ChicagoMaroon112216

NOVEMBER 22, 2016

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

Zimmer Talks Finances, Trigger Warnings with THE MAROON

BY PETE GRIEVE NEWS EDITOR

University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer stayed on message at his quarterly meeting with THE M AROON last week, diplomatically skirting around or declining to answer a number of questions about contentious issues on our campus.

Zimmer directed a number of T HE M AROON ’s questions to other administrators, often stating that he was not immediately responsible for particular decisions.

He declined to comment on whether there would be more budget cuts this year following the eight percent cuts that were imposed on humanities departments last year. Zimmer said these matters fall under the domain of Provost Daniel Diermeier.

We asked Zimmer if he was concerned about the performance of the University’s endowment (In October, the University announced that the endowment was down 1.9 percent this year). He directed these inquiries to the

Vice President and Chief Investment Officer Mark Schmid, but acknowledged that the University is monitoring long-term endowment trends with more weight than yearly returns.

Zimmer was more willing, however, to field our questions about Dean John “Jay” Ellison’s letter to incoming first-years this summer condemning safe spaces and trigger warnings.

Blue Nights Behind the Difficult Working Conditions for University Security Guards and the Barriers to Change.

BY KRISTIN LIN AND SINDHU GNANASAMBANDAN “It’s more of a mental thing to actually stand out here. Especially when you got kids like me. You really have to talk to yourself… because you are thinking about your bills; you are thinking about all the things your kids need. So, it’s like, ‘Stick it out,’” Anna said.

At the time, Anna worked at the University of Chicago as a security guard. For four days each week, she stood outdoors for 10 hours, from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., watching over her block of Hyde Park. Most Allied Universal personnel work this shift, which includes a 40-minute lunch and two 20-minute breaks.

According to the officers with whom we spoke, wages range from $10.50 to $13 per hour.

Allied Universal has grown significantly since the University fi rst enlisted security services in 2009.

The Ellison Letter Zimmer would not say that he signed off on Ellison’s letter before it was sent out, and he was reluctant to back its message unequivocally.

“It’s not true that we tell faculty what to do. If that’s the interpretation, it’s a factual error, because it can’t be the case because [Ellison] may say that, but it’s not University policy to tell faculty what to do,” he said.

“This is Dean Ellison’s letter.

This is not the University.”

Zimmer was speaking publicly about that letter for the fi rst time, which came as news to us— he said that his August 26 op-ed Continued on page 5

Meera Joshi

Uncommon Interview: Presidential Politics Professor William Howell

BY JAMIE EHRLICH SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

T he shocking success of Donald T rump and the Republican Party in this month’s election prompted political science professor William Howell to give up his sabbatical and return to the classroom to teach a class on the American presidency. Howell also wrote an op-ed for CNN noting the irony in a candidate running on the premise that the American electoral system was “rigged” ultimately coming into power without a popular vote plurality.

T HE M A ROON sat down with Howell to discuss his decision, his new class, and the prospect of executive power in a Trump presidency. Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the Harris School of Public Policy and a

Personality Before Politics Page 9 Your friend who supported Trump or Bernie Sanders is not out to get you, and his or her political ideology should certainly not be a reason to end the relationship.

professor in the Department of Political Science and the College.

Chicago Maroon: Thank you for joining us. F irst, I wanted to say welcome back from your sabbatical. Many on campus were saying you left your sabbatical after the election results. What brought you to that decision and what were you doing on your sabbatical?

Professor William Howell: Well, the last sabbatical I had was seven years ago when I went off to Stanford and wrote this book, The Wartime President. This sabbatical, I had an idea—and I still have an idea—for an altogether new project about the politics of information and surveillance.

Those are questions and interests that I continue to harbor and want to continue to pursue.

But, the enormity of this

VOL. 128, ISSUE 16

election, emotionally and intellectually, and the immediacy of this election made me want to return to the University and to teach again. To get back into the classroom, to try as best I could to make sense of what awaits us. I think there’s some big profound questions that await the country about whether or not this institution is going to discipline this man.

What it means to have a president like Trump entering into a system of separated powers.

This class on the American presidency can speak to [that], and I’m eager to enter in to conversation with students. I didn’t want to wait a year to do that. I wanted to be able to process these issues in shared conversation with students.

CM: S o your class next quarter, “The American Presidency”—what’s going to be the Continued on page 3

Provost Signals Support for Immigrants on Campus Post-Election

BY ADAM THORP NEWS EDITOR

Provost Daniel Diermeier, on behalf of the University, committed to support immigrant students regardless of their legal status, according to an e-mail sent to the campus community a little more than a week after Donald Trump was elected president.

The University of Chicago enrolls undocumented students and gives them access to private financial aid through the University.

In his e-mail, Diermeier said the University would continue to do so and is “committed to raising more private funds for financial aid to assist international and undocumented students.”

Diermeier also said that non-citizens would continue to have access to the same set of campus services

Something to Write Home About

South Siders’ Historic Season Comes to an End

Page 10

Page 16

We desperately need more spaces for the diverse stories of the less privileged, to push back until we dismantle this hegemony.

The Maroons’ undefeated run came to a heartbreaking end against University of Redlands on a chilly Saturday afternoon.

Audience Uncon-Vince-d

by MAB Fall Show Page 12 There was little excuse for the subpar mosh pit or lack of audience participation found in Mandel Hall Saturday night.

Continued on page 7

and guarantees of confidentiality with regard to their citizenship status while enrolled at the school.

“The national conversation around these issues has caused many in our community a great deal of concern. We take these concerns seriously and will be closely monitoring any proposed changes at the local, state and national level,” Diermeier wrote. Diermeier also said the University would continue to help immigrants with their visa status and other issues.

The University of Chicago Coalition for Immigrant Rights (UCCIR) responded to the e-mail with a post on its Facebook page: “We appreciate the support and will continue organizing and working with the University to ensure that UChicago is a safe campus for all.”

Several other universities have Continued on page 4

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

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 - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

The Delicious History of the Latke-Hamantash Debate

BY HILLEL STEINMETZ ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR

Latke? Or hamantash? Both fatty Jewish foods may bring a smile to bubbe’s and zayda’s (Yiddish for grandma and grandpa) faces, but which food is objectively better than the other? Is the latke’s circularity an indication that is it a reflection of some greater Platonic truth? Or is the hamantash more economically viable on international markets? The question as to whether the latke, a fried potato pancake, or the hamantash, a triangular cookie typically fi lled with jelly, is superior has occupied the minds of the University’s brightest scholars for 70 years since the Latke-Hamantash debate began in 1946.

The event found its beginnings with a smaller audience in Hillel. This style of humor caught on and grew into an event that hundreds of people crowd into Mandel Hall to watch. It became one of the University’s strongest traditions. The debate has featured some of the University’s most distinguished academics, including Milton Friedman, George Lederman, Allan Bloom, Martha Nussbaum, and Leo Strauss. The late Ted Cohen, professor of philosophy, moderated the debate for more than 25 years until he passed away in February 2014.

“Academia is in some sense a great institution that is separate from but interacts with the culture around it, so like religion it needs its rituals. It needs the things that are done every year,” said Professor Shmuel Weinberger, chair of the Department of Mathematics and a former moderator of the annual debate.

This year’s debate will be held on Tuesday, November 22 in Mandel Hall.

Wendy Freedman, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics, David Nirenberg, the dean of the Social Sciences division, Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer, a classics professor, and Anne Rogers, a professor of computer science, will be participating in this year’s debate. Hal Weitzman, a professor of behavioral science at the Booth School, will moderate.

If you ask some members of the UChicago community whether the latke or hamantash is superior, they might tell you the it’s a mahkhloket—the Hebrew word in Jewish legal terminology for a disagreement.

Some consider the Latke-Hamantash debate to be a dramatic iteration of the type of scholarship that has defi ned Jewish educational institutions for centuries.

Weinberger said that the debate pokes fun both at the Jewish intellectual tradition of the Talmud and at the intellectual tradition of academia.

“It’s spoofing the tradition of the Talmud [the central text of Jewish law] where any issue could be discussed and could be discussed multiple times in contradictory fashions on different pages,” Weinberger said. “Of course it’s also a part of the egghead tradition of academia as opposed to the practical, pre-professional type of academia.”

Rabbi Anna Levin Rosen, the executive director of the University’s Hillel, also said that the debate reenacts Talmudic discourse.The tangential, improvised style of humor gives the debate its charm.

“What makes the debate so funny is that, each year, it engages what is going on in the world around us in a vague satire that marks the moment,” she said.

Ari Mulgay, a third-year in the College who is doing research on previous debates, said that the whole schtick (the Yiddish word for nonsense) of the debate is a good thing since it fosters integration with the Jewish community.

“I think that schtick is significant,” Mulgay said. “I like seeing everyone in on Jewish schtick at events like this that are open and accessible to the wider community. And I think it’s just good fun to have this marriage between Jewish schtick and University jargon. It can be a delight to watch.”

The debate began with the purpose of integrating the Jewish identity of members of the University community with the secular culture of American academia in the 1940s. According to Ruth Fredman Cernea’s 2006 book The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate, scholarship at the University was hostile to bringing one’s ethnic identity into the classroom. The University imposed quotas on admitting Jewish students and hiring

Jewish faculty, although not to the same extent as some peer institutions. This, in addition to the academic stress, the gloomy weather, and the strong Christmas atmosphere on campus that developed toward the end of the fall quarter, made many members of the Jewish community felt alienated on campus, Cernea writes.

The debate, founded by professors Saul Tax and Louis Gottstalk and Rabbi Maurive Pekarsky, was created as a means for Jewish students and faculty to openly take pride in Jewish culture and to reconcile their academic and Jewish identities. It used laughter as a response to the issues facing Jewish students.

Echoing the founders of the debate, Weitzman thinks that laughing is an important response to difficult times.

“I think [laughing] is a healthy reaction,” Weitzman said. “God knows right now we need a good laugh.”

Editor’s Note: Steinmetz is on the leadership board of UChicago Hillel.

Professors participate in the 2012 Latke-Hamantash debate.

Darren Leow

Students Flock to Watch Sandhill Crane Migration

BY CAMILLE KIRSCH MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

The Biological Sciences Collegiate Division led a trip to see the annual migration of sandhill cranes on Sunday. About 30 students, accompanied by three faculty members, travelled to the Jasper-Pulaski Wildlife Reserve in Indiana to watch the cranes.

Sandhill cranes stop in the Indiana wetlands twice a year on their migratory route. The subtype of sandhills observed in Indiana spend summers in Canada and winters in Florida.

According to Eric Larsen, a lecturer at the University who teaches ecology courses, this is the fi rst year the department has led this trip. The Biological Sciences Division is considering making it an annual event.

Students going on the trip gathered at the Biological Sciences Learning Center just before 2 p.m. Three faculty trip leaders handed out binoculars and shepherded students onto a rented tour bus for the hour-and-a-half drive to the wildlife reserve.

Upon arriving in Indiana, students walked to an observation tower. Hun-

dreds of cranes stood in the field below, resting and socializing with each other.

On the tower, students mingled, chatting with the approximately 50 other observers present—mostly families and retirees.

Hundreds more cranes flew overhead in V-formations, calling out their distinctive rattling cry.

The ululating calls of the cranes mixed with the howl of the wind and the quiet murmur of the gathered crowd.

Several students said they were struck by the cranes’ cries. “They make dinosaur-like sounds. It’s like—have you seen Jurassic Park?” Aviv Hargil, a third-year Biological Sciences major, said.

Warren Gartner, a retired educator in “They dance with each other to reaffi rm Indiana’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, their pair bonds, and they mate for life.”

Students on the trip said they came for said he thought that was an apt comparthe cranes, but also for the opportunity ison.

“The cranes have been around for mil- to leave the Chicago bubble. “I wanted to lions of years, and actually they go back get out of the University for a day,” Hargil as far as the dinosaurs,” he told students. said. “And I’m interested in all kinds of “They’ve been flying this route through the nature stuff, too.”

Second-year Rachel Liu said watching Ice Ages and everything else.”

According to Gartner, sandhill cranes the cranes was an incredible experience. are unusual among bird species for their “It’s really cool to see a huge group of thoulong lifespans—around 30 years—and for sands of birds like this,” she said. “The their community-oriented behavior. “I love cold and windy weather, however, was that they’re such a social bird,” he said. unpleasant.”

Camille Kirsch

The group left early due to the cold, after just under an hour of watching the cranes.

As the sun began to set, the light reflected off the wings of cranes flying overhead, making the grey birds appear dazzlingly red.

On the way back to campus, most students said they were glad they made the trip, despite the cold.

“It’s good to get some perspective,” firstyear Sammy Zucker said. “Watching the cranes makes all the crazy things going on in the world seem small.”

Hyde Park Church Fundraising to Support Syrian Refugees

BY JIAWEI HE MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

Local residents are raising money to settle a Syrian refugee family in Hyde Park.

The Augustana Lutheran Church co-sponsored the Hyde Park Refugee

Project, which is collaborating with Chicago-based nonprofit Refugee One. Refugee One works with the federal government to settle sanctioned refugees in the city.

Dorothy Pytel of the Augustana Lutheran Church spoke with T H E M A ROON about the Church’s involvement

in the Hyde Park Refugee Project as a co-sponsor.

Pytel learned about Refugee One from her son, whose class was studying the Syrian refugee crisis in school.

Pytel teamed up with her church and reached out to Refugee One last fall to become involved.

W hen asked about her motivation for taking on this share of burden, she said it was “a motivation to show my children that we can help.” Since the beginning of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2011, she said, many have felt overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness in Continued on page 4

THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

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“I’m eager to enter in to conversation with students. I didn’t want to wait a year to do that.”

Continued from front page

main focus of the class and how is the class going to be different than if you were to teach it last year?

WH: The class is going to focus on issues of power, issues of governance, issues of institutional design, which to my mind are central to understanding the significance of his election.

The class is not going to focus on how it came to be that a country elected Trump. And it isn’t going to focus on primaries, general elections, voting patterns in presidential elections and how they compare to congressional elections. It’s not a class on political behavior, it’s a class on political institutions and the office of the presidency.

But I think it’s going to also ask… it’s going to provide a venue in which we can reckon with this historical moment, because I think we are in a real historical moment. And it’s a historical moment that’s overwhelming. It operates on lots of levels. I think a lot of people are afraid. I think there is a lot of bigotry that has not just been legitimated but is ascendent that we need to come to terms with. Come to terms with not just in its own right, but try to understand the significance of it for our politics.

I think there are ways in which the kinds of institutions that we’re accustomed to —the press, and the way it disciplines political actors, civic organizations, parties—have been and will continue to be challenged in foundational ways by this man, by his campaign, and by the kind of populist sentiments that he has aroused. So, to my mind, it’s not just about understanding the presidency because that’s something important for us to understand as political observers, it’s understanding the presidency because it provides a lense for us to understand this historical moment. And I’m hoping we can come together and do that.

CM: How do you think campus will change under Trump’s presidency? How will educational experiences be impacted?

WH: First, let me say, it won’t be impacted. Insofar as we’re a private institution, an elite institution, a wealthy institution. We have lots of protections against the kinds of passions that have been stirred up. We have deep commitments to open and free inquiry that the University leadership has reaffirmed.

We came here because we believe deeply in free and open inquiry, and I continue to believe that will persist. We are not beholden to a state legislature that public universities are and we have a sizable endowment...so we play from a position of strength in ways that other institutions do not.

On the other hand, I think that students at the University are struggling to try to understand what just happened and are asking foundational questions about what it means to lead a meaningful life in an era in which the kinds of basic values that they hold dear have not just been challenged, but to many of their minds, have been defiled.

They have been soiled. They have been degraded.

There’s a way in which, to my mind, whatever your life pursuits are —be they entering into politics and going to lots of seminars at the IOP or working in the humanities or working in the sciences—there’s a newfound meaning to be had in that work, that is given newfound urgency in a world in which questions raised about importance of truth have been raised, questions on free and open inquiry, questions have been

Giovanna DeCastro

raised about the idea that we should respect one another and recognize the humanity in one another.

A lot of people over the course of this campaign couldn’t wait to get to Election Day because there was a sense in which there was going to be a turn.

Not just the negativity, but the ways in which the left and the right lost their way. There was going to be a restoration once we got past this election.

For many people that didn’t happen.

Many people on the left, many centrists, and to my mind, many principled Republicans feel like all that they feared about the Trump presidency have been legitimated and could well be institutionalized. So conversations that we’re going to have going forward on campus involving issues of race, inequality, class, urban versus rural divides, are going to be challenged and given new urgency. They could be coarsened. But there’s a way in which I think this event was a total event. I mean, it works on so many different levels and it’s going to work on so many levels in this privileged, great institution we have.

CM: How do you think Donald Trump will transform the office of the presidency in the way that it functions?

WH: This is a great question. I just want to affirm the question. We should be asking this question.

So I write about the American presidency, and I am accustomed to thinking in institutional terms. I am accustomed to saying that if you want to make sense of the decisions that are made, the platforms that are argued on behalf of presidents, you should study and scrutinize the design of the institution [and] think about how it interacts with Congress and the courts and international organizations and the bureaucracy and interest groups the press. There is an institutional story to be told here, and that story is still to be told with a Trump presidency.

But I think it’s something of an open question, the extent to which these institutions discipline Trump to the extent to which Trump leaves these institutions in disarray. I think those who bet on the Republican Party disciplining Trump in the primaries are reeling, those who felt like a press is going to call out his inexperience and his—I want to choose my words correctly here—the values he chooses to uphold and the facts that he selective-

ly chooses to justify those values. The screening mechanism that the media might serve, I think people are now justifiably raising questions about. I think the members of the press are raising big questions about, ‘did we do our work here?’

In the same way that the media was reeling from revelations in the aftermath of the Iraq war, that there were not in fact weapons of mass destruction, that maybe the media should have been doing something more vigorous in scrutinizing a sitting president. And here too, should they have been doing something other than presenting over and over again what the predicted probability of what a Trump presidency would be. The amount of resources, attention, and energy was paid to that.

There are two big institutions— the party and the media—that are reeling in his wake. He’s about to assume the office. We’ll see.

CM: In your piece on CNN, you discuss how things may or may not change in the future in regards to the Electoral College. What do you think Hillary Clinton’s winning the popular vote does to Trump’s presidential mandate?

WH: Well, it takes it away, to the extent that a mandate is born out of the will of the people. And the will of the people is best experienced through a popular vote. He doesn’t have much of a platform on which to argue in terms of a mandate. In that piece, I was also try-

ing to highlight the irony of all of this, that he presented himself not just as a populist, but as an insurgent populist, one who hasn’t been sullied by politics and one that stood for the interest of average citizens in taking the fight to a rigged political system.

He says it again and again— our politics are rigged. What does he mean by that? It’s that the will of the people are subverted in our politics. So again and again, the example he would use is that people will come and vote, and those votes won’t be counted. Or certain people who have no business voting will vote, and they will vote repeatedly. And in that sense, the votes that we cast and the electoral outcomes that we observe will not reflect the will of the people.

There’s great irony that the institution that since day one of the republic has most consistently subverted or distorted what the will of the people is, is the Electoral College, which puts disproportional weights on small states….

Because it’s a winner-take-all system state by state, you can get big swings, it often exaggerates what the popular vote differential is, and in some cases— this isn’t the first time—the person who wins the popular vote does not win the Electoral College vote. That institution, that reliably distorts the popular will came to the rescue of the very individual who ran on a platform of being against this rigged political system, and that’s worth recognizing.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

NEWS IN BRIEF Booth Falls in Businessweek Rankings Campus Sculpture Undergoing Restorations The Booth School fell in Bloomberg Businessweek’s top business school rankings from second place last year to fourth this year.

Harvard Business School retained its number one position in the rankings.

Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Duke’s Fuqua School of Business both outranked Booth, with number two and three positions, respectively.

Business schools ranked below Booth include Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania’s

Wharton School, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management also fell in the rankings from third place last year to ninth place this year.

The report specifically ranked U.S. fulltime M.B.A. programs. The main criteria for Bloomberg Businessweek’s rankings include an employer survey, an alumni survey, a student survey, job placement rates, and graduates’ starting salaries.

—Olivia Rosenzweig

University Announces Construction of Hong Kong Center The University of Chicago announced on Monday that it will begin construction on a new center in Hong Kong, diversifying the University’s international engagement.

“The Yuen Center will be a home for education and research in the context of collaboration and engagement in Hong Kong, China, and Asia, building upon the University’s rich history of scholarship in the region,” University President Robert Zimmer said. The University currently runs centers in Beijing, Delhi, and Paris.

Scheduled to open in 2018, the Francis and Rose Yuen Center will support study abroad programs in the College, house University of Chicago Booth School of Business programs, and advance interactions with regional partner institutions, including local businesses, universities, and the social

For 40 years, a large copper disk stood in front of the Surgery Brain Research Institute on South Ellis Avenue, jagged cracks radiating from a complicated geometric pattern in the center.

In 2013, it seemingly disappeared.

The sculpture, La Grande Disco by Arnaldo Pomodoro, is being restored following years of weathering and corrosion. It is one of six identical sculptures around the world, and contains a turning mechanism which allows it to rotate slowly.

Methods & Mater ials, a Chicago-based art installation company, is working with the Litas Liparini Restoration Studio to bring the sculpture back to its original condition.

“It’s important to note that these massive outdoor objects require a considered approach to their care and

siting, and extensive research is done before moving or conserving a work to ensure that our decisions are appropriate to the artist’s intent and the art historical context of the object,” University spokesperson Marielle Sainvilus said.

Jane Foley, who is heading the restoration efforts, said that great care is being taken in ensuring that the sculpture will be able to withstand environmental conditions in the future.

Aside from polishing the surface and removing corroded and loose material, the studio is treating the sculpture with anti-corrosion agents and coating the exterior with lacquer.

According to Foley, restoration efforts will be completed in December, with final adjustments made in the sculpture’s new location on campus.

—Sofia Garcia

services sector. Regional institutions the University has partnered with in the past include World Wildlife Foundation Hong Kong, Wells Fargo (Asia Pacific Region) and the University of Hong Kong.

The Yuen Center will also serve as the new hub for the Booth Executive M.B.A. Program Asia and other expanded Booth social innovation and entrepreneurship programs, which are directly focused on social impact in Hong Kong. These programs will complement businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies that seek to solve social, environmental, or cultural problems in the region.

The construction of the Yuen Center will be supported by a $30 million grant from the nonprofit Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust.

— Yao Xen Tan

Making the University a “safe campus for all” stating that the program “significantly Continued from front page publicly reaffirmed their policy toward immi- expands educational and degree opportugrant students after Trump’s election. The nities for undocumented students.” The chancellor of California State University e-mail provided links to an application to (CSU) said that CSU would “not enter into the program.

Trump promised on the campaign trail agreements with state or local law enforcement agencies, Homeland Security or any that he would overturn all of Obama’s exother federal department for the enforcement ecutive actions, leaving the status of peoof federal immigration law” unless legally ple who participated in the program in doubt. Trump has pledged to deport huge compelled to do so.

Students, alumni and faculty at several numbers of undocumented people and to Ivy League universities and a growing num- tighten U.S. immigration law. The 2015 ber of other schools have petitioned their ad- version of a yearly report of student body ministrations to make their campuses “sanc- demographics required by the state of Iltuary campuses,” analogous to “sanctuary linois classified more than one in 10 uncities,” which limit official cooperation with dergraduates, and a larger percentage of agencies that enforce federal immigration law. graduate and professional students, as Under the Obama administration’s De- “non-resident aliens.”

The University of Chicago first publicly ferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, some undocumented people who affi rmed its policy with regard to undocentered the United States as children and umented students and applicants in 2010, met other requirements could apply for tem- under pressure from UCCIR. The Univerporary relief from deportation and receive sity simultaneously declined to endorse the work authorization. When the program was DREAM Act, which would have provided a announced, Karen Warren Coleman, then path to permanent residency for some imvice president for campus life and student migrants, stating that it would not comservices, sent an e-mail to the campus ment on political questions.

courtesy of University of Chicago ScienceLife

Pomodoro’s sculpture will be fully restored and returned to campus by the end of the year.

“[I’m supporting refugees] to show my children that we can help.”

Continued from page 2

the face of a great calamity. The tragedy resonated with her because her oldest son is disabled. She emphasized that government aid and nonprofit organizations’ contributions supported her family through the difficult times, and she wishes to pass on that support to others in need.

According to K im Snoddy, senior manager of co-sponsorships at Refugee One, the circumstances for incoming refugees to this country—who for the past several years have been predominantly Syrian—are difficult. Each incoming refugee family is granted a three-month living expense of $1,875, but most of them come into the country with at least $2,000 in debt. Moreover, the average time it takes for a refugee to become employable is six to eight months, far longer than the covered period of three. Therefore, co-sponsors like the Augustana Lutheran Church prioritize covering the financial gap.

The co-sponsors’ fundraising efforts were successful this year: As of November 20, the Hyde Park Refugee Project’s fundraising page shows the goal of $8,000 has already been met, and has

actually been exceeded by $939.

Refugee One is the official sponsor of the refugee families it settles and is in charge of ensuring the refugees have their basic needs met, including an apartment and daily essentials. The co-sponsors, on the other hand, focus on the social adjustment aspect to ensure refugees’ integration into society through mentorship and counselling.

Snoddy estimated that in the current fiscal year, Refugee One will help settle 200 refugee families, amounting to a total of about 900 individuals. There are, however, only 52 co-sponsors enrolled.

Under the scheme of one co-sponsor per family, there are always families left without co-sponsorship.

According to Snoddy, families are evaluated for their need, based on criteria such as existence of disability and number of family members. Those with more urgent needs are prioritized for co-sponsors.

Snoddy emphasized that an effective way to contribute to Refugee One is to become a co-sponsor to a refugee family. At the same time, donations to the project’s fundraising page are always welcomed.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

“Do I have political views on this, that, or the other thing like everybody else does? Of course I do.”

Continued from front page

“Free Speech Is the Basis of a True Education” was submitted to The Wall Street Journal prior to Ellison’s letter.

When asked who “we” in the letter refers to if not the administration or the University as a whole, Zimmer said, “You should talk to [Ellison]. It was not a letter written by me.”

Later asked what function the letter serves if not to reaffi rm the University’s position, Zimmer repeated, “This is not a letter that has been authored by anyone other than the Dean.”

“Part of the issue in my mind is around what is he talking about exactly? And obviously, greater clarity would have been useful. That’s certainly clear,” he said.

Zimmer repeatedly said that he avoids the terms “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” because he thinks they are not well defi ned. He said he would prefer to engage in a dialogue without using those terms.

“Let’s have conversations that are specific, where you work them out, where you explore them.”

Given the specific example of a professor warning students that a class is moving into a discussion about rape or hate crimes, and asked whether that kind of warning has the potential to stifle free speech, Zimmer said it was not his business to take a position. He maintained that faculty should have plenty of latitude to do what they want in their classrooms.

Student Input After hundreds of students rallied and sat-in to “Democratize the University” last spring, we asked Zimmer to what extent he values student, staff, and community feedback. Much of the University’s decision-making ought to be left up to administrators, he said. The University does value feedback on issues that directly affect students, and he said that the University has mechanisms to collect that feedback.

“It’s certainly true that there are lots of situations in which it’s very important to have input from different sectors of the University, which includes students, it includes staff, so on. There are some decisions that need to be made in largely different ways. There are literally thousands of decisions that need to be made all the time,” he said. “There’s a whole set of [decisions], particularly ones that have an impact on students, where students need to have a significant amount of input into it and that’s certainly something we are trying to do.”

Zimmer said that aside from his meetings with T HE M AROON, his only formal meetings with students are with Student Government (SG) and residence halls.

These meetings add up to approximately one per month, though he said that he occasionally meets with students in other capacities.

“It’s possible to do other ones and I’ve done other ones in the past,” he said.

The University recently announced that students will receive their degrees at a ceremony with people from their residential halls, which SG leaders say was made without any student feedback. Zimmer said, “You should talk to Dean [John] Boyer about it.”

Zimmer added that the Provost is taking lots of input on Shared Services—a plan to consolidate administrative services across departments. CFO Rowan Miranda, who was behind the initiative, left the University earlier this year. The Provost is now considering departmental input to decide what works and doesn’t work, Zimmer said. Zimmer added that Shared Services will be “phased-in” more gradually.

“Shared Services is moving ahead in a rather different style,” he said.

Budget Cuts and Endowment Last year, members of the departments affected by the eight percent budget cuts attributed them to Shared Services, although the University said that the implementation of Shared Services was not directly related to the cuts.

Asked if he could speak to whether there would be more layoffs this year or the next, Zimmer said, “Not really, actually.”

He said that the Provost is reorganizing the budget model structure and that deans will have more authority over the budgets of their departments. “[Deans] should have a budget target and they should meet that target. It will be up to them to figure out exactly how to do it.”

Zimmer would not put a number on those targets. “It’s still a process,” he said.

Asked if any additional cuts this year would likely be associated with Shared Services, he said, “I wouldn’t put it that way…. There are no two things that are totally independent…but it’s not as if one follows the other.”

We asked Zimmer about the University’s investment strategy and the 1.9 percent loss in this year’s endowment returns.

“Our primary goal has not been to focus on driving the size of the endowment.

Our primary goal has been driving the eminence of the University and its programs and our capacity to support students independent of their financial situation,” he said.

BDS We asked Zimmer to set aside the ideals of the Kalven report to give us his personal thoughts on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He said he could not do that.

He explained that he believes the 1967 Kalven report—which states the University must remain neutral on political issues—applies not only to the University institutionally, but also to the University’s president as an individual. However, in his interpretation, the Kalven report does not prohibit the University from taking positions on issues that concretely affect the University, even if they have political implications.

“On some measure, I’m actually not going to answer the question because I don’t express my views about fundamentally what are political things that have nothing to do with the University per se.

So I’m happy to tell you how I think about it from a University point of view, which does connect in a very strong way to the Kalven report. Now if you are asking me do I have political views on this that or the other thing like everybody else does? Of course I do. But I have consistently said my political views need to be kept out of my actions as president and that everybody’s got political views, but my job is to be responsible for the University and to do what’s best for the University…. I’ve written before about my concern for the University participating in any academic boycotts, and divestment is a particular case.

I’d say—while I’m not going to express any particular political view about a particular situation—I will say that I think academic boycotts per se, depending upon what you are talking, again, are problematic, and problematic for the spirit of what the University of Chicago is about.”

Zimmer said that the Kalven report applies to the issue of fossil fuel divestment as well, and prohibits the University from adopting what he would perceive to be a political investment strategy.

Minimum Wage for Campus Workers Fair Budget UChicago (FBU), an activist group fighting for a higher minimum wage for campus workers, recently secured a meeting with the Provost. In a state-

Emily Lo

Zimmer during a 2010 forum on sexual assault.

ment after their meeting, FBU said that the Provost cited the Kalven report, and told them that “the University could not raise its minimum wage to $15/hr, despite comparable universities like NYU and Columbia having done so, because it would be too political.”

Zimmer said that he does not think that the Kalven report prohibits administrators from taking a stance on the campus wage.

“The question of what are the University’s policies for paying people—that’s a perfectly appropriate topic. The University needs to decide. It’s a perfectly appropriate topic for people to weigh in on. That’s not a Kalven issue,” he said.

On the question of whether there should be a higher federal or state minimum wage, Zimmer said, “I don’t think in terms of minimum wage that the University as a whole should be taking a position about what public policy should be with respect to minimum wage issues—that’s not really what we do.”

In a statement sent to T HE M AROON through a University spokesperson, Provost Diermeier said that there was a “misunderstanding.”

“The Kalven report is relevant in the context of the contention that the University should ‘lead by example’ on the minimum wage issue, for the purpose of influencing local and national minimum wage policies. The University does not have a position on these policies. Decisions on compensation and fi nancial support are made for the benefit of the University, its faculty, students and staff, without regard to how such decisions affect particular political interests,” he wrote.

Diermeier did not place blame on himself or FBU for the misunderstanding.

Fair Budget member Nora Helfand, who attended the meeting, wrote in an e-mail, “I understood him to be directly responding to our ask for a campus minimum wage. The federal minimum wage was not mentioned.”

Graduate Student Unionization Zimmer wrote a letter this summer arguing that unionization would negatively affect graduate students, and he maintained that issue is within the University’s jurisdiction.

When asked if his objection to graduate student unionization is truly that he does not think it would be good for graduate students—as he stated in his letter— rather than a matter of cost, Zimmer did not hesitate.

“It’s not a matter of cost. Cost is not going to be the issue,” he said. “It’s fundamentally about the individual graduate student relationship to faculty members, to their program, to the extent to which there are others intervening into that process and decision-making.”

Zimmer clarified that when he said

it’s not a matter of cost he meant that the University is not thinking about cost, not that he does not expect there to be a cost difference for the University if graduate students were to unionize.

Politics and the University At the end of our conversation, we turned to the election of President-elect Donald Trump. Several days after the election, Zimmer wrote a campus-wide e-mail cosigned by Diermeier that reaffirmed the University’s values of diversity, inclusion, and free speech in the wake of series of racist events on campuses since Trump was elected president. We asked what specific incidents prompted the letter.

“That was very much a response to what we’ve been seeing over the last week on various campuses—not exclusively campuses, but a general tone of a lot of very strong messages of racism, misogyny, and more. There has been certainly an increase in behavior of this, and I think it’s made a lot of people ‘uneasy’ about what that means in terms of the country,” he said. “We thought it was important to make a statement.”

Zimmer did not condemn Trump in any explicit terms, but he repeatedly used the words “uneasy” and “uncertain” to describe how people are feeling in the wake of the election. Federal funding for science is one such area of “uncertainty,” he said.

“If you step back and say, with these various caveats, ‘Has the federal government been supportive of science as a whole over the last seventy years? The answer is pretty much ‘Yes,’” he said. “There is uncertainty right now. I think the uncertainty is real. The history offers comfort to the point that you are comforted by history, but there are all sorts of reasons you might be nervous.”

The future of health care in the United States, especially with regard to the University’s medical center, was another area of “uncertainty.”

“National health-care policy and the structure of health care in the United States has a huge amount of uncertainty attached to it. It’s evolving constantly….

We run a significant[ly] sized hospital.

We have a lot of patients—a very high percentage of our patients compared to most other academic medical centers are government insured rather than private insured, which means that we are very much dependent on the ups and downs of this type of this kind of government policy.

I think it’s a big question how that’s going to evolve.”

Zimmer said he does not think it is obvious what the health-care structure in the United States will look like a decade or two into the future. “There are a lot of questions to what’s going to happen to national health-care policy under President Trump, but that’s not the only moving part of the whole thing.”

6

THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Professors Discuss Intersection of Capitalism and Race

BY LEE HARRIS MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

On Thursday, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC) held the latest in its series of talks on the intersection of race and capitalism.

The panel was moderated by Michael Dawson, director of the CSRPC, and comprised Virginia Parks, professor of urban and environmental policy at Occidental College, J. Phillip Thompson, associate professor of urban studies and planning at MIT, and Kristy Ulibarri, assistant professor of English at East Carolina University.

Thompson called the intersection of race and capitalism “very much undertheorized.”

He noted W.E.B. Du Bois’s description of the formation of a racialized police state as one example of work that has not been sufficiently developed since its publication.

“Figuring how to entice white workers who were themselves oppressed, to be part of a system that oppresses them…that’s actually a challenging question. How do you do that? And so, giving them roles as police and military adjuncts of the system to supervise non-whites…that was part of the privilege that white workers were given. So, almost a century before Black Lives Matter, Du Bois was talking about how the very structure of capitalism created this role for poor whites policing non-whites,” he said.

Thompson argued that after the Civil Rights movement, black refusal to occupy subservient agricultural and domestic roles resulted in a labor crisis, which prompted the hiring of undocumented workers from Central America. “Somebody has to mow those lawns, pick those vegetables, rock those babies, and they don’t want to pay for it,” he said.

Parks built upon this thought. “We have a new class of workers, mostly Latino migrant workers who are coming in and filling those two spaces in the economy, and they are bereft of protections,” she said.

Ulibarri discussed examples of the intersection of race and capitalism in postmodern art. She brought up Sesshu Foster’s Atomik Aztex and the performance art piece Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West

by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco.

The artists travelled the world, posing in a cage as “undiscovered” natives from an island in the Gulf of Mexico. The audience reaction became part of the performance piece, as very few viewers objected to the actors’ apparent captivity.

“For a dollar, [audience members] could hear a story. For five dollars, they could see Gomez pick his genitalia. People paid lots of money to do this. This is the nineties; this isn’t that long ago. What’s scary is the majority of people thought this was real. They didn’t realize it was satire,” Ulibarri said.

CLASSIFIEDS 2BR Nice Co-Op Apt 53rd Ellis 78K

Annual Lecture Honors Pioneering African-American Biologist

BY SOLOMAN DWORKIN MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

A Howard University professor visited campus Thursday to discuss the importance of a black biologist who received his Ph.D. from the University a little more than a century ago.

Malcolm Byrnes gave the annual E.E. Just lecture on 100th anniversary of when Just received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

The annual lecture invites one speaker from a background underrepresented in biology to give a lecture in Just’s honor.

Byrnes argued in his talk that Just was an early “eco-devo” biologist; a biologist who “stresses…development in the natural setting, in the natural context.”

Just was one of the first black biologists in the United States. Born in Charleston and educated at elite institutions — K imball Union Academy, Dartmouth, and the University of Chicago — he was unsatisfied with his career prospects, and was only able to achieve a professorship at Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C. Following a series of trips to Europe, he eventually moved to Roscoff, France in 1938, where he was imprisoned in a Nazi POW camp for several months.

Just, who had been sick for months before his incarceration, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer upon his return to the U.S. in 1940 and died just a year later in 1941.

Byrnes’ talk was titled “E.E. Just’s Broad (and Hidden) Inf luence on the Development of Modern Biology.” He spent the majority of the lecture, after some biographical snippets, meticulously revealing the extent of Just’s inf luence. Although many scientific breakthroughs throughout the next 50 years were connected to Just’s original work, few researchers cited him.

Byrnes argued that Just was indebted to the uniqueness of his connections, from his black upbringing to his interactions with European scientists.

According to Byrnes, Just might have been directly influenced by sociological ideas circulating in the black community, just as Charles Darwin was influenced by Thomas Malthus.

For this reason, Byrnes concluded that “we have to encourage and foster diversity” in academia, and interact with a more diverse array of perspectives. But he also asked the audience to keep in mind that Just “wasn’t [just] a great African-American biologist; he was a great biologist.”

- VIEWPOINTS -

What We’re Thankful For A Brief and Incomplete List of Things UChicago Can Be Thankful for This Year Per Thanksgiving tradition, THE MAROON Editorial Board shares with you a few of the things it’s most thankful for this year….

Target: It’s finally here in Hyde Park and, even more surprisingly, was able to secure a liquor license, albeit with some provisions. You can only turn up from noon to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturdays, and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays.

Revolutionary Communist Party (RevCom) member Noche Diaz, who heroically stood on a table in Baker Dining Commons and overthrew the entire system.

Thanks, RevCom! North Campus, really just because it brought us Insomnia Cookies.

The Cubs’ World Series win, 108 years in the making.

The thrill of attempting to bid for classes with the new my.UChicago—and the subsequent sting of defeat.

Graduation changes: Starting with the Class of 2017, convocation will have eight concurrent ceremonies divided by first year house. Can’t wait to graduate next to awkward O-Mances and that one dude who loved anime a little too much.

Receiving financial aid during fifth week.

Better late than never?

Eminence: Now attending a university ranked #3 in the country, students on campus hopefully feel secure enough to retire

their “If I wanted an A, I would’ve gone to Harvard” T-shirts.

Student tour guides finally getting their paychecks from the admissions office after serious delays. How else are we going to keep that ranking?

College Republicans’ brave refusal to endorse Trump, which we suspect led to his defeat in Illinois and overall popular vote loss.

Cemitas Puebla, because anything’s better than Packed.

The student-organized giant leaf pile jump on the Classics quad last week. It’s the little things, sometimes.

Peaceful transitions of power: After five failed health inspections in one year, Aramark is finally out as UChicago’s dining provider and has been replaced by Bon Appétit. Unfortunately, we no longer can sneak into Bartlett so it’s unclear if the food got any better.

Fourth meal: a perennial safe space on campus we can all support.

Max Freedman being “bedeviled.”

Axelrod’s style. Though he wasn’t featured in the UChicago Manual of Style, his sneakers are pretty neat.

Our Copy team’s Twitter account, @ MaroonCopyDesk. Seriously, check it out. #Shameless —THE MAROON Editorial Board

7

THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

“You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Continued from front Editor’s Note Before you read the rest of this article, I believe it is important to disclose to you how the writers came upon this story and the challenges they faced reporting it. In 2014, Sindhu, one of the writers, started an organization called One Campus whose mission is to create events for students and non-academic staff. Through this, she got to know many Allied Universal officers and, during conversations with them, heard the same grievances come up repeatedly.

Sindhu and Kristin decided to investigate what was going on, but from the beginning and throughout this past year of reporting, they have had a hard time getting officers to feel safe talking on the record even when offered anonymity. They have also struggled to get the perspective of Allied Universal management and SEIU Local 1 (the union) as their interview requests have either been rejected or pushed to media relations staff who were unable to answer their core questions.

Despite the silences from key players in the University’s security system, they decided to present what they were able to collect in the following article.

Conditions In the beginning, security guards on campus were scarce, with a person every four blocks or so. Seven years later, security guards stand at nearly every street corner on and around campus to act as crime deterrents. Increases in security personnel are still happening: In an e-mail statement in July of this year, President Robert Zimmer noted that the University has increased the number of security officers along University properties on 53rd Street and Harper Court in particular.

Zimmer credited the 60 percent decrease in on-campus robberies and 19 percent reduction in violent crimes within the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) patrol area since 2009 in part to this increase in security presence. University spokesperson Marielle Sainvilus pointed to the same trend, though she acknowledges that it is difficult to identify trends in the number of violent crime incidents on campus, in part because the number is relatively low. According to her, the 11 incidents reported in 2015 represented a decrease of more than 20 percent from the 14 cases reported in 2011.

This work of providing safety to the campus community has taken a toll on some officers. At a recent routine checkup, Anna spoke with her doctor about a growing pain in her ankle. The pain had gotten so bad that she had started wearing an ankle brace. When her doctor asked her what kind of work she did, Anna responded, “Well, I’ve been outside, standing.”

Anna’s doctor advised her to find another job, but Anna initially hesitated.

She was accustomed to her routine and had grown close to many members of the campus community. But her health was declining—she had started getting sick more often and her allergies were growing worse.

“Your body can only take so much.

Then, after a while, you have to say, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’ That’s where I am now.”

Anna said that a lot of her coworkers also have body aches and other medical issues related to the work and that, especially during winter months, the demands of standing outdoors are felt by many.

“Most people usually quit in the winter. The wind [will] hit them a certain way, and they’ll…[say], ‘No, I can’t do it.’”

Beyond the demands of standing for long periods of time and enduring harsh weather, Anna and other officers with whom we spoke shared frustrations about not being allowed into a number of campus buildings and having to wait long amounts of time to get clearance from their supervisor to use the restroom. According to Anna, an officer once peed himself while waiting to be relieved.

Another concern officers shared was related to their safety. Christina McNeil, who worked as an Allied Universal security guard from 2010 to 2013, told us that her husband at the time would sit in his car at her post during her shift to make sure she was safe.

“I was a woman, on a corner right there, by myself, and no one checked on me until two in the morning,” McNeil said.

Since McNeil’s time, officers are now checked on periodically by Allied Universal staff who make rounds in cars. Still, safety remains a concern among the officers because none of them are armed. “ They were shooting on 61st and Woodlawn, but they still have officers posted right there. Why? A bullet does not have eyes,” Anna said.

Few officers were willing to speak on the record about these and other concerns. Almost every officer that Grey City approached expressed concern about being fired for talking to the media. Two officers who agreed to speak with us on the record include Anna, whose name has been changed because she fears that speaking out will affect her at her next security job, and Christina McNeil.

McNeil first came to campus in 2010, a year after the University hired Allied Universal (which was named AlliedBarton before merging with Universal Services of America in August 2016).

She previously worked as a temp in the Allied Universal human resources department. When the temp job expired, she decided to take a job as a security guard so she could continue supporting her family. She originally worked at the front desk of Stony Island Hall, but Allied Universal managers eventually

moved her to an outdoor position. She recalls standing at University Avenue and 57th Street on her first day of working the outdoor shift.

“I was like, ‘This is the worst thing ever.’ How can they make people do this?” she said.

But what seems to frustrate McNeil and Anna even more than the conditions is the way they are treated by the institutions on which they rely to better these conditions. Both officers recounted a sense of fear and frustration resulting from tensions with Allied Universal management, particularly in regard to advocating for any improvements to their working conditions. They also expressed difficulties getting their union, SEIU Local 1, to advocate on their behalf for changes to these problems, as well as fear of being reprimanded for contacting the union in the first place.

These frustrations eventually led both security guards to quit their jobs.

McNeil now works behind the front desk at International House. Anna began speaking to Grey City before she found a new job, but is now leaving Allied Universal to work for another security company in Chicago. According to Anna, 17 offi cers have left in the last few weeks and many others are in search of new jobs. There are new hires, but Anna does not think they will stick around long.

“I guarantee you, the people that they just hired now…when it starts to get cold and they can’t take it, they are

“They were shooting on 61st and Woodlawn, but they still have officers posted right there. Why? A bullet does not have eyes.”

going to quit, and so now they’ll have another hiring [round]. They hire every four to six months.”

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t It is difficult to determine the party that is responsible, or most able to address these and other complaints.

According to Sainvilus, the University’s only responsibility in its contract with Allied Universal is to determine the hours and locations for the security posts. As the contractor, Allied Universal takes care of everything else: the hiring, the staffing, any disciplinary or HR-related issues, mitigation of complaints, and negotiations w ith the union. Allied Universal, however, claims that security programs, including “the duties” of the officers, are cus-

tomized to the needs of each client. The union, SEIU Local 1, did not comment directly regarding allegations of its unresponsiveness, citing the current contract negotiations it is undergoing with Allied Universal as its reason for being unable to answer questions.

Regardless of where the responsibility lies, the lack of outlets for security guards to openly address and resolve these frustrations has led Allied Universal security guards to believe that they are not being treated like human beings.

“You’re not human in certain places,” McNeil said. “ You’re a product of the building; you shut on and you shut off when they say so. You move when they say so.”

Both McNeil and A nna also felt that their managers did not truly understand the difficulty of their job, and that A llied Universal as a company could provide more support to officers standing outdoors.

“They say, ‘Aw, it’s not bad out here,’” Anna said. “Well, how about you try standing out here in the cold, freezing your ass off…. It don’t feel too good when it’s cold, and you got hail hitting your face.”

She and other security guards have requested booths to stand in, but to no avail. “[The managers] say, ‘Well, we are already doing so much.’”

When asked about what steps Allied Universal takes to ensure that workers are able to do their job, Samantha Thomas, a spokesperson for the company, said in a statement that the company works to ensure the safety of its employees who work outdoors at the University of Chicago. Support includes “cold weather gear; roving supervisors to relieve security professionals for breaks; warming breaks during cold weather; procedural changes to limit exposure during Wind Chill Advisories; water distribution during hot weather; and continued monitoring of weather reports to alert security professionals to take cover when needed.”

Sainvilus added that UCPD also assists with the warming breaks, and that “citizens also provide hot beverages during winter months.”

However, Anna said that it has been difficult to get Allied Universal to offer additional accommodations for employees. She and her coworkers have thought about starting a petition for Allied Universal to provide booths, but feel discouraged because of the possibility of getting fired. McNeil echoed similar concerns, stating that the difficulties she experienced communicating and working with her managers were what perpetuated many problems.

“It’s really how management treats you. Because they don’t treat you with respect. They look at you as someone who needs a job, and their favorite thing is to tell people, ‘Well, if you don’t work Continued on page 8

8 Continued from page 7 it, someone else needs a job, and they’ll work it.’”

McNeil acknowledges that there is truth to management’s claim. Before working the security detail, McNeil spent some time in human resources helping to hire officers. According to her, she would get hundreds of applications for every position.

Allied Universal held a hiring event in Englewood last week that was filled with hopefuls. One woman walking out of the event voiced her concern about the job. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stand outside for 10 hours in the cold. You get frostbite,” she said. When asked if she will still apply, she responded, “Yeah, money is money.”

McNeil believes officers are willing to tolerate difficulties because they need the money. “ You come to work every day. You have a family to take care of. You may not have a lot of education, or you have been looking for a job for three, four months…. You’re going to do whatever it takes to stay under the radar and be in this job,” McNeil said. “So many people deal with stuff that they shouldn’t have to deal with, [and] I feel like somebody needs to say something.”

McNeil believes the company operates on a culture of fear, effectively discouraging workers from speaking up, even when they have significant problems.

“One thing that you’ll find out is that people are afraid to work for AlliedBarton. They don’t open their mouths, and they don’t say things that might [make them] lose their job,” McNeil said.

Beyond the culture of fear, Anna pointed out that it is difficult to pinpoint who exactly is responsible for decisions that affect working conditions. “ It’s so confusing because…first they tell us what Allied Universal’s role [is], then [they say], ‘Oh no, it’s up to the University of Chicago.’ So it’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ There has got to be something that they can do,” Anna said.

While collective bargaining is considered a traditional outlet for addressing and negotiating working conditions, the two were also frustrated with SEIU Local 1, the union that represents Allied Universal security guards. “ The union doesn’t help you,” McNeil said. “ You call them, [and] they don’t know what you’re talking about.

[They’ll say], ‘Well, let me look into it.’

If I’m paying you, I shouldn’t have to hound you down. We pay you to be our representative.”

Anna expressed a similar sentiment: “ You are paying 50 bucks [a month].

What are you getting out of it? Like

THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

something goes wrong, and you go talk to them about the situation, and then sometimes it doesn’t get handled, or they will try to brush you off, saying, ‘Go talk to your supervisor or the manager of the supervisor.’”

Both McNeil and A nna also expressed that, from witnessing others’ experiences, contacting the union generally leads to some form of punishment.

“It’s like this unspoken thing. It’s really hard to explain. It’s not said, but you know it because everyone who has ever contacted the union…[has] been reprimanded in some type of way,” McNeil said.

“You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Anna said.

The National Labor Relations Act prohibits employers from “transferring, laying off, terminating, assigning employees more difficult work tasks, or otherwise punishing employees because they engaged in union or protected concerted activity.”

When asked about the stigma surrounding contacting the union, Allied Universal spokesperson Samantha Thomas said in an e-mail statement that “any employee with a concern or question about their post is encouraged to discuss it with their on-site manager or with their union representative.”

According to Thomas, “Allied Universal is happy to work in conjunction with the SEIU,” but that “union representation is at the discretion of the employees.”

McNeil, Anna, and every other officer we have asked did not know that they had a say in whether or not SEIU Local 1 would be the one to represent them.

“I didn’t know that you can choose your union. We were always told that this was the union for this campus so [we] basically [had] no choice,” McNeil said.

Thomas declined to comment beyond the initial statement.

The Community Man Though it is largely hushed, some people have noticed the difficulties that security officers face. When Sainvilus, University spokesperson, mentioned that there were citizens who “provided hot beverages during winter months,” she was referring to people like Peter Zelchenko, a Hyde Park resident who used to take his son with him to ladle hot chocolate for the officers.

“It was hard work, walking around, biking around, driving around in a car, ladling out cocoa, but one shift of that is easier than standing outside for [10] hours,” Zelchenko said.

After doing this four or five times,

he decided that something more had to be done, so he began brainstorming amenities that officers could use on an everyday basis. After consulting a few officers, he decided it would be nice for them to have chairs or stools, and cushioned pads that they could stand on.

“That will help with stress disorder on the legs…standing on concrete all day is not something you should do for your knees,” Zelchenko said.

He also wanted to provide each officer with a 32-ounce Thermos that could be filled with hot water for tea or hot cocoa. “ That would mean that they could have their Swiss Miss anytime.”

He drew up a budget and found that this entire project would cost about $20,000. His initial plan was to split this cost among four parties: the students, the community, Allied Universal, and the UCPD. L ast S eptember, he approached then-Director of Security Services at the University of Chicago Craig Nance, UCPD Sergeant Janelle Marcellis, and the then-Director of AlliedBarton Paul Ohm, among others, about the project. According to Zelchenko, while they offered him a meeting space in the police department, they said that contributing money to the project was not possible. According to Zelchenko, Ohm cited liability issues such as the sanitation requirements for the Thermoses. Zelchenko continued to work with Ohm, Nance, and other individuals, but found that, while these parties seemed proactive during meetings, it was difficult to get follow-up traction.

He does not attribute this to ill intent, but rather a general inertia that comes with bureaucracy.

Ohm did not respond to requests for comment. Marcellis said she was present in the initial meeting in more of an organizing capacity but did not remain involved and does not know about the decisions made. Nance confirmed that these items were discussed but said he could not speak to the decisions made since he is no longer in the same position at the University.

“I see four bureaucracies…that all want to do right. I don’t see a conspiracy to shirk responsibility here…. It’s a whole can of worms, and it’s hard to get it started,” Zelchenko said.

Zelchenko did say, however, that his project would be a drop in the bucket considering the University’s security budget. “ Pol icing at the Un iversity, it ’s multimillions of dollars…. Considering the size of the budget and considering how easy it would be to just give

them a Thermos, I don’t think it is a lack of will. It’s just a matter of getting them to do it.”

Zelchenko has not yet convinced them.

Cont rac t Negotiations , Peti tions, and Hope Within the organization, effor ts to bring about change largely depend on times when Allied Universal management and the officers are negotiating their contract. This process is currently underway, and will continue through early December of this year.

Union representatives have been going around having officers sign a petition asking for higher wages and add itiona l weather considerations.

T hey are also holding meetings for of f icers t o sha re thei r g r ieva nces so they can serve as intermediaries during contract negotiations. A nna has been to two of the meetings, and she does feel that the union is trying. “ The union is fighting, but there is always the other side that will do no compromising.”

W hen asked if she is hopeful for what will come from the negotiations, A nna says she is not going to wait around to find out.

This has not been an easy decision.

In the process of leaving the company, Anna has had to say a lot of goodbyes, and it’s made her realize how much of an impact she has been able to have on the community during her years with Allied Universal. “[Members of the community] have told me they are going to have to take another route because I’m not going to be there, and it broke my heart. I cried because I didn’t realize how much I have changed people. I have made a difference in someone’s life. It just hurts because I love what I do; I love helping people, and it hurts my soul that I have to leave, but at the same time, I have to do what I got to do.”

Despite leaving the company, Anna hopes to be involved in bringing about change in the system for the benefit of current and future off icers. She and some other security guards are talking about starting their own petition, but are afraid of the repercussions that may come from this. She believes it is important that they do so anyway, and do so united.

“We all have to come together, voice our opinions. If we voice our opinions, and go to the meetings and talk about what needs to be done, things can be changed. I know you are scared, I know everybody’s scared, but…you are human.”

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Personality Before Politics People of Different Political Ideologies Can Still Find Common Ground

Brian Dong Some of my close friends and I have a running gag where we count how many people have unfriended or blocked us on social media because of our controversial views. I’ve gotten so used to it that I actually chuckle when I see my friend count decrease slightly. Oh, look, another person I hardly know who finds my philosophy morally disturbing!

Unfortunately, I have lost dozens of Facebook friends over the years. Because of my background and personal views, my best friend from middle school stopped all forms of contact with me shortly after he became cognizant of our political differences. All of the fun we had together and trust we had suddenly meant nothing.

It hurts to see years of friendship and trust crumble because of differing points of view. Far too often, people are quick to judge others’ characters by their political views. From what I’ve observed during

my two months at UChicago, this seems to be less of a problem on campus than elsewhere due to our university’s culture of open discourse. And yet I have noticed that even otherwise friendly people at a certain point succumb to judging me because my views diverge from their own.

Right after Trump won the election, I noticed a significant number of posts on my news feed demanding that Trump supporters unfriend them. After listening to my peers, I understand why many people are extremely distressed over Trump’s presidency. I can relate to the people who are worried about their futures and those of their loved ones.

At the same time, I cannot fathom why some people assume others have all the negative traits of the politicians they support.

To start the healing process after this especially divisive election, we need to fundamentally understand that there is a

distinction between people and their politics. A Facebook friend of mine made an eloquent post recounting a conversation he had had with two zealous Trump supporters on a bus. He overheard them praising Trump’s deportation plan and engaged in a conversation with them, challenging its logical fallacies. After a relatively civil discussion, the two Trump supporters steadfastly maintained that illegal immigrants should be deported. He then looked them in the eyes and revealed that he was an undocumented immigrant. He waited a few seconds and asked them if he should be deported.

Their response was a reluctant no, though they continued to defend Trump’s plan. Despite having every reason to hate these people whose views endanger his very livelihood, he still had a polite discussion with them.

If an undocumented immigrant can see the humanity in strangers who support positions that affect him negatively, then why can’t you? If someone, whether it be a friend, family member, or acquaintance adheres to

Amelia Frank

ideologies different from your own, this does not mean that he or she wishes ill upon you. Politics can be very personal, but they can be separated from the personal as well. One only has to look at the surprising friendship between Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the late Antonin Scalia. Despite operating at opposite ends of the political spectrum, they maintained a strong friendship that lasted for more than 30

years. One can also look at the humorous video of former Speaker of the House John Boehner advising President Obama on how to live after he leaves office. Despite tension during Boehner’s stint as Speaker, the two men now clearly treat each other as if they were old friends.

If political enemies can form such a truce and see the humanity in one another, then this gives me faith about the future.

Your friend who supported

Trump or Bernie Sanders is not out to get you, and his or her political ideology should certainly not be a reason to end the relationship. For everyone’s sake, our political lives should remain separate from our interpersonal relationships. Once we can see that people exist outside of politics, we can then work together for a better future.

Brian Dong is a firstyear in the College majoring in political science.

Letter: UChicago Fails to Properly Address Islamophobia This week, the University of Chicago released a climate survey “aimed at identifying ways the University can improve in regards to diversity and inclusion.” Strikingly, despite the fact that just weeks ago Muslim students and those ad-

vocating for Palestinian civil rights on this campus were targeted by an outside hate group, mentions of anti-Muslim or anti–Middle Eastern bigotry were nowhere to be found in the statement.

The situation has gotten so bad

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that an outside civil rights group even demanded the University take steps to protect student activists.

And yet the survey showed no concern for documenting, addressing, or stopping them, instead rendering these concerns completely invisible.

The most recent incident occurred just last month, when an anti-Muslim hate group put posters up on 10 campuses across the country—including the University of Chicago—listing the names and affiliations of more than 100 students and faculty. The targets were primarily Muslim, and the posters labeled them anti-Semites, “Jew haters,” and sympathizers with the militant group Hamas. Some even featured black-and-white cartoons that accentuated the dark features of those targeted, a tactic eerily reminiscent of anti-Semitic caricatures.

My name was one of those on the list.

I was horrified when I awoke that morning to find a poster with my name on it below the words “#JewHatred” posted all over campus. A chill went down my spine as I realized hundreds of students had likely already seen the poster slandering me and more than a dozen other students.

Even worse was the fact that the posters carried a link to Canary Mission, a website which is composed of a blacklist of individuals active in groups promoting Palestinian human rights and has been

slammed as “McCarthyist” by more than 1,000 university faculty from across the country. It is run by an anonymous, shadowy organization that refuses to identify itself. It includes hundreds of profiles of people with pictures and statements beside accusations of anti-Semitism and Islamic extremism. Among those listed are professors, faculty, and students from universities across the country.

Since the website went up, I have been harassed on a regular basis by tweets claiming that I hate Jews, retweeted by dozens of people along with hateful messages.

But the day the posters went up on campus was the first time this cyberbullying and harassment hunted me down in real life.

Some universities, notably UCLA, have released statements condemning the group, which is the second campaign by the Horowitz Center this year. The Anti-Defamation League, an organization committed to fighting anti-Semitism, even denounced the campaign as “hateful.”

The University’s response, comparatively, was muted. A University spokeswoman at the time described the flyers as “defamatory and inconsistent with our values and policies.” In meetings with administration officials, though, students targeted by the poster were offered sympathy but little more. After reviewing camera footage, we were told, the University was unable to

identify those responsible. A statement to all students condemning anti-Muslim bigotry on campus was deemed out of the question, and the University has yet to comment on Canary Mission.

But the posters were not put up by unknown assailants. They bore the logo of the “David Horowitz Freedom Center,” an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center labels “a driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black movements” and the “premier financier of radical anti-Muslim extremism” in the United States today. Horowitz himself has called Islam a “religion which preaches war and violence and hate” and Obama an “evil man,” while he deems Black Lives Matter a “racist hate group.”

The posters substantiated their allegations of “anti-Semitism” by claiming those named were involved with Muslim Student Association (MSA) and/or Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), while others were labeled as being linked to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

The idea that being in any of these organizations is proof of anti-Semitism is patently absurd.

The Muslim Student Association is a religious organization that serves Muslim students—like Hillel serves Jews or Christian clubs serve Christians. SJP, meanwhile, is a club that advocates for an end to Continued on page 10

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Campus Climate Survey Disregards Anti-Muslim Bigotry Continued from page 9

Israeli human rights abuses of Palestinians through nonviolent means such as boycotting companies that profit from the Israeli occupation.

None of this constitutes proof of “Jew hatred” or promoting the “genocide” of the Jewish people. And yet there were the names strewn on posters across campus.

What is clear is that these students were targeted primarily for being Muslim or for being involved in causes that advocate for Muslims.

The failure of the University of

Chicago—and other universities like it—to vocally defend the rights of its students to free speech, political activism, and to live in an environment free of racial and religious hatred is particularly disconcerting given the wave of Islamophobia that has overtaken the country in the last year, particularly in light of Donald Trump’s electoral victory.

Trump’s campaign was predicated on defaming Muslims and threatening those who use their free speech in ways he disliked.

He has revived the idea of forcing Muslim Americans to register—

raising the specter of internment camps—and called for a ban on Muslims entering the country, besides defaming, attacking, and slandering those of many political stripes who have dared to stand up to his bullying and bigotry against African Americans, women, Mexican Americans, the disabled, and many others. Many of Trump’s closest advisers, like Steve Bannon and Frank Gaffney, are notoriously discriminatory against Muslims.

None of this is accidental. Rather, it is part of a broader attack on Muslim American rights under the

cover of targeting terrorism and protecting national security.

This is not the first time SJP or MSA members on our campus have been targeted; just last year SJP was subject to a postering campaign accusing the organization of standing for “Stabbing Jews for Peace,” which led to a wave of online harassment against the group and its members. In another incident, leaked emails from a fraternity showed a pattern of anti-Muslim hate speech.

In this climate, one would expect anti-Muslim bigotry and si-

lencing of students involved in promotion of Palestinian human rights through Islamophobic attacks to be taken seriously, especially when discussing the implications of a campus climate survey.

If universities refuse to protect their students from attacks by hate groups in this climate, who will?

When will anti-Muslim bigotry be considered important enough for the University of Chicago to intervene?

Alex Shams is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology.

Something to Write Home About Stories by Non-White Authors Are Unfairly Perceived as Mere Narratives of Otherness

BY URVI KUMBHAT ASSOCIATE VIEWPOINTS EDITOR

I’ve wanted to become a writer for as long as I can remember— since the second grade, before I even knew what that meant. Back then, someone asked my chubby-cheeked English teacher how to study for tests in school, and she said something that’s stayed with me ever since. There’s nothing to memorize, she told us. Just read the words and let them stick.

Now, 19 years old and clinging to that ambition more tightly than my seven-year-old self could fathom, things are so much more complicated. Every word feels like a step toward a great unforeseeable future. Every word is heavy with the weight of what it could become.

Every word is a reminder that my formerly childish fantasies are finally inching their way toward reality.

Things are complicated even beyond the pressures of just wanting to create something worth reading.

I’m not a white man. I go to college in a country that is across the world from the one I grew up in, but location is the least of my worries. My accent jars against the smooth harmony of American voices, I’ve never felt more isolated by standards of beauty, and no matter how much UChicago seems to embrace diversity, sometimes I just don’t belong.

When I’m in Chicago, my bones ache for home, for Calcutta’s fish-scented streets and orange-colored skies and dirty dhabas. India isn’t an easy place to love. It’s an easy place to exoticize, or visit, or take Instagram-worthy pictures in. But it spins on the wheels of corruption and colonialism and communalism, it was born of both violence and freedom, and it nurtures its bigotry under the garb of tradition. Its people, however, are resilient and beautiful and worth more than we are told. Its history is nuanced and glorious and dark all at once—we are so much more than our poverty, or our dance routines, or the color of our skin. We are everything—at once impossibly Anglicized and yet inextricably Indian, both dizzyingly urban and helplessly rural and everything in between. There is so much to unpack that I don’t know where or how to begin.

Coming here felt alienating at first, but not because people were

unwelcoming. Fitting in was hard enough by itself, but add to that a heavy dose of homesickness, and “international” just didn’t sound all that glamorous anymore. I was disconnected from home, from my family, from my friends. I felt like I was made up of in-betweens.

A solution of sorts presented itself to me at the beginning of fall quarter this year. I found that I could involve myself in more conversations relating to my upbringing in India. It was an easy pattern to slip into—my conversations became longer and interspersed by fewer awkward lulls. It almost seemed as though I fascinated people. “How does one get here all the way from India?” someone asked, eyes wide with surprise. I always acquiesced to questions, answering them patiently, ignoring how startling my foreignness was to some people.

Memories of these conversations unsettle me now. Was I selling out my own country? Was I appropriating my own culture just to make friends? When did I, one person, become some kind of authority on the entirety of India? The answers are unclear. On one hand, my experiences are very Indian, and by virtue of that, uncommon at UChicago. They make me who I am, and expecting to not talk about them is ridiculous. But on the other hand, was that all I was—an Indian in America?

The Indian-in-America narrative, understandably, informs my work and my thoughts. But when I began writing in a different setting, it seemed like it was the only subject I was supposed to write about.

My writing had to be about my “interesting and unique” experiences, experiences that were necessarily Indian. An invisible guiding hand was holding mine, telling me that writing about identity and foreignness was the only way forward—it was all people wanted to read from me.

Blind to the implications of this pressure, I tried harder and harder to craft stories around Indian-ness, and everything felt skewed and contrived. But this summer, when I was back at home reflecting on my writing, a striking problem emerged for the first time in my consciousness. Who decided that my experiences were “interesting,” while American experiences were “normal?” And it wasn’t just me— specific categories of literature, like immigrant stories and

Sofia Garcia

Asian-American literature, merely perpetuate the existing racial hierarchy. Once, I found a novel whose back cover proudly instructed readers to buy it if they were interested in South Asian experiences. Are the experiences of the writer only worth reading by virtue of their South Asian-ness? Do all South Asian stories need to be preceded by warnings? Stories by white authors seem to fall into the realm of the regular, necessarily creating the exotic, foreign “other.” To me, and to countless other Asian writers, these categories simply sound like ways of yelling to the reader, “these are non-white stories.”

I also didn’t want to be crafted into a glorified representative for my whole culture. Saying I know everything about India is laughable—no one knows everything about India. Why should my writing be treated as some kind of enlightening insider’s view into India? Why should people reach for writers of color only in order to embrace diversity? I understand and fully endorse the need for more diversity, but it seems more and more like an empty, tokenizing gesture. Why does diversity not mean simply more stories about non-white people? Why doesn’t it mean reading stories by

white and non-white people without compartmentalizing them? I don’t want my work, now or in the future, to exclusively fit into some kind of South Asian literature category. I want it to simply be—to be an authentic narrative from a real person like any other white writer.

Often the stories we do see from marginalized writers are ones of pain and anguish, as explained in Jenny Zhang’s brilliant essay on writing as a person of color. People of color so often become reduced to nothing but their stories of suffering. While I don’t dispute the necessity of narratives about subjugation, I too, began to feel like I could only write about the struggles that come with brown skin. In a twisted, unconscious manner, I was combing through my life for instances of my own oppression—whether or not it was what I really wanted to write about. Somehow, as she argues, the voices of people of color become relevant in the public domain only after they have been battered and discriminated against. Zhang asks a question I can’t help but echo: “Where are my carefree writers of color at?” And more disturbingly, why does no one want to read them?

I was fed a postcolonial palette of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl as

a child, and I discovered Indian writers much later. They almost always fell into a corner in my favorite bookstore labeled “Indian Literature,” a category I readily accepted until I realized that’s what I would become too. Stepping outside my comfort zone has convinced me of one thing: We desperately need more spaces for the diverse stories of the less privileged, to push back until we dismantle this hegemony of “mainstream” and “niche.” I am Indian and a student in America and a woman, and my multiple identities collide and merge inextricably. None of these alone determines who I am; I can’t be divided to fit into neat little boxes. The stories I want to tell don’t fit into neat little boxes either, carved out of the places that no one ever visits. We, and only we, should write our own stories—the stories of the less heard and barely seen. Louder than a scream and quieter than a whisper, I wait for the day our voices will ring out and resonate in the old and the young and the new, and maybe even in the forever.

Urvi Kumbhat is a second-year in the College majoring in English and political science. She is an associate editor of the Viewpoints section.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Culture Shock The Surprise of the Election’s Outcome Is Partly Due to Our Society’s Flawed Understanding of Identity Politics

Andrew Nicotra Reilly We a r e n o w l i v i n g i n Trump’s America. Discussions about the election and the reasons for its outcome rage on, in personal conversations as well as in the news. It has become clear that for a large part of the American public, a traditional view of identity politics does not seem to apply. Whereas voters are often defined monolithically by one aspect of their identity, people seem to give different politically salient elements of their identities different amounts of credence. For example, 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump. This suggests that his comments about women took a backseat to his promises that he will improve the lives of white Americans.

Put more simply, white women were willing to vote based on their whiteness rather than on their gender identity.

Political campaigns often paint voters in broad strokes, oversimplify ing their intersecting identities. Black people are presumed to always vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. White men vote Republican. But this kind of rhetoric underestimates the ability of politicians to truly understand their constituents. A ny one person’s identity is inf luenced by so much more than these blunt and ineffectual identity markers. Politicians may be hard-pressed to understand i nt er se c t ion a l it y, the ide a that any one person’s standing in the world is affected by the multiple categories that encapsulate their own personal history. A bisexual, white, college-educated man from an urban setting is likely to have a very different world outlook

than a heterosexual white man with the same education who lives in the suburbs. Both face different issues, prejudices, and societal biases. To lump them together as simply college-educated white men reduces their differences. A nd yet this is how we usually try to understand the electorate.

Dona ld T r ump was able to appeal to a large enough coalition of Midwestern and S outher n vot ers t o ensu re his victory. More specifically, Trump was able to appeal to Rust Belt and working class white A mer icans, ensur ing his v ictory in these crucial states. This election’s outcome was a surprise, partly because of a f lawed understanding of identity politics. Pundits and pollsters were quick to assume that women were going to unilaterally vote against Trump due to his vile language about women. W hat they missed, however, was that white working class and suburban women were willing to accept these kinds of attacks in the hopes that T rump would build an economy with a strong manufacturing core, replete with jobs for native-born A mericans rather than for foreigners. More upsetting was the consta nt reassu ra nce f rom these pollsters and pundits that Trump’s hate-filled message would deter enough swing voters. What happened, however, is that his core message resonated with many voters who felt privileged enough to ignore his more inf lammatory rhetoric. He promised to dismantle trade deals, invest in infrastructure, drive away immigrants who many blame for stealing their jobs, and

ultimately return jobs to the heartland. Trump supporters did not denounce him for his hate, because he appealed to their sense of identity. His more discriminatory messages, while offensive to many ma rg i na l ized commun ities, were not a deal-breaker for ma ny wh it e, work i ng- class voters. He appealed to a group of racially privileged people, many of whom also identify as members of the disenfranchised working class.

Our collective misunderstanding of identity politics ref lects a certain naiveté. We are generally optimistic about the morality of the American public, assuming that people will be turned off by hate toward other groups. But more implicitly, it is a lack of understanding of which part of someone’s identity resonates more powerfully within their consciousness. Simple demographics do not give an idea of how privileged someone is, nor does a simple gender category help us understand the way someone feels about their gender role. In order to truly comprehend the American electorate, we need to focus more on understanding the reasons people feel the way they do, beyond census-level data collection.

Perhaps the greatest evidence of the failings of this type of identity politics can be seen in the ways campaigns conduct themselves. In recent memory, the elections have come down to Ohio, F lorida, and other swing states. But these states represent only a small facet of American life. The issues that

Helen Chen

plague these states are given greater credence than the issues facing states that either party deems “safe.” The issues of Northeastern states and the West Coast do not much concern the candidates since they will inevitably go to the Democrats, while the South is ignored since it always votes R epublican. By cater ing to these unrepresentative swing states and the perceived identity of the voters within them, the interests of other states are

unjustly ignored. Politicians cater to specific states and specific identities at the expense of a more nuanced concern for America as a whole. Groups of individuals with similar census data do not vote as monoliths, but rather with their various interests at heart. These interests go beyond simple data collection and speculation.

Andrew Nicotra Reilly is a third-year in the College majoring in economics and political science.

CORRECTIONS Correction: The November 18th print edition of the article “Widespread Delays in Graduate Employees’ Pay” incorrectly stated that Graduate Students United planned to deliver their letter November 17th. They delivered it November 18th.

- ARTS -

Comedy and Social Commentary in First Chicago Podcast Festival

BY BROOKE NAGLER MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

The voices in your earbuds a re f i na l ly comi ng t o l i fe.

T he Chicago Podcast Festival debuted this weekend in theaters throughout the city, hosti ng comed ia ns, act ors, musicians, and story tellers who sa ng, l aughed , c r ied , drank, told stories, and delivered social commentary, all while recording a podcast in front of dedicated listeners.

The festival was held on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights in theaters ranging from the Promontory in Hyde Park to the Steppenwolf Theater in Lincoln Park.

Spread out in various theaters,

film-festival style, the festival aims to reach out to as many community members as possible. It was created and produced by Jonathan Pitts, the current executive director of Chicago Improv Productions. “ T he podcast went from being an odd, quirky thing that only a few people had done to a very emerging technology and an emerging art,” P it t s ex pl a i n s . “ [ T hey ’r e] only about five minutes away from hitting the mainstream.”

Tyler Greene, the festival’s a r tistic d i rector, works for The Moth, a storytelling show in Chicago, and is an event producer for WBEZ radio. He chose a mosaic of podcasts for the festival, emphasizing di-

versity in all areas— recording location, genre, subject matter, and hosts—unified by a focus on comedy, storytelling and culture. There was everything from the tear-jerking show Crybabies to a podcast with a socio-political focus, Minority Korner. The festival showcased some well-established podcasts with larger audiences like Guys We Fucked, a self-described a nt i- s lut - sh a m i n g p o dc a s t that currently ranks in the top 100 podcasts on iTunes, as well as more recent creations l i ke T h e R o om W h ere It’s Happening, a Hamilton podcast started over the summer.

Since Pitts’ group Chicago Improv Productions runs the event, all of the podcasts

were completely unscripted, setting the Chicago Podcast Festival apart from most other podcast festivals, which typically feature pre-written shows with elaborate effects.

T his allowed for lively and spontaneous shows that fed off of the energy of the audience.

The audience on Thursday night laughed and applauded throughout the performance.

W hen the podcasters asked listeners whether they listened to the show reg ularly, many raised their hands.

They waited long lines to talk to them after the show was over, excited to finally join the conversations that they had been listening in on for so long.

While it might seem odd to

make a podcast—usually recorded in a private space—in front of a live audience, Pitts argues that the setting creates intimacy instead of awkwardness. The convergence of the audience in a central location allows for listener communities to form. The podcast serves as a common interest, so that when the podcasters perform, “everyone in the room know the same quirks of those hosts,” Pitts said. This creates “an inside joke with the whole room.”

The comedy podcast Lady to Lady was featured at the P r o m o nt o r y o n T hu r s d ay night. The three ladies behind the podcast are comedians— Tess Barker, Barbara Gray, Continued on page 12

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THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

ARTS

Audience Uncon-Vince-d by MAB Fall Show

BY GARRETT WILLIAMS NEWS STAFF

Rapper Vince Staples is finally segueing into the final run of tracks for his 2016 fall show, and he’s just introduced “Hands Up,” one of the standout tracks from his 2014 Hell Can Wait EP, by telling the crowd, “GET YOUR HANDS UP.” It’s a little jarring—while it might not be apparent to the audience, “Hands Up” refers both to getting your hands up to party and getting them up for the police. But he delivers them with demanding intensity regardless of what they mean, and so everybody sticks them up.

By the end of the first verse, the whole crowd has returned to a vaguely interested, if somewhat confused, stance, with their hands by their sides. Staples is barely paying attention, more invested in the music than in performing.

There was little excuse for the subpar mosh pit or lack of audience participation found in Mandel Hall Saturday night. Staples brought enough seething energ y to supply a crowd full of politically frustrated students, but didn’t quite get the response.

T he show opened w ith Simeon Daferede and Christopher Good, both second-years in the College and Major Activities Board (MAB) members, who performed as SIMDEF and York Smiles, respectively. Their 45-minute hip-hop/modern dance set offered staple bangers mixed in with well-appreciated hints of psychedelic electronica.

Staples began his set with popular hits from Summertime ’06, his debut album released in 2015, then moved on to deeper cuts, before hitting the audience with a cathartic rendition of “Norf Norf.” He followed this with a two-song encore—singles “ Blue Suede” and “ Summertime”— though sadly, the crowd was only given the first verse of “Summertime.”

His set was laced with social commentary, which included chants and exchanges between Staples and the crowd. His subdued (and somewhat indiscernible) muttering between songs was conscious of the lone officer who’s “just trying to do their best.” Following each of these sidebars, Staples joined the audience in shouting out the universal sentiment: “Fuck the Police.”

During the performance, some attendees left early, perhaps expecting a 20 -song set of “ Norf Norf ”’s and “Blue Suede”’s, but by the time Staples reached these songs, the theme of the night had already been set.

This was not a banger-after-banger power hour, nor was it meant to be. If that’s what you came for there’s a good chance you left disappointed, and Staples didn’t seem to give a fuck. He was there to tell us a story, give us some feels, let us dance, and throw out a punch line or two (“ Make sure y’all aren’t giving each other any STDs”).

Turn-up-ready attendees were confronted with unexpectedly dark tones and haunting drones at M AB’s weekend festivities. Granted, we did not walk in expecting an uplifting stroll through Staples’ Long Beach life experience, but “Norf Norf ” (which prominently features the lyric “I ain’t never ran from nothin’ but the police”) alone was not adequate preparation for the social-commentary-heavy set.

Those who walked out of Mandel Hall Saturday night not feeling convicted for their ivory tower turn-up expectations, did not get the message. But that’s OK, I guess. We just tryna’ party.

Courtesy of Luke Sironski-White

“Podcasting is a very democratic art form” Continued from page 11

and Brandie Posey—who described their podcast as “a candid hangout.” They bring on a guest for each episode, which have included comedians like Margaret Cho, French Stewart, and Rhea Butcher in the past, to discuss their lives, play games, and give advice through listener-submitted questions in a segment entitled “Lady Problems.” The women set few boundaries on what they are willing to share, making the conversation candid, unrestricted, and personal.

“We defi nitely fi ll a niche for a lot of people, because there are so few shows that are just for females sitting around, hanging out,” Posey said. Their audience is predominantly women, some of whom have few female friends or work in mostly male-dominated fields. This podcast thus serves as a place where these women “get their girl talk out.”

The Lady to Lady comedians have nev-

er performed at a festival exclusively for podcasts, but they have done live shows in the past on their own and at comedy festivals. Their content did not seem more restricted with an audience present. During the show, they discussed everything from their plans in case of an apocalypse to Barbara’s crush on the chef from their lunch that day (and her subsequent e-mail letting him know she is single and available), all while expressing their embarrassment, laughing, asking questions, and drinking.

The women described what it is like meeting their listeners. “You’ll be talking to them and playing it cool and then you’ll laugh genuinely at something they say and they look like a deer in headlights because they’re like, oh no that laugh is in 3-D,” Posey said.

Lady to Lady is broadcast on the Maximum Fun, an independent podcast and radio production network. This network allows for collaboration and creates

a community of podcasts that give the women creative freedom. “That’s what’s so great about a podcast; you’re not beholden to anyone,” Barker explained. “The world is our verbal oyster,” Posey added.

“Podcasting is a very democratic art form,” Pitts said, echoing this sentiment of creative liberty seems to be one of the most unique and appealing aspects of making podcasts, “The artists get to create whatever they want to create and then they fi nd their audience. And it’s their audience. They don’t have to go through structures to achieve approval to get a movie up or a TV show up. They create the material themselves and then they put out there. Audiences respond to it or they don’t. And it’s a direct connection.”

Although this is only the Chicago Podcast Festival’s fi rst year, its future looks bright, given the rapidly growing production and demand for podcasts. The audience response will likely guide the orga-

nizers’ plan of action in subsequent years.

What is the future of podcasts? It is unclear whether they will take over radio, but have nonetheless forced radio stations to adapt to modern times, as many radio shows now provide an on-demand service. The production of podcasts shows no signs of slowing down; there is an infi nite number of topics for them to cover. “If you have an interest, you just type that word and add podcast, and you can fi nd something,” Greene stated.

In an age where technology is making people more isolated, maybe podcasts can provide that togetherness we need. “As we have all gotten more separate from each other because of our phones, podcasts that come through our phones are kind of a way of reconnecting,” Pitts explained. “As human beings we still love stories… that’s what these podcasts are. They are niche, focused stories on demand.”

13

THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

uchicago MANUAL OF

STYLE

by jessica hwang

TERRY HINES / FOURTH-YEAR

Things change, especially at this point in my life. My look has changed over the years. There are things I spent a ton of money on in high school that will rarely make it into my wardrobe today. That was part of a learning experience, figuring out what is really worth investing in.

I’m Terry Hines. I’m a fourth-year TAPS major. I’m part of Blacklight Magazine, Fire Escape Films, and Southside Scribblers.

“I’ll have every day of my working life to wear a collar.”

Terry got this dashiki from a street carnival on the Midway his second year.

The CTA is a great place to watch for style. You get a wild mix of people… that is, if you pay attention out in the city, instead of being in your own bubble.

On campus, we’re all so busy thinking about what we have to do next. But when I’m out in the city, I really like to relax and absorb what’s going on. —T ERRY

Terry is wearing a vintage University of Kansas pullover, jeans

by Levi’s, and 2013 Air Jordan 1s by Nike.

I like to pull from a lot of things.

Right now, I’m on a streetwear kick.

When I first came to school, I…I went to East Coast prep, honestly, just to be very forward about it. And I still have a lot of nautical stripes in my wardrobe, which I brought from home. Last year, I started buying a lot of black. And this year I’m really into portrait tees.

My style’s become more of a streetwear look. Growing up on the East Coast, it used to be very preppy. And I can still appreciate that style. But eventually I’m going to get a job—I’ll have every day of my working life to wear a collar. So I can be more creative now while I’m in college — take advantage of the fact that I’m 20 now and dress like I’m 30 later.

The change happened with my Jordan 1s. I knew about them in high school and thought they were cool. I was also aware it didn’t fit the look that I had, so it wasn’t worth the investment. But I started changing my look in college —buying these Jordans definitely acknowledged the confidence I had to change my look, and the direction I was trying to take it.

I’ve always worn a watch. Jewelry is always a cool accessory, but watches also happen to be functional—I wear my watch every day. It’s both a tool and an accessory, so it warrants an investment. But I’m also in college. I live a rough life. This watch has lasted a year, and I’m glad I didn’t invest a ton in it. I invest in a look, not a name.

I like to pull from my environment. I followed fashion weeks in high school— that stopped in college, because I just didn’t have the time anymore. What I like to do now is go out to Chicago and see what’s going on in the city. The city is so diverse in and of itself. On almost anyone, you can find something about their outfit that you like. That’s what I really appreciate about Chicago—so many different influences that have inspired me throughout the years.

“The CTA is a great place to watch for style.”

Terry is wearing a fi shtail parka by Forever 21, a dashiki, jeans from Levi’s, and Flyknit Chukkas by Nike.

14

THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Electrafying Performance at the Court Theatre

BY EMILY EHRET ARTS STAFF

I’m the first to admit that I know very little about Greek tragedies. I gained most of my Greek theater knowledge from a few brief high school readings (tragic in their own way). But, Court Theatre’s Electra, the final production in their three-year House of A rteus cycle, is stunning, thought-provoking, and accessible even to those who may not be well-versed in Greek tragedy.

The play is a continuation of last fall’s Agamemnon, in which Clytemnestra kills her husband Agamemnon in a fit of grief and vengeance over his murderous sacrifice of their daughter Iphegenia. Electra picks up with their other daughter, Electra, who mourns her father’s death as she lives under her mother’s unjust and tyrannical rule. She throws herself entirely into her sorrow as she awaits

the return of her brother Orestes who will help her kill Clytemnestra and her new lover, Aegisthus. All the essentials are present: love, murder, and compl icated fami ly dy namics.

Electra’s cast keeps all of these charged emotions in excellent balance. “[T]he thing that I have learned about Clytemnestra over these three years is that she runs the gamut of human emotion,” Sandra Marquez, the actress who plays Clytemnestra said. “She is so often thought of as simply a villainous angry woman, but…is more than that. She is a woman who would have been happy to be a mother loving her children and a queen enjoy ing her rightful place in the palace and polis, but life dealt her a different hand.”

With her strong will and intimidating presence, Clytemnestra, the powerful matriarch who has been the consistent point throughout this trilogy, clashes directly with the brute

Courtesy of Michael Brosilow Electra pits family against honor in a blood-drenched finale to an epic Greek tragedy.

Courtesy of Michael Brosilow Electra (Kate Fry) and Clytemnestra (Sandra Marquez) are at the heart of this family tragedy.

force of emotion within Electra (Kate Fry). Electra’s despair over her father’s death is just part of her commitment to justice. Electra’s sister, Chrysothemis (Emjoy Gavino), is the rational, prudent one, steady as a pillar in contrast to her sister’s turbulence.

The intricacies of their relationships are drawn out by a seamlessly integrated three-woman chorus, blending rhythmic and movement-based elements in a haunting, ethereal manner.

Electra definitely asks more questions than it answers. Reflecting on her character, Fry asks, “[H]ow much of

[Electra’s] grief is propelled by her sense of justice, making sure that all who live never forget what happened to her father?” Similarly, we wonder: Are her actions satisfying? After the fi nal words of the play, is the cycle of violence truly broken? While deeply rooted in the Athenian theater tradition, Court’s Electra provides a lens through which modern viewers can confront these questions.

See Court T heater’s Electra by S oph o cl e s n ow throu gh D e c ember 11. F ive- d ollar stud ent ru sh tickets available one hour before show.

- SPORTS -

South Siders Kick Off Season in Concordia WRESTLING

BY NATALIE DEMURO SPORTS STAFF

The University of Chicago wrestling team travelled to Mequon, WI on Saturday to compete in its second tournament of the year at the 24th annual Concordia University Wisconsin (CUW) Open. The Maroons posted a number of strong performances in a field of nationally ranked teams, placing three athletes in their respective weight classes, including both finalists at the 174-pound weight class.

Saturday ’s top performers were th i rd-yea r Nick Fer ra ro a nd se cond-year Jason Lynch. Ferraro and

Lynch both went 4 – 0 on their way to the finals of the 174-pound weight class.

Their results marked the first time in program history that two Maroons of the same weight have reached the finals at the CUW Open.

In their first matches of the day, Ferraro and Lynch each recorded technical falls, with Ferraro up 15–0 and Lynch winning 1– 0. Ferraro next notched a 6 –1 decision over his opponent, followed by a pin in the third round and an 18–2 technical fall in the semifinals.

Lynch won 13 –5 by major decision in the second round and recorded an 18 –3 technical fall in the quarterfinal match.

He concluded the day with a 7–2 win

by decision. The two Maroons did not wrestle in the final match.

First-year Kahlan Lee-Lermer also placed on Saturday, finishing sixth in the 149-pound weight class with an overall record of 4 –3. Lee-Lermer notched one pin and one 5 – 0 decision in the first and second rounds, respectively, before losing 7–2 by decision. He then recorded two more pins on the day and fell by a 7–5 decision in the fifth place match. “ We had a pretty good showing at one of the toughest tournaments on our schedule. We had a lot of strong performances out of our freshmen and definitely have something to build on,”

Ferraro said.

Ferraro maintains that the squad is in high spirits and is looking forward to improvement. “As a team, we have some things we need to work on in practice these next few weeks as we get ready for the next tournament and the bulk of the season, but all in all there were a lot more positives coming out of this weekend than negatives,” he said.

The Maroons return to competition on Saturday, December 3 at 9 a.m., traveling to Milwaukee, W I for the MSOE Invitational. Last year, UChicago placed seventh out of 11 teams with two runner-up finishes from Ferraro and current fourth-year Paul Papoutsis.

15

THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Maroons Bounce Back from Season Opener

Home Meet Spells Success for Maroons

MEN’S BASKETBALL

SWIMMING & DIVING

BY CAVELL MEANS SPORTS STAFF

The Maroons dominated in their first away game of the season, never trailing in their 78 – 68 game against Lake Forest College. This win marks the fi rst of the season for the South Siders and gives the team high spirits for their game against Illinois Tech (IIT).

The game started off very efficiently for the team, with fourth-year forward Waller Perez knocking down a jumper in the fi rst play of the game. With Lake Forest scoring to tie the game at 2–2, the score was the closest it would be for the rest of the game.

From there, the Maroon defense took over, not allowing the home team to convert field goals for the next six minutes and building a 14–4 lead in the process.

The bigger lead was also due in part to the offense moving the ball around, as all of the starting five scored during the run. Chicago continued to score efficiently and lock down defensively and ended the half leading 39–24.

The second half was much closer, with the Foresters cutting the lead to as small as one. Despite this, sharp outside shooting from second-year guard Noah Karras and clutch free throws from third-year forward Collin Barthel iced the game for the Maroons. Barthel was

also the team’s leading scorer for the game, with a career high of 20 points.

Fourth-year Blaine Crawford pounded the boards all night, and it paid off, as he led the team with a solid 10 rebounds. Fourth-year guard Tyler Howard also stuffed the stat sheet, with the game-high of five assists to go with 15 points and five rebounds. First-year forward Sam Sustacek reflected on the work of his teammates and looked forward to the improvement of the team in the future.

“Our starting unit played with a lot of confidence, and that translated into a constant lead. Lake Forest hit some tough shots, but we never got discouraged. We stayed disciplined and carried the lead to the fi nish,” Sustacek said. “With our fi rst win under our belt, there’s a lot of excitement and energy at practices. We’re excited to build on the good things and work towards being even better.”

The Maroons look to improve to 2–1 when they face off against IIT today.

The last time these teams squared off was last season in January, when Chicago dominated and walked off with an 85 –65 victory. Time will tell whether the outcome will be similar this season.

The home game against IIT will start at 8 p.m. It will be the fi nal game for the team before the Thanksgiving break.

BY MINNIE HORVATH SPORTS STAFF

Last weekend the University of Chicago hosted the Phoenix Fall Classic. The Maroons swam to numerous school records and personal bests, propelling both the men’s and women’s teams to victory in their biggest meet of the quarter. The men fi nished fi rst of 12 teams with 1,022 points, beating the runner-up William Jewell College by a crushing 466-point margin. The women also took fi rst of 14 teams with 972.5 points. DePauw University was a distant second with 519 points.

Together the men and women claimed victory in 20 events and broke six school records. This performance is made even more impressive by the fact that this meet falls so early in the season, which leaves almost three months for further improvement before the UAA Championships.

Gushing about the squad’s performance, fourth-year Maya Scheidl said, “It was the best Phoenix Invitational meet that I’ve had in my college career, and the team performed so well.” Scheidl swam on three winning relay teams: the 200-yard freestyle relay, the 400-yard freestyle relay, and the 400-yard medley relay. She also claimed two individual victories in the 100-yard and 50-yard freestyle.

First-year Taye Baldinazzo claimed one of the team’s six broken school re-

cords this weekend with his second-place fi nish in the 1,650-yard freestyle. His time of 16:03.42 was more than seven seconds ahead of the previous school record. He was followed closely by fellow fi rst-year Aaron Guo, in third place with 16:03.80. Guo was “glad to have been able to go under the old mark of 16:10, and to have been able to race with my teammate…. It’s great to have a couple of solid distance swims down this early in the season.”

The Maroon men and women combined for 30 NCAA B cuts, which bodes well for representation in the national championship meet in March. To compete at the NCAA Championship, a swimmer must be invited in their event based on time. The number of invites changes year to year and for each event. However, when a swimmer is invited in one event, they are allowed to swim in any additional events that they have Bcut times for.

The divers were also successful this weekend, with two divers hitting regional qualifying marks. Second-year Anna Girlich won the one-meter board easily with a score of 430.50, and thirdyear Dean Boures took second in the three-meter dive with a score of 453.10.

“I know the momentum from this meet will carry through the season, and I can’t wait to see how we continue to compete next quarter,” Sheidl said.

Undefeated Start for Chicago in St. Louis WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

BY MAGGIE O’HARA SPORTS STAFF

The women’s basketball team started out its season on about as high of a note as it gets, knocking off a ranked team and later setting the school record for points scored in a single game. The Maroons competed in the McWilliams Classic Tournament at Wash U, defeating both No. 25 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) and Hanover. The squad looked in top form as it shone on both offense and defense all weekend.

On Friday, the Maroons took on CMS for the season opener. After a back-and-forth start, the South Siders went on a 20–1 run highlighted by six-point halves from both second-year guard Jamie Kockenmeister and first-year guard Miranda Burt, en route to a

28–9 advantage by halftime.

Chicago continued to assert its dominance in the second half, immediately forcing a turnover via a steal by fourth-year Britta Nordstrom, which resulted in a layup. Chicago held a comfortable lead the rest of the way, culminating in a final score of 64–36.

The Maroons were led by second-year forward Olariche Obi with 13 points, Kockenmeister with 10 points, and first-year Mia Farrell with 10 points in the first game of her collegiate career.

The defense ruled the day for the Maroons as they limited CMS to 24.5 percent shooting percentage. Though the Maroons and Athenas had a similar number of turnovers, 27 and 26 respectively, the Maroons capitalized on the Athenas’ turnovers for 29 points.

While the defense shone for Chicago on

Friday, its offense truly came alive on Saturday. The Maroons blew past Hanover College with a score of 113–83, setting a school record for points in a game. The previous school record was 101, achieved in both the 1985–86 and 1992–93 seasons.

The Maroons picked up 78 of their points in the paint and shot 64 percent on field goals within the arc. The forwards, Nordstrom along with first-year Taylor Lake, led this charge while dominating inside the paint.

Lake ended with 21 points and 11 rebounds while Nordstrom had 19 points, six rebounds, four assists, and four steals. They both went on to be named to the McWilliams Classic All-Tournament Team.

Kockenmeister noted how excited the team is to have played so well in its first time hitting the court together, especially while

integrating the newcomers. “These first few games are definitely a great indicator for the rest of our season. Our defense and offense can be kind of hard to grasp if you think too much about it, but everyone did a great job this weekend of adjusting to the other team and just playing basketball, especially our freshmen, which was really fun to see,” Kockenmeister said.

Both games saw significant impact from the first-years on the team, making it hard to distinguish them from the veterans. “They all played like they had played college basketball before, and they contributed a huge part to our wins this weekend,” Kockenmeister said.

The Maroons look to keep the ball rolling today at their home opener versus Carroll University at 6 p.m.

Maroons Finish With National Championship Run CROSS COUNTRY

BY DANNY EISGRUBER SPORTS STAFF

The women’s cross country team finished 25th of 32 teams at the NCAA DIII Championships this Saturday in Louisville, KY. Third-year Khia Kurtenbach led the way with a time of 20:54.4, finishing 10th overall out of 280 participants and earning All-American honors.

“It means a lot to go out and race and know that I’m not just representing myself, but I’m representing my school and representing my teammates. I definitely think during the race and post-race to make my teammates and the teammates who are watching proud,” Kurtenbach said. She received All-American status for the second consecutive year.

Kurtenbach was followed by fourth-year Madeleine Horvath in 163rd with a time of 22:22.2, third-year Megan Verner-Crist in 186th with a time of 22:33.4, third-year Claire Costelloe in 195th with a time of 22:35.0, third-year Kelsey Dunn in 207th with a time of 22:41.3, third-year Cassidy McPherson in 210th with a time of 22:45.7, and firstyear Taylor Campos in 236th with a time of 22:58.6.

This year was the seventh straight team appearance in the National Championship for the Maroons. However, 25th was the team’s lowest finish since 2011, when they finished 27th.

“I think that as a team we were obviously really excited to be at the national meet,” Kurtenbach said. “On the other hand, I don’t think that we had our best day at the meet. I think our team is a better team than 25th in

the country.”

One of the reasons the team was not able to perform as well as expected was that not prepared for the speed with which the race started. After just 3K, the squad was 10th, but by the 4.18K mark it had dropped down to 21st before eventually dropping to 25th by the end of the race. Kurtenbach moved from 15th to seventh and finally to 10th during those intervals.

“I don’t know if we were quite as prepared for the pace that the race went out at, but I also think there’s an element of confidence and experience that comes from racing in those meets, and knowing that even if you get out really fast that you have the training behind you to be able to try and hold that,” Kurtenbach said. “I think that as our team builds confidence over the next year, we’ll

come back and be more ready for that.”

The team has reason to be optimistic about its future prospects since most of its members will be returning next season.

“I think the national meets are like a different atmosphere than any of the meets you race all season,” Kurtenbach said. “We’re only graduating one senior, so next year we’re going to come back with even more experience.

And I think as you gain experience, you learn how to handle the pressure of all the really big meets and all the excitement that comes with that pressure. We were really fit and prepared for the race, but some days you’re there and some days you’re not.”

The Maroons will break until next year, although many of the cross country runners will also participate in the track and field seasons during the winter and spring.

16

THE CHICAGO MAROON - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

SPORTS IN-QUOTES... “No disrespect to @KingJames but he will never be as big as @MuhammadAli” —Stephen A Smith

South Siders’ Historic Season Comes to an End MEN’S SOCCER

BY SIDDHARTH KAPOOR SPORTS STAFF

The Maroons’ undefeated run came to a heartbreaking end against University of Redlands on a chilly Saturday afternoon.

The No. 1 South Siders were hot favorites for the game after finishing the year with a 17–1–2 record. They had reached the NCAA DIII Round of 16 for the second time in program history, and their regular season performance had earned them the honor of hosting the first and second rounds of the tournament. The No. 25 Bulldogs (18– 5–1), after upsetting Chicago, next played No. 8 University of St. Thomas (19–1–3) in the NCAA Quarterfinal on Sunday, where they lost 3–2.

Redlands started the first half really well, controlling the majority of the possession. The Bulldogs made the pressure count, scoring in the first 10 minutes off a header. For the rest of the first half, the South Siders were on the attack; however, this did not count for much as the Redlands defense was rock solid, blocking everything that came into its path. But the dominance and constant probing eventually paid off at the 40th minute when first-year midfielder David McBroom’s shot deflected off a Redlands defender and found its way into the back off the net.

Redlands gained back momentum in the second half, and the Bulldogs capitalized on an error by the Maroons in the 58th

minute, making the score 2–1. Another Maroon turnover increased the deficit to 3–1 when a header off the free ball rolled in at the 65th minute. Before Saturday, Chicago had not allowed a goal in the second half of a match all year. The solid defense that the Maroons prided themselves on failed them at the most inopportune moment.

Facing the two-point deficit, the South Siders acted and brought first-year defender Sam Drablos up top in an effort to utilize his heading ability. This paid off in the 76th minute when Drablos scored his fourth goal of the season to bring the score to 3–2, where it would stay.

“It was definitely a tough loss considering how much time and effort we put into being the best this year,” second-year forward Matthew Koh said. “Sometimes things just don’t go your way, but that doesn’t take anything away from what we grew to be as a team.”

And with loss, so ends Chicago’s historic season. Even though it did not end in championship glory, it was a season to remember for the Maroons, and consistent performances by young players prove promising for the future of the team.

“Looking back on this season,” Koh said, “I think we’ll begin to realize how successful of a season we had. When it comes down to it I think we all believe that, as a group, led by our senior class, [we] were the best team in the country this year.”

University of Chicago Athletics

Third-year goalie Hill Bonin passes the ball.

Chicago is One of the Final Four WOMEN’S SOCCER

BY KATIE ANDERSON SPORTS EDITOR

The No. 11 women’s soccer squad (18–3–1) is on its way to making history, winning two games this past weekend to propel them to the Final Four of the NCAA DIII Championships.

Playing in Whitewater, WI, the Maroons kicked off the weekend with an upset against No. 3 Thomas More by a score of 3–1 in the Sweet Sixteen matchup on Saturday. The Saints entered the match undefeated in the season, also having beat Chicago last year in the NCAA tournament.

First-year Hanna Watkins got the

Chicago offense going, netting a goal in the 26th minute of play. Approaching the halfway mark of the match, second-year Sydney Mathis scored one of her own to put the Maroons up 2–0 going into the break.

In the second half, second-year midfielder and UAA Player of the Year Jenna McKinney scored the squad’s third and fi nal goal of the game, also bringing her own scoring tally to 14 on the season. The Saints’ offense fi nally found a rhythm in the remaining 30 minutes of the game, but first-year goalkeeper Katie Donovan’s six saves in the second half proved to be too much for Thomas More, who was only able to net one goal in the 77th minute.

Next up was No. 18 Pomona-Pitzer (17–1–3) in the Elite Eight round of the tournament. Despite Chicago’s offensive control throughout much of the game, it was the Sagehens who scored fi rst, just fi ve minutes into the match. The Maroons had a 35–8 shot advantage with 15 shots on goal, but were unable to convert until two minutes before the fi nal whistle would have blown, in the 88th minute.

Third-year Mia Calamari, who holds the Chicago record for career assists, did what she does best and put Watkins in scoring position. The fi rst-year was able to fi nd the back of the net to tally her second goal of the weekend and tie the

University of Chicago Athletics

Second-year midfielder Dana Ulrich cuts through the defense.

score at 1–1, where it remained through regular and extra time.

The game then entered penalty kicks.

Luckily for the Maroons, it was Donovan in net, which has been a clutch factor for the squad all season. In the round of PKs, fourth-year Sophia Kim made one for Chicago, while Donovan blocked Pomona-Pitzer’s attempt. From there, it was a battle, but Chicago came out victorious, 6–5. “[On Saturday] despite being scored on early, our team never wavered in our effort or confidence in our ability to get the job done,” Calamari said. “From the moment the fi rst goal was scored to the last PK save Katie Donovan made, our team fought for that win.”

After a short hiatus for Thanksgiving break, the South Siders will travel to Salem, VA to compete in the NCAA DIII Final Four against No. 5 Messiah College. This marks the Maroons’ fourth trip to the Final Four, all coming under current head coach Amy Reifert.

Final Four play requires maturity and composure, both of which Chicago has demonstrated thus far, despite the squad’s young age. “We will continue to fight to improve in practice and look forward to competing at the highest level in December,” Calamari said.

On the squad’s accomplishments, Calamari said, “I’m incredibly proud of our team, not only for this past weekend but for an entirely amazing season thus far. From our leadership to our freshman class, every single player has been committed to doing what it takes to win games.”

The Maroons will kick off against Messiah on Friday, December 2 at 5 p.m. EST.