant to somebody like me, and now you can focus on what you want to take, so I think that’s a big change.

Another big change is the recruiting seems to start now the day the student arrives at the school. I don’t quite know how that works because, as I said, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I’m not sure what kind of recruit I would have been…. The recruiting was very organized back then but it was later, sometime during the second year….

I think another big change is the Harper Center, which is a fantastic thing. Your entire life is in that building. It’s brand new and it’s beautiful. There’s food in there and classrooms, and all the students. I would think that’s an enormous addition to the students because they see each other and they’re there all the time, and it must foster all kinds of relationships that are helpful in many ways. When I was there, it wasn’t the case, but it was nice and the building we were in had a library in it. It was right near where the school of economics taught their courses. I used to go and audit Milton Friedman. It was great back when I was there. It was sensational.

CM: What made you decide to go to business school? What made you decide to go into finance?

EG: I decided to go to business school because I came to the conclusion that if you want to go into business you need to have an M.B.A. to give you the best chance of getting a top job, where your future could be aligned with the highest potential which you could achieve. I just thought you needed an M.B.A. I was a history major. My father was not a businessman. He was an engineer. I knew nothing about business and I did not think that having a history major would have prepared me much. I decided while I was in the service that I was going to get an M.B.A. before I tried to find a job.

It was interesting because all my buddies said, “What, are you crazy?” The jobs were everywhere, unlike now where it’s much harder. Jobs were falling off trees and I was the only one who went back to school. I started a week later, and that was one of the reasons I went to the University of Chicago.

I wanted to go there—that was my first choice—and it turned out that timing-wise it was fantastic. At school, I thought at first, maybe marketing would be what I could

do. I didn’t know anything about finance.

But once I started taking finance courses I really liked it. I saw a combination of analytical requirement and also people skills.

I thought that was a combination that I possessed. I liked the idea of the markets and the global aspect of it, and so forth, and that’s why I chose it.

CM: What was the transition like serving in the Marines and going to business school?

EG: Nothing was very difficult, but looking back the transition was indicative of my three and a half years in the military. I started, and I had to take calculus, and my professor was a guy named Hodson Thornber, a Ph.D. student in economics…at this time he was a good-looking guy with blond hair down to his shoulders. The class was pretty small, and once he realized that I was just getting out of the Marine Corps, he just started talking about the Vietnamese War, and there were a lot of demonstrations on the campus—I think Bettina Aptheker was there…. And I thought, this is crazy, because I was in the Marine Corps and I was believing [in] what was going on, and here were these people completely at the 180-degree plane of antagonism to that.

After a while, obviously they were right. It showed me how my perspective was very limited and very narrow, which probably says that was the way it was supposed to be in the military. So that was a real eye opener for me. The first quarter, I remember, I was pretty good at accounting. But when the midterm came, I was so nervous about doing well that I misunderstood one of the questions on the exam. It was a question I had actually asked in class. The professor had reworded it and I got a zero on that question because I totally misunderstood it.

Looking back, I didn’t have any money and I had a pregnant wife, and I hadn’t been in school for almost four years. So there was a transition, but it was made easier by the dean of students at that time, a guy named Jeff Metcalf. He was the first guy I met when I showed up, and I went in his office, and he had a picture of a Marine general on the wall. So I felt comfortable there. I told him, “I hope I’m up to this.” And he said, “I’m sure you will be. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you and everything will be all right.” I’ll never forget that. Of course, he and I became great friends, as he did with almost everybody he had real contact with.

He was a tremendous asset for the school in so many ways.

CM: Were there many other veterans [at Booth] when you were there?

EG: No. There was one fellow that I met, his name was Bob McCormick…. He had just gotten out of the Navy…. We were in the same three classes that first term, so we got to know each other. It was good for me.

He was obviously a friend that understood where I was coming from. He also knew a lot about investment banking, which was something he wanted to do, and I learned a lot about it from him. There weren’t classes at school that taught it. There were classes on securities analysis and money and banking and all that, but there was no information about investment banking. So actually from a friend I learned a lot about it, which is something that happens all the time. That’s the benefit of working in groups. But other than him, I don’t remember any other veterans.

CM: What qualities and experiences do you think prepare veterans for business school?

EG: I mean most of the veterans have experienced some form of requirement for leadership, and that’s a given in business.

You have to have those qualities no matter what you do. I think that’s why the program has been so successful at the school. And students work in groups now a lot more than back when I was there. The veterans add a perspective to the whole process that the other students absolutely don’t have. And that’s probably a tremendous and valuable asset for all the other students to benefit from, to have people from the military who have done all kinds of things. It adds to the experience of working in a group, or learning from someone else like I learned from my friend who had been in the Navy. Those qualities, aligned with what you learned in the business school, have the potential to follow people into leadership positions, entrepreneurships, or the corporate world. It’s a very powerful combination.

CM: Do you have any advice for college students today who are interested in going into finance?

EG: I think that undergraduates should take a wide variety of courses, and not think that if they major in economics it’s going to help them get ahead in the world…. I think that if you’re an undergraduate interested in the liberal arts education, you should take a whole wide variety of things. It’s not a time in your life when you’re preparing specifically for a job. And then when you go to business school, you try to figure out what you like, and then you focus on that.

And you do take all the courses you can that pertain to that. That’s the advice that I’ve given to my kids, and many others.

5

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

On and Around Campus for the Week of 4/22 - 4/28 Friday, April 22 Solidarity v. Cooptation: Black Lives Matter and White Folks 6 p.m., University Church Chicago, 5655 South University Avenue. Free, refreshments provided.

Leaders of the local Black Lives Matter movement will discuss how white community members can properly support the movement and be considerate allies.

The Perfect Woman: A Video Blog Play 9 p.m., Logan Center, Room 501 This play, written by and starring fourth-year Elisabeth Del Toro as part of University Theater’s New Work Week, centers on a young actress trying to write the ideal female character in a musical. The play is in the format of a series of video blogs, which will be released online after the show. $5 at the door, or $10 for a New Work Week festival pass.

Community Yoga with Chaturanga Seeds 9:30 –10:30 a.m., Arts Incubator, 301 East Garfi eld Boulevard A free beginner yoga class with both standing and seated poses. All necessary objects will be provided.

Research in Art & Visual Evidence Workshop: Museum Collections and the Historiography of Colonial Art in Brazil 12–1:20 p.m., Cochrane-Woods Art Center, 5540 South Greenwood Avenue An art history workshop about Brazilian art from its colonial period led by renowned professor Pablo Knauss, from the Universidade Federal Fluminense, and featuring David Recksieck, a Ph.D. candidate in art history. All papers are pre-circulated through the workshop email list. Contact Luke Fidler for more information at lfidler@uchicago.edu.

Earth Day Full Moon Hangout 7–9 p.m., Zen Garden (outside of Spiritual Life), 1212 East 59th Street This event, sponsored by Hyde Park Pagans, is meant to honor the Beaver Moon in Scorpio. Visitors will be able to construct a beaver dam talisman. (Googling “beaver dam talisman” yields no results, so there is only one way to fi nd out what this entails). Snacks, candles, and incense will be provided. Free.

Saturday, April 23 Poetry Reading– Jonathan Wells, Colleen Abel, Carlen Arnett, Mike Puican, and Vesna Neskow 2 p.m., Seminary Co-Op, 5751 South Woodlawn Avenue Jonathan Wells will be reading from his latest poetry collection, The Man With Many Pens. His poems focus on the multi-faceted nature of love and song.

Langar on the Quads 11 a.m.–1:30 p.m., Pick Quad (on the Main Quads) Langar is a Sikh tradition that promotes equality between all humans. The event will feature a “service component” and then a meal at which people from all backgrounds can sit, eat, and talk in peace.

Story of a Rape Survivor 5:30–9 p.m., Chicago Theological Seminary, 1407 East 60th Street This multimedia presentation follows the story of a rape survivor as she reclaims her body, sexuality, and self-esteem. The presentation also aims to ed-

ucate the audience about sexual assault prevention.

Sunday, April 24 Pacifica Quartet 3 –5 p.m,. Logan Center Performance Hall The Pacifica Quartet will perform a diverse program including Mozart, Shostakovich, and Beethoven. The Pacifi ca Quartet is considered one of the most accomplished chamber groups of the last two decades. The quartet is in residence at the University of Chicago. Purchase tickets online. ($30, $5 for students).

Opening reception: Between the Ticks of the Watch (Max) 4–7 p.m., The Renaissance Society, Cobb Lecture Hall, 4th Floor The opening reception for an art exhibition featuring fi ve artists who “seek to examine the traces of how doubt can eat away at the foundation of understanding itself, which calls into question the very possibility of knowledge, or at least demanding recognition of its limitations.” The event will also feature a performance at 5 p.m. from one of the exhibit’s artists, Kevin Beasley.

FRESH AYERS: “Every Person Is a Philosopher” – with Bill Ayers, Janise Hurtig, Peter Kahn & Christine Tarkowski 3–5 p.m., 57th Street Books, 1301 East 57th Street Hal Adams was a radical educator who worked under the assumption that even people ignored by society could contribute to the country’s intellectual life. At this event, ex-Weather Underground member Bill Ayers will host a discussion with the authors of a book of essays reflecting on his work.

Monday, April 25 Ask An Atheist Day 12–1:30 p.m. Cobb Lecture Hall The Secular Alliance will set up a table in front of Cobb to hang out, eat candy, and answer fun questions about atheism.

Kristin Chen: Soy Sauce for Beginners–SAMSU 6 p.m., Seminary Co-Op, 5751 South Woodlawn Avenue K ristin Chen reads from her book, Soy Sauce for Beginners, at an event co-sponsored by the Singaporean and Malaysian Society at the University of Chicago. The book follows the story of a woman who returns home to Singapore, where her father runs a soy sauce business. She faces a confl ict between familial obligations and her own ambitions.

Andreï Makine – “A Woman Loved” and “Brief Loves That Live Forever” – Alison James – Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and CEERES 6 p.m., 57th Street Books, 1301 East 57th Street Russian-born French author Andrei Makine will read from two of his novels, A Woman Loved and Brief Loves That Live Forever. His works explore themes of love, freedom, and the uses of art against the backdrop of life under the Soviet regime and the eventual fall of Communism. Makine will be joined in conversation by Alison James, an associate professor of French at the University of Chicago, and the event is co-sponsored by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the Depart-

ment of Romance Languages and Literatures and Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies at the University of Chicago.

Turks and Armenians: Nationalism and Conflict in the Ottoman Empire 6–7:30 p.m., International House Assembly Hall Justin McCarthy, professor of history and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville, will discuss his new book, Turks and Armenians: Nationalism and Conflict in the Ottoman Empire. In the book, McCarthy explores late Ottoman historiography and offers a new interpretation of the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and its Armenian minority. A Q&A and book signing will follow the event, which is co-sponsored by the Global Voices Lecture Series, the Consulate General of the Republic of Turkey in Chicago, the Turkish American Cultural Alliance, and the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore.

Poetry off the Shelf: Jana Harris – Poetry Foundation 7 p.m., Poetry Foundation, 61 West Superior Street The Poetry Foundation presents Jana Harris, a poet whose most recent publication is entitled You Haven’t Asked About My Wedding or What I Wore: Poems of Courtship on the American Frontier. In addition to writing and publishing poetry, Harris also teaches creative writing at the University of Washington and is the editor and founder of Switched-on Gutenberg, one of the fi rst electronic poetry journals in English.

Tuesday, April 26 Abrahamic vs. Non-Abrahamic Traditions: How to Bridge the Gap 4:30 –5:30 p.m. Ida Noyes Hall, Room 034 An interfaith dialogue sponsored by the Spiritual Life Council that seeks to compare and contrast religions founded on Abrahamic origins with those that are not.

Will Howell – “Relic” – John Mark Hansen 6 p.m., Seminary Co-Op, 5751 South Woodlawn Avenue William Howell, Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the University of Chicago, will discuss his new book Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government—and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency. In the book, Howell identifies the Constitution as the cause our ineffective government, arguing that a document designed for an agrarian economy cannot possibly address modern social problems such as healthcare and climate change. He will be joined in discussion by John Mark Hansen, Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science and the College.

book RELIC: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government and the inherently ineffective structure of the constitution with David Axelrod.

The event is free, but attendees need to register through Eventbrite. Lunch will be provided.

Literary Public Sphere: “After Scalia: Originalism v. The Living Constitution” – with David Strauss 6–8 p.m. Seminary Co-Op, 5751 South Woodlawn Avenue Only three years separated the tenures of David Strauss and late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at the University of Chicago Law School, but their stances on the crucial question of constitutional interpretation were dramatically different. Strauss advocates a living constitution; Scalia said, half-jokingly, that he preferred his constitution dead.

M ECh A de UChicago presents: Jimmy Santiago Baca–Keynote Lecturer at the Social Sciences Building 6 – 8 p.m. Social Sciences Research Building, Room 122 “Author of the acclaimed book A Place to Stand, Jimmy Santiago Baca will give this year’s Latinx Heritage Series Keynote Lecture. Baca will discuss his previous literary work, his life experiences, and the Latinx identity. He will draw upon his knowledge to address the issues faced by Chicanx communities and the ways in which narrative has the power to transform and shape the future.” Featuring a lecture, Q&A session, and dinner reception.

A N EV ENING W ITH JOHN LEE (A.K.A. JOHN THREAT A.K.A. CORRUPT) 6:30 –8:30 p.m. Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, 5733 South University Avenue Internet activist John Lee will be speaking about his history with Masters of Deception, a New York City hacker group and in the Great Hacker War of the early ’90s.

Kalapriya Center for Indian Performing Arts presents Aham Sita 7–8:30 p.m. International House Assembly Hall A Justus Repertory production from India which blends poetry, music, dance, and theatre to tell the story of five crucial moments in the life of Sita, the metaphorical fi gure who is revered as the “perfect wife.” Director Gowri Ramnarayan and Choreographer Vidhya Subramanian set out in the performance to examine what makes the magic of Sita work. The dance portions provide energy and sensual elements, while the dialogues emphasize the resolute spirit of Sita. $20 for students, $35 general admission, $50 VIP.

I-House Open Mic 6:30–9:30 p.m. International House Assembly Hall This event is free and open to everyone.

Attendees will have a chance to sing, dance, act, speak, or perform any other sort of talent in front of an audience.

Sign-ups will begin at 6:30.

New Voices in Nonfi ction Reading

by Jeff Hobbs 7–8 p.m. Logan Center, Seminar Terrace 801 Jeff Hobbs attracted national attention with his non-fiction book, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, which explored the double life of his college roommate, who remained tied to the brutal neighborhood of his youth while accruing conventional signs of success.

Wednesday, April 27

Thursday, April 28

POW ER TO THE PRESIDENT! A plan for more effective government 12:15–1:30 p.m. Institute of Politics Professor Will Howell will discuss his

José Orduña– “The Weight of Shadows”– M.E.Ch.A (Katie) 6 p.m.,International House Coulter Continued on page 6

6

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

Ask An Atheist Day, Pacifica Quartet Concert, and I-House Open Mic Among Other Events on This Week’s Calendar Continued from page 5

Lounge José Orduña will be discussing his memoir, The Weight of Shadows, about his experience becoming a U.S. citizen in a post-9/11 world.

Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry: Rachel Zucker– Poetry Foundation 7 p.m., Poetry Foundation, 61 West Superior Street Rachel Zucker, a poet best known for her 2009 collection, A Museum of Accidents, will present her thoughts on poetry. “A poem,” she wrote in the Huffington Post, “is never going to be a copy of the real world or a mirror—it’s always a translation of experience and another experi-

ence in and of itself.

The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt 4:30 p.m., Franke Institute, 1100 East 57th Street P r ofess or s at the D iv i n it y S cho ol question how to examine histor ical ev idence across mu ltiple academ ic fields from law and science to theology and historiography. This conference, featuring University of California Davis Professor of History Omnia El Shakry and American University i n Ca i ro P rofessor K ha led Fa hmy, explores this topic while examining more speci f ic ones such as psycho analysis in modern Eg y pt and ev idence in Islamic law.

Professor Investigates Black and Latino Student College Choices

BY ANNIE GUO NEWS STAFF

Micere Keels, a professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development, recently published a study that highlights a disparity between where black and Latino students choose to enroll and their chances of graduating from that college.

Beyond Enrollment Rates: The Gaping Disparity in Where Black, Latino, and White Students Enroll, which examines where black and Latino students in the freshman classes of 2013 and 2014 chose to enroll, suggests that there is a correlation between a college’s historical ability to graduate black and Latino students and the likelihood of current black and Latino college students to succeed.

Her study reports that only 10 percent of Latino freshmen enrolled in colleges where more than two-thirds of past Latino students had graduated. Similarly and even more drastically, only four percent of black freshmen enrolled in colleges that graduated more than twothirds of past black students.

Keels, the primary faculty investigator of the project, explained that she was interested in this topic because she found in her previous studies that there was little focus in black and Latino college students’ counseling process on evaluating schools based on individual familial and fi nancial circumstances. She noted that while college counselors heavily emphasized college applications and acceptances, students were not encouraged to

critically consider where to go to college.

In addition, she noticed a discrepancy between college enrollment and graduation rates for black and Latino students.

While college enrollment rates from 1996 to 2012 increased by 72 percent among blacks and 240 percent among Latinos, only 22 percent of blacks and 15 percent of Latinos held a college degree in 2014.

These discoveries made Keels wonder what hindered the success of black and Latino students in college.

The results of her research illuminate the inconsistency between black and Latino student graduation rates versus those of white college students. Her data suggests that the majority of black and Latino college students are less likely to graduate and more likely to drop out laden with student debt than white college students. The full report, which lists the graduation rate of blacks and Latinos of more than 1,800 schools is available online on her EdTalk website. Her EdTalk project is a compilation of reports and information from her various individual research studies released online so that it is more useful to the general public.

Reflecting on her research and its implications on the college counseling process, Keels said, “If we understand that college has a lot of financial and psychological costs, we should spend more time helping students get into the best institution that will meet their needs and where they will have as good a chance as possible to graduate, rather than just getting as many students to go anywhere.”

Corrections Due to an editing error the article titled “Executive Slate Candidates Launch Campaigns” in the April 19 issue of THE MAROON misreported College Council Chairperson Eric Holmberg’s position on the creation of a socially responsible investment committee. The purpose of such a committee in Holmberg’s platform would be to examine University investments in general and not, as this article initially stated, to push partial divestment from Israel.

The article titled “Insurance Firm Reconciles With UCMC” in the April 19 issue of THE MAROON reported incorrectly that David Blumenthal, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Land of Lincoln Health, declined to comment about how the resolution of the case would affect him.

The article titled “Drug May Help Fight Urothelial Cancer, Researchers Find” in the April 19 issue of THE MAROON misidentified the form of cancer University of Chicago Medical Center researchers hope the drug afatinib can treat in its headline and once in the article. It is urothelial cancer, not urethral cancer.

Feng Ye

The University of Chicago Political Union and College Republicans presented First-year Pat Mulkerin, sporting a “Make America Great Again” hat, represented the pro-Trump position

Mock Trial Team Earns Accolades at National Championship

BY RYAN FLEISHMAN MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

At the Mock Trial National Championship in Greenville, SC this weekend, one of UChicago’s two teams received an Honorable Mention and a witness received an All-American designation, the highest possible award for the category.

Chicago’s Mock Trial team has a prestigious history of attending the Nationa l Championsh ips, but th is year was the first time the University has sent two teams.

The Mock Trial B team was particularly successful, placing 11th in the 48 -team tournament and receiv ing an Honorable Mention for its winning record of nine wins, eight losses, and three ties. A n Honorable Mention is given to teams with a winning record at the National Championship, which numbers only 24 teams out of roughly

60 0 competing teams across the nation. Yale and the University of Virginia were the winner and the runner-up, respectively.

I n order t o reach the Nationa l Championship, teams had to place in the top eight of the Illinois Regional Tournament in February and in the top six of the Opening Round Championships (ORCS) in March. The UChicago A team went 8 – 0 – 0 in regionals and 5 –3 – 0 in ORCS, while the B team went 7–1– 0 in regionals and 7– 0 –1 in ORCS. Only one member of the B team is graduating this year. Members believe that returning to Nationals next year with nearly the same team line-up bodes well for their future success.

“Sending two teams really demonstrates the depth of our program, and shows that we have promising seasons ahead of us,” said first-year Jeremiah Milbauer, a member of the Mock Trial B team.

The Team Won One National Championship and Placed Second in Another Continued from front

ing to Chicago team captain Maximillian Schindler, DII provides inexperienced new players an arena in which they can compete against other developing teams. DI provides experienced teams with high-level competitions.

The Chicago A Team and B Team won ICT titles in DI and DII, respectively, on the weekend of April 9 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare. Two individuals, one in Team A and the other in Team B, also scored all-star titles in their respective divisions.

This year’s ICT title ends the longest title d rought in club histor y. “ The title drought was not something we particularly thought about as we played,” Schindler said. “ Nevertheless, there is always a pressure on us to win.”

The 2016 ACF Nationals took place

this past weekend at the University of Michigan. The four Chicago teams performed steadily in their respective groups and managed to stay in the top eight all the way through. The Chicago A Team was in the top two through every round and came in second in the final rankings.

T he ACF Nationals, which took place this past Sunday, is another renowned national collegiate quiz bowl tournament. Unlike the ICT, there are no division distinctions in the ACF Nationals. “ We knew we had a good chance, [but] Michigan was a very good team [and] we’d have our hands full trying to out-compete,” Schindler said with regards to their ICT win. “Fortunately, it paid off.”

7

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

VIEWPOINTS

Letter to the Editor: Students Call for Program Changes to Prevent Lowered Financial Aid for Resident Assistants For each of us, ou r hou s e s —Ta l b ot , M idway, and Breckinridge—played a significant role throughout college. We made our closest friends in our dorms, served on ou r House C ounci ls, and volunteered as House O -A ide s t o f ac i l it at e t he incoming first-years’ transition. It makes sense that we wa nted t o apply t o be Resident A ssistants ( R A s) this year: we value building strong communities and suppor t systems — communities and support systems that ou r f utu re residents could turn to.

As we talked to current and past R As and other applicants, we realized that becoming an R A negatively affects a student’s financial aid package. Conversations with the Office of Financial Aid confirmed our fear that as R As, each of our financ i a l a id g ra nt s wou ld be affected. Without our needbased grant aid, attending a university with a sticker price of over $60,000 is unthinkable.

According to the Off ice of Financial A id, becoming an R A eliminates the room a nd b o a r d ex p en s e , t hu s decreasing the cost of attendance. Because the cost of att end a nce de cl i nes, a student’s need-based grant de cl i nes dol la r for dol la r w ith the cost of housi ng : according to Financial Aid, your ability to pay does not de crease. For example, i f you receive $45,000 in need-

based a id and the cost of room and board is $15,000, your grant aid would be reduced to $30,0 0 0. You and your parents would pay the same amount—in this case about $2 0,0 0 0 — t o att end the College, rega rd less of your employment as an R A. In fact, one of us was told that not only would her grant decrease, but her expected family contr ibution would increase by $1,000. Another ca nd idate we i nter v iewed was in formed that his expected family contribution increase by $3,000, while a third was given an estimate of $3,500. In essence, these indiv iduals would be paying to work. Conversations with the Off ice of College Housing revealed that College Housing was aware of the situation candidates on need-based a id faced, but that they could not change the system. Some R As just have t o work for f ree — or pay for their employment.

Unequal pay of Resident Assistants presents a major f law in the housing system.

Aside from the inherent unfairness in requiring candidates of low-income and midd le - class backg rou nds to make financial and emot ion a l sacr i f ices t o bu i ld community, it reduces the d iversit y of R esident A ssistants. If this university truly believes in the diversity it continues to preach, it cannot limit its RA candidate pool to students above a certain income threshold,

Maggie Loughran, Editor-in-Chief Forrest Sill, Editor-in-Chief Annie Cantara, Managing Editor The MAROON Editorial Board consists of the Editors-in-Chief and editors of THE MAROON.

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disregarding lower-income students who are willing to forsake other commitments because they believe in the importance of the housing c om mu n it y. T he c u r r ent R A hiring process perpetuates and deepens the socioeconomic divide between high- and low- or middle-income students. W hile some R As receive approximately $15,000 for their work, their peers and co-workers receive no financial benefit for the same work. T h is d iscrep ancy is based entirely on a student ’s fami ly income — not on their performance on the job. This system, then, inherently punishes applicants from less advantaged backgrounds.

T he syst em a lso sign i f i c a nt ly d i s adv a nt a g e s l o w-i n c o m e s t ud e nt s b e cause those on financial aid can least afford to work for f ree. By ded icating 10 –2 0 hours per week to their R A job, these students cannot dedicate these same hours t o pay i ng jobs . T he Un iversity has addressed this problem, i n pa r t, th rough the Met c a l f pr og ra m a nd other stipends to students with substantive but unpaid summer internships. Career A d v a n c eme nt r e c o g n i z e s that lower-income students, un li ke thei r wea lthier peers, cannot afford to accept unpaid internships and are thus disadvantaged in thei r professional g row th.

T he Un iver s it y h a s a l s o launched programs like the

No Barriers Initiative that make it easier for students f rom lower-i ncome house holds to attend the College.

We find it hypocritical that Housing—which the College considers to be a gem of the UC h ic a g o u nder g r adu at e exper ience — does not echo these values.

According to the University, over 60 percent of students in the College receive f i na ncia l a id. T h is might explain why College Housing has seen a decl ine in R A applicants in the past few years, as students realize that they do not want to work for an office that will not advocate for them. A s College Housing moves towards building mega-dorms l i ke C a mpu s N or t h t h at requ i re more R A s, we do not understand how it can continue recruiting enough R A s when ma ny of these individuals remain uncomp en s at e d . T h i s ye a r, for example, Col lege Housing has only about 10 more candidates than are open positions, while previous years have boasted nearly double the cand idates relative to open spots. Of the remaining candidates, at least 10 are on need-based aid. For many, the decision to ultimately accept the R A position will be contingent on their financial aid package.

Reforming the system would benefit both candidates and C ol lege Housi ng, as they will see a larger candidate p o ol — a nd g r e at er d iver -

sity—in R As. We started a petition for other students who ag ree with us to sign that recommends that College Housing switch to a credit-based system, similar to how merit scholarships are applied to a student’s bill. R As will instead be billed for the full amount of housing but will be issued a cred it for the same amount on their bill each quarter. Alternatively, this can be thought of as an “ R A Merit Scholarship,” as it is applied to a student’s bill in the same fashion as merit aid. Because students are still being billed for the f u l l a mou nt of r o om a nd board, the cost of attendance remains the same. Thus, a student’s financial aid package and need-based grants are not affected. We recommend this system because College Housing already implements this on a smaller scale with Resident Masters’ Assistants (RM As) and Prog ram Coord inat ors ( PCs).

Interviews with students on financial aid holding R M A a nd P C positions con f i rm that their need-based grants were not affected and that their expected family contribution declined by the full stipend amount. We see no reason why College Housing would not implement this on a larger scale with Resident Assistants.

— Michelle Gan, Sara Maillacheruvu, and Casey Mulroy

8

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

Bigotry Isn’t a Right Religious Liberty Laws Misunderstand Constitutional Rights

Wei Yi Ow

Natalie Denby

Ink by the Barrel Recently, several states have considered measures that some allege would legalize discrimination against gay and transgender people. For instance, North Carolina passed a bill preventing cities from introducing anti-discrimination legislation based on gender identity. The bill also requires transgender people to use bathrooms which correspond to their birth-assigned sex and not the gender they identify with. A similar Mississippi law allows people to deny jobs and services to LGBTQ+ job applicants and customers.

Defending legislation this bigoted requires the use of convoluted rhetoric.

Proponents of these bills claim that, in addition to protecting the prejudices of business owners, the bills defend the liberty of the persecuted straight Christian majority.

Such a defense (ignoring the fact that polls show a majority of North Carolina’s citizens do not support legislation of this kind) supposes that we have a right to discriminate, so long as we say that we’re doing it for religious reasons. And because we’re doing it for religious reasons, legally protecting this discrimination isn’t simply acceptable—it’s doing a service for everybody’s freedom.

In this distorted vision of the world, the real victims of laws banning anti-discrimination legislation are the straight bigots who’ve suffered the indignity of not getting to discriminate against whomever

they like.

Such a worldview is built on a perverted understanding of liberty. Although it may seem ridiculous, this conception of liberty is becoming increasingly popular.

People legitimately believe that their First Amendment rights are being violated if they cannot force their religious beliefs on others. But interpreting freedom of religion as the license to do whatever you think God wants you to do is ludicrous and untenable, for obvious reasons. What if voters were to decide that refusing service to gay people doesn’t go far enough? What if people don’t want to allow gay people to live in their town at all? What if someone wants to deny service to people based on race for “religious” reasons?

These forms of discrimination would likely outrage many of the same people who support the North Carolina and Mississippi legislation, but the logic is essentially the same. If you can lawfully refuse service to an entire class of people for religious reasons, then you ought to be able to deny service to anybody if you claim your religion precludes you from it. Apparently, this is the only way to guarantee our freedom.

But religious liberty is not free rein to discriminate against whomever you want, so long as you’re quick to clarify that you’re doing it for spiritual reasons.

The First Amendment says that Congress can’t restrict your free exercise of reli-

gion—within reason. Reynolds v. United States, in which the Supreme Court ruled that religious duty doesn’t trump anti-bigamy laws, clearly sets limits on religious freedom; the Court’s opinion clearly states that religious convictions are subordinate to the law of the land.

You can’t sacrifice people, no matter what religious sect you belong to. You can’t have m aultiple wives. You can’t refuse to pay your personal income taxes because your god hates the IRS. Lawmakers don’t consider any of these limitations to be threats to religious liberty, yet many are quick to call anti-discrimination legislation an attack on spiritual freedom. But why is my religious liberty in mortal danger if I have to sell products to gay and straight people alike?

That’s hardly an imposition on my religious beliefs. I’m still free to be as homophobic and nasty as I like, after all. There are plenty of other venues through which I can express my religious beliefs, however discriminatory those beliefs may be. I simply can’t use my “liberty” as a thinly veiled excuse to steal someone else’s.

Religious freedom is being used as a permit to encroach on other rights by people who believe that freedom is the voting populace’s right to get what it wants. And if a substantial portion of the population wants to deny service to gay people, then as a free country we are apparently obliged to let them. But both voters and lawmakers have rallied behind insane and evil laws before. This fact shouldn’t be controversial; the voting majority at various points in history has supported slavery, Jim Crow laws, and limiting suffrage to white men. Would anyone today dare to

claim that allowing slavery or restricting the vote protected liberty—by giving voters what they wanted at the time?

But maybe it’s unreasonable to expect voters to understand what their rights are (and, crucially, what their rights aren’t). The American people are horribly uninformed: in 2012, a study found that a third of voting age citizens would fail the civics part of the citizenship test, and a 2011 national civics exam found that less than 50 percent of eighth graders could identify the purpose of the Bill of Rights and most couldn’t name a single Congressional power derived from the Constitution.

This is why state legislators can make the ludicrous assertion that people are being victimized by efforts to protect minority groups; too many people don’t know enough about the Constitution to understand what their specific rights and freedoms are. If you don’t understand the freedom you’re entitled to, how can you be expected to know that your elected officials are spitting in its face? As far as many lawmakers and voters are concerned, the majority has a right to enshrine its prejudices in law, as a matter of basic “religious liberty.” This laughable conception of freedom doesn’t sound any different from unbridled bigotry, and the precedent it sets is outrageous—the instant anyone can successfully argue that their spiritual beliefs override anti-discrimination legislation, no one’s freedom is safe.

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

Letter to the Editor: UCAN Endorses United Progress for Student Government, Esquivel for Undergrad Liaison to the Board of Trustees There are many changes that we, the UChicago Climate Action Network (UCAN), would like to see on our campus. We demand that UChicago be held accountable to the needs of people and the planet rather than the interests of big donors, and we call for increased transparency around financial and administrative decisions. More specifically, we believe that UChicago must follow the precedent set by such institutions as Yale, the University of California, and the Rockefeller Foundation, by divesting from fossil fuels rather than continuing to profit from environmental destruction.

Student Government elections provide a powerful opportunity to assess the needs of the UChicago community and elect students who represent our

values. We want to vote for candidates who share our people-and-planet-first vision, see the need for enhanced accountability and transparency, and have the experience to enact bold changes. After assessing the various campaigns, we have decided to endorse the United Progress for UChicago Executive Slate and Kenzo Esquivel for the Undergraduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees.

Simply stated, United Progress for UChicago promises to make our University a better place for students.

Their platform calls for the creation of a socially responsible investment committee to ensure that “while we are paying large sums of money for an invaluable education, we aren’t complicit in corporate investments that endanger lives and our climate.”

Furthermore, the three candidates on the slate have the experience—as leaders in student government, workers on campus, undergraduate and graduate students, and community organizers—to make their vision a reality.

In his campaign platform for Undergraduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees, Kenzo Esquivel is demanding powerful reforms to the way that UChicago’s governing body interacts with the students, faculty, and workers it oversees. He plans to publish updates on the Board’s recent activities, fight for a socially responsible investment committee, and allow for a variety of student groups, including our fossil fuel divestment campaign, to make their cases to trustees. Esquivel’s experience in Student Gov-

ernment as current Vice President for Student Affairs and former Community and Government Liaison proves his unmatched understanding of the needs of our student body and demonstrates his success at working with administrators.

We’re excited to see experienced campus leaders take on new positions in Student Government to realize our values through meaningful reforms. We believe that United Progress for UChicago and Kenzo Esquivel will amplify our voices — as students, as workers, as a community organizing group—to create a UChicago that hears and acts on our needs.

—UChicago Climate Action Network

9

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

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10

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

ARTS Criticism of Criticism: A Conversation with A.O. Scott

BY REBECCA JULIE ASSOCIATE ARTS EDITOR

When the venerable New York Times fi lm critic A.O. Scott released his subpar review of The Avengers in 2012, he was berated on Twitter for being a heartless critic, over-obsessed with intellectualizing the leisurely act of watching a movie.

On Saturday, when Scott walked into the Seminary Co-Op for a discussion on his new book, Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth, the standingroom-only audience held its breath. The attendees waited to be greeted by an unforgiving presence reminiscent of the frightening food critic Anton Ego from Pixar’s Ratatouille—a character featured in the conclusion of Scott’s book.

“Where’s the teleprompter? I can’t talk to you without it!” Scott joked upon taking his seat. The audience laughed a sigh of relief. Unlike Ego, Scott’s presence was calm and genial. His beard was slightly unkempt, and his eyes emitted friendly warmth. With Michael Phillips, the fi lm critic for The Chicago Tribune, Scott peppered his Sem Co-Op dialogue with jokes and humble self-deprecation—a far cry from Ego’s persona.

Although Scott admits that he greatly admires Ego’s love for food and perfection, Better Living Through Criticism seeks to dispel the notion that all critics are of the Pixar ilk. What began as a polemical text in the name of the integrity of criticism ultimately evolved into a manifesto-like

praise for critical thinking as the writing progressed, Scott explained. He told the audience how his famous Twitter battle in 2012 planted the seed for a work that would uphold the integrity of the newspaper critic, but he ultimately found himself grappling with far more philosophical questions concerning taste and opinion.

This approach inspired one of the centerpieces of the book’s argument, which is that we are all, in fact, critics. We all engage with art forms, have opinions, and are ready to defend them. The newspaper critic takes their own love of art and uses it as a way to engage in critical thinking, in the hopes that readers form their own opinions.

Both Scott and Phillips, who used to chat in this manner on their (now off-air) television show, “At the Movies,” acknowledged that many people see newspaper criticism as a dying genre of journalism.

In this age of “user-generated” content when print journalism is always the last on the scene, the newspaper critic is viewed as increasingly superfluous. However, both Scott and Phillips agreed that good criticism is starkly lacking in today’s age of over-zealous, under-informed bloggers and tweeters, though social media has allowed opinions on art to circulate much faster.

“Too much criticism is generalizations and bullshit,” Phillips said.

Yet Scott remains hopeful that consumers will come to realize the caveats of online reviews. If this new book is any indication, it seems that he has faith

Carmen Henning

New York Times fi lm critic A.O. Scott defended himself against detractors on Twitter at the Seminary Co-Op last Saturday.

in consumers’ ability to think critically about art again. Scott jokingly called it “a foolishly optimistic book” after an audience member remarked on the book’s hopeful tone.

But for Scott, the hope nonetheless remains, and in the book he actually uses Ratatouille’s Ego to support this. In the fi lm, the rat chef Remy and the critical Ego have a moment of intense understanding in the fi nale, in which Remy’s cooking transports Ego back to his happy childhood kitchen. Scott calls this a sort of “utopian dream…that the boundary between art and life—and therefore the uncomfortably aligned, sometimes an-

tagonistic roles of creator, consumer, and critic—…dissolves.”

According to Scott, if we can learn to open our minds and engage critically, we will understand what it means for each of us to be a critic, dissolving the barrier between artist and viewer, critic and reader.

“We are capable of thinking against our own prejudices, of balancing skepticism with open-mindedness, of sharpening our dulled and glutted senses and battling the intellectual inertia that surrounds us,” Scott writes in his book. “We need to put our remarkable minds to use and to pay our own experience the honor of taking it seriously.”

Assads’ Classical Guitar Concert at Mandel a Family Affair

BY HENRY BACHA MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

Drawing on traditions as disparate as the baião rhythm of northeastern Brazil and the Arabesque f lair of the Lebanese diaspora, Sérgio, Odair, and Clarice Assad reaffirmed their status as members of Brazil’s most musically innovative family by playing compositions spanning from Rio to Catalonia in Mandel Hall Sunday afternoon.

Although Sérgio Assad maintains close ties to the University of Chicago—his wife, Angela Olinto, chairs the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics—he and his brother Odair typically perform in Evanston. On Sunday, however, Sérgio and Odair, who were joined by Sérgio’s daughter Clarice near the end of their show, had no trouble adjusting to their new environs. The acoustics of Mandel provided a worthy setting for the crisp dexterity that characterizes their style of classical guitar playing.

The brothers began on stage with their respective guitars, playing renditions of two pieces from Isaac Albéniz’s suite Iberia. The arrangement drew on elements from the suite’s origin—a technically challenging piano composition—incorporating elements of the two-guitar arrangement introduced by Brazilian classical guitarist and composer Sergio Abreu in the 1970s. Swift and percussive, the Assad brothers alternated seamlessly between curt chord sequences and trembling melodies.

A f ter excu rsions into Debussy, among other composers, Sérgio and Odair presented the fusion of Chopin’s

Prelude No. 4 in E minor (Op. 28) with Insensatez, a 1960s bossa nova standard written by Brazilian legend Antônio Carlos Jobim. More than any other played on Sunday, this piece showcased the genius of the Assad brothers, who combined a classic Brazilian composition—based loosely on a chord progression by Chopin—with its imitation, Insensatez, to create a piece that honors old and new masters alike.

The performance also provided the audience with its first taste of Clarice Assad’s vocal talent. Her versatile voice adeptly handled Jobim’s melancholy lines—no small feat, considering that her accompaniment consisted of only two guitars, as opposed to the sweeping orchestral instrumentation that accompanied the original recording.

The three Assads continued their program with three more works from the Brazilian musical canon. Baião de Cinco, based on a rhythmic corruption of Pernambuco’s signature musical beat, featured Clarice and Odair trading vocal and guitar lead lines over the staccato shuffle of Sérgio’s rhythm guitar. Next, Sérgio and Odair temporarily left the stage and Clarice took to the piano to perform two suites of songs by two of Brazil’s most celebrated composers, Jobim and the Minas Gerais– born Milton Nascimento. The suite of Nascimento songs, including “Cravo E Canela” and “Ponta de Areia,” drew heavily from his mid-1970s repertoire.

Clarice Assad’s idiosyncratic vocal interpretations bore unmistakable resemblance to Nascimento’s own singing style, marked by heavy reliance on the upper register and evocative, impro-

University of Chicago Presents

Odair, Clarice, and Sérgio Assad performed a multifaceted, diverse program Sunday at Mandel Hall.

vised vocalizations. In addition, her thick and often dissonant piano sounds recalled the layered arrangements that characterized Nascimento’s music in the ’70s.

The highlight of Assad’s Jobim medley was her take on “Waters of March,” in which Jobim’s Portuguese lyrics were accompanied by Assad’s blocky piano arrangement.

The Assads concluded their concert with a performance of Clarice and Sérgio’s suite Back to Our Roots. Although the suite, somewhat drawn-out and lacking the crispness of the rest of the program, was perhaps a poor choice for

the finale, it did feature delightful contributions from Sérgio on the sazouky, which is a hybrid of the Greek bouzouki and the Turkish saz. Clarice referred to her father’s sazouky as a “peaceful instrument,” representing harmony between the often-fractious Greek and Turkish peoples.

The adjective “peaceful” could be easily applied to the entire concert; the Assads’ musical and interpretive abilities indeed blended serenely, allowing for the music of Nascimento and Jobim, the celebratory shuff le of the baião, and classical Impressionism to share the stage.

11

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

Sleepy Storytelling at CSO Stunts Tchaikovsky, Mahler

BY HANNAH EDGAR ARTS EDITOR

The Bard is back—and, until the end of the month, so is the beloved music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO).

After withdrawing from his mid-February residency due to a sudden injury and last-minute hip surgery, Riccardo Muti has returned to the helm of the CSO for his penultimate season residency, leading a batch of Shakespeare-centric performances as part of the city’s yearlong Shakespeare 400 Celebration. Last week’s festivities included Berlioz’s massive symphonie dramatique, Roméo et Juliette, with a concert version of Verdi’s Falstaff on tap for next week.

Friday’s program included two Shakespeare-inspired symphonic fantasies by Tchaikovsky: his underrated The Tempest and its more famous cousin, Romeo and Juliet. The pieces were a prelude to Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, which is a similarly overshadowed but precious gem in the composer’s symphonic output.

Tchaikovsky’s palindromic Tempest begins and ends with a churning invocation of the sea, signaled by soaring horns and flurried strings. The titular storm was truly fearsome upon the broad, sonorous shoulders of the CSO’s mighty brass, and under the fingers of the CSO’s caramel strings, one wondered anew why Miranda and Ferdinand’s love theme isn’t heard as often as Romeo and Juliet’s.

Romeo and Juliet was the program’s certain crowd-pleaser and didn’t disappoint in that respect. The famous love-theme was exquisitely shaped and the clashing inter-

ludes explosive. Muti’s disciplined direction did well to avoid soupy melodramatics, presenting a cohesive, compelling whole.

Mahler’s Fourth Symphony is also inspired by a text, albeit not one by Shakespeare: he drew inspiration from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, an anthology of German folk poems. The specific poem that birthed the Fourth, “Das himmlische Leben” (“The Heavenly Life”), depicts a child’s view of heaven; the symphony is structured around themes of life, death, and innocent bliss. The text of the poem appears in the fourth movement, performed by a soprano soloist.

The Fourth is often called Mahler’s sunniest and most “classical” symphony, and there were glimpses of lightness in the CSO’s interpretation. However, despite moments of great tenderness and sensitive dynamic contrast—as well as laudable solo contributions by former principal oboe Alex Klein and first-desk violinists Robert Chen and Stephanie Jeong—generally leaden tempi kept this interpretation disappointedly earth-bound.

The selection of Italian soprano Rosa Feola as the fourth-movement vocal soloist also proved mixed, and it raised questions about the importance of character in concert music like Mahler’s Fourth. Feola’s voice is dark-hued and rich, though the mezzo tendencies of her voice sometimes meant she was drowned out by the orchestra. While vocally secure, her smoky, almost sexy delivery seemed incongruous with the text’s awed, childlike depiction of heaven.

Interpretive incongruities weren’t limited to the evening’s soloist. Though Muti is a compelling interpreter of Berlioz, Scriabin,

Todd Rosenberg

Soprano Rosa Feola joins the CSO in the fi nal movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

and Respighi, and undoubtedly one of the greatest Verdians of our time, for this critic, his interpretations of late-century symphonic greats leave something to be desired.

I am more often puzzled than deeply moved by the maestro’s Tchaikovsky and Mahler, and indeed, at Friday’s concert, the tempi for swaths of the Tchaikovsky pieces were almost metronomic, with too little emphasis on the “fantasy” of these fantasy-overtures.

The pacing of Mahler’s Fourth also seemed off: from beginning to end, Muti favored a practice-tempo-steady reading, which translated into heaviness at some points and stiffness at others. Reining in one movement or section can yield fascinating interpretive insights, but to take a whole Mahler symphony at a universally

placid tempo—mercurial emotional shifts and all—deadens its impact.

Muti’s bulkier interpretation of the Fourth finds good company in those by acclaimed Mahlerians like Maazel and Klemperer, and these criticisms come from a listener in the Bernstein, Tilson Thomas, and Abbado camp. But, for this reviewer, Friday’s performance largely brought to mind a line from Richard II: “Keep time: how sour sweet music is,/ When time is broke and no proportion kept!”

Muti leads the CSO in performances of the Tchaikovsky and Mahler program through Sunday, April 24. $15 student tickets are also available for Verdi’s Falstaff on Tuesday, April 26. Non-student pricing and other information available online at cso.org.

Green Room: Bleed, Puke, Repeat

BY WALKER KING ARTS STAFF

As the legend goes, director William Friedkin realized that The Exorcist would be a hit when he saw an audience member run out of a screening, vomit, and immediately run back into the theater. Go to a hardcore punk show today (or an Iggy Pop show in the ’70s) and you’ll see performers bleed, puke, and destroy their bodies in order to give the audience a good time.

Combine the two and you get Green Room, a punk rock thriller from Jeremy Saulnier that transforms some of the grossest images you’ll see this year into an exhilarating achievement in exploitation.

Saulnier, himself a veteran of the ’90s punk scene, sets up a simple problem, but one that pays rich dividends over the course of the fi lm. The Ain’t Rights are a D.C. hardcore band that actively rejects popularity, forgoing a social media presence and telling a college radio DJ that its music should be hard for fans to find. (Unsurprisingly, its tour isn’t going too well). After making six bucks a person performing at a Mexican restaurant, the band plays a gig at a rural Oregon skinhead bar patronized by punks with swastika tattoos and decorated with white pride stickers and Confederate flags. But when one of the band members witnesses a gruesome murder after a set, the band gets detained by neo-Nazis in the titular green room. As the situation deteriorates, it becomes clear that the Ain’t Rights won’t get back to Washington without a fight.

The neo-Nazis and their icy, calculating leader (Patrick Stewart) don’t foresee any trouble in knocking off the band by staging an accident. They soon fi nd out, however, that the green room is just as much a fortress as it is a cell. Aided by the murdered girl’s shell-shocked friend (Im-

Broad Green Pictures

Patrick Stewart (center) leads an antagonistic group of neo-Nazi thugs in director Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room.

ogen Poots) and whatever skills they’ve picked up from their hard-living punk lifestyle, the members of the band have to punch, cut, and shoot their way back to their van.

Virtually every terrible thing that can happen to a human body does. The squickiest moments—involving a box-cutter and duct tape—come early on, but machetes, shotguns, and a pair of vicious attack dogs all get chances to draw copious amounts of blood each time the band sallies out of the green room.

Saulnier effectively uses the natural colors of his setting for atmosphere. The relatively safe green room is a warm incandescent yellow, while the black-lit and

ice-blue lighting of the bar area gives it an appropriate haunted-house vibe. The thick Oregon woods that surround the bar are lush, like an oasis just out of reach for both the band and the audience. Saulnier also keeps the framing tight and the focus narrow. When the camera is watching the band plan its next move, the viewer gets the impression that there’s always something important just out of the frame (which there usually is, to disastrous results).

Not everything in Green Room works quite as well. The film struggles with establishing its expansive cast of characters in a tight running time, and the same goes for communicating the Nazis’ constantly

shifting tactics. Poots and Stewart, both English, struggle with accents: Poots sometimes veers into an Appalachian drawl, and Stewart’s master-thespian voice never stops sounding out of place.

Still, these are minor complaints against a movie that nails both stomach-churning horror and get-up-and-applaud catharsis. By applying a hardcore punk formula to film, Green Room shows how something dark and violent can end up bringing you somewhere transcendent.

AAn interview with director Jeremy Saulnier is available on THE CHICAGO M AROON’s website.

12

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

TWIN CATALAN READINGS HIGHLIGHT BORDERS IN LANGUAGE, CULTURE

BY SARAH MANHARDT SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

The Catalan program celebrated Sant Jordi Day—a more patriotic Catalan equivalent of Valentine’s Day—with a discussion of literature and the art of translation at the Seminary Co-Op on Monday. The event was co-sponsored by the University’s Department of Romance Languages and Literature, the Joan Coromines Chair of Catalan Studies, and the Institut Ramon Llull. Mary Ann Newman discussed her translation of Josep Maria de Sagarra’s 1932 novel Private Life with Susan Harris, the editorial director of the international magazine Words Without Borders.

Catalan is one of the four official languages of Spain, along with Basque, Galician, and Spanish. It is spoken throughout Spain, with pockets of speakers in France, Andorra, and Italy.

While the use of Catalan was severely repressed during the regime of fascist dictator Francisco Franco, the language

survived and has experienced resurgence in recent years.

Alba Girons Masot, Catalan language coordinator and lecturer at the University, emphasized the importance and utility of the Catalan language, which is intertwined with Catalonian culture.

“I think it is interesting to learn Catalan because you discover a new literature and films and so many things; you have access to this culture universe, but at the same time in a very daily and practical way,” Girons Masot said.

The event then featured a reading from Private Life in both Catalan and English. The 15-minute reading illustrated the importance of translation, placing the rhythms of the two languages next to each other.

After the reading, Newman and Harris discussed Private Life as a scandalous “roman à clef.” Newman explained that the novel was considered a class betrayal at the time of its publication,

as Sagarra was a part of the decaying aristocracy he skewered.

Most of the conversation, however, focused on the art of translation. New-

“Languages like Catalan provide an important understanding of the diversity of languages in the world” man said that translators must rely on judgment to navigate between languages.

“There were a lot of places where I just tightened the style because of En-

glish,” she said. “I couldn’t put things in the same order as the Catalan, so I had to play with it.”

Newman also discussed the research she undertook for the translation, saying that some of the references from the 1930s were no longer clear and required investigation, and that additional context was needed for an English-reading audience.

Mario Santana, Catalan undergraduate adviser and associate professor of Spanish literature, said that languages like Catalan provide an important understanding of the diversity of languages in the world.

“Living in the world from the perspective of a language that is not shared by many people, I think it gives you a very different perspective on the world and learning how to negotiate linguistic differences. It’s one of the challenges in the present, and I think it’s going to continue to be one of the challenges in the future,” he said.

The Ideal Father: John Misty at the Riviera

BY BROOKE WHITE VIEWPOINTS COLUMNIST

A little over a year since the release of his album I Love You, Honeybear, singer-songwriter Father John Misty wooed Chicago audiences last week with two back-to-back performances at the Riviera Theatre. The tour, which has carried him and his two-man opening act Tess & Dave (who double as his vocalists and guitarists) across the U.S., has sold out in nearly every city, gaining more momentum after each performance.

Composed of yuppies, hipster millennials, and 30-something still-in-uniform construction workers, the Father John Misty die-hards are not what you’d expect. A little wild and a little melancholy, Thursday’s performance combined elements of excitement and calm, solidifying an energy that permeated the room.

When Misty walked on stage, dressed in all black, his sex appeal did not go unnoticed. Father John Misty—with his slender physique, shoulder-length hair, and tasteful beard—resembles a modern-day hipster Jesus. How could an artist be so sexy and confident, calm and collected, serious and subtle, lighthearted and airy, and put on such an impeccably smooth show? One minute, fans swayed in the audience and echoed “Fun Times in Babylon” lyrics back at him; the next, they jumped up and down, belting the lines to high-energy songs like “The Ideal Husband.” On Thursday night, Misty payed homage to Nine Inch Nails and put his own twist on “Closer,” but this unexpected cover didn’t dampen the show’s aura.

No matter where fans were—seated

James Richards IV

Buckle up your Birkenstocks: Last week at the Riviera, Father John Misty transported concertgoers to hipster heaven.

in the side balconies, an arm’s length from the stage, or back near the bar— most of them knew the words to every song. The early-2015 release date of I Love You, Honeybear had given them enough time to listen to the album repeatedly, and Misty even pulled through with popular tracks from his 2012 album Fear Fun. At the beginning of the per-

formance, Misty maintained a reserved and relaxed stage presence, but he ended the night by grabbing fans’ hands and crowdsurfi ng.

At 11 p.m., in awe of a near-perfect show, we asked ourselves, “Who really is Father John Misty?” Certainly, he’s the creation of Joshua Tillman, crafted over four long years: Misty is Tillman’s ge-

nius, the embodiment of artistic experimentation and creative exploration. During his stint with Fleet Foxes, he became bolder, drumming under the moniker J. Tillman. On Thursday night, however, he was Father John Misty, and that was no accident. Don’t let him deceive you: his character is intentional, his music a craft.

13

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

the Sketch A RTS , B RIEFLY .

Marijuanarama!

The subheading of “Marijuanarama” is “A Comedy Extrava-ganja,” which covers pretty much everything you need to know about the event. Hosted by the Eek! Theatre Company, which assures audiences that whatever it puts out will be “funny and fucked up,” the comedy spectacular features sketches, songs, and stand-up. Blaze it.

Saturday, April 23, Gorilla Tango (1919 North Milwaukee Avenue), 8 p.m.

Tickets are $12 and can be found at http://www.chicagoplays.com/component/show/showdetails/1006.html.

New Work Week Original plays written by UChicago students will continue to be featured as part of New Work Week until April 23. Grace McLeod’s Girls Drink For Free, Elisabeth Del Toro’s The Perfect Woman, and Cynthia Campos Costanzo’s The Exodus Summarized will be performed on Friday; Gwendolyn Wiegold’s Tower of Horn, Sophie Kennedy’s Untitled BA, and Joshua Sonny Harris’s 5 Dead Detectives will be performed on Saturday.

Thursday, April 21 to Saturday, April 23, Logan Center 501 and 701. $5 per performance, $10 NWW Festival Pass.

UChicago Sy mphony Orchestra performs Bloch and Dvorak For its penultimate concert of the

academic year, Barbara Schubert leads the UChicago Symphony Orchestra in Dvorák’s Symphony No. 7 as well as Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque. Second-year Andrew Molina, who won the 2016 UChicago Concerto Competition, is the featured soloist. A reception will follow.

Saturday, April 23, Mandel Hall, 8 p.m. Free; donations requested at the door: general $10, students $5.

MEChA de UChicago presents: Jimmy Santiago as the Baca Keynote Lecturer The second event of the Seminary Co-Op’s 2016 Latinx Heritage Series, titled “A rte Popular: Narratives of Change,” features Jimmy Santiago as the Baca Keynote Lecturer. Santiago will discuss his most recent book, A Place to Stand, a memoir about his experiences before and after spending time in a maximum-security prison. He will also discuss the meaning of Latinx identity, the issues faced by Chicanx communities, and the power of narratives to shape the future. Illiterate until his incarceration at the age of 21, Santiago, winner of the prestigious International Prize in 2001 for A Place to Stand, is now considered one of the finest contemporary poets in America.

Wednesday, April 27, Social Sciences 122, 6 – 8 p.m. ( lecture 6 – 6:45 p.m., Q&A 6:45 –7 p.m., dinner reception 7–8 p.m.) Free.

Kaitlyn Akin

Club Sueto Didn’t make it to Ultra? Missed out on Mad Decent Block Party tickets for the fifth year in a row? Senior Arts Editor Ellen Rodnianski and fellow fourthyear Dani Wieder have your back—their Uncommon Fund-ed project Club Sueto is turning Mansueto into a rave near you. Club Sueto will be DJ’d by fourthyear Jonah Rabb, and is already sold out. Thanks Ellen, we love you!

Friday, April 29, Mansueto Reading Room, 10:30 p.m., free with RSVP.

Chic ago Swing Da nc e S ociet y : Spring Swing with Nicole Kestler!

Swing by the Chicago Swing Dance Society’s weekly Java Jive next Saturday, featuring Chicago-based jazz singer Nicole Kestler and her quintet.

There will be an hour-long beginner East Coast swing lesson starting at 7:30 p.m., followed by open dancing to live music until 11 p.m. Free food from the Med will be served.

Saturday, April 30, Ida Noyes Hall, 7:30 –11 p.m. Free.

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14

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

Women’s Squad Looks to Defend UAA Crown TRACK & FIELD

BY MICHAEL PERRY SPORTS STAFF

The Maroons will look to defend their UA A title this weekend at conference championships in St. Louis.

The two-day meet will pit the South Siders against six conference rivals: Brandeis University, Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western University, Emory University, N YU, and Wash U. Expectations are sky high for the M a r o on s , fol low i ng t hei r s e c ondplace finish against tough, nationally ranked competition last weekend at the Wheaton Twilight Meet, and their first-place finish the weekend before at the Chicagoland Championships. “A f t er f i n ish i ng se c ond at the W heat on T w i l ight Meet th is past weekend, and first at the Chicagoland Championships the weekend prior, the women’s team is excited to compete at UA A [championships],� said first-

year sprinter Emma Koether, who was a member of the 4x40 0 -meter team that took first place at Wheaton with a time of 3:49.59. This relay time not only won, but also broke the UChicago record for the event.

Many Maroons are looking to defend thei r championsh ips i n thei r respective events this weekend, including the 4x800-meter team, which included second-year Cassidy McPherson, third-year Michelle Dobbs, and fourth-year Brianna Hickey—all returning runners.

With the field events, fourth-year N kemdilim Nwaokolo is looking to repeat her first-place performances in the shot put, hammer throw, and discus. Fellow fourth-year Nelly Trotter will defend her first-place performances in the high jump and triple jump as well.

T he squad used eight d i f ferent first-place finishes last weekend in

their 132-point performance, losing by just six points to Illinois Wesleyan University, which is ranked sixth best in the country. The competition will remain similar this weekend, as Wash U is the No. 8 –ranked team in the country. The Maroons are not scared, however. “ T here’s a lot of talent on this team,� Koether said. “ With only two [outdoor] meets under our belt, we have shown that we are ready and able to compete at a high level. Wash U will likely be our strongest competition, but the goal is to come out on top like the team was able to last spring.�

Meanwhile, the men’s team is coming off its own fifth-place finish in W heaton and fourth-place finish at Chicagoland, and will be looking to make an impact. Holding two firstand second-place finishes on the season, the squad is hoping to better its results from last year, when it finished

in third place. While the Maroons’ last two results haven’t been the most encouraging sign, there is good reason for optimism when looking at this group.

The team will be looking for strong performances from some of its main contributors on the season, such as third-year Temisan Osowa in the 600m and 200m, second-year Patrick LeFevre in the 600m hurdles, and fourthyear Ryan Manzuk in the 400m dash.

All three have been integral parts of the South Siders’ success this year, and will be key factors in the push for a UA A title. Fourth-year Michael Bennett will most likely compete in the pole vault, coming off of a second place finish at the Chicagoland Championships. If these key players, along with Chicago’s other stalwar t members, come up big this weekend, the Maroons might turn some heads.

The UA A Championships will start this Saturday at 9 a.m. in St. Louis.

University of Chicago Athletics Department

Fourth-year Rachael Jackson and second-year Aleksandra Majka compete in the hurdles.

University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra Barbara Schubert, Music Director and Conductor

Saturday, April 23 at 8 PM Mandel Hall, UChicago campus 1131 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637

Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo: Rhapsodie HÊbraïque 2016 UChicago Concerto Competition First Place Winner Andrew Molina, violoncello (2nd year in the College)

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15

THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - APRIL 22, 2016

SPORTS IN-QUOTES... “Whats everybody fake caring about today? Kobe? Trumph? Nba playoffs? Black chyna and rob? Let me know I wanna fake care too...”

-Football defensive tackle Darnell Docket, from a tweet on the current state of American pop culture

Maroons Improve to 6–1 at Home on the Season BASEBALL

BY GARY HUANG SPORTS STAFF

After a tough weekend in St. Louis, the Maroons rebounded to continue their home dominance by beating Calvin College to earn their sixth home win out of seven home games this season. With their victory, the Maroons improved to 12–10, while the Knights fell to 10–18.

A strong performance by six Chicago pitchers was the deciding factor in the win. In its 12 victories, the pitching staff has thrown for a combined ERA of 1.53.

First-year Ravi Bakhai started things off, hurling the first two innings with three hits, two walks and four strikeouts.

Third-year Thomas Prescott got the win with two innings pitched, one earned run, three hits and a strikeout. First-year Alex McGimpsey also went two innings with three hits, two walks and four strikeouts.

Three others pitched one inning each: first-year Isaac Johnston, second-year Chase Packard, and second-year Michael Davis.

On the offensive side, Chicago was able to get the bats swinging, delivering 15 hits in the game. Fourth-year third baseman Tim Sonnefeldt, fi rst-year outfielder Connor Hickey, and fi rst-year second baseman Max Brzostowski all had three hits apiece. However, runners left on base became an issue for both teams,

as a total of 27 stranded runners were recorded, with nine coming from bases-loaded scenarios.

The South Siders will look to continue the home field advantage they’ve developed throughout the season in a matchup with Beloit College this Saturday, before traveling to Rockford University on Sunday. Playing two doubleheaders in two days will result in many tired bodies, and the entire depth of the roster will surely be counted on.

“Four games in a weekend is always going to be a tough demand on time and energy,” fi rst-year pitcher Miles Grogger said. “Provided we get all the games in and there are no rainouts, this will be the fi rst time this season that the team has had to do it. However, we have proven that our physicality and cohesiveness as a team are certainly there, and I feel that this weekend will be successful no matter what.”

The Beloit Buccaneers currently stand at a record of 17–7 for the season. Over the past weekend, the Bucs split a fourgame series at St. Norbert College, winning both games on Saturday before losing the Sunday doubleheader. Each game was decided by one or two runs, including a walk-off 9–8 win for Beloit in the 11th inning on Saturday. The Maroon pitchers will have to be extra careful in hitting the strike zone, as Beloit has drawn more

University of Chicago Athletics Department

Second-year Matt Slodzinski bats against Illinois Institute of Technology last season.

walks than strikeouts this season (139 to 124). They will also have to compete with a strong Buccaneer pitching staff who own a combined 3.53 ERA with three shutouts. In the two teams’ last meeting in 2014, Beloit was able to walk away with a convincing 13–1 win.

Rockford University won its last three games this week to return to .500 on the season. Owning a record of 14–14, the Regents will seek their fourth consecutive

win at Concordia Chicago before hosting the Maroons. Offensively, the South Siders will try to take advantage of an opposing pitching rotation who possess a combined 4.44 ERA. This Saturday, the Chicago baseball team will host a doubleheader at J. Kyle Anderson Field against Beloit College at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. The next day, the squad will travel to Rockford to take on Rockford University at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.

No. 5 South Siders Have Sights Set on UAA Championships

Chicago Treks to Florida in Search of Conference Title

MEN’S TENNIS

WOMEN’S TENNIS

BY ALEC MILLER SPORTS STAFF

The regular season has come to a close, and now is when the real fun begins. The No. 5 Maroons traveled down to Almonte Springs, FL on Wednesday for the UA A Tournament in hopes of claiming the conference title.

T he S outh Siders had a stellar regular season, finishing it off with a 15 –3 record. Their regular season performance landed them the No. 2 seed for the UA A Tournament, to face off against No. 7 Rochester in their first match.

The squad built momentum for the weekend, sweeping Rochester 9 – 0 in the UA A quarterfinals on Thursday morning. This win did not come as a surprise for the Maroons. Second-year David Liu said the team was expecting this fast start before Thursday’s match. “ We’re very confident going into tomorrow. We’ve earned the two seed in the tournament and as a result we play Rochester, who are lower ranked and should give us confidence going into the rest of the tournament,” Liu said on Wednesday.

However, winning the first match is not the ultimate goal for the Maroons this weekend. Chicago has its eyes on the UA A title. This will not be easy, as the Maroons are not the only ranked team in the competitive UA A bracket.

Teams like No. 13 Wash U, No. 6 Case Western, and No. 1 Emory are all try-

ing to claim the title for themselves.

Chicago will play Wash U on Friday morning in the semifinals.

Emory comes into the weekend as the defending champs and they are looking to repeat this year. According to Liu, Emory and Wash U, Chicago’s next match, will be the stiffest competition in the tournament. “Emory and Wash U have historically been our toughest matchups in the tournament. Earlier this year, Emory beat us, so hopefully we will get to play them in the final and show them how much we’ve improved as the season has gone on,” Liu said. The Maroons are not just setting their sights on the top-ranked Emory. They recognize they have to beat a tough opponent in Wash U to gain entrance to the final. “Of course we need to get there first, so we are not overlooking any of the matches before the final. Every team we play is tough and we’ll need to play our best every day,” Liu said.

W h i le t he NC A A DI I I Tou r n ament is a lso lo om i ng, the M a ro ons a re fo cused on the goa l i n f r ont of them. “ UA A s is a huge dea l for us.

We ’ v e ne v e r wo n t he t ou r n a me nt i n scho ol h ist or y a nd we made it a goa l th is season t o br i ng it home,” L iu sa id.

Chicago will play Wash U Friday morning at 9 a.m. If the Maroons win, they will face the winner of the Emory vs. Carnegie Mellon match in the finals on Saturday.

BY EMMETT ROSENBAUM ASSOCIATE SPORTS EDITOR

This weekend, the No. 16 –ranked Maroons will travel south to Florida t o compete i n the UA A Championships. With an initial quar ter f inal match scheduled for F riday against the No. 2 0 – r a n ked Case We st er n Reserve Spartans, the Maroons will look to play their way to a conference title.

The other teams in the tournament are Rochester, Carnegie Mellon, Wash U, Brandeis, N Y U, and Emory. While No. 1 Emory will provide the biggest challenge of any potential opponent, this Chicago squad comes in with a formidable roster of its own.

This season has been a strong one for the Maroons, as they will enter the eight-team tournament boasting a 9 – 4 record. However, they will be up against fierce competition, facing the best teams that the UA A has to offer. Case Western provides an instant example, as it handed the Maroons a harrowing 5 – 4 loss in their f inal match of the regular season. Chicago will be looking to strike back on Friday.

“I guess revenge is one way of putting it,” fourth-year Stephanie L ee said of facing the Spartans for the second straight match. “ We’re definitely looking to take it to Case and have been working a lot on being mentally tough on big points. It’ll be a big first

match for us and I think all our hard work will help us come out on top,” she said.

As the postseason gets under way, the pressure will begin to ratchet up as the stakes of each game get higher and higher. Given that most of its games during the season were fairly lopsided, the team spent the week in practice preparing for this big stage.

“We’ve been doing a lot of match play,” Lee said. “ In particular, match play with a lot of pressure points.”

The team will be looking to better its performance from last year, when it was bounced in the second round by the formidable Emory, then dropped the third-place match to Wash U to register a fourth place finish. However, this squad is ready to rewrite last yea r ’s h ist or y. A rmed w ith a better record than last year’s 13 –12 and fresh faces (the team carries six first-years), this group will draw on its experiences from the season to help achieve its goals. “ It rea l ly comes dow n t o those pr e s su r e moment s a nd m a i nt a i ning focus,” L ee said, speaking as a wise fourth-year. “ We’ve had a lot of matches swing one way or another based on just a few points. Capitalizing on those big points is going to be key for us, especially going into this Case match.”

Friday’s match is scheduled to take place at 7 a.m. on Friday, April 22 in Altamonte Springs, FL.