Chicagomaroon050517

MAY 5, 2017

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

VOL. 128, ISSUE 44

Major Activities Board Announces 2017 Summer Breeze Lineup Concert Will Feature Tinashe, D.R.A.M., and Sam Gellaitry

BY EMILY KRAMER NEWS EDITOR

Courtesy of the Obama Foundation

The planned design for the Presidential Center’s main building, an 180-foot-tall museum.

Obama Unveils Design for Center

BY JAMIE EHRLICH AND YAO XEN TAN SENIOR NEWS EDITOR AND NEWS WRITER

On Wednesday, former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama joined members of the South Side community and local politicians for an unveiling of the design for the Obama Presidential Center.

“I wanted to be an architect when I was a kid,” Obama joked as he spoke at the South Shore Cultural Center, where he and Michelle Obama held their wedding reception. “Somehow, I took a wrong turn and ended up in politics instead.”

The designs revealed a campus of three buildings, including a museum, a forum, and a li-

brary. Rising 180 feet high with splayed walls as its exterior, the museum will highlight the campus and hold exhibition spaces, public spaces, offices, and meeting rooms. Obama also intends to open up the top floor of the museum to the public, so that “kids can have access to the view, and see for themselves the beauty of Jackson Park and the neighborhood.”

Adjacent to the museum will be the forum and library, each a single-story structure with a rooftop terrace. The forum will house the Obama Foundation offices as well as an auditorium, restaurant, and public garden.

The library will be the first presidential library to fully digitize a president’s unclassified records.

The Foundation is still exploring

Yao Xen

Architect Dina Griffin, former president Barack Obama, and Obama Foundation vice-president for civic engagement Michael Strautmanis at the unveiling.

how the library can meet community needs, including the possibility of establishing a branch of the Chicago Public Library on site.

The buildings will surround a public plaza, forming a campus that integrates seamlessly with the landscape of Jackson Park while being stationed a short walk away from the Museum of Science and Industry.

“The design for the Obama Presidential Center promises to bring a beautiful new addition to Jackson Park and the South Side community,” President Zimmer said in a statement released by the Obama Foundation. “The Center will benefit the entire Chicago region as a catalyst for economic development, cultural enrichment and community programming.”

Among other local politicians, in attendance at the event were Fifth Ward alderman Leslie Hairston, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and—as the president joked—the University of Chicago Hospital OB/GYN who delivered his daughters.

“President Obama never lost touch with his home, Chicago.

And Chicago never lost touch with President Obama,” Emanuel said in his introduction.

“The best things that have happened to me in my life, hap-

‘A Special Problem’ On Page 4, the University’s troubled history with sexual assault, harrassment, and campus safety, continued from Tuesday’s issue.

Student Government Elections will close today at 4:30 p.m.

Vote online at blueprint.uchicago.edu For more information on the candidates, visit us online at chicagomaroon.com

Continued on page 2

Down in Suburbia

Senior Spotlight: Britta Nordstrom

Page 5

Advertising in THE M AROON

Page 8

The suburban rings rippling out from our cities cannot be reconciled with a participatory community.

“Each year, I have defi nitely gotten better at different aspects of my game, and the coaches have been so supportive in every aspect.”

Grey City: ‘A Special Problem’

RBIM’s Collective Conscious

Page 3

Page 7 Despite the many distinct pieces, there was never a sense of scattered focus.

Behind the University’s façade of towering gothic architecture and academic prestige lies a dark, deeply-rooted history.

The Major Activities Board ( M AB) announced the lineup for its annual Summer Breeze concert this evening on Bartlett quad. The concert will feature Shelley Marshaun Massenbu rg- Sm ith ( D. R . A . M .), T inashe Jorgenson K achingwe (Tinashe), and Sam Gellaitry on May 20 in Hutchinson Courtyard.

D.R . A .M., an acronym for Does Real Ass Music, is a rapper, singer, and song wr iter born in Germany and raised in Hampton, Virg inia. He is best known for his songs “Broccoli” with Lil Yachty (2016), “Cash Machine” (2016), “Cute” (2016), and “Cha Cha” (2015).

T inashe is a singer and songwriter whose music blends hip-hop, R&B, and pop. She is also a record producer, actress, dancer, and former model originally from Lexington.

Tinashe is best known for her

songs “2 On” (2014), “Superlove” (2016), “A ll Hands on Deck ” (2 014), and “ Player ” (2015).

Gellaitry is a 20-year-old DJ and producer from Stirling, Scotland, who creates futuristic electronic music. After leaving school at 16 to pursue music, Gellaitry released Short Stories, his first EP, in 2015 at 18, followed by his Escapism EP that same year.

Tickets will be available for $25 on May 6 from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m., and current students will be able to purchase a maximum of two tickets per UCID. Non-UC h ic a g o st udent s may attend the event if a ticket is purchased on their behalf by a University student. In the case of rain, the event will move to Mandel Hall for those holding the first 800 tickets.

The remaining tickets will be refunded. Doors to the concert will open at 5:30 p.m., and the show will begin at 6 p.m.

If you want to place an ad in T HE M AROON, please email ads@chicagomaroon.com or visit chicagomaroon.com/pages/advertise

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 2017

2

THE CHICAGO MAROON - MAY 5, 2017

Obama Visits South Shore Cultural Center to Discuss Library Continued from front

pened in this community,” Obama said.

“Although we had a formal bidding process to determine where the presidential library was going to be, the fact of the matter was it had to be right here on the South Side of Chicago.”

The first look at the conceptual plans of the Obama Presidential Center comes at a time of increasing tension between the community and the Foundation. Community leaders from surrounding neighborhoods are concerned over gentrification effects, and have been pushing for a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) that would legally bind the Foundation to resolving potential community displacement by providing free after-school programs for Chicago Public Schools students and developing black-owned, neighborhood-owned and locally-owned businesses, among other initiatives.

In his hour-long talk, Obama did not mention the potential for a CBA. He says the plans for the Center are not final, and the Obama Foundation will continue taking input from the community.

“Ultimately this is your center, not just mine.”

In his speech, Obama preemptively addressed the concerns of the community by highlighting the benefits he hopes it will feel after the center’s construction is complete.

The Foundation estimates that the Obama Presidential Center will bring, in addition to temporary construction jobs, 200 permanent jobs within the center, 2,000 in the surrounding neighborhood, and 5,000 in the greater economic area.

“We want this to be a living center in which the community itself feels as if, on an ongoing basis, they can bring their children, participate in activities, listen to concerts, look at lectures, learn how to work a computer, learn how to make a movie, learn how to record music that speaks to the issues of today, learn how to organize.

That constant living process of building bridges in communities between people, that is what is going to make this thing come alive and make it special.”

Obama proceeded to outline several ideas the Obama Foundation has envisioned in partnership with the community, such as inviting community artists, filmmakers, and musicians to host workshops, setting up barbecue grills, potentially building an underground parking garage on the Midway Plaisance, stationing food trucks serving tacos in Jackson Park, and having paddle boats in the lagoons.

“I don’t want [the center] to be something kids get dragged to for a field trip, going ‘I have to write an essay about the center,’ then leave,” Obama said.

Obama said that he didn’t want to wait four years for the construction to be complete to see change, and announced a personal donation of $2 million two million dollars to summer jobs programs on the South Side, which will help train employees so they can be hired upon the Center’s completion.

“The Center will strengthen the economic climate of the community by bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors to the South Side every year, creating new jobs and opportunities on the South Side, and revitalizing historic Jackson Park,” stated the Foundation in a statement released to the media. “It is a good thing to have people coming here,” Obama said to community leaders, citing economic and safety improvements that resulted when areas like the South Loop similarly experienced an increase in visitors during the ’70s.

The former president also addressed the concern community leaders have with the necessary closure of Cornell Drive in order to make room for the Center.

“I don’t want everybody to get so fixated on the traffic—which is solvable— that we lose sight of what is possible,” Obama said, citing traffic studies that revealed the road closure adding a maximum of one to three minutes of transit time. “You can’t have little kids playing right next to the road. You can’t have sledding into the road.”

The Obama Presidential Center is scheduled to be finished in Jackson Park within the next four years. Community programming through the Center will begin over the summer.

New Astrophysics Courses Coming Next Fall

BY TYRONE LOMAX NEWS WRITER

Four new astrophysics courses will be offered beginning next fall. The courses include Observational Techniques in Astrophysics, Cosmological Physics, Radiation Processes in Astrophysics, and Physics of Galaxies.

The astrophysics major has not yet been approved. Faculty representatives will hold a vote on May 16 to determine whether the program will be offered. If the vote passes, students will be able to declare once the major is published in the next College Catalog, which will come out next February. In the interim, interested students will be able to take any of the new available courses, all of which will count toward the major upon its approval.

If the vote does not pass, the astronomy and astrophysics department has until next February to address any concerns brought up during the upcoming vote.

The astrophysics major will offer an A.B. and S.B., consisting of 15 and 18 courses respectively. For both certifications, seven courses are to be taken in astrophysics, with additional credits from physics or chemistry, math, computer science, and statistics courses. Electives are also included in the total number of courses.

According to Julia Brazas, the academic affairs administrator of the astronomy and astrophysics department, the major will not have an introduction sequence. Instead, there will be a spring quarter introductory course available to students in either the physics or chem-

istry introductory sequences. The astrophysics introductory course will not be available until the 2018 –19 academic year.

“What we’re trying to do is make sure that students who come out at the end of this, they can code, they can analyze and evaluate data, they can do research, and they have mastery of the fundamental science concepts they need to be in a good position vis-á-vis their graduate school applications for astro or other STEM fields,” Brazas said.

A new course will also be offered next fall for students in the astronomy and astrophysics minor. The course, Philosophical Problems and Cosmology, can be counted as an elective for any student who has completed a physical sciences introductory sequence. It will also be cross-listed with the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine (HIPS) program.

The three-course specialization in astrophysics program, currently available to physics majors, will be unaffected if the astrophysics major is approved. The specialization program will remain so long as there is sufficient demand, Brazas said. “ We ’r e ju st r e a l ly exc it e d i n the department that this day has come,” Brazas said. “[I]t’s just like a new…day for us and it’s very exciting. I guess for astronomers, you should say a new night but, it’s a new moment in our history,” she joked.

On May 16 at 5:30 p.m., an astrophysics major information session will be held in the Hubble Lounge of the Eckhardt Research Center (ERC 501).

Cook County CFO to Serve as University’s Vice President, CFO

BY STEPHANIE PALAZZOLO ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR

The current chief financial officer of Cook County, Ivan Samstein, will serve as the University’s new vice president and chief financial officer starting June 26.

“Ivan will work to ensure that ongoing analysis, discipline, and appropriate organization best support and serve the ambitious academic mission and priorities of the University,” President Robert J. Zimmer said to UChicago News. “He will work closely with the provost and me, as well as with deans, officers and the board of trustees.”

During his five years as the county’s chief financial officer, Samstein’s responsibilities included managing a $5 billion all funds budget, $3.5 billion debt portfolio, and the investment of cash balances ex-

ceeding $400 million, as well as overseeing a 250-person staff and implementing different projects across the county.

Before this position, he served in the Army National Guard and worked as an investment banker at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch and as an assistant vice president and analyst at Moody’s Investors Service. Samstein plans to bring his experience in finance to his position at the University.

“The University of Chicago is not only one of the world’s leading academic institutions, but is also an anchor for the greater Chicago economy and has an active commitment to that role. That is one of the things that attracted me to this position,” Samstein said to UChicago News. “I look forward to taking on this exciting new challenge and continuing to build out the University’s financial administrative function.”

UNIVERSITY AVE. APARTMENTS

Above, architect Dina Griffin and president Obama present plans for the library. Photo by Yao Xen. Below, a model of the library, as it will stand on the eastern edge of Jackson Park.

Courtesy of the Obama Foundation.

5124-26 S. UNIVERSITY 5 BEDROOM, 3 BATH “2,500 SQ FT” $2,300 p/mo 4 BEDROOM, 2 BATH W/ BALCONY “1,900 SQ FT” $2500 p/mo 3 BEDROOM, 2 BATH $2200 p/mo AVAILABLE JUNE 16th or Sept. 1st Modern appliances; laundry in unit 5422-24 S. UNIVERSITY LAST UNIT - GREAT LOCATION, GREAT PRICE! 5 BEDROOM/2 BATH - 3,000 SQ FT STEPS TO CAMPUS, JUNE 16TH Only $2,700 per month Contact Betsy at betnewton@msn.com Call/text 312.391.7203

3

THE CHICAGO MAROON - MAY 5, 2017

‘A Special Problem’: The University of Chicago’s Troubled History with Sexual Assault, Harassment, and Campus Safety

BY JAMIE EHRLICH, EMILY FEIGENBAUM, AND SARAH ZIMMERMAN Continued from Tuesday’s issue. Find it around campus, or on chicagomaroon.com

Information on particular incidents would be spread only by “word of mouth,” according to Burns.

Shortly after THE M AROON covered this abduction, the administration sent what was perceived to be a confidential memo to housing staff, informing them of the incident. There was no word on whether or not the RAs and RHs should share that information with students or not.

The administration eventually apologized for its handling of the case, but students pushed for reforms to the way that the University informs the student body on incidents of crime.

Assistant Dean of Students Martina Munsters defended the University’s silence on the incident, saying that they didn’t inform the campus for “security reasons, to keep things as quiet as possible, so as to not hinder the investigation, [and] the student, herself, wanted to keep this incident as quiet as possible.”

Yet, as other students pointed out, it was possible to send out the information in a depersonalized way, without compromising the identity of the survivor.

“The University, by not warning the community in at least general terms that a horrendously violent sexual crime was perpetrated a mere two blocks from the library, is ignoring the general welfare of its members,” wrote fi rst-year graduate student at the time Ellen Foley in a M AROON Letter to the Editor.

Harp, Burns, and the rest of the Womyn’s Union held a candlelight vigil in sympathy with the survivor on February 18. The event, which was well-attended by the campus community, was intended in part to protest in favor of University compliance with the Clery Act, pushing administrators to come up with official procedures for crime notification.

Ten days later, the University instituted the student-faculty Crime Notification Task Force, which was responsible for making recommendations to the University on what crimes to report on, how, and to whom.

The task force called for a formal system to distinguish what crimes call for an immediate security alert. If and when alerts are sent out, they should detail the location and nature of the incident and the relationship of the victim to the accused.

Additionally, alerts should be spread through campus-wide bulletins as a way of spreading the information publicly.

“Our concern was not neighborhood crime, but [that] when something happens we should know about it so we can have the choice whether we want to change our behavior in any way,” Harp said. “Providing information was essential so we could then utilize it to make choices for ourselves. It was just another tool for a human living in this space that [they] could choose to utilize or not.”

Jamie Ehrlich

The University van service and the creation of a standardized security alert system only responded to one narrative of sexual assault. University administrators often did not address the reality of sexual harassment and assault on-campus. According to the 1994 A Woman’s Guide to the U of C, an administrative guidebook for students on women’s issues, “stranger rape,” was the only type of assault accounted for in the University’s crime statistics. Even when speaking of the 1990 abduction, Munsters attempted to comfort the community saying that the incident was the only reported sexual assault of the academic year, “not including date rape and acquaintance rape.”

But as alumni point out, it was these latter two categories women had to worry about the most.

“It was a very male atmosphere at the time,” the ’95 alumna said. “We were a population of smart, motivated women, so we managed to get through it, but I can’t say it was an experience that was good for a 17- or 18-year-old woman to go through…. And then [the] University was very male-oriented as well, just in thinking and in lack of protections.”

Two widely publicized sexual assaults prompted swift campus backlash in 1997, with students pushing for more widespread security protections. In early December, 1996, a 22-year-old prospective law student was assaulted at the 59th Street Metra station. The assailant held a gun to her back and pushed her onto the train tracks where he then proceeded to assault her.

Weeks later, in mid-January, a student was abducted and assaulted in broad daylight at the corner of 56th Street and Woodlawn Avenue. A security alert was sent via e-mail to the campus.

Between 1992 and 1997, the University significantly increased support sys-

tems for survivors of sexual assault. In June 1992, the Class of 1992 voted to use its senior class gift to create the Sexual Violence Prevention Resource Center (SVPRC), a resource connected to the Student Counseling Center that provided information about preventative measures as well as resources for survivors.

In 1996, the University responded to pressure from the Action for a Student Assault Policy (ASAP) and created the Sexual Assault Dean-On-Call Program, a group composed of four female administrators who could respond to cases of sexual assault.

After the two assaults that winter, students wanted more comprehensive sexual violence prevention measures. On February 6, 1997, Student Government allotted $2,000 to subsidize women’s self-defense classes, a program that would eventually be taken over and funded by the University administration.

Students also created a volunteer escort service that ran between Woodward Court, the Reynolds Club, and Regenstein, Crerar, and Harper libraries. Students who felt unsafe could use the service and wait for an escort volunteer to walk them home from the library. The program was in part conceived as a replacement for the 1992 umbrella service, which had to end because it became too popular.

“The umbrella service was such a success that it impeded the police from doing their other duties because they were always taking people back and forth,” Munsters said.

The higher demand from students for more University protections only perpetuated the narrative that the most common type of sexual assault was “stranger rape” and that the University’s position on the South Side of Chicago could mean higher risk of sexual assault.

At least that’s the message Megan

Haag-Fisk (A.B. ’00) received when she entered the College. In 1995, she was handed a rape whistle. In the orientation meetings, she remembers that she was taught “how to not get raped” and was told where not to walk on campus. After spending her first year in Burton-Judson Hall, Haag-Fisk recalled that students and administrators would especially caution women against going past the Midway and into the South Side.

“It was sort of like ‘be careful. Be extra careful. You’re crossing over the Midway.

You have a little bit of an extra step to be careful of.’”

But the University’s concerted push to be more transparent about the dangers of sexual assault had unintended consequences for the survivors themselves. In Haag-Fisk’s third year, after returning from studying abroad in Barcelona, she was waiting for a friend outside a show in a neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. After her friend’s car broke down on his way to meet her, Haag-Fisk was left waiting on the North Side for her ride back to campus. A man offered to buy her a drink at a nearby bar.

“I had a drink, and that was the last thing I remember. And I woke up the next morning in an apartment of someone I didn’t know with a man I didn’t know in the bed with me.”

Haag-Fisk immediately left the apartment and found the closest phone to call a friend to pick her up and was driven soon thereafter to the University of Chicago hospital, where they performed a rape kit examination.

“I talked to the police, and the city police were fi ne, they were actually really good. The campus police are who I had a real problem with. They did nothing but victim-blame. And then in talking to the administration, they did nothing but victim-blame.”

Haag-Fisk recalls the Chicago police force being supportive and helpful—they drove around the neighborhood where she was approached and looked at security footage. The Chicago police were able to identify the man who assaulted her and knew he was a predator.

Her experience with campus police was starkly different. She remembers officers asking her “Why would you ever accept a drink from a stranger?” and “What were you doing there alone?” One officer told her that rape was not uncommon for women coming back from being abroad; they became too trusting.

“Coming back [from study abroad] and having this experience was one thing, but then them saying, ‘you need to forget everything you learned in your experience abroad,’ was just very strange.”

A couple of days after her assault, Haag-Fisk remembers standing in the Reynolds Club when she first saw the security alert. In the 1990s, before the age Continued on page 4

4

THE CHICAGO MAROON - MAY 5, 2017

“The language was pure victim-blaming.”

Continued from page 3 of the e-mail, security alerts were posted around campus on fliers.

“The language was pure victim-blaming. ‘Student accepted a drink from a stranger’—I mean, it was just bizarre for me to see that. That was sort of the trigger for me.”

T HE M AROON sat down with Eric M. Heath, associate vice president of safety and security, to discuss the intricacies of crime reporting, UCPD procedure, and compliance with the Clery Act. Security alerts are typically sent out when a crime is deemed a “continuing threat” to the community, meaning that the crime may happen again and the University has a responsibility to warn its students. In most crimes that warrant a security alert, police are still actively investigating the incident, and the victim does not know the suspect.

The University is not legally obliged to report crimes external to Clery geography, but, as Heath noted, 75 percent of security alerts emailed to the University community occur outside of Clery boundaries.

“For most Clery crimes, if we do believe there’s a community threat, we’re going to send [a security alert] out. For the other[s], we need to [default] to our guidelines for off-campus incidents, and there’s a very narrow set of parameters where we would send those out. Even if it meets a parameter thing, at times if we don’t feel there is a community threat we won’t send it,” Heath explained.

Heath provided examples for which locations in and around campus would qualify as Clery geography. Residence halls are campus property, and the Arts Incubator is a non-campus property that is controlled by the University for educational purposes, so these buildings constitute Clery geography. The privately-owned Robie House, the fraternity houses that line the perimeter of campus, and student-occupied apartment buildings along 57th Street do not qualify as Clery geography, and thus crimes that occur at these locations are not federally required to be reported in security alerts.

Heath explained that such examples of sexual assault that would require a security alert have not been reported to the Department of Safety and Security (DSS) since he returned to the University in 2015.

Over 50 security alerts have been issued since 2015—only one archived on the DSS’s website alerts the community to a sexual assault.

“If we get a report, multiple reports, or even just one report of a suspect date rape, we’d most likely send it out. We just haven’t had those reports, that I can remember in 2016. It doesn’t mean that they didn’t happen, it just means I didn’t get it via [the Campus Security Authority reporting mechanisms], and we didn’t get it via the police department. Could we have those and a security alert be issued? Absolutely. If we don’t know who the suspect is, could we send out a security alert? Absolutely. If we have multiple sexual assaults reported from one specific location, there’s a very good possibility we may send that out,” Heath said.

When cases of sexual assault that occur on Clery geography are reported, the Department of Education requires the University to analyze the reports on a case-by-case basis in order to determine if a community threat exists.

In an interview with T HE M AROON, Deputy Title IX Director Shae Wolf added that there is only one scenario in which Title IX and Clery interact—when a crime is committed on Clery territory and the crime is reported to either the University or the UCPD. Under Title IX, safety and

security personnel are mandatory reporters, meaning that if they hear of incidences of sexual misconduct in Clery territory, they are required under Title IX to report it to the University. The same goes for the personnel within the Title IX office, who are required to report the crime through Campus Security Authority reporting processes.

Heath noted that the nature of reports of sexual assaults is uniquely complicated, as the victim is statistically likely to know the identity of the offender and is not likely to report the sexual assault to the police department. When reports are fi led, Heath added, the DSS must cautiously evaluate whether it constitutes a continuing threat to the community. “[The known identity of the suspect]

enforcement has failed.”

“I think the University of Chicago has definitely improved significantly what they have done over the past several years, and I think you’re seeing better reporting because of it.”

But would more security alerts help the University improve its reporting of sexual assault? Heath seems to think that there is no clear solution.

“We get complaints both ways. We either send too much or we don’t send enough. There’s no perfect medium,” Heath explained.

Survivors and activists don’t see eye to eye on the issue, either. In 2012, Michele Beaulieux, the student who was raped in her dorm room, inadvertently reported the assault she endured 33 years after

Members of the University of Chicago campus community light candles at a vigil in solidarity with victims of rape and assault on campus in 1992 (left). University of Chicago students at a campus rally organized by the Womyn’s Union in 1992 (right).

Photos from Maroon archives; illustration by Amelia Frank. creates a lot of different nuances to evaluating whether or not there’s a community threat, and there’s no perfect answer,” Heath said. “We just have to evaluate [the reports] individually and make a determination on whether or not we think the entire campus community can be affected by that particular individual.”

“We take in a lot of considerations, whether it’s victim confidentiality, it’s the wishes of the victim of [the incident] being public, what we know about the individual or the suspect at the time, because that’s the difference in a lot of these cases,” Heath said.

Heath acknowledged that though the ways in which the University has handled cases of sexual assault have evolved over the years, there is still room for growth.

“You ask me, ‘Where do we need to improve?’ I think we just have to consistently train. I think this has to be an annual, if not daily thing, that we’re teaching our officers and training our officers around the misperceptions around these types of crimes and how to respond compassionately to these types of issues. I think, over the course of 25 years, that’s really where law

the fact when exploring disciplinary options. There is no statute of limitations for reporting a crime to the police or to the University or for filing a disciplinary complaint at the University of Chicago.

The annual Clery sexual assault statistics released by the University contain the crimes reported in a year, not necessarily the ones that actually occurred that year. Considering Beaulieux’s assault in 1979 occurred on Clery geography, it was included as one of the five assaults reported in 2012.

Official University recognition of Beaulieux’s assault was validating for her, but it also shows the need for clarity about the Clery Act sexual assault statistics.

“The numbers reported and [what] actually happened are different,” she said.

Beaulieux also expressed concern that increasing security alerts focused around sexual assault could promote a singular narrative of sexual assault.

“It would probably end up focusing more on stranger rape,” she said. “There are other things that I would want to focus on more. The problem is that the rapes being reported are not typical rapes. Alerts

perpetuate the notion that I’ll be safe if I keep my keys between my fingers when I go out.”

Others argue that reporting more cases of sexual assault in security alerts could inform the student body of their startling frequency on campus. Sexual assault advocacy group Phoenix Survivors Alliance (PSA), met with Provost Daniel Diermeier to discuss concerns with the University’s handling of sexual assault.

Fatima Eldigair, a first-year in the College and member of PSA, asked the provost why security alerts generally do not report sexual assault, saying that it serves as a safety measure for members of the campus community.

“Beyond the preventative potential of security alerts, it raises conversation regarding the reality of sexual assault on campus, and forces UChicago to take ownership over sexual violence that occurs against their students,” Eldigair wrote to T HE M AROON following the meeting.

In Eldigair’s recollection of Diermeier’s response, the provost both contended that security alerts did not fall under his purview and stressed that the nature of campus-wide security alerts pertinent to sexual assault was “complicated.” The circulation of these reports, Diermeier surmised, could potentially desensitize individuals to the issue of sexual assault.

“I found this to be highly ironic because the University sends us e-mails regarding strings of petty theft and robberies frequently. UChicago creates this racialized narrative that Black Southside assailants constitute a threat rather than student predators. They perpetrate the idea that sexual assault is not a prolific epidemic on our campus through willfully choosing to not publicize incidents of it,” Eldigair wrote.

Though the Title IX office informed her that campus-wide security alerts about sexual assault could violate the survivor’s privacy, Eldigair refuted this concern. Not only does the UCPD publish these reports on their crime log, Eldigair argued, but it is also possible to craft an e-mail without revealing specific information about the victim or the crime.

“If UChicago cared about the well-being of its students, they would inform us about sex crimes the same way they do with robberies. As I see it, the University is compliant in propagating sexual violence through not alerting us.”

Though the University has made significant strides in its methodical approach to handling reports of sexual assault, the dark shadow of its past missteps looms.

Each survivor’s story is unique, but there seems to be an overarching pattern of normalizing on-campus sexual assault. For too long, the reality of sexual assault on campus has been obfuscated as the University ascribed an internal problem to the non-campus community.

This case study of the University’s history of insensitivity and mishandlings in its approach to assault is likely a microcosm of a far-reaching problem that extends to other universities throughout the nation, particularly those also located in low-income and traditionally segregated cities.

Students and administrators should recognize that behind the University’s façade of towering gothic architecture and academic prestige lies a dark, deeply-rooted history of stigmatization and maltreatment of sexual assault and harassment survivors. Whether it means sending out more security alerts that report sexual assault or not, it is time to turn the lens inward.

5

THE CHICAGO MAROON - MAY 5, 2017

VIEWPOINTS Down in Suburbia Those Who Live in Commuter Suburbs Are Often Engaging With the Wrong Community

Natalie Denby On the face of it, commuter suburbs are a panacea for the ills of urban life. Professionals can find city jobs, enjoy easy access to a city’s culture, and network with millions of urban dwellers—while also getting the big house on a spacious lot in a quiet neighborhood, which might have better public schools and lower crime rates. You can have your cake and eat it too. This is a lifestyle that millions have opted into.

Consider New York; the city proper, with 8.4 million people, is only 42 percent of the metropolitan area, with 20 million people. Likewise, Chicago is only 29 percent of its metro area, with 2.7 million in the city out of nearly 9.5 million people in the metro area. San Francisco is by far the most egregious. Only around 18 percent of the 4.7 million in the metropolitan area live in the city, which has a measly population of 850,000.

This popular arrangement is bad for us all. The suburban rings rippling out from our cities cannot be reconciled with a participatory community. Commuter suburbs make for bad citizens and worse neighbors.

The reason can be gleaned from that little suburbanite lie, which annoys actual city dwellers to no end. Recall the many times you’ve met someone who claimed to be from Chicago. Recall how often a follow-up or off-hand remark quickly revealed that said “Chicagoan” is not from Chicago at all, but rather

from the suburbs. People who claim Chicago as their home without actually having a home in the city aren’t lying to mess with your head.

(Except for people from Indianapolis who claim to be “from here,” and it takes everything in your power not to suffer a spontaneous aneurysm.) They’re not even saying it out of the fear you won’t recognize their humble village—though odds are, you won’t.

The reason suburbanites call themselves Chicagoans without batting an eye is that they really believe they are—and why shouldn’t they? Chicago is obviously the center of gravity in the region, and the satellite suburbs in its orbit often lack some quintessential features of a real community. You may like your town and consider it home, but nevertheless have a sense that the civic fabric holding the entire thing together is somehow impaired.

Anyone from a commuter suburb understands intuitively the sense of dislocation you experience.

If you’re from a Chicago suburb, you likely know a great deal about Chicago politics. At the very least, you can identify the mayor of Chicago and you have some rudimentary sense of the problems plaguing the city. But you probably don’t know the mayor of your town. That’s assuming you can even identify the structure of your local government.

Plenty of suburbs have local political parties. Good luck finding someone who can name them, much less

someone who can remember which one they voted for. The Chicagoland area is teeming with people who have strong opinions about elections they can’t vote in but who couldn’t care less about the local races actually on their ballot.

That’s the real problem with commuter suburbs. We often have no desire to be a local citizen in the only place where we can be, and no power to be an active participant in the place we’d want.

This runs hand-in-hand with a related trend in the U.S. civic scene: we form our associations based on ideological affinity and not geographic proximity. In doing so, we neglect other facets of civic life.

You’re supposed to be a neighbor in your hometown. In commuter suburbs, that title is nothing more than a descriptive label for the guy in the house next to yours. Maybe you can name the people living next door. But you might not know anyone else on your block. In the stereotypical small town, that would

be pretty shocking. But it may very well be the norm in the commuter suburb, where getting to know the people around you is anathema.

And the people who take the next step and join community organizations? They’re the “crazies.” They’re those cliché parents in the PTA who want to ban video games and have yet to recover from the discovery that their teenager swears.

When people don’t consider their hometowns to be worth their time, there’s no real appetite for community engagement. But while community involvement is “off-limits” to most, other forms of involvement abound in commuter suburbs. People join national political groups. They march. They form interest clubs.

But that doesn’t make up for the community deficit. The associations preferred by suburbanites are almost never based on location.

Instead, they’re based on shared values. We seek out organizations that reflect our ideals; consequent-

ly, we spend our free time associating almost exclusively with people who reflect those values too.

That might be quixotic if it weren’t for the fact that it leaves us more deeply entrenched in our ideologies and unmoored from our hometowns. We may prefer to spend our spare time with those like ourselves, and we may find community engagement to be maddening, but we can’t have communities when no one is willing to participate. We certainly can’t keep our civic fabric intact when people’s knowledge of their suburbs barely extends beyond town names. For the millions of Americans who are mere observers in “their” cities and virtual strangers in their hometowns, civic involvement is too often abdicated, when it doesn’t have to be. That’s a dangerous trend.

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

Katie Hill

Adam Thorp, Editor-in-Chief Hannah Edgar, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Euirim Choi, Managing Editor Stephanie Liu, Managing Editor

The Misogyny Factor Bill O’Reilly’s Dismissal Points to Larger Problems of Sexism Within Journalism

The MAROON Editorial Board consists of the Editors-in-Chief and editors of THE MAROON.

NEWS

GREY CITY

Emily Kramer, editor Sonia Schlesinger, editor Katie Akin, editor Lee Harris, deputy editor Eugenia Ko, deputy editor Deepti Sailappan, deputy editor Jamie Ehrlich, senior editor Emily Feigenbaum, senior editor Pete Grieve, senior editor

Wendy Lee, editor

VIEWPOINTS

Cole Martin, editor Sarah Zimmerman, editor ARTS

Alexia Bacigalupi, editor MJ Chen, editor Grace Hauck, senior editor SPORTS

Rhea Bhojwani, editor Emmett Rosenbaum, deputy editor DESIGN

Kay Yang, head designer COPY

Sophie Downes, copy chief Morganne Ramsey, copy chief Michelle Zhao, copy chief Katrina Lee, deputy copy chief Patrick Lou, deputy copy chief THIS ISSUE

Design Associates: Henry Gao, Kristen Izquierdo Copy: Mohammed Bashier, Whitney Halperin, Katie Kahal, Marco Laghi, Tanvi Lakhtakia, Sarah Pan, Kuba Sokolowski

SOCIAL MEDIA

Jamie Ehrlich, editor ONLINE

Vishal Talasani, editor

Annie Geng

PHOTO

Zoe Kaiser, editor VIDEO

Kenny Talbott La Vega, editor Grace Hauck, editor BUSINESS

Andrew Mamo, chief financial officer Olive Lopez, director of development Antonia Salisbury, director of marketing Ross Piper, director of marketing Taylor Bachelis, director of operations Alex Markowitz, director of strategy Regina Filomeno, business manager Harry Backlund, distributor Editor-in-Chief E-mail: Editor@ChicagoMaroon.com Newsroom Phone: (773) 702-1403 Business Phone: (773) 702-9555 Fax: (773) 702-3032 For advertising inquiries, please contact Ads@ChicagoMaroon.com or (773) 702-9555.

Circulation: 5,500. © 2017 THE CHICAGO MAROON Ida Noyes Hall / 1212 East 59th Street / Chicago, IL 60637

Earlier this month, an investigation by The New York Times brought to light a nefarious side of the already controversial, yet highly popular journalist Bill O’Reilly.

The report reveals him as a predatory figure who volunteered mentorship in order to coerce women into sex. The startling accounts of sexual harassment in the report, as well as the subsequent drop in O’Reilly’s corporate sponsorship, prompted Fox News to dismiss the veteran commentator.

The facts that have arisen through the Times’ investigation are too heinous to ignore. $13 mil-

lion was spent on settlements to dissuade O’Reilly’s accusers from pursuing legal measures. Even worse, the earliest settlement dates as early as 2002, indicating that O’Reilly has been denigrating and preying on women for over a decade.

Hearing this impacted me more personally than I’d like to admit. The O’Reilly Factor has been a staple in my household, a function of my family’s political conservatism. In a time when the media, as they perceived it to be, was far too saturated by liberal sentiments, my parents looked up

to O’Reilly as a bold figurehead for conservatism— a hero of sorts.

Their reverence for O’Reilly taught me not to conflate political beliefs with moral character, helping me reconcile my love for my parents and my vehement disagreement with their ideological leanings.

But, no matter your personal beliefs, it’s clear that Fox’s decision to dismiss O’Reilly is long overdue.

The women who have spoken out against O’Reilly clearly affirm a sexist culture at Fox—and this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this. Just 10 months ago, former CEO Roger E. Ailes was similarly ousted after allegations of sexual harassment. Collectively, the accusations that have come forth paint a picture of a toxic environment in which women are constantly devalued, and expected to commodify their physical attributes in order

6

THE CHICAGO MAROON - MAY 5, 2017

“Sexism in journalism is not a singularly conservative or liberal concern—it’s everyone’s concern.” to rise through the professional ranks.

This theme of gender inequity is not just within Fox News, but journalism as a whole. Research from the Women’s Media Center in 2015 found that female anchors and reporters only comprise 36 percent of on-camera appearances.

Moreover, male correspondents and reporters largely outnumber their female counterparts. Even in print journalism, men still have more bylines attributed to them than women across the 20-most circulated and read newspapers in the nation. Ironically, The New York Times, which broke the O’Reilly scandal, has the biggest gender gap in bylines.

Understanding the inherent inequity in journalism amplifies the necessity

to oust O’Reilly. And the fact that the decision was most likely commercially, and not morally, motivated, doesn’t diminish that this is a step toward change. Getting rid of someone who has actively propagated sexism at a major news network for over a decade is a decisive move in the right direction. The decision is not a perfect one—it is belated, and will by no means fully eradicate sexism at Fox, but it is a hopeful beginning.

A fter O’ Reilly ’s dismissal, CEO Rupert Murdoch released a statement saying that Fox wants to emphasize its “consistent commitment to fostering a work environment built on the values of trust and respect.” If Fox at all cares about these “values,” then the next

step it must take is to develop a firm stance against sexism in its workplace.

Already, Fox has condoned at least two sexual predators in their workplace for decades—the Times article even adds that current and former Fox employees have feared raising complaints to network executives, or the human resources department, for fear of backlash.

It is probable that Fox isn’t the only newsroom where women feel this way.

Women deserve a workspace in which they feel safe. By giving women the same respect as their male counterparts, news networks and publications alike can show that they actually respect and value women.

Moreover, this isn’t a partisan issue.

Sexism in journalism is not a singularly

conservative or liberal concern—it’s everyone’s concern. Right-and-left leaning publications will produce better content by providing women with more opportunities to excel.

If Fox chooses to continue along the path of change it claims to, it will not only impact the women who work for it, but female journalists as a whole. The path towardsgender equality, in journalism and beyond, can seem difficult, almost Sisyphean, but every small step in favor of women matters.

Annie Geng is a first-year in the College.

ARTS

Abstract Takes Form in RBIM’s Collective Conscious

BY IVAN OST ARTS STAFF

On most Wednesdays for the past six weeks, second-year Khephren Chambers has rushed over to Ratner’s bright, mirrored dance rooms. He wears loose dance gear, puts on a pair of worn tap shoes, and presses his earbuds deep into his ears. He has to.

At more than six-feet-tall, each step, jump, and turn sends his long limbs into dramatic motion. Loose earbuds wouldn’t last long.

His tap piece, set to James Brown’s exuberant I Feel Good, was a colorful conclusion to Rhythmic Bodies in Motion’s (RBIM) Friday and Saturday night showcase, Collective Conscious, in Mandel Hall. Members of the student dance group choreographed all of the 14 pieces in the show, allowing individual styles to shine through a dazzling array of style, color, and movement. The pieces aimed to tackle abstract topics, from the redemptive power of escaping an alcoholic spiral to the emotional drain of late-stage capitalism. Lost among the audience in the big, dark hall, I was thoroughly captivated by the glow of the stage and the subtle shifts in color washing over dancers made foreign and unsettlingly beautiful in their wandering journeys.

Fourth-year Alexandra Berthiaume’s choreography for “Mind Over Matter” stranded the lead dancer (fourth-year Luna Shen), arresting in a brilliant red dress, in a sea of supporting dancers made uniformly alien by bright white costumes. Set to Max Richter’s subtle and eerie reworking of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, the piece suggested isolation and loss in an unfriendly, sterile world. I found myself empathizing strongly with the woman in red—her confusion, as stranger in a strange land, became ours too.

Yet the showcase also captured joy: second-year Dasha Beniash’s “Horovod,” a take on traditional Slavic circle dance, united dancers on stage in a huge, spinning circle that came apart and effortlessly reknit. The dancers moved freely together, as if part of a joyous festival. A soothing performance after Berthiaume’s haunting creation, Beniash’s piece was a reminder of the collective nature of humanity, that under the warm light we don’t always feel quite so lost.

And sometimes, we feel very not lost around other people. Third-year Lorenzo Guio and fourth-year Yvette McGivern’s “Modern Bachata” explored a connection that was more than friendly in a sly, slinky number steeped in sexual tension. It was unlike any other piece that night, tight and lithe,

where “Horovod” was sweeping but orderly, and “Mind Over Matter” drifted between flowing and sharply angular.

Despite the many distinct pieces, there was never a sense of scattered focus; instead, the showcase felt carefully assembled, the kind of thing that a good collage can capture. It was a celebration of the efforts and creativity of the talented student choreographers. The show was captivating and beautiful, diverse and exciting. It wasn’t perfect, of course, with overly-ambitious moves that were a stretch for many beginning dancers.

But it was successful as a sequence of different approaches that combined into a greater whole.

And to be clear: there really was a lot of labor. Chambers has been working on his piece (and another which he co-choreographed with third-year Alex Dworakowski) since the beginning of winter quarter.

He spent nearly 16 weeks perfecting each click of metal heel on hard floor, practicing until all of his eight dancers could make every move with a grin on their face. It was a long, slow process. Then, when he finally performed at the show, his piece ran for twoand-a-half-minutes total. But those grins never faded. At the end of the show, Chambers said he did, in fact, feel good.

Olivia Shao Bottom: Fourth-year Luna Shen dances amidst supporting dancers in fourth-year Alexandra Berthiaume’s choreography for “Mind Over Matter.”

7

THE CHICAGO MAROON - MAY 5, 2017

Beyond Aesthetic: Art that Wills Change

BY BROOKE NAGLER ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Art rarely exists in a vacuum. It responds to and shapes the political and social context in which it was created. Last weekend, seven artists from around the world gathered in the Logan Center for the Arts to address a weighty question: “What is an Artistic Practice of Human Rights?” Through a multi-day summit that explored issues such as U.S. criminal policies, the refugee crisis, and the hypocrisy of governments, the artists not only formed a community among themselves, but constructed a discourse with the audience.

The summit was proposed two years ago

by Mark Bradley, a Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor in the history department and the faculty director of the Pozen Center. A collaboration between the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, and the Logan Center, the summit featured artists whose work exposes national and international neglect of human rights.

The artists work through a variety of mediums, including film, performance art, architecture, and activism. Such diversity was important to the coordinators, who wanted to invite mid-career professional artists working on “the edge” of what can be considered art. “[We hoped] to air away from anyone feeling like a keynote speaker,” explained Leigh Fagin, assistant director of collaborative pro-

gramming at the Logan Center.

Cinematographer Carlos Javier Ortiz screened two of his films, We All We Got and A Thousand Midnights, on Saturday. The former is an award-winning piece depicting the profound sense of communal loss caused by gun violence in the United States and the latter racial tensions facing the black community in the South. Ortiz chose to shoot both in black and white to remove any jarring elements that might interrupt the narrative, like a pool of blood whose “color was too distracting” in the background. His works resonated powerfully in a city where gun violence regularly draws media attention.

“People are lazy,” lamented Ortiz regarding the response of community members to civic issues. “[They] are sleepwalking a bit.”

Zachary Cahill, one of the coordinators of the event and the curator for the Gray Center, echoed Ortiz’s frustrations, but also sees ways art can offer solutions.

“There is a kind of numbing effect that can start to take place. Maybe one of the things that artists can do is take away that anesthetic,” he said, “[to] make some of these stories and issues of human rights much more real and visceral, and get people to connect to other people.”

One artist who certainly generated a call to action was Laurie Jo Reynolds, professor at the School of Art and Art History at the

University of Illinois at Chicago. Reynolds creates what she terms “legislative art,” centered on policy and social practice. Her presentation was unconventional, yet conveyed an all-too-familiar message.

The stage was set to resemble a courtroom, with a podium surrounded by a half-circle of chairs. People would stand before the podium and give personal testimonials about how the sex offender registry had impacted their lives.

The speakers included both sex offenders and sexual assault survivors—often the same person. The mother of a child with a learning disability spoke about her child’s difficulty understanding the guidelines he had to follow as a sex offender, and many adults described constantly having to move in order to maintain the required distance from facilities designated for children.

It is difficult to describe the power of Reynolds’s piece. As speakers shared testimonials and policy analysts explained the problems with the sex offender registry system, the captivated silence from the audience indicated the intense emotional impact of the presentation. Although it was an act, Reynolds’s work conveyed disturbing realism; art was not just reflecting, but also enacting, life.

Perhaps this shock of realism is the force needed to initiate the social change intended through the work. This is not to say that the artists had to forgo aesthetic appeal in order

to captivate the audience, or that aestheticism itself cannot be potent, but aestheticism alone might not combat the public’s impassive reaction to human rights violations. “[I look for ways to] transform effect into political effectiveness,” explained Cuban artist Tania Bruguera.

Bruguera even addressed the criticism she often receives about her work not being visually pleasing.

“The biggest orgasmic pleasure I had was when I fought the Cuban government,” she countered.

Yet some of the artists argue that even the organization of this public is constantly threatened by the state implementations of authority.

Sandi Hilal, who works with her partner Alessandro Petti to create architectural designs for experimental educational programs in Palestinian refugee camps, communicated the destabilizing effects and “condition of permanent temporariness” created by refugee camps. Yet the sociopolitical chaos created by the camps is not the only battle with which these architects contend; the refugees who use the facilities are often wary of their effect as well. By making permanent a temporary situation, “we are the first enemies of the refugees.”

Read the rest of the article on www.chicagomaroon.com

Ayiti Mon Amour Brings Magic and Mystery to Latino Film Festival

BY KENNETH TALBOTT LA VEGA VIDEO EDITOR

The first thing I noticed from Haitian drama Ayiti Mon Amour was the softness and coolness with which the film carries itself. Unlike many small-budget directors who fear inadequacy, director Guetty Felin never makes visible efforts to meet lofty or expensive standards of visual storytelling or artistic refinement. Shots from moving vehicles are kept intact, even at moments when the camera shakes enough that you can feel the separate elements of the equipment rattling through the image. Felin, conscious of the limits of her filmmaking potential, does not seek hyperrealism or minimalism in her film either. There is no abundance of dollies, cranes, and Steadicams for Haitian

filmmakers, nor is there a steady supply of internationally trained actors. Yet she also understands where her vision has unique potential for success, and how that success can be achieved with her available resources.

Ultimately, Ayiti Mon Amour functions best as an exploration of identity, a work that tries to resolve the many external factors—racial, economic, environmental—that challenge and complicate the filmmakers’ understandings of their lived experiences as “Haitian.” The film strikes a chord with a particularly common Latin American sentiment—a simultaneous distaste and yearning for the homeland. One of the lead characters, Orphée (Joakim Cohen), discusses his vacillating wishes to go back to France or the United States. In a parallel storyline, an author poetically personifies Haiti as a

beautiful and caring woman, but also as something a little more.

The thematic narrative of the film goes hand in hand with the story’s elements of magical realism. Mermaids, divine powers, and other mystical developments engage with and give more substance to themes of nature, family, tradition, and community.

Even the way some scenes begin, with an uncertain sense of viewer subjectivity, has an intriguing otherworldliness to it. Are the characters talking to other characters, to themselves, to “us,” or to something else, something less definable?

I can’t pretend, after one viewing, to understand exactly how all of the separate components in Ayiti Mon Amour come together to make a narrative whole. There is simple way of providing a plot summary. This is not due

to a lack of coherence or storytelling ability, although Felin certainly has some room for growth in both areas. Instead, the film’s slippery, transitory nature can be attributed to the fact that Felin and her fellow filmmakers are not “telling a story” so much as recounting a set of shared experiences that will inevitably be read and understood as a story.

Felin invests a great deal of cultural energy into her film, not just in what she shows— gorgeous sea and land footage of the Haitian coast, crowds celebrating or marching on streets against the backdrop of dilapidated but colorfully vibrant urban landscapes—but also how and why she shows it. While this approach can make for a more challenging viewing experience the final product still possesses an equally grand and rewarding impact on all its viewers.

Scenes from Mexican History Come Together in La Habitación

BY IVAN OST ARTS STAFF

Presented as part of Chicago’s 33rd Latino Film Festival, La Habitación was the result of a joint effort between eight of Mexico’s premier contemporary directors of an elaborate story spanning eight critical periods in Mexican history.

It’s strange, then, that some of that emphasis on location was quite literally lost in translation. The English title is “Tales of Mexico.” But La Habitación means something more like “room,” or “habitat”—words loaded with a sense of place and a geographic weight. “Tales of Mexico” is a bland, soulless cop-out—everything the movie isn’t.

This is apparent from the first scene. Ángela (the remarkable Irene Jacobs), the proud young mistress of a colonial Mexican home, stands alone in a bright, clean bathroom. In the corner, a mirrored cabinet seems to move of its own accord. We watch in apprehension as she inches towards it, finally mustering the courage to throw it open.

Inside sits a man as startled to see her as she is him. We watch her think: “do I turn him in?” In this first sympathetic moment, she

Each of the stories in La Habitación indecides: no. She tells him: “Just turn around.

Don’t watch me undress.” And then she clos- volves these complicated arrangements of love, violence, and humanity, and each of es the cabinet and bathes as normal.

We wonder why – this stranger has done them is set in the same old building. The title nothing to earn her sympathy. Ángela is a “La Habitación” evolves with the trajectory of confusing character, aloof and expensive- the movie to reflect the major developments ly dressed, but genuinely interested as to at different moments in Mexican history. why her indigenous servant, Guadalupe, is During the 1910 Mexican Revolution, lamps dressed so nicely. As the two women are are shot out by opposition forces; walls crack talking, Ángela’s husband Alfredo (Mauricio and crumble in the earthquake of 1985; most García Lozano) stomps into the room and or- damning, in the modern era it is home to ders her to speed up – they have places to be, groups of armed boys no older than ten.

It is in this same setting, which begins as a president to meet, and he is fed up waiting.

“And don’t let these nasty indigenous see you decadent but grows ever more claustrophobic and decayed, that we see the expression of undressed. It’s improper.”

The lovers take advantage of the rich terrible violence. A Chinese grandmother is couple’s absence, drinking expensive liquor strangled to death in a pointless hate crime; and trying on their luxurious clothes. They an addict poisons her abusive boyfriend; eventually go to bed together but wake up, young boys, hungry, armed, and confused, the room still in a debauched state, to hear shoot and kill members of a rival gang.

La Habitación is hard film to watch. It the horses of Ángela and Alfredo’s carriage.

Guadalupe frantically begins to pick up the is an exploration of horror, of paralysis and room. Hilario, instead, takes a sword from immobility, trapped inside the same limited its sheath, and stands, the long weapon setting, watching violence play out again poised, just inside the door. He doesn’t know and again. There is no sense of triumph at if Ángela or Alfredo is coming first. The han- the end of the film, no redemption. The film dle turns. Hilario tenses. The door begins to ends among that gang of boys as they bleed open. And then a hard cut to the next story. to death on the ground.

Each scene, however, explores the connection between kinship, affection, and violence.

It is the boyfriend, not a mugger or thief, who is abusive. Ángela’s cruel husband is the one who inspires her sympathy for Guadalupe and Hilario. Before the shooting begins, two of the boys find a brief friendship and sympathy in one another, and cherish it; they are clearly not used to tender moments.

This is the theme and course of La Habitación. We face terrible fear, a great tragedy, and the paralysis which must accompany such constant horror as it continues across time, people, and across places. It is inescapable.

Just as inescapable, the film argues, are moments of connection, exquisite beauty, and warm affection. Living as a human being is vulnerable. It is living a life forever broken open. And it is doing so across time, permanent and unchangeable. This is a grim thought, given the suffering in the film. But I ended the film somehow reassured. Everyone else kept going.

I guess I should too.

For more coverage of the Latino Film Festival, visit chicagomaroon.com.

8

THE CHICAGO MAROON - MAY 5, 2017

SPORTS Looking to Bounce Back BASEBALL

BY EMMA GRIFFITHS SPORTS STAFF

After five losses in a row against Case Western University and Grinnell University, the University of Chicago baseball team is looking to make a comeback and end the season on a positive note as it closes out its remaining games.

The Maroons had to cancel their game against Carthage this past Tuesday due to weather restrictions, and the two games before that against Grinnell were also canceled.

A fter starting their season on a strong streak of wins, the Maroons have lost some momentum as the season has gone on. They are no longer in the running for the National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament, but are hoping to maintain a good record as they look to next year’s season and their shot at the tournament.

Regarding these upcoming games, first-year Patrick Rogers said, “We’re looking to finish the season strong by reigniting the explosive offensive threat that we exhibited early in the season.” Rogers has had a strong breakout season so far, pitching in a number of games and showing great potential for UChicago baseball team’s future for these next three years to follow. He is among many strong first-years who have grown to become a large part of the team this season.

T his weekend, the Maroons are facing Illinois Institute of Technology ( IIT ) at Guaranteed Rate Field, the home of the Chicago White Sox. They

Zoe Kaiser

A University of Chicago baseball player races the ball to home against Finlandia University last month.

will be playing four games against their 11–24 opponent: one Friday, one Saturday, and two Sunday.

Saturday ’s game at Guaranteed Rate F ield, formerly U. S. Cellular Field, will begin at 1 p.m. The stadium will open up at noon. Admission is free, with open seating at the stadium’s 100 Level. Free parking will be available in Lot B. The last time the Maroons played at the home of the White Sox against IIT, they beat them 7–3. The Maroons are

looking for a similar finish this time around, as well.

“We have hit a rough patch the past few games but we are determined to right the ship against IIT and get back our winning ways heading into the final couple weeks of the season,” said second-year Brenton Villasenor about the rest of the season. Villasenor, a pitcher for the Maroons, has had a really strong season so far, adding on to all of his successes from last season.

The team is hoping for a big crowd

to come out for its games on Sunday, as it is Senior Day at home.

To finish out their season after this weekend, the UChicago Maroons will close it out with five games at Wash U the following weekend.

The Maroons have not yet faced IIT or Wash U this year and are looking for wins against these very competitive teams.

Senior Spotlight: Britta Nordstrom WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

BY MIRANDA BURT SPORTS STAFF

If one were to set foot in the University of Chicago’s Ratner Athletics Center over the past four years, more often than not they would happen upon Britta Nordstrom, a University of Chicago women’s basketball forward. Nordstrom has left her mark on the basketball program, ranking in the top ten in five different statistical categories. Coming in as a

fi rst-year, Nordstrom made her presence felt averaging double digits (10.7 PPG), ranking seventh in free throws made in a season (84), and receiving Second Team All-UA A recognition. The more years Nordstrom had under her belt, the more her time in Ratner showed. She went on to collect seven more All-UAA mentions, along with All-Region Honors, and countless double doubles.

Nordstrom ref lected on her career saying, “Each year, I have definitely

University of Chicago Athletics Department

Britta Nordstrom advances the ball against Milwaulkee School of Engineering.

gotten better at different aspects of my game, and the coaches have been so supportive in every aspect. Coach [Carissa Sain Knoche] has been instrumental in changing the way that I play the game from a conditioning, emotional, and leadership standpoint, and I couldn’t be happier about how everything turned out.

Approaching each moment like it was my last made this season the best one I have ever had, because I truly soaked up every practice, workout, and moment with my team which made me infi nitely more invested in the success of each individual.”

Nordstrom’s senior campaign might have been her most impressive, as the she led her team to their first NCA A tournament appearance in five years.

Nordstrom collected many individual accolades this year, reaching the 1,000-point mark, receiving First Team All-UAA honors, marking a new career high in points (25), along with numerous others.

What really set Nordstrom apart, however, was her leadership displayed throughout her career and senior campaign. On the court, Nordstrom led the Maroons in four separate statistical categories and also was able to match that same influence off the court.

First-year teammate Anna Rose said of Nordstrom, “Britta inspires the team both on and off the court. There’s never a time where she’s not trying to make

her teammates better; she encourages us to always give our best effort no matter the circumstance. She just cares deeply about every single one of us.”

Nordstrom herself refl ected on the season and her career saying, “I have been incredibly fortunate to attend UChicago and play with an amazing group of girls. It was amazing to be part of something that was bigger than just us. Every player on the team contributed in some way through the course of the season which was so great.”

“A senior my freshman year told me that ‘you stand on the shoulders of those who came before you.’ I know that my entire college experience has been shaped by the women I played with my first three years, and I can only hope I had the same effect on them,” said Nordstrom.

As she goes off to the next chapter in her life, working at McMaster-Carr in Los Angeles, California, Nordstrom will no doubt continue living out success. While she may be in Los Angeles, she will be still holding up the women’s basketball program at the University of Chicago, her influence extending to those who are fortunate enough to come after her.

Editor’s Note: Britta Nordstrom previously worked as an editor and writer for the M AROON.