The panel explored the three decades since the epidemic was brought to public attention in the 1980s, a time period captured by Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play.

“The Court’s production of Angels gives viewers a magnificent glimpse into the horror of the epidemic back in the ’80s, but the U of C community also needs to hear about what’s happened in the course of 31 years, where we are now, and what the epidemic’s future looks like,” said moderator David Ernesto Munar, President and CEO of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago (AFC). Munar was one of two panelists who are HIV–positive, a status that has empowered him to nearly 20 years of HIV prevention and activism.

Despite medical advances, social stigma against being HIV–positive is a persistent problem, according to panelist Keith Green, who works with AFC. “When there’s a stigma against gay people or people with HIV, at-risk people are less likely to acknowledge their infection, get tested, or seek treatment,” he said.

“It was first known as GRID—gay-related immune deficiency—a name that thankfully didn’t stick,” said panelist Doriane Miller, a professor and physician at the University of Chicago Medical Center. “Since then, the epidemic has expanded to affect all kinds of Americans but now disproportionally affects drug users, sex workers, and African Americans and Latinos regardless of sexual orientation.”

Green praised Obama’s comments last week accepting same-sex marriage.

“This is one step in alleviating the stigma associated with homosexuals and HIV, which is one of the last barriers to the end of this epidemic,” he said.

Even with the social stigma as a barrier, medical advances have still dramatically changed the epidemic’s course, according to Dr. John Schneider of the Medical Center.

“When I began work with AIDS patients in hospitals, life expectancy was a mere three weeks and long-term treatment didn’t exist. Now, HIV infection is a chronic health condition, similar to diabetes, that can usually be stabilized with one daily pill,” he said.

Though the number of new infections has plateaued in recent years, panelists were hopeful but hesitant to accept Hillary Clinton’s projection for an AIDS–free generation of Americans in the near future.

“In the words of Harper, a character from Angels in America, we’ve made ‘painful progress,’ but still have a long way to go,” Munar said.

Photo: Jamie Manley/The Chicago Maroon

Students contribute to the nearly 2000 gallons of food waste produced every week by the University's dining halls.

Some 1,980 gallons in total food waste of varying weight are collected every week from the three dining halls by the Resource Center, a Chicago-based composting company, according to its director, Ken Dunn (AM ’70).

Richard Mason, director of campus dining, estimates that the three cafeterias produce 84,000 pounds of waste every year, not including leftovers from food preparation, such as meat trimmings and vegetable stocks. All of it is composted.

While Pierce produces 20 bins for pickup twice a week, South Campus contributes only 10 total each week, and Bartlett 16.

The Resource Center has had to pick-up bi-weekly at Pierce for two years, according to Dunn, and has noticed an increase since last spring, but he was unsure of Fourth Meal’s relation to the increase.

Depending on the contents of the 32-gallon collection bins housed at each cafeteria, a bin may weigh between 50 and 200 pounds. A few of those bins may only become half or two-thirds full before the next pickup date. According to Dunn, when the dining halls switch to disposable dishes because of technical issues, they only fill each 32-gallon container with 20 pounds worth of compost.

One of the most conspicuous examples of food waste is hardly eaten fruit, according to Dunn, which he said is unfortunate. “The earth gave itself to produce this fruit, and we shouldn’t be sending it to composting without benefiting the consumer,” he said.

Students claim that the problem lies with the way the University serves its meals.

First-year Alyssa Mallory, who was discarding some of her dinner at Bartlett, said that portion sizes are too large. She added that availability of choice adds to the waste.

“The buffet style leans toward you wasting food,” she said. “If you paid for individual items, you would care if you actually ate it and would take less.”

Dunn agreed, stating that the amount of waste is due to the variety of dishes.

“You’ll often see a half-a-tray of chicken or a half-a-tray of lasagna; they prepare enough in case everybody wants each of the selection,” he said.

Fourth-year Matt Lee, who also was stopped at the dish rack, said that he wouldn’t throw so much food away if it tasted better.

“Honestly, if it were good food, I would’ve eaten it. That was the intent [to clear his plate], but every time, I leave this place disappointed, and it’s been four years,” he said.

Mason says that the dining halls are working to improve.

“We know how many servings get taken and what gets returned, and we use that information and look at the recipe or menu and use that information accordingly,” he said.

The University also has to be cognizant of how much the Resource Center charges for composting, which is calculated based on volume instead of weight.

Dunn could not say how much he bills the University, but industry averages for composting services in Chicago are between $40 and $80 per hour for trucking time and $0.03 per pound of material collected, according to Dunn.

All told, the Resource Center’s only larger client than the U of C is Kendall College, a culinary institute on Goose Island.

“It adds up to quite a bit,” Mason said.

—Additional reporting by Jennifer Standish

Photo: Sam Levine/The Chicago Maroon

Darrius Lightfoot, a member of Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY), leads protesters in chants outside the UCMC on Saturday, the first stop of a 10-mile march.

As raindrops began to fall on Saturday morning, protesters gathered at the intersection of East 61st Street and South Cottage Grove Avenue and marched to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in the northern downtown area, stopping at several sites along the way to draw attention to the insufficient support they believe South Side residents receive from the city’s health care system.

The starting point of the march was also symbolic. Damian Turner, an 18-year-old activist and one of the founders of the group Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY), was fatally shot at the same intersection, three blocks away from the UCMC, in August 2010. Turner was pronounced dead 90 minutes later, after riding in an ambulance to Northwestern. Since then, FLY has staged multiple die-ins and demonstrations, including Saturday’s protest.

At a press conference outside the UCMC, the first stop on the march, Evan Lyon, an attending physician at the hospital, said that he knew that next time he went to work, his patients would be a certain subset of people.

“This hospital is not welcoming and is not designed to bring in people who can’t pay,” Lyon said. “I’m afraid that the biggest reason behind not having a trauma center is just the same, that it costs money.”

UCMC officials decided to close its adult Level 1 trauma center in 1988 because it was draining hospital resources and jeopardizing other vital healthcare services, according to a press release on the hospital’s Web site. The hospital continues to operate a pediatric Level 1 trauma center for children 16 and under, the only burn unit on the South Side, a neonatal intensive care unit, and one of the only chopper emergency response systems in the Chicago region, the release said.

An adult Level 1 trauma center requires specific facilities as well as 24-hour staffing from doctors specialized in treating every aspect of a traumatic injury. There are currently four Level 1 adult trauma centers in the city, two on the North Side and two on the West Side.

Lyon said that the hospital already has all of the pieces necessary to open a trauma center.

“There are some of the best neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, emergency room care, general trauma doctors, intensive care units, inside this building,” he said. “All that’s needed is to organize and invest in a trauma center.”

Second-year Michael McCown, who helped start the group Students for Health Equity (SHE) this fall, said that while he understood that organizing a trauma center at the UCMC would be complicated, it would not be impossible.

“For an institution that claims 80 Nobel laureates, how can it be that complicated?” he said, evoking cheers from the crowd. “If you could do it in the ’80s, why can’t you do it now?”

Participants in Sunday’s march ranged from high school students like Yasmine Rayley, 16, who attends Martin Luther King, Jr. College Prep in Kenwood, to Pastor Elizabeth Slaughter, who worked as a medical technician at the UCMC until 1987. The diversity of the protestors, Slaughter said, mirrored those affected by the absence of a trauma center.

“We all have the same common needs,” Slaughter said. “We have a right to receive the same care as anyone. Color, race, nationality, we all get sick.”

Earlier this year, administrators announced that door-to-door SafeRide service will be suspended in the fall for all of the next academic year. Instead, a pilot program will add new evening shuttle routes and expand on existing ones to eliminate long wait times. The evening shuttles will also have longer hours, operating from 5 p.m. until 4 a.m. most of the week. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, the shuttles will run until 6 a.m.

Even though Director of Transportation and Parking Theresa Fletcher Brown said that her department had worked with students on the Transportation and Safety Advisory Board and utilized the student group Eckhardt Consulting, some students at the forum said that they felt cut out of the decision to eliminate the service.

“I feel that the students were not included in their decision. Our feedback was not solicited,” said Ria Marcia, a graduate student in economics. She added that without SafeRide she felt it would be dangerous to walk to her apartment.

Nicola Barham, a graduate student in the division of the humanities, also expressed concern that female students in particular would be impacted by the change.

“I feel that it would be a shame to remove SafeRide, especially for women who have to walk alone or for those who live very far,” she said.

Second-year Rohan Manthani, the Undergraduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees-elect, proposed that in addition to the new routes, there should be at least one SafeRide shuttle for students whose apartments do not fall on those routes, but that is not part of the current plan.

Fletcher Brown said that the pilot program was an economically feasible way of providing late night transportation for students. Both Fletcher-Brown and Assistant Director of Transportation and Parking Service Brandon Dodd emphasized that student perspectives were essential to understanding the needs and priorities of the student body.

“We are looking to make significant changes to improve the system,” Fletcher Brown said.

Regardless of the eventual solution, Bartham said that she simply wants to feel safe walking home at night.

“I just want some way of getting home,” she said.

Snell-Hitchcock’s team took first place, reclaiming its seat at the top after losing last year to Burton-Judson, which was bumped back to second this year.

Judges announced the winners from Ida Noyes Hall on Sunday night, bringing to a close a Scav Hunt that boasted one of the longest lists in the tradition’s 25-year history.

Following Burton-Judson were MacPierce (representing Maclean and Pierce), Breckinridge, Max Palevsky, Blintstone (of Broadview, Stony Island, and Flint House in Max Palevsky Central), the graduate student and alumni team GASH, South Campus, International House, and, in last place, a team of first-year physics graduate students.

“It’s really you against the list,” said Snitchcock captain John Bobka, a third-year who was around to see both the heyday of his team’s dominance and its momentary fall from the spotlight. “You just try your hardest to conquer this monumental document.”

“I wish all the other teams the best.”

With a 351-item list that called on Scavvies to find the tackiest roadside bric-a-brac in the world’s largest truck stop and engineer a power source for a laptop using only materials available in 15th century Europe, this year’s hunt was the biggest on the books, tied with that of 1996.

Judges announced the winners from Ida Noyes Hall earlier tonight, bringing to a close a Scav Hunt that boasted one of the longest lists in the tradition’s 25-year history.

B-J was one of the teams which managed to complete item 107: secure a meeting with Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

It was a strong showing for a few of the smaller teams. Breckinridge surprised other teams with its place in fourth, its first time breaking into the top four since 1994, when only three teams competed.

The road trip component of Scav also went smoothly, said third-year China Whitmeyer, who hit the road with other B-J residents.

“There were no accidents, which was fabulous considering last year,” she said, referring to the two accidents that befell the road teams of Max Palevsky and Blintstone in 2011.

The B–J team also created a Twitter account on the road, tweeting inside jokes in hashtag form, such as #watchthethrone and #64ouncestofreedom.

“We only missed one item, which was unfortunate,” Whitmeyer said. “Whatever.”

Third-year Andrew Fan, a lieutenant for B-J’s team, was hardly bitter.

“I know, from the outside, you think about it as, ‘Who won scav?’” he said. “To us, that’s sort of beside the point.”

Photo: Jamie Manley/The Chicago Maroon

Second-year Moxie Schults (left) and Anna Jones (AB '11) water their plot at the Chabad Center's new community garden.

Chabad Community Garden, which began construction last month, has already developed into a full-fledged patch of 12 individual plots, 10 of which are already reserved and in the first stages of sprouting and the other two available for year-long leases.

Though basil, tomatoes, carrots, and squash are the plants in vogue, vegetation is as diverse as its growers. Gardeners range from undergraduate and graduate students to alumni and community members, first-time horticulturalists to seasoned black-thumb offenders.

The idea for a community garden sprang from Rabbi Yossi Brackman, the director of Chabad House, who wanted to transform the yard into something seen as useful and meaningful while drawing a lot of traffic.

“And putting down grass or concrete didn’t seem like the way to go,” he said. However, Brackman saw that, with the demolition of the 61st Street Community Garden last March, Chabad’s vacant yard could fill a niche in Hyde Park life.

“There’s no campus opportunity for students to plant anything. All the dorms have lovely lawns but there are no vegetable gardens. And I just thought there has to be a need and a desire for students to grow and garden.”

Brackman’s vision began to blossom under the direction of Chabad’s student intern, first-year Lily Gordon, who began the planning process in January. Gordon had no previous experience in horticulture, so she gathered notes from community gardeners around Chicago and the South Side, specifically veteran organizer Ken Dunn (A.M. ’70) of the Resource Center, the city’s oldest and largest nonprofit recycling center.

After learning the ropes of gardening, Gordon contacted organizers of the Hyde Park Flower Show, procured soil tests, and gathered a coalition of volunteers.

For the month of April, Gordon and volunteers cleared out Chabad’s backyard every Sunday, rain or shine. With basic gardening tools provided by the house, the pioneers divided the space into 10-by-10 plots, separated by wooden planks recycled from a tree that used to occupy the majority of the yard.

A compost system sits in a corner of the lot and Brackman discourages gardeners to use chemical pesticides, reflecting the goal of sustainable environmentalism.

“I believe very strongly that we should be good stewards of the earth and the environment. This is an opportunity for us to actualize that,” he said.

To Brackman, gardening reflects many Jewish themes. “The idea is that before we consume something, we should take a moment to reflect where it came from. It’s a meditation about where our food is from, where is the divinity within nature.”

Even so, Brackman said that gardening in the house’s backyard comes with no religious strings attached.

“One of the things I like so much about my experience here so far is I don’t feel any pressure at all in terms of spiritual beliefs. I think nature is nice, whether you want to put the attitude of spiritual in there or not,” said fourth-year and first-time gardener Vanessa Bernick.

With the fast success of the community garden, Brackman would like to expand the program in the future, perhaps to include local high school students.

“Hyde Parkers love community gardens,” Brackman said.

Editor’s Note: Lily Gordon is a MAROON staffer.

“It’s kind of rude for an American to talk about the euro…so I’ll talk about America,” Sargent began. The early American nation, like the current European Union (EU), consisted of sovereign states without a strong central government to hold them together. The young country suffered from debt and an inability to raise revenue, two problems that also plague the EU, Sargent said.

The United States was able to recover from its debt, Sargent said, by nationalizing the debt and paying it back at par, incentivizing creditor loyalty to the recently developed government.

The same solution, Sargent said, would not necessarily fix all of the EU’s problems. Indeed, Sargent claimed that more than one man had unsuccessfully tried to implement an American-like solution to truly create integrated European economies.

Sargent declined to speculate on whether the EU’s woes would be solved with leadership from a George Washington figure, saying that that had already been tried with men from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Napoleon. “That’s not a question to be touched with a ten foot pole because they’ve had him,” he said.

Sargent also would not, and said no economist could, predict the future of the EU’s restructuring after the economic crisis.

“Fiscal crises cause a reordering of who chooses what and when,” Sargent said.

His only prediction was one of an uncertain and personal nature.

“There are going to be big winners and big losers all over the place,” he said. “The only answer I have as to what should happen is that Greece shouldn’t leave the Euro. I own a bunch of Greek bonds right now.”

Sargent earned the 2011 Nobel Prize with Princeton University’s Christopher Sims for their research on macroeconomics, specifically the relationship between policy choices and the economic outcomes. His lecture was part of the Becker Friedman Institute’s College Speaker Series, which started in February as an outlet for undergraduates interested in economics.

Photo: Johnny Hung

Jose Antonio Vargas speaks to the Chicago Maroon during an Uncommon Interview.

On May 9, Vargas spoke at I-House about his experiences as an undocumented alien and sat down with the Maroon to talk about being an American, the search for a solution to the immigration problem and coming out as an illegal immigrant.

CM: You wrote in The New York Times Magazine that though you consider yourself American, you are not considered an American by the United States. What would change that for you?

JV: Outside getting my license revoked, I have not been contacted by anyone from any level of government. I saw John Martin in D.C. and we waved at each other and then walked the opposite way. Frankly, I think that’s because my story doesn’t fit the narrative that people have and most of our stories don’t fit that narrative. I was prepared for the Republicans to go after me right away and be like ‘this is why we have to pass E-Verify to protect our borders although my border was the Pacific Ocean. I thought that the government was going to go after me and I actually was preparing myself for getting deported. I prepared my apartment and what was going to happen to my stuff. The fact that they haven’t done anything is just emblematic of how we’re unwilling to face the issue. The question that I’ve been pursuing, and I’m writing about this right now in the essay I’m working on right now, is what exactly is the Jose Antonio Vargas exception. Why am I exempt?

CM: Do you think that being told by the United States government that you’re not an American has done anything to take away your own sense of identity as an American?

JV: Yes it has, but that’s why the name of the campaign is Define American. It was really important. I mean we didn’t even have the word immigrant in there. You can call me whatever you want to call me but as far as I’m concerned I’m an American, so why don’t you define it? That’s why we’re asking people to do that.

CM: What were you looking to accomplish with Define American?

JV: If you’re a millennial American, there are two defining issues for your generation. There are gay rights and there are immigrant rights. What are those things about? American identity. You live with this issue. You went to school with them. You may not know it but you probably know someone. So it’s your job to explain it to the older generation. That’s why it’s important for the media to get involved. I think it’s going to be an issue for the next generation. We can’t keep going the way we’re going.

CM: How have you felt differently about your own identity and immigration since publicly declaring your status as an undocumented immigrant?

JV: I’ve met a lot of people and sometimes it has been a bit overwhelming. Especially that story that I told about the girl who said when she gets nervous, she says, ‘It’s okay, I’m white. I’m white.’ That was one of those things that I literally just had to take a long ass walk after that. That’s the kind of emotions people are going through. I think it has changed me because it made me realize that my decision really was right that I was right in coming out. I was of course sure about it but I was just nervous about it. I’ve been surprised by many things but I’ve been most surprised by hearing all the stories of all the other people who are going through exactly what I went through and somehow surviving. That, I think, is a testament to people’s character.

CM: Are you relieved?

JV: Oh yeah. I think I’ve felt a big relief. I think that happens when you free yourself of anything. Once you stop being afraid of something, you free yourself. I think that’s about anything really, so it’s been liberating because of that, but I’ve also been working. It’s been a very intense 11 months. I’ve just been traveling like a mad man. The irony about this is, I’m traveling more now than I ever traveled as not being publicly undocumented.

CM: Because of your current legal status you can’t really return to a salaried job in journalism, so what are your plans?

JV: So I’m not allowed to be employed but the government has really defined what employment is. So they said I can’t be employed but it doesn’t mean I can’t work for myself. So I’m surviving mostly through independent contractor work. But that’s been the hardest because I was making really good money and I kind of miss not having a salary. It’s okay because as long as I can fit in my clothes, I have all the clothes I want and I need.

CM: Do you plan on continuing your career in journalism?

JV: Absolutely. I’m working on a piece now for a magazine that’s going to run hopefully in the next few weeks. As far as I’m concerned, my journalism career actually just got started. I feel like it just got started and I have to be really good at it.

CM: After all of this, do you still believe that the DREAM Act is the right solution? Is it a comprehensive solution? If not, what really needs to be done?

JV: No it’s not a comprehensive solution, but it’s a solution. I’m for the DREAM Act because what are we going to do with these kids? Anyone getting educated benefits everyone, that’s just the reality, so of course I’m for it. It doesn’t address the full picture because who do you think those kids go home to? For the most part they belong in families where their older brother or mom or dad are undocumented. It’s definitely a good first step. For me, the DREAM Act is a litmus test. The fact that we can’t even pass something as pragmatic like that tells us just how completely divorced we are from reality, how completely nonsensical this issue is that has been in some ways hijacked by the extreme right.

CM: What do you think has precipitated the divorce of immigration from rational solutions, and what do you think will get us back towards solving the issue appropriately?

JV: Again I think it was kind of 9/11. After  9/11 happened…it was welcoming America, and all of a sudden everyone’s a terrorist and everyone’s a stranger. I think that there’s that, but I think also the demographic reality scares a lot of people. For a lot of conservative white people, having more Asian people and Latino people is a threatening thing. I think it has to do with a lack of political courage in our politicians, and elected officials just can’t tell the truth anymore. Look, Dick Lugar just got thrown. Dick Lugar was one of the first co-sponsors of the DREAM Act as a Republican. He supported the DREAM Act and moderate people like him have no place right now in politics.

CM: Do you think there is going to be a return to those moderates?

JV: The center, I mean I don’t want to have to quote Joan Didion, ‘the center will not hold.’ It will just not. Something has to change. If you think about it, this election is actually such a cultural and demographic war. Who are the Republicans relying on for the vote? And who are the Democrats relying on for the vote? I’ve always thought politics was about adding more people to your corner, not subtracting them. If you’re a gay person right now or a poor person or a person of color, you feel much more likely to support Obama because you feel that the Democratic party is not so much attacking your sense of reality and identity as the Republicans are.

CM: Do you think this upcoming election will force comprehensive legislation in any way?

JV: I think there’s going to be a lot of talk. I welcome the fact that Senator Rubio is part of the conversation now. I think that’s great. But I think all of it right now is going to be political theater. All of it right now is undocumented people being thrown around like a football from left to right. We have talked our way through the immigration problem. We know there’s a problem. What we haven’t talked about are the actual solutions. That’s really what should be on the table.

When the Maroon was contacted by the UCVC about coverage of the event, it seemed like a great idea for me to compete. A little insider perspective never hurt anybody, right? Well, maybe wrong. It would probably be inaccurate to call mine an insider’s perspective given how far behind in the race I was, but Saturday was the culmination, for me, of a long and unlikely relationship with the sport of cycling, and, despite the abject competitive failure it was, I will remember it well.

My history as a competitive cyclist consists, more or less, of the time I fell off my bike in the park as a 10-year-old. That was the last time I rode a bike in anger, and I think I accepted that my career as a cyclist was over that day. As I picked the gravel out of my leg, I can imagine imagining that I was done. How could I go on after something like that? I didn’t stop riding completely, but somehow it wasn’t as fun as it used to be. The thrill that I used to get from moving my legs really fast in a circle wasn’t quite as thrilling.

Slowly, bikes faded away. My bike was moved to the basement, and I’m not sure I took it out again until I gave it away last year. During the pre-global-warming-is-an-issue era, before cycling had undergone its eco-friendly renaissance, I don’t think I gave it a single thought. It seemed my cycling days were well and truly behind me.

I watched the Tour de France for the first time in 2009, as Spain’s Alberto Contador won his second yellow jersey and my bike was still gathering dust in the basement. I don’t know why I ended up watching the Tour that year. My brother asked me the same thing. “It’s boring,” he said, “It’s just a bunch of people riding in a straight line for hours.”

That isn’t really inaccurate. Any bike race is essentially just a lot of guys riding their bikes around for hours—but then, any sport sounds boring when you reduce it to its component parts. Soccer’s just a bunch of guys kicking a ball, football’s just a bunch of guys jumping on each other, basketball’s just a bunch of guys throwing a ball at a hoop. The entertainment is in the detail, and the difference between cycling and those other sports is that its details aren’t as obvious to an uneducated observer.

It’s easy to applaud a good pass or a good shot because there is a very immediate understanding of the skill involved. These actions have clear purposes, the fulfillment of which provides a sense of satisfaction that doesn’t necessarily hinge on the larger context of the game. However, in cycling, context is everything, and if you aren’t aware of the bigger picture, it is very difficult to appreciate the difficulty and skill involved in the more immediate tactical maneuvers. The goal in cycling is separated from the build-up by such a distance that people who are unfamiliar with the sport often lose interest. As I watched the Tour in 2009, I started to realize this. And I kept going back, day after day, for three weeks, to watch the cycling. I did the same the next year, and the year after that. After all that time, I had finally been converted back to cycling.

When I got the offer to compete in Monsters of the Midway, I accepted without a second thought. I didn’t own a bike. I hadn’t even ridden one for nearly eight years. But I was going to do it anyway. I managed to borrow a secondhand bike from a friend. It wasn’t exactly a racing bike, but it was all I had to work with, so I took it. I was racing in the men’s Cat 4/5, which, as I would learn, placed me somewhere at the beginner/intermediate level. “Okay,” I thought, blissfully ignorant as I was back then, “I should be fine.”

I arrived on Saturday just in time to see the start of the Cat 4 men’s race. About 50 guys were lined up on the start line, all decked out in spandex shorts and cycling jerseys. I looked down at my noticeably baggy attire. Rarely concerned as I am with wearing skintight clothing, I didn’t think too much of it, but I was beginning to get the sense that I was a little out of place.

Anyway, I signed up for my race and took up a nice position by the finish line to watch the Cat 4. At the time I didn’t know what level the race was, but they were moving pretty fast. “It must be Cat 1,” I told myself. “Two laps left of the men’s Cat 4,” the race announcer told me. Uh-oh. If these guys were Cat 4, and I was Cat 4/5, then why were they moving so quickly? “That’s a good question,” I thought, “that’s a very good question.” It turned out to have a very good answer too. It’s because, in reality, my level was probably somewhere in the mid–Cat 100s. But it was too late; the Cat 4 had finished and it was my turn. I took up my position on the starting line right at the back of the field. The whistle blew. The race had started.

It didn’t dawn on me right away how far out of my depth I was, but it couldn’t have been more than four or five seconds. I think I stayed with the main group for about 50m. Then they were gone and I was all alone with my slightly-too-small secondhand bike. I kept on pedaling away though. It was kind of nice to be out there riding a bike again. The main pack was a distant memory, but I still had 30 minutes of cycling to get through, and I was determined to finish. I thought of those guys in the Tour de France. Riding around the Midway for half an hour is nothing compared to that, I reassured myself. Unfortunately, everything is relative. I’m very confident any one of the riders in the Tour could have won the race on Saturday, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with me, does it?

The pack was well on its way to lapping me a second time when I gave up on the Tour de France approach. It was time for something different, something I look back on fondly and remember as the denial approach. Of course they were faster than me. They had better bikes and more streamlined clothing and nicer shoes and better hair, but that didn’t make them better than me. They just had multiple unfair (by which I mean fair) advantages. I picked up the pace. So did they, probably, wherever they were. I didn’t know, I hadn’t seen them for about five days. I hoped they were doing well. In reality, the pack was actually just coming up behind me again.

Denial gave way to anger. In fact, I think I experienced all five stages of grief at some point during that race, and some more than once. But I kept on going. My wildly fluctuating mental state became commendably bullish as the finish line came into view. No one else cared at this point. They were all probably walking up stairs somewhere toning their ridiculously-sized quadriceps. But I came into the final turn feeling good. I’d done it. I’d reached the finish.

After the race I spoke to a few of the spectators and cyclists around the finish line. “Don’t worry,” they told me, “everyone gets dropped in their first race.” Maybe, or maybe they were just being polite. Either way, I couldn’t help but smile. I can only imagine how ridiculous I looked. I was like a kid running alongside a car trying to keep up with it, except I wasn’t a kid, and no one was driving a car. Lance Armstrong was probably crying somewhere.

It might have been the worst I’d ever done in anything, but for once I really didn’t care. I wanted to do it again. I wanted to get up the next morning and go for another ride. I might even be back next year with my own bike. Maybe I wasn’t the hero on Saturday. (That’s not really in doubt. I was not the hero on Saturday.) But I might be a cyclist yet.

While the UAA Conference Championship is the main team focus for the Maroons’ outdoor season, the Penultimate is an opportunity for athletes to explore new events and pursue stronger NCAA rankings individually. However, this new focus on the individual as opposed to team-wide achievements can mean different things for different athletes.

“I don’t think we had any spectacular performances [at Penultimate],” fourth-year distance runner and captain Sonia Khan said. “But it’s hard transitioning from emotionally-charged meets where you run for the team score to meets where you run for your own personal bests.”

However, some athletes took this individualized focus as an opportunity to reach—or recapture—PRs. First-year Kelly Wood and second-year Luyi Adesanya, for example, both threw lifetime bests in the hammer throw, earning fourth and fifth place with distances of 35.47m and 34m, respectively.

Adesanya’s performance, in fact, marked a return to a personal best she had struggled to maintain. “I reached my PR again, which is something I haven’t been able to do for two meets,” she said. “I was happy to be competing back to my original standing again.”

Thursday’s Keeler Invitational at North Central College was characterized by a similar combination of lackluster performances and notable personal bests.

While Khan failed to meet her expectations with a 14th-place finish (37:20.92) in the 10,000-meter, third-year Julia Sizek finished with a time of 36:04.08—a time not only worthy of a second-place finish at the meet, but also an eighth-place ranking in the nation. In addition to being a fantastic time, it was Sizek’s debut performance in the 10k race.

“I was definitely surprised that I ran a qualifying time,” Sizek said. “I’ve never thought of myself as a very fast runner, but I guess hard work pays off.”

Many of the athletes who competed at Thursday’s meet were rested on Saturday, but several members of Chicago’s usual lineup still went on to secure top rankings.

Top point earners included fourth-year Jalessa Akuoko with first- (1:01.18) and second-place (26.99) finishes in the 400-meter and 200-meter, third-year Kayla McDonald with a first-place finish in the 800-meter (2:14.21), and fourth-year high jumper Paige Peltzer with a second-place jump of 1.58m.

Fourth-years Ali Klooster and Maddie Allen secured second-place finishes in the 3,000-meter steeplechase (11:47.56) and triple jump (10.83m), respectively, and first-year Reecie Dern continued her streak as one of the top Maroon throwers, securing a third-place finish in the hammer throw (35.94m), and fourth-place in the discus throw (again throwing 35.94m).

The Maroons now look forward to next week’s North Central Last Chance as a final opportunity for some of their NCAA hopefuls to put in qualifying performances.

Photo: Courtesy of Dave Hilbert

Instead of the traditional dual or team meet competition, at the Penultimate the South Siders focused on individual athletes getting their personal marks up in order to qualify for Nationals. Despite that, the Maroons still competed well as a team and as individuals.

“I think the men’s team did great; I was really happy with the results. [We had] a lot of PRs and season bests,” third-year Demetrios Brizzolara said.

With the help of so many personal and season bests, the Maroons put together eight top-three finishes across all events with more than three competitors and placed many more athletes within the top five.

Brizzolara topped the list in the 200-meter dash with a time of 21.84 seconds. First-year Renat Zalov and fourth-year Brian Wille placed first and third respectively in the 800-meter run with times of 1:57.34 and 1:59.09. Third-year Gregor Siegmund placed second in the 1,500-meter run with a time of 4:07.99 while fourth-year Brian Schlick and second-year Samuel Butler took first and third in the 5,000-meter run with times of 15:12.42 and 15:33.39.In throwing events, third-year Conner Ryan posted a 42.94-meter throw in the javelin and fourth-year Daniel Heck threw 51.57m in the shot put.

In addition, other athletes were able to reach mark requirements for the North Central Last Chance that takes place this Thursday and Friday.

As the season comes to a close, extra opportunities to post high marks can only benefit the team.

“It was good to get a [personal record] in the hammer yesterday. I met the standard for the Last Chance meet at North Central, so it allows me to compete in the event one more time,” fourth-year thrower Nick Rockwell said.

Rockwell threw 43.11m in the hammer.

With only the North Central meet remaining, the Maroons have one more chance to qualify athletes to Nationals.

Considering that, despite the poor weather at the Penultimate, the Maroons were able to put up good numbers, some have hopes for strong performances on Friday.

“I’m excited to see what we can do, assuming the weather cooperates. I hope we get a few more people into [Nationals], but we’ll see,” Brizzolara said. “A lot of us are close to qualifying; hopefully we can run well this Friday.”

The Maroons have less than two weeks before any qualifiers travel to Claremont, CA for the NCAA DIII National Championship, and the team knows time is running out.

“We need to really get after it at the meet this week,” Rockwell said. “It’s the last meet of the season before Nationals so there’s no reason to hold back.”

There are three types of bids to the championship: Pool A, Pool B, and Pool C. Pool A consists of teams that won their conferences, within conferences that have automatic bids to the tournament. Pool B consists of independent teams or ones without an automatic bid. And Pool C is the leftover teams from the first two categories that are still determined to be deserving of a bid. The breakdown of the bids given is weighted toward Pool A, and there are only two Pool B bids. This already put the South Siders at a disadvantage, since their conference has no automatic bid. The Wash U Bears (28–12) instead received the Pool B bid that could have presumably gone to Chicago, and then it was not selected for Pool C. No reasoning was offered.

In their two doubleheaders against Wash U this season, the Maroons dropped only one game. North Park, a team receiving a Pool A bid, lost to Chicago earlier in the season. The only other team to make the tournament that Chicago matched up against this season is Concordia Chicago, who beat the Maroons.

Chicago may have been hurt by a weak schedule. Wash U, while accumulating the same number of losses, was able to boast of wins over teams like Brandeis, Case, Rochester, and Emory.

“We had a great season; it’s disappointing it didn’t end up the way we would have liked, but now we have something to try and look forward to for next year,” second-year outfielder and first baseman Brett Huff said.

The season was by no means a waste. A win over DI Northwestern in its final game of the year should be a good motivating factor heading into next year, evidence of what the squad can achieve.

“It was a great experience playing with the seniors this year; we’re going to miss them a lot next year,” Huff said.

“There’s a lot to look forward to in the next few years with this team. There’s a lot of potential to do great with next year’s team,” first-year infielder Kyle Engel said.

For now, that’s all the Maroons can do: Look toward next year.

Photo: Courtesy of Dave Hilbert

Second-year Zoe Oliver-Grey swings at the ball during a game against Hope College earlier this season.

The South Siders couldn’t keep up with Trine on Friday, dropping a 6–1 decision. After securing their second win of the postseason against sixth-seeded Denison (28–19) in a tense 1–0 pitchers duel, the breaks went the other way against host Alma (31–13), as Chicago (26–11) lost to the third-seeded Scots 3–1.

“At this point, at the NCAA tournament level, every team is solid,” head coach Ruth Kmak said last week. “We belong in this group of teams.”

The Maroons certainly proved that they belonged, finishing with a .500 record in the postseason as they justified their seeding by finishing fourth in their region. They had previously won their first game, a 3–2 triumph over John Carroll.

Trine went ahead 1–0 on Carly Searles’ third-inning RBI-triple. Fourth-year Sarah Neuhaus (8–5) came off for third-year Kim Cygan in the fourth inning, but was brought right back after Cygan allowed a homerun, a double, and a walk. Neuhaus contained the damage, allowing only the inherited runner to score.

The Maroons got their only run in the fourth, as Cygan scored on a Vicky Tomaka single. Even in the loss, though, the Maroons got both of their first-year hurlers—Emily Ashbridge and Tabbetha Bohac—valuable time on the mound.

The pair held Trine scoreless for the last two and two-thirds frames.

“We’re not fearful of Trine,” Kmak said earlier in the week.

Cygan (16–5) redeemed herself on Saturday as she hurled a six-hit shutout against Denison, extinguishing threat after threat, as the Big Red managed runners on base in five out of the seven innings. In the second inning, Denison had runners on second and third after a wild pitch by Cygan, but with two outs, Denison’s designated hitter Gretchen Staubach popped the ball right back to Cygan, who made the catch to end the inning.

Fourth-year Julia Schneider plated the only run of the game in the top of the fourth, doubling off of Denison’s Becca Dyer to lead off and advancing to third on a groundout by fourth-year Liz Payonk. First-year Raechel Cloud’s sacrifice fly brought Schneider home.

Denison threatened to retaliate in the bottom of the inning, as Cygan faced Staubach again with two runners on and two outs. Cygan proved up to the challenge once again, striking her out swinging to preserve the lead.

After an error, wild pitch, and walk, Denison mounted the game’s final offensive threat in the seventh inning, with runners on second and third with two outs. Almost predictably, though, Cygan managed the threat, inducing a routine groundout that Schneider sent to Payonk at first for the game’s final out.

“We know that if we play our game the way we can we can beat any team,” second-year Vicky Tomaka said last week. True to form, the Maroons got their record-tying 26th win of the season behind strong pitching, aggressive baserunning, and reliable defense.

A slow start against Alma, though, put the Maroons in what proved to be an insurmountable hole. In the top of the first inning, a pair of errors by Chicago’s middle infield allowed the Scots to get two runs on their two hits. Cygan proved dominant once again throughout the game, allowing only five more hits and a sole run in the seventh, but Alma’s Louise Rezmer was equally fit for the occasion, holding the Maroons to four hits and an unearned run.

Second-year Kaitlyn Carpenter got her 57th hit of the season against Alma—one short of Chicago’s single season record—coming around to score in the sixth on an error to reduce the deficit to one. The seventh inning started promisingly, with a double by Cloud, but three straight outs sent the Maroons back to Hyde Park.

While at Alma, though, the South Siders impressed, placing five onto the all-Region team. Carpenter and Cygan made the first team, and catcher Zoe Oliver-Gray, Schneider, and Payonk made the third team.

Photo: Jamie Manley/The Chicago Maroon

First-year Kelsey McGillis helps lead Chicago to victory in its NCAA DIII Championship match against Carleton in Bally's Health Club last Saturday.

The Maroons cruised into their fourth consecutive NCAA DIII National Tournament quarterfinal appearance with wins over Carleton on Saturday and UW–Whitewater on Sunday at Stagg Field. Chicago will play Johns Hopkins, a team that it beat on March 3 (6–3), on Monday, May 21 in Cary, N.C.

With each doubles team allowing no more than three games in their respective matches, the Maroons came out with a 3–0 lead against Carleton.

It was even less of a contest in singles as fourth-year Carmen VacaGuzman won 6–1, 6–1 at No. 3 singles and first-year Megan Tang took No. 5 singles 6–0, 6–1 to clinch the dual win.

On Sunday, Chicago took on a tougher opponent in UW–Whitewater.

At No. 1 doubles the Warhawks held serve to open up the match. In the following game, in spite of three double faults by VacaGuzman, fourth-year Kendra Higgins and VacaGuzman tied the match at 1–1.

“I actually had no clue I double faulted three times the first service game,” VacaGuzman said. “I guess it must have been nerves.”

Each team continued to hold serve to even up the score at 3–3.

The following game determined the course of the rest of the match.

With the Warhawks serving down 30–40 and on the attack, Higgins made a reaching save and lobbed the ball over her Wisconsin opponents. Moments later, the Maroons broke UW–Whitewater.

Chicago did not lose a game after that, winning 8–3.

Fourth-year Jennifer Kung and third-year Linden Li controlled No. 2 doubles (8–3).

Perhaps, the one match that seemed over almost as soon as it started was the match that ended up being the toughest: No. 3 doubles.

Tang and first-year Kelsey McGillis stormed to a 4–1 lead which later became a 7–4 advantage.

With McGillis serving for the match, Chicago went up 40–0. Five points later, McGillis and Tang lost the game.

“We definitely lost focus a bit, which is something you cannot do against a team like that, who gets everything back and can feed off your attitude,” McGillis said. “When something like that happens, you just have to shake it off and focus on the next point, which we didn’t do.”

The following game featured four advantages for UW–Whitewater. Even so, Tang and McGillis closed out the match with a Tang overhead smash in their first advantage. Tang and McGillis won 8–5.

“It’s really all about experience and knowing what to do,” McGillis said. “After being in those types of situations so many times, especially in juniors, it becomes easier to swallow your nerves and just play.”

In the end, it was never a concern that the Maroons were ever going to lose this round of 16 match.

In fact, McGillis, having had shoulder surgery a few years ago, did not want her shoulder to bother her and head coach Taka Bertrand wanted McGillis to keep it as healthy as possible for the next round. Because of that, McGillis served underhand for the day.

“I have served underhand in high school before, and it’s not really a weakness or strength, just really a neutral shot,” McGillis said. “People have trouble getting under it and attacking it. It definitely helps with the shoulder though.”

Higgins and Tang cruised at No. 1 and No. 5 singles respectively to give the Maroons their quarterfinal birth.

Chicago plays Johns Hopkins on Monday, May 21 at a time to be determined in Cary, N.C.

Photo: Sydney Combs

Students salsa in Rythmic Bodies in Motion's Legendary spring showcase in Madnel Hall this weekend.

As the audience members settled down, the first act began without preamble. Women wearing navel-baring Amazonian tops and short black shorts performed kicks, spins, and cartwheels in the jazz piece “XR2.” The subsequent dances varied greatly in style and tempo. “Aura,” a modern dance number, for example, was slow and lyrical while other pieces, like “Radio Caribbean,” were considerably more upbeat.

Some dance numbers incorporated multiple forms of dance. “Set it Off,” choreographed by Kate Oppenheimer, Colin Bohan, and Anna Tripodi, combined elements of ballet and hip-hop to tell the story of a romance between a sheltered ballerina and a more streetwise hip-hop dancer. Another hybrid highlight was the Senior Piece, performed by the graduating members of RBIM. That dance incorporated a slew of different Disney songs to highlight the progression from O-Week to convocation.

Given the diversity of the pieces, it was unsurprising that many members of RBIM were involved in the show in a variety of ways. Third-year Erik Landry, for example, was the co-choreographer of the hip-hop piece “Swag Roulette,” and also danced in his own piece and two others. Fourth-year Suzanna So, RBIM’s Administrative Director, danced in five pieces, including “Senior Piece,” “Radio Caribbean,” and “Legendary 80s.”

So explained the reasoning behind RBIM’s “LEGENDARY” theme. “We wanted something that would be general enough so that all these different styles could choreograph something to it, but something that still had a powerful image.”

For Landry and co-choreographer Oscar Rivera, a fourth-year, the show’s theme presented an interesting challenge. Landry and Rivera tried to use recent hip-hop songs that they considered to be “legendary” for their piece. As they planned their choreography, they changed songs whenever they heard new music that they felt had to be included. Both Landry and second-year choreographer Annie Pei talked about recruiting dancers for their pieces from their own friend groups. Pei mentioned how difficult being a new choreographer without an established reputation was. She hopes that next year when fall auditions roll around, even more people will want to try out.

Still, RBIM’s XL-size ranks are already impressive, and its dancers devote one hour of weekly rehearsal for every piece they performed in. For members like So, who was involved in five pieces, that amounted to five hours of rehearsal a week starting in the beginning of winter quarter.

“It’s really hard to put together a show with so many people,” Pei, who is RBIM’s Outreach Chair, said. “It exceeded all of our expectations.”

The audience was surprisingly receptive this year,” Pei continued. “They were super energetic and I don’t think any of us expected them to react the way they did. It’s a great feeling.”

“The show was definitely a great way to end my four years at UChicago. I started crying out there,” So said.

“The thrill of being on stage is incredible!” Landry added.

“Everyone should try to dance, I think, at least once in their lives. It’s a whole different form of expression…we need that sort of artistic release,” Pei said.

Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment

(L-r) JOHNNY DEPP as Barnabas Collins and MICHELLE PFEIFFER as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Village Roadshow Pictures’ gothic comedy “DARK SHADOWS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

Version 4.0 of Dark Shadows stars Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins, an 18th-century playboy who discovers that he can only break so many hearts before his own stops beating. Unfortunately, Barnabas has to learn this lesson the hard way when his latest and last love interest, Angelique Bouchard, turns out to be a beauty of the underworld. Angelique is, quite literally, an “ex-girlfriend from hell”: She reacts to Barnabas’s break-up by turning him into a vampire, murdering his parents, cursing his whole family, and burying him ‘alive’ for all eternity (or so she thinks).

A team of construction workers accidentally unearths Barnabas’s body in 1972. Famished, the undead Barnabas immediately kills his discoverers and proceeds to make his way back to his family’s once-majestic Collinwood Manor. He finds his dear old home in a grave state of disrepair, the chaos all the more dire for its dysfunctional and impoverished occupants. Barnabas vows to restore his family name and fortune, and for the rest of the film he manages to run into his ex-girlfriend, have a humorously hard time trying to adjust to life in the technological, trippy, and televised 20th century, and makes awkward comments about a 15-year-old’s “fertile birthing hips.”

First, the good: Burton distributes his props carefully, develops detailed sets, and adorns his characters in unquestionably complex costumes and makeup looks. This gives the mansion in Dark Shadows an evocative level of rococo-style decadence. Unlike rococo, though, each little nook and cranny of the mansion still serves a purpose, lending the manor a quirky, gothic mystique that is at once magical and fun.

If only the film’s plot, dialogue, and character development were done in the same way! Depp and decorations carry the entire film; Helena Bonham Carter and Michelle Pfeiffer deserve honorable mentions. Unfortunately, that’s all that there really is to the film—Depp, scenery, Carter, and Pfeiffer. And neither woman plays Depp’s bewitching (or perhaps just bitching) ex.

The lack of inventiveness in Dark Shadows is surprisingly unrelated to its ’60s soap opera foundations. Practically all of the film’s humor can be attributed to either Barnabas’s gaffes or jabs at contemporary pop culture, both of which are convenient tactics until he overused them.

Of course, most of Burton’s films are about an outsider journeying into a familiar—though for him, frighteningly foreign—realm. Besides Dark Shadows, Burton has directed a number of such films, including Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Burton’s films are the definition of “forever alone.” Yet Depp’s hackneyed antics in Dark Shadows take the film to strangely uninspired levels. It’s Edward Scissorhands stripped of all its quirks and charm. It’s a best-lines-are-in-the-trailer kind of movie that desperately wants to prove something, but doesn’t really know what that ‘something’ is.

It’s the tale of an outsider looking in with so many era and pop-culture based detours that it loses sight of what he’s actually looking for. To make up for its lack of direction, the film packs in so many pop culture references that one begins to wonder whether Burton is simply trying to prove that he isn’t past his prime. All this film’s rushed and underdeveloped ending proves is that the ever-impressive Johnny Depp can carry any film, with or without a storyline.

Dark Shadows sees Burton, like Barnabas, endeavor desperately to ‘get with the times’ of the new generation and try too hard to restore his name. But unlike Barnabas, Burton, having spent the past several decades directing-producing some of this generation’s best films, has nothing to restore.

Stravinsky reminds us that, “Conductors’ careers are made for the most part with ‘Romantic’ music. ‘Classic’ music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.” To some extent his observation holds, as one imagines Koopman had merely to give a downbeat and the tightly unified CSO could have carried it from there. That said, the conducting was never wan or hesitant; Koopman was in his element, and it showed.

Haydn’s “Symphony No. 6” (of 104, plus at least two others and three sinfonie concertanti) prominently features the flautist, bassoonist, principal cellist, and concertmaster, among others. Nicknamed “Le matin,” and opening with a six-bar sunrise, it was the first in a series of three for his new patron, Prince Esterházy, followed by “Le midi” and “Le soir” (“Morning,” “Noon,” and “Evening,” respectively). Haydn was to spend 30 years with the Hungarian prince, and the tailoring of the solos to particular instruments (and indeed, particular instrumentalists) demonstrates the close relationship he had with the court orchestra. Koopman led the orchestra in a smooth but colorful account and permitted the flautist several charming ornamentations.

Although Haydn wrote two cello concerti, the piece performed on Saturday only became “Cello Concerto No. 2 in D major” in 1961, after the discovery of his earlier work. Narek Hakhnazaryan, who studied under Rostropovich, played the piece—which is less showy, though more technically rigorous than its predecessor—with assured grace, after Thursday and Friday night performances by Yo-Yo Ma, perhaps the hardest cellist to follow since the Armenian’s teacher passed away in 2007. If Ma’s “romantic indulgences” (as the Tribune judged them) were an anachronism on Thursday and Friday, Hakhnazaryan’s performance Saturday was appropriately staid, and the audience thanked him with an ovation that he took with a single, entirely pizzicato encore.

After intermission, Koopman directed two obscure but forward-looking short pieces from the 1730s by Pietro Locatelli and Jean-Féry Rebel. Locatelli is perhaps best known as a violin virtuoso and Italian émigré to Holland, where he stopped performing publicly and became active in musical publishing. His Introduttione teatrale has been justifiably neglected, and indeed this is the first time the Symphony has played it, though it was executed, one assumes, as well as it could have been. “Chaos,” the opening movement from Rebel’s choreographed symphony The Elements, a multi-movement, orchestral genre to be danced in full costume, begins with an introduction of dissonance extraordinary for the time, a simultaneous sounding of every note in the minor scale for about a half-minute. Although perhaps not as exciting a century after Arnold Schoenberg’s disturbing Pierrot Lunaire as it was to the mid-18th century, the orchestra and audience were captivated by this historical oddity, among Rebel’s last pieces, written when the composer was in his 70s.

The evening had a precocious finish—Mozart’s “Symphony No. 20,” written at just 16. The piece, rather like the Haydn symphony, was consummately rehearsed and unfolded in a deliberate, if buoyant, 20 minutes (the CSO’s estimate of 16 was slightly optimistic). It is formally quite daring—the first movement’s opening theme is not developed or recapitulated as is usual, though the piece does return to D major, and the theme reappears only, almost like a practical joke, in the last half-minute of the movement. The third-movement minuet and trio were written somewhat in response to Mozart’s recent time in Italy (indeed, he signed the autograph score “Amadeo Wolfgango Mozart”) in which minuets were too slow and too florid for his taste; that of the 20th symphony is of the simplest elegance. Mozart finishes the piece with a quick finale to which the CSO lent due brightness, if leaving some small measure of verve to be desired, a sentiment perhaps applicable to the tenor of the evening as a whole.

I’m wary of sentencing anyone to the realm of hipsterdom, but Alan Palomo of Neon Indian has trouble escaping this one. The tight pants, the vest, the buttoned-up button-down—yep, he’s got it. I’ve seen more than one photo in which he flaunts animal-themed shirts that conjure up memories of Three Wolf Moon (you know the ones: muted tie-dye encircling soft images of wolves or horses running through mist), and if that doesn’t scream hip, I don’t know what does. Though as much as people love to hate classic hipster fashion, you have to admit it can be great; in a way, the “I just rolled out of bed and into oversized glasses” mentality makes up the groundwork for festival fashion. Find a piece of string on the ground? Wrap it around your head! What’s that, a bottle cap? Now it’s an earring! Though Palomo probably isn’t one to take his outfits to such extremes, he has that hipster something that—I must say—just looks pretty cool.

Cults band members seem to inhabit a similar spot on the fashion spectrum: Madeline Follin regularly dons sweet dresses and flowy blouses, and Brian Oblivion seems comfortable in a fitted suit topped off with skinny tie. Pretty basic stuff until—whoa, that hair. Each chocolate-tressed performer flaunts a veritable mane so long it could be an outfit in and of itself (in Follin’s case, a coat—that thing has got to provide some serious warmth). Put a long wig on any Wicker Park–ite, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect from this group.

And then there’s Luda. Images of baggy pants, big chains, and bucket hats come to mind when we think of the charismatic musician, but his style has certainly changed since its “Area Codes” days. As Ludacris evolves into a practiced actor (do we call him Christopher Bridges now?), he has largely bid good-bye to the signature style that rolled onto the scene in the late ’90s, transitioning to more crisp looks fit for the red carpet and his new status as rapper-actor. If you’re looking forward to seeing the old Luda though, don’t be discouraged—no matter what he wears this weekend, he’s still rocking the same mustache we remember from the “Get Back” video (one can only hope he brings along the oversized arms as well).

So what can we, the nerdy masses, do to stand out in the midst of such stylish swag? Simple: Go a little crazy. If there’s anything we can learn from the weekend’s performers, it’s that there are no rules in festival fashion. If you look like an idiot, be comforted by the fact that no one around you really cares (and the fact that they probably look a little idiotic themselves). Leave your notions of “weird” at the gate, because the best part about music festivals is the fact that everything is a little weird, and everyone is a little too sweaty to notice. You know you’ll be spending the next three weeks in T-shirts and sweats, tucked away into the pallid-faced and over-caffeinated bowels of libraries, so why not be outrageous while you can? The weather should be lovely (fingers crossed), so get out your shades and your shorts, and let loose. Paint, bedazzle, braid, rip, feather, do anything you want—it’s music season, after all.

Of course, this story is apocryphal. If such an incident did occur, there is no evidence for it.

It does, however, demonstrate our desire to create narratives around our leaders that exemplify their positive qualities. The greatness that is within them has been in them since the start, or so we would like to believe. Thus, in political campaigns, a sure-fire way to cast aspersions upon an  opponent is to disprove this narrative and show that she has not always been what she now claims to be.

Recounts of Mitt Romney’s harassment of a gay student in his high school are the latest in a line of this type of political maneuvers. How should we view the allegations? Is it fair to hold someone to something that he did 50 years ago? Is this just a low blow from the left? In general I am in favor of giving politicians the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their youthful actions; I would like to believe that there is a possibility for individuals to rethink their previous behavior, and to become more moral people. However, several aspects of this incident, especially Romney’s reaction to it, are troubling enough that we should think twice before discounting it as a youthful mistake.

The Washington Post published the original article about the incident, which was detailed to them by some of Romney’s classmates: A young Mitt Romney led a group of others in holding down a student as they cut off his dyed-blond hair, as he cried and yelled for help. The student later came out as gay, and many commentators attribute the incident to homophobia.

Though this is clearly abhorrent behavior, I would not say that it guarantees in itself that the Romney of today is as lacking in empathy as his high school self was. That he was not punished for the incident could indicate an acceptance of his behavior by the school. And though this in no way excuses the act, his social environment was probably one in which this behavior was expected. In the club of privilege, there was little tolerance of those who were different.

When I originally set out to write this column, I had planned to leave it at that: that his behavior was clearly wrong and unacceptable, but that there is certainly the possibility that he has changed.

Then I actually listened to the recording of his “apology” myself.

It was painfully clear that Mitt Romney didn’t seem to think that the incident was very important, though it was very traumatic for the victim. When the incident is described to him, he chuckles and says that he does not remember it, but that he played some pranks in his high school days and “if I did stupid things I’m afraid I’ve got to say sorry for it.”

That his first reaction is a laugh is difficult to stomach, especially given the many widely publicized cases of bully-driven suicides among teenagers, particularly gay teenagers. Either he is so out of touch that he cannot see how harmful his behavior was, or he doesn’t care. His actions as a youth may not be representative of his character today, but his actions today surely are.

That he says he cannot remember the incident means one of two things: He is either lying to save face, or this form of harassment was so commonplace for him that this case in particular was not memorable enough to stand out. Either one of these has serious ethical implications.

What should we take from all this? From my point of view, Romney failed to do the right thing. In neither owning up to his actions nor taking them seriously, he failed to treat his fellow man with the empathy and compassion that he deserves. He failed to show the empathy and compassion that we should want in a leader. If he had apologized seriously and sincerely, he would be what most of us are: Someone who has made mistakes in the past and learned from them. Instead, he is someone who has propagated his mistakes from the past to the present.

So, by all means, let’s judge presidential candidates for whom they are today. But by the look of it, the Romney of today is the spitting image of the Romney of yesterday.

Maya Fraser is a second-year in the College majoring in sociology.

But the worst elements of contemporary attitudes about age are the ones situated in the science of cognition and learning. Article after article appears in major publications detailing how hopelessly limited we’re doomed to be as adults if we weren’t immersed in a trilingual home from age zero onwards. We will never be as mentally acute, as gifted at multitasking or spatial cognition, as the young prodigies coming out of multicultural or well-to-do homes where child-rearing continues to be a matter of “best practices”—x inputs yield y results. Give junior the right toys, the right incentives, and the right auditory and visual stimuli, and she’ll be well on the way to maximal productivity and worldly success. The strange thing is, of course, in all this emphasis on building the best possible minds, the science of childrearing offers universal prescriptions, while contradictorily promising unique and gifted children.

I have it on fair authority that one of the great perks of being a university academic is being constantly surrounded with younger minds. One view holds that as a person ages, the mind becomes more rigid, less plastic, increasingly a total storage unit for information, rather than some generator of novel connections. Therefore, it is essential that the successful academic have fresher perspectives in abundance growing at her feet, to stimulate her own thinking, so she can pluck interesting ideas and use her greater encyclopedic knowledge to really pull things together. I don’t know how far this metaphor goes in describing the dynamics of the professor-student relationship, but other graduate students have confided that they feel grad-level seminars are sometimes little more than idea mills for their professors. There is of course a mutual reciprocity here, as the older mind shares loads of information and guides inquiry in useful directions, but the primary benefit probably accrues to the faculty.

But the worst consequence of contemporary attitudes about the rigidity of the adult brain is the sense of hopelessness they engender for…well, the vast majority of the world populace. Neuro- and behavioral scientific findings continue to paint an ever more deterministic view of human existence—the modern human is slave to her fairly crystallized neural pathways before she is old enough to realize her connection-generating prime has passed. Abused physically or verbally as a child? Suffered severe pre- and post-pubescent bullying? Raised sans one parent? Sorry, you’re broken for life, and any therapeutic successes can only ever mitigate or redirect, but never undo, the subsequent behavioral responses and their objects. I recognize I’m laying out very hyperbolic positions here—ones few would publicly hold when so many questions remain unanswered in these fields—but these are some of the conclusions being drawn by scientists and the reading public well in advance of a fuller picture.

For instance, being “hardwired” to do this or that is bandied about in everyday parlance and in the media. Therefore, behaviors in line with the hardwiring deserve acceptance or exculpation, within convenient and constantly shifting bounds. I don’t for a second propose to be able to properly gauge the extent to which we can be said to have free will or control over our behaviors, beyond what we tell ourselves our behavioral identities are (often without bothering to look at our own behaviors to determine how they are in-line with what we broadcast). However, I am constantly confronted with the sense that we cannot truly change our behaviors or perspectives past a certain range of ages—that all we are left with is a daily battle, ever-constant vigilance, and redirecting of patterns of thought, lest we slip once more into depression, anxiety, alcoholism (name your daily tragedy).

Our culture is in the midst of a monumental struggle of redefinition at the moment (or maybe at all moments, though that’s off-topic). On the one hand, many (most, one hopes) of us are avidly embracing a normativity that accommodates all flavors of humanity; I leave that intentionally vague. On the other, we are presented with scientific arguments that most of the values we seek for our society have few, if any, biological underpinnings. And yet, we seek them all the same. President Obama just came out in favor of gay marriage, and it seems like we are that much closer to being a society that lets people define for themselves how to express their love of one another. Clearly the picture is even more complicated than all the theorists paint it, at least at the collective level.

But in the end, it seems to me that there are two emergent attitudes regarding personal expectation for the lifelong learner: You believe (or try to believe) that you are not increasingly handicapped in your acquisition of languages, knowledge, skills, and experiences, and continue apace as you always have; or, you accept that you are severely constrained, and that it will only get worse—but you either make a go of it anyway, or gradually abandon all expectations as you age. There are other ways of looking at it, I’m sure, but these seem to me the most obvious. No matter what pattern of thought you fall into, though, and regardless of whether you chose that pattern, the consequences on your life are very real and will be with you daily.

Christopher Ivan is a graduate student in the MAPSS program.

At present, Aramark has in place in all three dining halls an elaborate, EPA-compliant food waste protocol. As of last fall, all dining halls donate leftover food to a local rescue mission, and the Resource Center collects all food waste (over half of which is produced by Pierce) for composting. These steps have all been taken recently and should be lauded. Yet, according to the Dining website, about 8,000 pounds of food waste is composted each week on average. Plainly, the University is doing much systematically to mitigate the harm of the immense wastage that occurs, so it alone should not be held accountable for the scale of this problem.

Rather, students should seek to correct their own bad habits. One such habit is the use of trays, items which contribute both to heavy water use due to washing and to food waste, as diners tend to pile them too highly with food. All dining halls have implemented a policy of “Tray Inconvenience,” which entails that they make trays somewhat difficult to access, thereby stemming their use. However, students can take the initiative to make trayless dining an official policy. As of this spring, 300 Aramark-affiliated colleges and universities in North America have, to varying extents, removed trays from their dining halls, resulting in the diversion of 15 million pounds of food from landfills this year. As long as trays are made available for those who need them due to physical or medical challenges, the U of C has little reason not to be among these schools.

Students should view trayless dining—a system in place at Princeton and the University of Michigan, and which has saved Grand Valley State University 31,000 gallons of water per year since 2007—as an opportunity to prove that they are responsible consumers by advocating and taking responsibility for reducing their food waste. Groups like SAGE and the Sustainability Council should be at the forefront of any efforts, communicating to students the importance of their decision to not use trays and advancing the cause within the proper administrative channels. Individual students, too, can easily contribute to waste reduction, merely by taking only what they know they’ll eat and avoiding trays. After all, the journey from your table to the food lines is hardly arduous.

Some may wryly point to the quality of food in our dining halls as a reason why so much of it goes to waste on our campus. However, that alone is a shameful reason for students to forget the importance of their collective stewardship of the community and environment. If U of C students are rightly serious about this responsibility, they should know that the ball is in their court—or, perhaps, on their tray.

The Editorial Board consists of the Editors-in-Chief and the Viewpoints Editors.

A planning committee of senior administrators are investigating the possibility of demolishing the 52-year-old residence hall and building a new one in its place. A proposal will be submitted to the Board of Trustees within the coming months, possibly as soon as the end of the quarter.

Photo: Griffin Dennis

Pierce Tower, home to four houses and dining hall, faces an uncertain future in light of recent maintenence problems.

Pierce will remain open for the 2012-2013 school year, according to University spokesperson Steve Kloehn. Otherwise, a precise picture of the building’s fate—including any demolition and construction projects—remains under consideration.

“We hope to have more detailed information about the future of Pierce either by the end of this academic year or the beginning of the fall quarter,” Kloehn said in an e-mail.

However, Dean of the College John Boyer, who is not a member of the planning committee but is head of faculty, has led the charge for an expansion of the housing system and hopes that the University closes Pierce soon.

“The University needs to initiate planning such that we’re able to close Pierce by June of 2013, clear the site, and then begin construction on a new, very modern residence hall, like the one we have on South Campus. Hopefully it would open as soon as possible, but not later than the fall of 2017,” Boyer said in an interview. He imagines the new dorm on the current site of Pierce, along with the parking lot to the west of it.

Administrators on the committee, including Executive Vice President David Greene, Associate Vice President for Campus Life Karen Warren Coleman, and Assistant Dean in the College Katie Callow-Wright, did not respond to emails seeking comment.

“I think I’m speaking on behalf of the faculty,” Boyer said.

If the committee and the Board decide to use Pierce’s location for the new dorm (instead of building a replacement dorm elsewhere), the University will need to find temporary housing for the 250 students who live there now. Boyer suggested International House or the New Graduate residence hall as candidates.

Although Boyer envisions a dorm similar to South Campus, the planning committee may have other ideas.

First-year David Goldfeld attended a meeting last month between the planning committee and the Pierce Resident Working Group, of which he is a member. He said that the committee may be leaning toward a design unlike that of other dorms.

“[The administration] has thrown out lots of ideas. Whether it could be potentially like a taller [Burton-Judson], made out of stone, kind of Gothic. They said they don’t want it to be like South necessarily, with all the glass and steel,” said Goldfeld, who lives in Shorey House.

Regardless of the new dorm’s architecture, the administration wants to maintain the Pierce identity, according to Goldfeld. “They want to keep the good qualities of Pierce, especially the close communities and the small houses. So they want that to be incorporated into the new design,” he said.

Administrators will continue to solicit student feedback as they develop their proposal.

“The work [of the planning committee] continues to be informed by the Pierce Resident Work Group, the Pierce Tower Council, resident staff and other voices,” Kloehn said.

While Boyer could not give a projection of the costs, the last dorm the University built—South Campus—was a $100 million project.

“New residence halls are very expensive. You don’t just decide to do them casually,” Boyer said.

The committee’s decision will come at the end of a long year for Pierce, whose residents experienced structural and maintenance issues, followed by multiple renovations and internal improvements. Asked whether the debate should have begun sooner, Boyer was ambivalent.

“It’s interesting,” he said. “The University has a tremendous opportunity, with the quality of our students, with the quality of our education. If we could just get the residential resources up to a state that’s worthy of our students and our faculty, I think that would be a great thing.”

Photo: Chris Salata

Comparative Human Development professor and practicing psychoanalyst Bertram Cohler (A.B. ’61) passed away on Wednesday. Cohler taught Self classes at the University for 40 years.

Cohler, the William Rainey Harper Professor in Comparative Human Development and the College, taught the Self, Culture, and Society social sciences sequence every year since 1972, in addition to five to seven other courses. During his 40-year tenure in higher education, Cohler was awarded the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1972 and 1999 and the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for enriching student life in 2006.

In his classes, Cohler tried to link each text to the lives of his students. In 2009, Cohler brought his Self class to a live streaming of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, and connected the moment to the theories of Émile Durkheim, which his class was reading at the time.

“The inauguration is a perfect example of what Durkheim is talking about,” Cohler said during the event. “We’re connecting social theory to the reality of social life. Race, class, ethnicity in American life, all of these are brought together in one week.”

Cohler earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1967 before returning to the University as Director of the Orthogenic School in 1969. A graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago, Cohler said that his psychoanalytic background helped him better understand the mindset of his students.

“I wear another hat as a psychoanalyst, and I’m sure that my psychoanalysis informs my teaching. I’m very much concerned about the climate of the classroom and students’ lives, because they have lives outside the classroom, and you can’t learn if you’re anxious,” Cohler said in a 2009 interview with the Maroon. “I try to reduce anxiety so they can really focus on the text.”

First-year Colette Robicheaux, a student in Cohler’s Self section this year until winter quarter when he stopped teaching due to illness, said that he wanted students to find meaning in the texts they studied.

“He was a very unique professor in that he really cared about us feeling connected to the class and feeling like the work we were doing is our own,” Robicheaux said. “He would bend over backwards so that you would get what you wanted to get out of the material.”

Cohler’s research in human development examined families and illuminated issues in the rehabilitation of individuals afflicted with mental illness.

Dean of the College John Boyer lauded Cohler’s longtime commitment to and passion for teaching and the College.

“Bert often insisted that the College’s ideal should be to recruit scholar-teachers for its faculty, by whom he meant faculty members who were distinguished scholars but who also had a profound love of teaching,” Boyer wrote in an e-mail. “Bert himself was such a scholar-teacher, and his impact on our history will be enduring.”

In 2009, Cohler said that the College should challenge students to reconcile the contemporary culture with their classical studies.

“You can’t just listen to classical opera, you’ve got to listen to Philip Glass, and participate in culture as it is and kind of make sense of it all. Each of us then kind of finds our own path to the College,” he said. “Then you have the rest of your life to put it all together again.”

—Additional reporting by Jennifer Standish

Photo: Peter Tang

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, emphasizes the extravagent hidden costs of coal in contrast to the falling price of solar power at the Law School on Thursday.

Kennedy, an environmental law attorney and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, said that free-market capitalism has been overtaken by special interests, preventing America from disposing of oil and coal in favor of cleaner-burning forms of power such as solar and wind.

He went on to blame high-polluting energy interests, Fox News, and talk radio for the false presentation of the issue as one pitting the environment against the economy. Rather, he said, the two are complementary.

Kennedy estimated that energy lobbyists have influenced policy to provide $1.3 trillion annually in subsidies to the oil and coal industries and to reduce regulations, leading to an American addiction to fossil-fuels and “an attack on America’s economy and on America’s wealth.”

Kennedy also said that the notion of “clean coal” is misleading, as coal-burning power plants emit the most mercury into the environment, endangering the food supply.

Combined with the harmful health effects associated with coal emissions, like respiratory and cardiac problems, such environmental dangers cost $345 billion each year in healthcare costs and have exacted a toll on local economies.

“There is no way that the economy can be regenerated,” he said, referring to areas of the country most affected by the extraction and burning of coal.

In the large influence of the coal industry in Congress, Kennedy saw the uprooting of civil liberties as well.

“Wherever you see the large-scale destruction of the environment, you see the destruction of democracy,” he said.

Kennedy also scoffed at the notion that fossil fuels are cheaper than their alternatives—a perception reinforced by oil and coal subsidies.

“There is an illusion that coal provides cheaper energy,” he said.

In reality, he said, solar energy is cheaper than coal in 23 states. “If we had true free market capitalism, with no subsidies, coal and oil would die overnight,” he said, explaining that America must build a national grid system to streamline the flow of wind or solar energy around the country.

“[The U.S.] can attract and utilize energy in a way that does not diminish our quality of life and get us into wars and diminish our leadership throughout the world,” he said.

Cathey’s donation, made in honor of his father, will provide funding for complete renovations in the Harper Reading Room and Stuart North Reading Room, which will become the Arley Cathey Learning Center. South Campus Dining Commons also will be renamed the Arley Cathey Dining Commons, while Chautauqua House in South Campus residence hall will become Cathey House.

“The plan is to use the gift to complete the renovation of the study spaces. Many changes will be invisible, such as air conditioning improvements, but some will be more visible, such as making the configuration of the Stuart cubicles more attractive,” said Associate Dean of the College Michael Jones.

Cathey, who hails from El Dorado, AR, entered the College at age 16. During his time here, Cathey lived in Burton-Judson Courts, adjacent to the dining commons that will boast his family name.

“The University plays a good role in shaping a person’s beliefs for life. It did mine,” he said in a press release.

The dedication of the Arley D. Cathey Learning Center will take place on June 1 in Harper Memorial Library, as part of an alumni weekend reception, Jones said. Cathey will attend the ceremony, but his further involvement in the Learning Center will be contingent upon his health, according to Jones.

Third-year Luciana Steinert, a resident of Cathey House since her first year, said the new name may have a hard time catching on.

“I don’t know how it’s pronounced—it’s sort of oddly spelled,” she said of the house’s new moniker. Moreover, the house began a tradition last year, its “Chautauqua House Chautauqua,” where students shared music and food. Somehow, “Cathey House Chautauqua” may lack the same ring.

“We might still call it that,” she said, referring to the original name.

Dean of the College John Boyer sent an e-mail to house residents May 8 assuring them that their bonds would remain strong.

“I recognize that this change in the identity of your community is significant. I also understand that the community in your House is strong, and I am certain that spirit and its budding traditions will continue and grow as your House name changes,” said Boyer.

Jones praised Cathey’s generosity and said he hopes that his gift will encourage more alumni to contribute. “We always hope that one alum’s generosity will inspire other alumni,” he said.

Photo: Johnny Hung

Jose Vargas speaks about his status as an undocumented alien during a talk at International House on Wednesday night.

Vargas has published over 700 stories, from his 2007 work on The Washington Post’s pulitzer-winning coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre to reporting on the 2008 presidential campaign in 2008 to profiling Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker in 2010.

However, it was not until his 2011 essay for The New York Times, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” that Vargas finally revealed his immigration status and founded DefineAmerican, a social media campaign centered around sharing the stories of undocumented “dreamers” across the country.

“It’s not just about the successful journalists; it’s about everyone who has had to deal with this broken immigration system,” Vargas said. “That’s what I’m trying to do with this. Tell the full story of immigration.”

While famous figures like Stephen Colbert and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have participated in DefineAmerican, uploading videos explaining how they define “American” (“How do I define American? I look in the mirror,” Colbert asserted smugly), Vargas insists that the importance of the project relies mainly on the contributions of students and everyday allies from all social backgrounds.

Drawing on economic as well as historical examples comparing the current state of American immigrants to those inspected and registered at Ellis Island a century earlier, wVargas highlighted the extent to which undocumented immigrants have been integrated into American society.

“I have paid so many taxes I should be a Republican. Here in Illinois, undocumented people paid over $499 million in state and local taxes alone in 2010,” Vargas said. “Sixty-three percent of undocumented people like me have been in this country for more than 10 years, which means we didn’t just jump the border yesterday and end up outside a Home Depot.”

When asked by an audience member why more focus was not given to the economic costs and benefits of immigration over pure emotional appeal, Vargas underscored the importance of remembering the individual and collective “humanity” that permeates the immigration issue despite the availability of objective factual evidence.

Fourth-year Jonathan Rodrigues, who co-founded the University of Chicago Coalition for Immigrant Rights (UCCIR), also acknowledged the effectiveness of storytelling in promoting immigrant rights.

“We invited him because he already has a story to tell, a story that is much like any other undocumented immigrant. He is lucky, and he recognizes that, and UCCIR wanted to spotlight his story as one that should be repeated every day in America and in our campus,” Rodrigues said.

Over 20 RSOs and on-campus organizations, including Office of Multicultural Student Affairs and the Office of LGBTQ Student Life, sponsored the event. As part of the Minority Men Policy Series, the talk was presented as a celebration of Asian American Heritage Month, as well as the one-year anniversary of the Illinois Dream Act, which established a private scholarship fund for children of undocumented immigrants seeking higher education opportunities.

Photo: Julia Reinitz

Political scientist, author, columnist, and pundit Charles Murray speaks about class division in America during a talk in Kent on Wednesday evening.

The hook for the lecture was Murray’s recent book, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010, which traces the development of social classes in white America since 1960, drawing upon census data from the past 50 years to illustrate broad demographic trends.

“In 1960, white America used to have a common civic culture, as the older people in the audience should remember. But young people have only ever seen white America divided, though it hasn’t always been that way,” Murray said.

Using quintessential American towns as models, Murray showed the divide between “Belmonts” (upper middle class towns) and “Fishtowns” (working class towns) that has taken place over the past few decades.

“While the Belmonts have held onto the core American values of industriousness, honesty, marital morality, and religiosity, the Fishtowns have not, and the results have been devastating,” he said.

Major social problems like unemployment, divorce, and obesity disproportionately affect white America’s lower class, according to Murray, while there has been little social deterioration in the upper middle class.

Murray blames the rise of what he calls the “new upper class,” an emergent social class of disproportionately wealthy elites which has grown since the 1960’s.

Citing U of C’s campus as an example of a “new upper class” pocket, Murray explained the consequences of this trend.

“The reality is that the new upper class has no idea how mainstream America works,” he said. “They live in exclusive parts of the country, have their own cultural currency, and don’t interact with their fellow Americans. There’s a complete disconnect, and it’s leading to social decline.”

“How thick is your bubble?” Murray asked the audience, drawing this question from the title of a quiz in his book. The quiz measures one’s own distance from mainstream, working class America with questions like: “Have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?” and “Have you ever purchased domestic mass-market beer to stock your own fridge?”

Murray is W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and the author of many best-selling books. He drew criticism from liberals when he published The Bell Curve, which points to IQ as the best indicator of social class, income, and success rather than commonly cited factors such as race, gender, and social disadvantage.

Counterpoint, a conservative campus publication, and the University Republicans sponsored the talk.

Photo: Julia Reinitz

Political scientist, author, columnist, and pundit Charles Murray speaks to the Maroon.

Chicago Maroon: Today [May 9th] is a pretty historic day, at least symbolically, for civil rights. How important is it for the President to take a stand on social issues like gay marriage? Do you think this helps or interferes with how public policy is treated and implemented?

Charles Murray: I think with divisive ones like gay marriage, a president probably is well advised to wait until some kind of consensus is starting to form, and I think that’s what’s happening to gay marriage. I think if a president had come out ten years ago, it would have been problematic because the deeply, deeply felt positions were so split down the middle. But you know, there are an awful lot of people on the right, including me, who having had ten, fifteen years to experience watching gay couples, are saying, ‘Well, you know. My friends who are gay who are living as couples, they sort of look like marriages to me.’ That’s certainly the reaction of my wife and myself. And that doesn’t mean that there is not still a very vocal, adamant portion of the population that’s still opposed to it, but I think it’s a lot more reasonable for a president to do that now than it would have been earlier.

CM: Your work seems to emphasize cultural over economic determinants when considering social policy. How can you act on these kinds of assumptions? David Brooks suggested a National Service Program that forces people of different economic and social classes to live together in order to spread certain values. Is there some sort of practical model you’d look to?

DCM: Well, I’m emphasizing cultural explanations in this book [Coming Apart]. In Losing Ground, I emphasize some very concrete changes in economic incentives that in my view jump-started a lot of the trends in out-of-wedlock births, in crime, in drop outs, and the rest. So economic incentives at some point in the policy trajectory play a big role. But, what happened in my view subsequently is that even if the trends were started by changes in economic incentives that then led to changes in social norms, such as stigma disappearing for out-of-wedlock births. Once that happens, then the continuing momentum for the continuing change is no longer the economics, and you aren’t going to turn the trend around by changing the economics.

So, at this point in our history, I think that cultural shifts are going to be the thing that fixes things, if that’s possible. In terms of policy prescriptions, one of the implications of that is that it’s probably very unwise and ineffectual to try to rely on policy. Government policy used to influence behavior in a manipulative way. Government has effects on behavior, but they’re usually unintended. They very seldom work out the way people planned them to work out.

Let’s take national service as an example of the natural policy prescription. If we do indeed have a problem of these cultural divisions of the upper class, it would be a disaster. Why? After all, the draft worked wonders in bringing people together. But the draft is backed by the uniformed code of military justice. If you are an unhappy draftee in the army, you don’t have a whole lot of choice but to do what the army tells you to, because you’re facing jail time if you don’t. Any national service program that we had that was compulsory is, like the draft, going to have a very large majority of young people who don’t want to be in it. They are there against their will, but they are not in a program backed by the code of military justice. They are in a soft, squishy Peace Corps type of thing, where people are trying to convince them what a wonderful thing this is going to be, and the result is going to be two things: first, everybody will learn how to game the system. They will manage to get away with the least possible they can do, and it will be a training ground for cynicism. And the second thing is, insofar as the national service administrators do manage to force people to do this, it’s not going to lead to wonderful new friendships across the classes; It’s going to lead to more hostility. And the same kind of thing applies to most of the kinds of solutions that you might advocate.

The one exception to that is that I would like us to get rid of the BA as a standard of educational achievement. I wrote about this extensively in a book called Real Education. I think setting up this four year, liberal arts, in quotation marks, if it even is that anymore, liberal arts degree, which no longer has any meaning except an enormous amount of cultural prestige. More precisely, lacking a BA now carries with it real stigma. I think the BA is one of the most class-divisive things we have, and it is something that both could be changed and probably will change in the natural course of events.

CM: You studied history as an undergraduate. How important is it to understand past social, political, and economic trends in order to understand and interpret change?

DCM: I think the most important thing is for us to understand past American culture. One of the things that I realize is going to be different about tonight’s lecture, is that this is going to be the first college audience I’ve addressed on this topic. So, in previous presentations, many of the people in my audience were 50, 60 years-old, or at least in their forties, and so when I refer to an American civic culture that used to exist, I didn’t get lots of people raising their hands saying ‘What are you talking about?’ I have a feeling that tonight, there are going to be lots of students in the audience that have had no experience with the kind of civic culture I’m talking about. They have not grown up in that world. They’ve grown up in the bubble, and I’m going to have to do some explaining that I’m not dredging up some nostalgic geezer’s view of what America used to be like. I’m talking about a real, existing civic culture that used to function. I’m going to explain what that was all about. So I’m all in favor of learning from history, but if there is one thing that is most exceptional about the United States, it has been that civic culture, which was unlike anything in Europe. And how many 19, 20 year-olds today at elite colleges are aware of that? I don’t know the answer to that.

CM: You work for the American Enterprise Institute. Why are think tanks important, and how can they work together with academia?

DCM: A lot of us in think tanks are there because we don’t want to be in academia. Is there any need to work together? I guess I don’t see any need for us to work together. What I find interesting is the degree to which serious policy scholarship is, I think, now predominantly in the think tanks rather than in academia. And part of that is because those of us who work at these political think tanks have much more intellectual freedom than people in most academic departments. How many academic institutions would have defended me and The Bell Curve the way that the American Enterprise Institute did? The Bell Curve was the one causing problems instead of being something that was supported, and yet they both protected my freedom to write it and they stood up for it without flinching once it came out.

Compare that to what just happened at The Chronicle of Higher Education. They fired one of their most important staff members for writing a no-holds-barred account of the nature of PhD dissertations in Black Studies, which were pretty dreadful, and she said so. There were all sorts of outraged PhD writers from Black Studies who were very upset and distressed by all this, and the response by The Chronicle of Higher Education was to fire the writer for causing distress. I have to say that as I look at academia, I find that that academia is much more concerned about whether intellectually people cause distress in others than they are in defending intellectual freedom to say whatever you damn well please. I guess maybe I do have an answer to your question—academia should learn from the think thanks what intellectual freedom is all about.

CM: The University of Chicago has quite a few cross-sections of people, especially considering the surrounding communities. How do you reconcile unique cases like Hyde Park with your more two-class thesis in Coming Apart?

DCM: The first answer is that if you have a chapter in the book talking about how thick your bubble is, we are sitting in the middle of one of the most carefully constructed bubbles in the country. My daughter went here for her first year in college, so I’m aware of the response time of the University of Chicago Police, which is probably the fastest response time in the world. To what extent in the student body here do you really have a whole lot of diverse backgrounds? One of the major problems of elite universities is that they are radically underrepresented with one particular demographic: white working class. You have a fair number of black kids from working class families, but you don’t have very many of what’s a major part of America, which is white working class, white lower-middle class.

I guess without knowing the University of Chicago in any detail, my prediction would be that you have probably distressingly little diversity in the student body and in the faculty in terms of social class. I’m not saying you don’t have any. There is not only probably an underrepresentation of working class and lower-middle class among those who are here from those classes who come in as freshmen. They are very quickly socialized into the elite culture that dominates the university, because when I describe the elite culture in the book, I’m describing the culture of the University of Chicago. Furthermore, when you come in as an 18 year-old from a working class or lower-middle class background, or if you come in from a small town in Iowa as I did when I went to Harvard, you really want to fit in. And so probably they adopt the elite culture even more rapidly than everyone else does: They do really want to assimilate and not want to be seen as the oddball. So I would imagine that overall the University of Chicago exists within a pretty thick bubble.

CM: Many critics have commented that this is a golden age of sorts to go to an elite university, but there has also never been a time when vocational schools are as relevant and essential as they are today. How can the two co-exist well together?

DCM: I’m hesitating at the idea that this is the golden age for going to elite universities. Certainly they are more in demand than they ever have been. I’m sure the University of Chicago could charge $100,000 and still fill its rolls, because there would be enough parents willing to pay that. That’s not the same as saying it’s a golden age in terms of the education you carry away from the University of Chicago. Someone like me would say, ‘Hey, your golden age was when you had the nation’s finest without parallel core curricula that guaranteed that if you went to the University of Chicago, you got a liberal education for real.’ And now, as I understand it, the University of Chicago still does a whole lot better than most other schools, but it’s softened up a lot.

So I don’t accept the idea that this is the golden age to go to elite schools, but in terms of vocational education, it is a crime. We are starting with high school counselors who counsel more than 90% of their students to go to a four-year college. Starting with high school counselors, reinforced by politicians, including the President of the United States who blather that everybody should go to college, reinforced by the artificial prestige associated with the BA. We are systematically preventing some huge proportion of America’s children from growing up learning something that they love to do, and learning how to do it well. We are making it as difficult as possible for them to do that. I consider one of my major policy objectives in future writing to keep hammering on a restructuring of post-secondary education—to get rid of what I think is an utterly unjustified and pernicious source of class division.

From a pool of over 3,000 proposals for new models and improvements to health care, the UHI was selected as one of 26 winners of the Health Care Innovation Challenge that received from $1 million to $30 million. The prizes went to organizations which sought to bridge the gap between private and public insurance provides, in order to improve access to health care for publicly insured patients.

Founded in 2005, the UHI will use its grant to establish the Community Rx, an electronic database system that will link approximately 200,000 South Side residents to nearby doctors and services.

The grant will allow the UHI to coordinate information about health care resources across the South Side with electronic health records, in order to streamline follow-up health care with “e-prescriptions,” according to Karen Lee, a project manager for the UCMC’s South Side Health and Vitality Studies.

Lee explained that, often, doctors recommend remedies for their patients’ ailments without providing the resources needed to carry out the treatment. By prescribing through the Community Rx database, after a diagnosis, a patient at the UCMC will have an online resource providing information on how and where to go next.

Lee is hopeful that the Community Rx system will both improve health in communities and expand the availability health care resources across the South Side.

“By providing this information to people about places in their community where they can go to stay healthy and manage their disease, we anticipate that this will improve people’s overall health,” Lee said.

She continued: “At the same time, with this local approach in getting people to use resources in their community, it will also help drive community vitality, hopefully bringing more programming to the community that will meet the health needs of the people living there.”

The grant, according to Lee, will bring together a diverse cohort of institutions and organizations, including Northwestern University, Alliance of Chicago Community Health Services, and numerous local clinics, that will work to “help people on the South Side of Chicago stay healthy.”

The UHI functions as a link between the UCMC and community health providers.

Earlier this year, the UHI donated $50,000 to the Community Health Englewood Clinic at West 63rd Street and South Halsted Parkway.

Photo: Tiffany Tan

Award-winning author and poet Michael Ondaatje reads excerpts of his work at the University's new Logan Center for the Arts on Monday evening.

Soto, the coordinator of the Committee on Creative Writing, had good reason to be content, regardless of the outside conditions. The audience for Kestnbaum Writer-in-Residence Michael Ondaatje, who spoke Monday afternoon in Logan Center, had already filled the Performance Penthouse to capacity. Just before the event got underway, attendees were asked to move to the center of their rows to make room for latecomers, prompting a dull roar as musical chairs-like shuffling rippled through the crowded space.

The packed audience was par for the course. Ondaatje is something of a celebrity writer. Best known for his Booker prize-winning novel The English Patient, which was later adapted into a film that won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Ondaatje has also worked in memoir, poetry, and film, and has received a slew of awards for his projects in all media he’s tried his hand at. Introducing Ondaatje, faculty member Suzanne Buffam said, “He seems to fashion fiction from memory’s debris. He’s a model for my generation of writers.”

Ondaatje chose to first read several poems from Handwriting, one of his 13 collections of poetry. Though he is most widely celebrated for his fiction, Ondaatje has serious poetic chops, and put them on full display at the event. In “The Great Tree,” a poem about a Chinese calligrapher’s brush strokes, “language attacks the paper from the air.” “Step,” which conjured a “full moon in a forest monastery,” was deeply evocative. Amidst his elegant metaphors, Ondaatje’s poems were also personally revealing. In “The Great Tree,” he addresses the calligrapher, “So I have always held you in my heart,” and in “Step,” he mentions “a lazy lunch, then sleeping together, then the disarray of grief.” In the conversation with literary critic Donna Seaman that followed, Ondaatje spoke about trying to pare his poetry down to the fewest possible words.

“How do your poetry and prose work together?” Seaman asked.

“When I was beginning as a writer, I wrote poetry,” Ondaatje said, in his calm, erudite tone, “but I wanted a larger landscape somehow. I mostly wrote shaggy dog stories at first. I still think poetry has an intimacy that prose doesn’t want to have, and a kind of suggestion. Two-thirds is usually enough for a poem.”

In his conversation with Seaman, Ondaatje stressed the importance of place and having a landscape in which to envision his work. “I can’t begin a book with an idea, or it peters out after about two pages,” he said. “Location is essential. Once I know when and where it’s happening, it creates a situation for a story. It’s almost like a plot, a landscape.”

Interestingly, Ondaatje’s most recent novel, The Cat’s Table, from which he read several selections, takes place on a ship, a sort of island which functions independent of geographical surroundings. Ondaatje chose passages from the beginning, middle, and end of the novel, since “the behavior gets worse [as the novel goes on], I’m afraid to say.”

Ondaatje’s prose was just as enchanting as his poetry, though more concretely descriptive. In one passage, the young protagonist, Michael, sees a girl go into an outdoor shower fully clothed after roller skating. “We began to get up earlier to watch her roller skate…She was like some kind of clothed animal. This was a new kind of beauty.” Other knockouts included Michael’s description of people who came before him (“innocent knights in a dangerous time”), his account of riding out a storm (“It was as if we were staked out in sacrifice”), and his thoughts upon encountering shady merchants in the Suez Canal (“We thought that our lives could be large with interesting strangers, who could pass by with no involvement”).

Seaman was full of praise for Ondaatje. “You put together collages of sensuousness and history,” she told him.

In a general question-and-answer session that followed Ondaatje’s informal interview with Seaman, the author seemed to relax fully into the situation. One audience member wanted to know how Ondaatje felt about having his books studied in an academic setting. “I don’t think about the interpretation,” Ondaatje replied. “Of course, we’re all really interested in a paragraph in Tolstoy that he doesn’t even remember writing.”

Another student asked, “How do you feel once your books go out into the world? Do you find people have got it all wrong? Or do you just feel like it’s theirs, it’s okay?”

From beneath his cool literary persona, Ondaatje deadpanned, “I’m in total denial.”

The compound, caffeic acid phenethyl ester, or “CAPE”, inhibits cancer cell proliferation by hindering the cells’ ability to sense nutrition necessary for tumor growth. Unlike most healthy cells, cancer cells use all of the nutrition available to them, even when traditional cues would say they do not need it.

“CAPE seems to shut off the cells’ proliferative response to nutrition and cells enter a senescent state and are just hanging out,” said Richard Jones, assistant professor at the Ben May Department for Cancer Research and senior author of the study. “This is kind of a trick to make them think that there is no nutrition available so that they stop proliferating.”

Herbal remedies to cancer, such as CAPE, are becoming increasingly attractive as safer and more holistic replacements to radiation and chemotherapy.

“Our hope is that these natural kinds of products might be different than a standard pharmaceutical treatment because we’re not targeting a specific molecule,” said Jones.

Assistant professor of surgery at the U of C Medical Center Scott Eggener authored a study that took a different approach at investigating potential ways to decrease the financial and health costs of traditional prostate cancer treatment.

Eggener and his colleagues found a lack of adherence to a 2005 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation against screening men aged 75 or older. The task force strived to avoid treatment that does little to prevent death.

Because of unnecessary screenings, “there’s an incredible downstream financial impact of screening, diagnosing, and screening prostate cancer,” Eggener said.

The study found that despite the USPSTF’s recommendations, physicians and patients felt that the benefits of screening outweigh risk of superfluous treatment and, consequently, the amount of men screened has not decreased.

“We were able to show that a lot of older, sicker men are being screened for prostate cancer inappropriately. And paradoxically, younger, healthy men who probably have the most to benefit from screening are being screened at a much lower rate,” Eggener said.

If herbal remedies such as CAPE had no side effects and was proven effective, Eggener would recommend screening all men at a young age. However, prostate cancer research seldom leads to actual clinical availability.

In order to determine if CAPE is the exception, Jones and his group of researchers are looking “to prove to a National Institutes of Health grant study section that we have sufficient information in animals to warrant them to provide us funding for humans.”

The research was made possible by Jones’s unique “micro-western array” technology, an innovative method of protein analysis that allows researchers to look at hundreds of proteins at once.

Photo: Courtesy of Facebook

If that last sentence was gibberish, allow me to explain. Hip-hop-heads are a notoriously hard audience to please and no one has garnered more respect among the hip-hop community lately than Los Angeles foursome Black Hippy. Composed of Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, ScHoolboy Q, and Kendrick Lamar, Black Hippy is both collectively and individually signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, an imprint of Interscope and Aftermath. They are also all part of what they have termed the HiiiPower Movement—a social consciousness ideology that manifests itself in both the group’s lyrics (in Kendrick Lamar’s “HiiiPower”), and in their trademark three-finger salute, as seen at ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul’s show at Reggie’s Music Joint last Tuesday.

The group’s members have each come to occupy different roles in the Black Hippy roster. Kendrick Lamar, the most famous member of the group, engages in introspective pondering about the troubles facing our generation, and is equal parts insecure youth and social critic. He is also most poised to claim celebrity status, having recently been crowned the “New King of the West Coast” by veterans Game, Snoop Dogg, and Dr. Dre. ScHoolboy Q offers a hardened street-gangster persona, often rapping about his days dealing OxyContin before a criminal associate betrayed him. Ab-Soul is the dedicated stoner in a group full of potheads, offering clever, laid-back lines over beats that sound like he stole them from Souls of Mischief. Jay Rock, featured on XXL’s 2010 Freshman list, is perhaps the most conventional rapper of the bunch—talking up his gangster past like a young Game or less-insane DMX through an extensive mixtape discography.

In April, ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul announced their Groovy Tour. It occupies a strange place in the Black Hippy universe. Label-mate Kendrick Lamar, having recently finished touring with Drake and Jay Rock, is accompanying Tech N9ne on his Lost Cities Tour, which leaves ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul to their own devices. For a group as tightly knit as Black Hippy, such a move is far from simple. The group has worked together so long that they can write duet verses without ever needing to be in the studio together. They’re even known to show up on many of each other’s most popular songs as featured artists. Perhaps more importantly though, they see themselves as collectively creating a different paradigm from the rest of hip-hop—able to understand today’s youth in a fundamentally different way from the gangster rappers still talking about crack-dealing and gun-slinging.

Ab-Soul seems perfectly at home being overlooked, speaking frankly about his current status in the group on tracks such as “Top Dawg Under Dawg,” which he performed as part of his Tuesday set. His attitude is reminiscent of Fatlip from The Pharcyde, who has clearly influenced Soul’s everyman persona as well as lyrics and delivery. He came onstage with a goofy swagger, eyes concealed behind his omnipresent sunglasses, and immediately launched into his smooth hit “Turn Me Up.” When Kendrick Lamar’s verse rolled around, he simply let the track fade out and began engaging the crowd—simply excited to be sharing the music he made with an audience who loved it. The crowd responded well to his honest, easy-going attitude, even singing along to songs like “Black Lip Bastard,” which has yet to show up on one of Ab-Soul’s official albums.

ScHoolboy Q took the stage in his trademark bucket hat (whether it’s deliberately un-cool or an homage to late-’80s hip-hop is up for interpretation) and proceeded to launch into a high-energy set complete with stage-diving, a cappella verses, and culminating in his decision to climb down into the crowd to show everyone how to bounce like a Black Hippy. Reggie’s is a venue that is home to flat brims and horn rims alike, and Q kept the whole crowd grooving through smoother songs like “Blessed” and “How We Feeling,” as well as thrashing out for bangers like “There He Go.” It was a powerful performance; his snarling delivery perfectly suited for the venue’s rambunctious atmosphere and punk roots.

But, unlike Ab-Soul, ScHoolboy Q betrayed a sense that something—more specifically, half of Black Hippy—was missing from his set. He seemed most at ease on stage when Ab-Soul returned to join him for a few of their collaboration efforts, including “Druggys Wit Hoes Again,” and he even went so far as to spit the first verse from Kendrick Lamar’s powerful “A.D.H.D.,” urging cheering fans to come see him and Lamar together at Pitchfork Festival. At the same time, cutting off songs after the second chorus to avoid featured verses kept the show moving at a quick clip, maintaining the crowd’s energy.

ScHoolboy Q even managed to use Reggie’s ludicrous 10 p.m. closing time and anti-marijuana smoking policies to humorous effect. He led the crowd in chants of “Bullshit” and “Fuck that.” It was damning proof that just because a show is well-executed doesn’t mean it has to be professional.

Photo: Jordan Larson/The Chicago Maroon

Photo: Courtesy of HBO

More than any other series, those who love The Wire are prone to overstating both its greatness and the qualitative disparity between it and other TV shows. In the eyes of die-hard fans, The Wire is the greatest, most important TV show of all time. As a matter of fact, it’s not really a TV show (Wikipedia helpfully calls it a “visual novel”); instead, it’s capital-a Art, and one can count the number of programs that approach it in quality on one hand (The Sopranos, Mad Men, and…?).

The Wire’s degree of critical and popular acclaim brings up a few thorny questions. Is it that different from other TV shows? Does it transcend the limitations of the television medium? And if the answer to both of these questions is “no,” then why do people continue to believe otherwise?

The Wire is undoubtedly a deep, complicated show, but there are various aspects of it that are unmistakably “TV”: irrelevant and uninteresting romantic side-plots, a few flat, one-dimensional characters, and the cheesy, soundtracked end-of-season montages that show the predictably horrible fates of the show’s protagonists. There’s a basic tension at the core of The Wire that helps make it so fascinating: Is it a TV show or is it High Art? Can it be both?

It’s not altogether clear what it means for a TV series to be art yet. Does it mean guaranteed longevity? Maybe, but consider The Sopranos, perhaps the one show with comparable critical cache and at one time an integral part of popular culture in a way that The Wire never was. And yet, I’m not sure any of my current TV-loving friends, who were all too young to watch the show when it first aired, have gone back and seen the first season. The importance, renown, and popularity that The Sopranos experienced at the turn of the century seem really strange now. It’s possible that TV as a medium is just not conducive to masterpieces. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that five seasons of a TV show, with 10–13 hour-long episodes per season, add up to a fairly substantial time commitment—especially when there are other shows running now.

So, there are reasons to doubt that The Wire, or indeed any show, can be permanently canonized the way a great film or novel can. But regardless, let’s accept the now general consensus that The Wire is the greatest show of all time, and ask why this view is so widespread. Part of it is, of course, that it was indeed a well-made, thought-provoking, high-quality show. But there are other factors to consider. Clearly, it’s the kind of TV show that goes a long way toward reaffirming the political views and social values of the people and critics most likely to watch it. And it is also the kind of show that is likely to trick a viewer into thinking that he or she is an expert on drug policy (after watching Season Three) and education issues (after watching Season Four), without making said viewer feel like she is working very hard to gain her expertise. The Wire’s social consciousness and absolute commitment to authenticity make it cool among certain target demographics, in a way that Breaking Bad could never be. All of this inevitably plays a part in explaining why the show is so beloved.

I’m not opposed to the idea that TV shows can be great art or that they belong to our popular culture canon. But I’ve always appreciated how democratic discussions about television are and just how little room there is to be a pretentious ass when you’re talking about a sitcom. There’s something vital and exciting about the fact that we don’t (as of yet) think of TV shows as masterpieces the way we do films or novels. Maybe you are illiterate and uncultured if you’ve never read Hamlet or listened to Beethoven’s 9th, but it would be preposterous to make the same claim about not having seen Seinfeld (an over-rated show if there has ever been one, by the way) or The Sopranos. Given this general atmosphere, it is particularly jarring to hear from a fan of The Wire about how the show “spoiled” him and rendered him unable to watch more pedestrian fare like, I don’t know, Dexter or something.

To be clear, I’m not sure “great art” is a meaningful or useful way to talk about aesthetics, but if we’re going to have it as a category, then The Wire is as good a candidate as most for the label. But sometimes I get the feeling that the show I watched and the show most fans watched were not the same. To my eyes, The Wire wasn’t a revolution in TV storytelling (except, perhaps, in ambition) and it had many of the same flaws that other TV shows do. This doesn’t really bother me, because I find nothing shameful in the TV format and see no reason to place The Wire in an alternative category like “visual novel.” It was a fine show; it had a lot to say about a variety of complicated social and political questions and it did so through a multitude of lovable and unforgettable characters. To me, at least, this is enough.

Photo: Courtesy of Carnival Films

Hadley first addressed the aspects of the “pleasure” she gets from watching the Masterpiece Classic period drama. As a professor of Victorian literature, Hadley believes that the plot of Downton Abbey fits the model of a 19th-century melodrama well. She finds the stark moral polarity of the pronounced good and bad characters on the show similar to much of literature of the show’s historical period, as well as the commitment to multi-plots and lack of emphasis on a single protagonist. Additionally, Hadley identified various themes in the show that are common to the novels of famous writers of the time, such as Anthony Trollope, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens.

Hadley also praised the filming of the show. In Downton Abbey, the camera often focuses on the faces of the characters, betraying their emotions even though most of their feelings are left unsaid. “I feel that British productions are very involved in this kind of ‘silent expressiveness,’ which is a reflection of the way society operated at the time. It’s not what the characters say that’s important, but what they don’t say.”

Downton Abbey has many impressive features, but the show is not without flaws. On this note, Hadley transitioned into the “guilty” component of her lecture. Hadley remarked that the producer of the show, Julian Fellowes, succeeds in portraying history with a conservative lens, and a lack of international perspective; for instance, World War I, as seen in Season Two, is portrayed primarily as a British war instead of as a world war. She also criticized the show’s representation of budding social movements in the early 20th century: She sees feminism as reduced to the “teenage angst” of the youngest daughter Sybil, and socialism is embodied by her “adoring boyfriend,” an errant Irish chauffeur who can’t tear himself away from Sybil and actually promote the socialist cause.

Hadley’s theories pertaining to the success of Downton Abbey offered a particularly thought-provoking explanation for what she sees as unusually high American interest in a Masterpiece Classic. She attributes this to the American fascination with an aristocracy it never had, and to the fact that the show portrays a moment of economic disparity that many Americans now identify with. Furthermore, many viewers can certainly find relief from the constant, sordid showing of reality TV shows, in a well-scripted show.

However, Hadley accepts that part of the show’s universal appeal is its masterful production. She played a clip from the first episode of the first season, and pointed out the ways in which the opening scene is a clear indicator of the show’s trajectory. The exquisite costumes, multiple vantage points, and sophisticated filming all promise that our guilty television pleasure will be a rich escape. And just as Downton Abbey is a great diversion, the “Guilty Pleasures” series is a pleasant way to break up the monotony of a day. After the hour-long lecture and discussion I went straight to my next class with a sense of rejuvenation that only our favorite distractions can offer.

“Guilty Pleasures” will continue on Monday, May 21st with a discussion on Breaking Bad.

There will be mud and women aggressively writhing in it at Reggie’s Rock Club this evening. The Mud Queens of Chicago, who apparently coalesced after a particularly dirty summer night absinthe binge, hope to bring mud-slinging in all its slimy grimy goodness (and rock ’n roll; they do that, too) to the dangerously clean Chicago hipster scene. They also donate a portion of their proceeds to the Young Women’s Empowerment Project and the Chicago Women’s Health Center. And, if you miss them this weekend, they will, apparently wrestle in your living room some other time. 2109 South State Street. Starts at 9 p.m., $12 at the door. 21+.

Have you ever saved Latin? That’s what I thought. It’s obvious then that you could benefit from seeing Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998) for the first, second, or fortieth time on the big screen at the Music Box Theatre. Watch this heartwarming, hilarious tale of love, expulsion, and revolution, and you’re bound to discover your own Rushmore. I’ll see you at next year’s RSO fair. 3733 North Southport. Starts at midnight, $8-$10.

Instead of catching a shuttle home from the Reg this evening, take one to Pilsen for 2nd Friday. If you’re unfamiliar with the monthly event, it’s a smashing good time where 30 galleries around South Halsted open their doors to the public, free of charge, and offer art viewing, music, food, wine, and the chance to talk to artists from around Chicago. ArtShould is providing a shuttle to and from event for U of C students. Shuttle leaves at 6:30 from 57th and University, leaves Pilsen at 9:30 (2nd Fridays runs from 6–10 p.m.; $4 roundtrip on shuttle.

Sat | May 12

Don’t feel like dancing? You can find something better to do (sit and watch other people dance) at RBIM’s annual spring showcase, “Legendary,” featuring a dazzling array of dance varieties including hip-hop, jazz, and flamenco. There will be an additional show at 6 p.m. on Sunday. 1131 East 57th Street. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., Show starts at 7 p.m., $7 in advance, $10 at the door.

What exactly is Art Apocalypse anyway and why do I keep getting ominous and incredibly intriguing emails about it (the last one linked me to the “Use of T.S. Eliot’s Poetry in Apocalypse Now” Wikipedia entry)? All I know is that there will be 100 performers, in 90 minutes, at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. There will be sword fighting, fire spinning and Shakespeare. The rest is darkness. 915 East 60th Street. 10:15–11:45 p.m., free.

Sun | May 13

The Hideout has found a space-saving, environmentally friendly and far less comfortable alternative to the drive-in-movie. Trade hand-holding for handle-bar holding (and beer) at their Bike-In Movie Theater screening of The T.A.M.I Show (1964), which documents a free, teen-only concert that took place at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and included performances by James Brown, The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, and a young Toni Basil as a back-up go-go dancer. 1354 West Wabansia Avenue. Starts at 8 p.m., free.

Le Vorris & Vox are slated to hold their spring show in Rockefeller Chapel. The 20-person student circus will perform all sorts of stunning and startling feats, including aerials, hand manipulation, dance, and dreamscapes. And, as if that weren’t impressive enough, they will do it all to music composed by U of C students specifically for the show. 5850 South Woodlawn Avenue, starts at 9 p.m., $5.

If your mother is in town this weekend, you ought to have a game plan. If not, show her how well she’s raised you by taking advantage of Chicago’s Mother’s Day offerings regardless. Dozens of restaurants throughout the city will offer special prix fixe menus and à la carte items (mostly brunch), but my vote is for Volare, which is churning out pasta, crepes, and slow-cooked baby lamb and mini pizza (for dessert), or Bistronomic and its brunch of Deviled Eggs and Ahi Tuna Nicoise Salad. Or head to The River East Art Center for the monthly Dose Market, which will feature special handbag sale, vintage clothing galore, Do-Rite Donuts, and Little Black Dress vodka. Plus, if you do bring a flesh-and-blood mother (preferably your own) she will be automatically entered into a raffle to win one of two boxes of this month’s Dose goodies. Volare: 201 East Grand Street. 11 a.m.–3 p.m. Bistronomic: 840 North Wabash Avenue. 10 a.m.–4 p.m., $32/person. Dose: 456 East Illinois Avenue. 10 a.m.–4p.m.

Why am I telling you this? Because I didn’t want to make a mess at the Chicago United Hoops Classic and disturb the families who were there to watch their son or their neighbor or their friend from across the block compete in the city’s premiere all–star game. 

Photo: Sydney Combs/The Chicago Maroon

So, I climbed up the Ratner bleachers into a lonely spot up in the top left hand–corner of the stands and set my lunch on the seat to my right and my laptop for note-taking to my left.

I took a big bite of my burger and anxiously awaited tip–off, to watch the best high school basketball players from Chicago’s South and West Sides go at it, with my feet up and fries spilled across my napkin.

As I sat there, mess on my lap like the starved kid at recess, I didn’t expect to have to stand until I’d finished my burger. But when the MC got up from his chair at the scorer’s table to introduce one of the city’s prominent pastors, I got the feeling I just might.

With his voice as smooth as Chi–town jazz this MC introduced the message behind the game we were about to witness. He talked about how this was “a rivalry with a purpose.” How it was a contest and a pledge to promote keeping violence off the streets and kids in the gym. And how it was a game to show the young ones in attendance the rewards of dedicating effort to basketball in the city of Chicago.

What followed at Ratner was what hit me hardest on Saturday. After the MC handed the pastor the mic, the pastor asked the fans for a simple request—to “look at the person next to you and give them your hand.”

Now, I went to a Jesuit school and I’ve been to my fair share of high school, college, and professional games, but I’ve never seen what happened next before. The entire arena—South Siders, West Siders, Hyde Parkers, and UChicagoans—looked to their the left and looked to their right and reached out. And the stadium stood still, as one.

I took the food off my lap and stood up in my corner by myself, but a West Side fan who slightly resembled Urkle with his thick glasses and jean shorts turned to me and said, “Come here, brother.” A kid with blonde hair to his left, no older than eight, turned back and smiled too.

I reciprocated a grin and stepped over the seats. I put my hands on their shoulders and they put their hands on mine. And all together the arena listened to the pastor’s prayer for Chicago’s youth. You could feel the city in that moment—religious or not. And I honestly felt a like a piece of the community. 

Photo: Sydney Combs/The Chicago Maroon

On the court, I didn’t see what I’d expected either. I didn’t see high school ball hogs or kids trying to push stats. I didn’t see a lazy defensive effort in an all–star game and I didn’t see bickering between cross–town rivals. I saw basketball the way it’s played best—the way Chicago plays it.

There was something very hip-hop about the game and the representation Chi–town is putting out. Even through warm-ups every player’s dribble bounced to the beat, whether it was Kanye blaring or Common. Watching between-the-leg passes made to look easy and up-and-under lay–ups, it was like listening to old school rap.

Once the game tipped–off, play swayed with the rhythm of the city. Every dime and handle flowed like lyrics. On Saturday it became evident to me that Chicago pumps out a certain type of basketballer, a player that encompasses the city’s values, its toughness, and its flair.

Watching the likes of Rashaun Stimage, Steve Taylor, and Michael Orris I couldn’t help but notice how the game looked pretty, even despite the fact that these players only had a week to practice together. Ball movement was their motto, ingrained in them like the unity in the stands and the city.

Their defense didn’t slack, though. Big men and guards were blocking shots in all directions. And whenever a player went down someone was there to help him back up—no matter what jersey color. Smooth on offense and tough on defense, even in all–star games, it doesn’t get much better than that.

With the “I love Chi” shirts filling Ratner, more halftime and postgame awards given out for sportsmanship than stat lines, and the occasional kid running onto the court for a shot between breaks, Chicago’s message resonated in Ratner on Saturday—in the stands and on the hardwood.

It proved that basketball, one of the city’s most momentous trophies, is more than just a game for its people—it’s a way of life. And that was an emotion all of Ratner felt. All it took was looking to our left and to our right.

The Maroons will compete at Stagg Field this Saturday at the UChicago Penultimate Invitational meet.

Having already competed in the UAA Conference Championship meet, the South Siders have largely shifted their focus from team achievements to individual achievements.

“This weekend’s meet is definitely going to have a different feel because it’s a post-conference meet,” first-year thrower Reecie Dern said. “A lot of people won’t be competing, or will be competing in a fraction of their normal events—at this point in the season, we’re really looking to improve individually.”

However, while the season is nearing its end, for several athletes it is not winding down just yet. While many team members take the end of the season as an opportunity to try their hand at new events, others use it to attempt to improve their rankings on the National Honor Roll and close in on NCAA Championship positions.

Third-year distance runner Julia Sizek, for example, is set to compete in the 10,000-meter run.

“I feel like I’m now in an extremely weird position, as I enjoy running for the team more than running for myself—particularly when it comes to nerves,” Sizek said. “It is not fun to be nervous, and I like legitimizing it somehow.”

In fact, with the Penultimate shaping up to be a smaller meet than usual, head coach Chris Hall entered several athletes (including Sizek, fourth-year Sonia Khan, and third-year Sarah Peluse) in the Keeler Invitational in Naperville, IL on Thursday, May 10 to provide an additional improvement opportunity for 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter runners.

“It’s not on our schedule, but coach [Hall] felt like the competition would be good for distance runners,” Khan said. “Julia [Sizek] and I will be working together to try and break 37 minutes in the 10,000-meter run.”

Even at the Penultimate itself, several athletes will be looking to end the season on a high note to improve—or secure—nationally ranked positions. Some of these athletes include fourth-year jumper Paige Peltzer (currently ranked 16th in the high jump) and third-year Kayla McDonald, who currently holds the 28th-place ranking in the 800-meter—a position she is eager to improve, as the top 22 athletes in each event qualify for Nationals.

Despite the small nature of the Penultimate, the competition on the field should be worthy of attention.

“For the throwers, it’ll be a small but healthily competitive group of athletes,” Dern said, who has held her own as a consistent point earner for the Maroons all season. “All competing throwers should get a good quantity of opportunities to throw their best.”

For all team members, however, the Penultimate meet will be a great opportunity to explore new areas of talent—or, at the very least, to support fellow teammates.

“Individually, people are trying to squeeze as much as they can out of the end of this season. As a team, we come together to try and give them that extra bit of encouragement that will help them achieve their goals,” Dern said.

As team captains have stressed throughout the season, this encouragement is often key for exceptional achievement.

“Hopefully we get a lot of people to come cheer us on Saturday because having support really makes a difference,” Khan said. “Knowing you are running for something bigger than yourself really puts the extra edge on a performance.”

Photo: Courtesy of Dave Hilbert

Second-year Sam Butler runs the steeplechase at the Chicagoland track meet earlier this season.

“It’s not a great meet this weekend,” head coach Chris Hall said. “A lot of other teams are in their conference meets right now or have finals or are graduating on Saturday. It’s not a great competition we have this weekend. Because some teams are done with school, you don’t necessarily get the full team.”

The South Siders will see competition from Northwest Missouri State, Carthage College, and Milwaukee School of Engineering, as well as several club teams and independent athletes.

With the UAAs already come and gone, Chicago’s athletes now divide into two groups: those still chasing qualification for the NCAA championship and those who aren’t. But, as Hall explains, all of his athletes still have something to compete for.

“At this point in the year we’re working on personal improvement more than anything,” Hall said. “We’ve got a handful of athletes who are chasing national standards and that’s their primary goal, but we have others who are using this time of the season to have the type of performances that could lead them to believe that maybe next year they’ll be in a position to advance to the national championships or be a scorer in the UAAs.”

“For those of us whose hopes of Nationals are somewhat distant, the meet still offers an opportunity for personal improvement, which is what track and field is all about,” third-year Avery Mainardi said. “This Penultimate meet is a great chance for all the hard work put in since the beginning of indoor track to materialize in fast times.”

There are still several Maroons, however, with a realistic, if improbable, shot at NCAA qualification. Third-year distance runner Billy Whitmore is currently Chicago’s top-placed athlete nationally, as he is ranked 16th in the 10,000-meter (30:18.56). Whitmore also holds out hope of qualifying in the 5,000-meter, an event he has mostly placed behind the 10,000 in importance this year, but that would require him to run over 30 seconds faster than his current season’s best (15:27.79). Third-year Isaac Dalke may be in a better position to challenge for national qualification in the 5,000-meter with his season’s best of 15:06.14.

Other potential national qualifiers include third-year Dee Brizzolara in the 200-meter, who still needs to shave off a tenth of a second from his best time this season (22.01) to make the top 50 in the nation at the DIII level. Fourth-year Moe Bahrani needs to find a little less than 9 seconds in the 3,000-meter steeplechase to make the national lists, while Daniel Heck needs to improve his season’s best (52.20m) by nearly half a meter to do the same in the hammer throw.

At a time of year when the individual is very much the focus, and at a meet with such a weakened field, there could be question marks about the team’s motivation. But the Maroons seem confident they will put in their best performances as they say farewell to Stagg Field for the year.

“Winning awards and standing on the podium definitely make our sport fun, but that is not why we compete. Track and field, especially at the DIII level, is about beating yourself,” Mainardi said. “Chasing personal records as well as running on our home track for the last time this season will certainly provide ample motivation for us this weekend, especially for the seniors.”

The Chicago Penultimate gets underway at 2 p.m. tomorrow at Stagg Field.

Photo: Courtey of Dave Hilbert

First-year Megan Tang returns the ball in a rally played against Emory University earlier this season.

Chicago, the nation’s second seed and the top seed in their region, will have a bye in the first round and will play the winner of the No. 30 Carleton/Grinnell match at 2 p.m. on Saturday. Being the favorite, the Maroons are likely to advance to the regional final and will likely play their archrival No. 11 Wash U Bears on Sunday at noon.

While the Maroons boast three fourth-years that have received fourth place in the NCAA DIII tournament for the past three years—Kendra Higgins, Jennifer Kung, and Carmen VacaGuzman—there is not a lot of tension and nerves to take home the national title.

“I know all of us seniors are very eager to progress further than we have in the past because this year we have a team that can do it,” Higgins said. “I don’t think I would say there is a lot of pressure. Yes, each of us is anxious and excited, but we have been in this situation before, and our goal is to have fun and go far especially in our last year.”

Luckily for the Maroons, they will avoid Emory, the team that has beaten them in two of the last three national semifinals but that the Maroons beat in this year’s UAA title match, until the final round.

Still, Chicago’s draw features national powerhouses No. 3 Amherst, No. 6 Carnegie Mellon and No. 8 DePauw, a team that the Maroons split duals with this season. But the Maroons will not visit any of those teams until the semifinal.

For now, the Maroons are concentrated on besting their regional opponents.

Carleton defeated Grinnell on April 1, 9–0.

If Chicago plays Carleton on Saturday, they should be ready for an easy victory. The two teams faced off on March 21 with the Maroons cruising to a 9–0 win.

But there were a couple of roadblocks along the way to victory. Being a non-conference match, and with the Maroons already having clinched the dual, a 10-point tiebreak was played in place of a third set for Kung and VacaGuzman at No. 2 and 3 singles, respectively. Kung won her tiebreak 12–10 while VacaGuzman won 10–7.

“I don’t want to underestimate any team; we will treat each team like a Williams or Amherst,” first-year Kelsey McGillis said.

The Maroons will have another familiar opponent in Wash U if the Bears advance to Sunday’s regional final.

Chicago beat Wash U 8–1 on April 15 at home. With such a large rivalry and stage, the Maroons are going to implement what they learned from their last match against the Bears.

“From Wash U, we learned there are many ways to win; it doesn’t necessarily have to be pretty, just getting one point for the team is one point closer to a win,” McGillis said. “You are really playing for the team, not yourself.”

With a Chicago starting lineup that includes two first-years, McGillis and Megan Tang, the Maroons need to adjust mentally to the new environment of the NCAA tournament.

“Although the pressure as a [first-year] is big, we really don’t know what to expect,” McGillis said. “The [fourth-years] can tell us, but we really just have to wait and experience it for ourselves.”

The combination of players, from first-years through fourth-years will be key in determining the Maroons’ success.

Chicago opens play at 2 p.m. on Saturday.

Chicago got on the board early in the first inning. In fact, they scored two runs before Northwestern second-year starter Nick Friar had recorded an out. Friar walked the first two hitters. Due up third was second-year outfielder Ricky Troncelliti, whose season has been nothing short of outstanding. Troncelliti padded his .468 batting average with a two-run double. Chalk it up to not knowing their opponent, perhaps, but the Wildcats should not have put runners on for Troncelliti.

After Northwestern cut the Maroons’ lead to one, adding a run in the bottom of the third, Chicago answered an inning later with three runs in the top of the fifth. The Wildcats’ pitching staff gave up yet another costly walk, this time walking third-year infielder J.R. Lopez with the bases loaded to force in a run. Fourth-year catcher Stephen Williams added to the inning driving in a run with a fielder’s choice, and second-year outfielder and first baseman Brett Huff capped off the inning’s scoring with an RBI single.

Though the Maroons gave up two runs in the bottom of that inning, their lead was never in doubt. They tacked on one more run in the eighth for a final score of 6–3. This squad is making a habit of playing games in which they accumulate a double-digit hit total, accumulating ten on Tuesday afternoon.

The gravity of this win is not to be understated. There’s no better way for a team like the Maroons to end a season than by beating a DI opponent, all while awaiting selections for a mere DIII tournament.

“It was nice to finish our season strong and get the win against Northwestern,” first-year infielder Kyle Engel said.

The win was Chicago’s first against a DI opponent since May 2, 2000, when they beat Chicago State.

The Maroons and the Wildcats have now met 119 times and four times in the past four years. In those games, the Maroons can now boast a 1–3 record.

Now, back on the South Side, the Maroons await word on whether or not they’ve made the NCAA tournament, and where they will be playing if they did indeed make it. The berth would be the program’s first ever to the NCAA DIII postseason.

“We’re all looking forward to hearing the NCAA selections in the future,” Engel said.

The South Siders’ fate will be announced on Sunday, May 13.

Photo: Courtesy of Dave Hilbert

Second-year Kaitlyn Carpenter slides into base at a home game against Hope College earlier this season.

That was then; these are the playoffs. A mostly quiet Chicago (25–9) offense got all the runs they needed Thursday afternoon against John Carroll (30–14) on a second-inning Vicky Tomaka three-run blast. It was the third-year’s first home run of the season, and it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.

On defense, third-year pitcher Kim Cygan (15–4) led a bend-not-break effort, allowing only two runs even as the Blue Streaks tallied seven hits and three walks. The Maroons stranded eight of John Carroll’s base runners en route to a 3–2 victory.

“We came out a bit nervous and tight,” head coach Ruth Kmak said, “but we battled through.”

In the second inning, Cygan reached on a fielder’s choice and second-year Zoe Oliver-Grey drew a walk to set the stage for Tamaka. She stepped up to the occasion spectacularly, bashing a ball from pitcher Brittany Danilov (22–6) to left-center field. The Maroons have now had ten games with a home run; they’ve won nine of them.

“I saw the change-up coming and I just wanted to drive the ball somewhere,” Tomaka said.

After four innings of stranding at least one runner on base, the Blue Streaks broke through in the fifth inning. In a rare lapse of control, Cygan hurled two wild pitches in the inning. The first allowed John Carroll’s Morgan Robinson to advance to third after she had already stolen second base; the second came after Robinson scored, and allowed another base runner to advance into scoring position. A double from Blue Streaks catcher Mackenzie Griffin brought in their second and final run.

With Chicago clinging to a one run lead, John Carroll mounted the night’s biggest threat, getting Robinson and Griffin on the corners with one out. Showing poise, Cygan deflated the high-pressure moment, inducing an in-field pop up before ending the game by striking a Blue Streaks batter out looking.

Now in the winner’s bracket of the double-elimination tournament, the Maroons square off today against first-seeded Trine (38–8), who triumphed over eighth seed Geneva College 6–5 in a Thursday morning game. The Thunder are making their sixth straight NCAA tournament bid, and were two games away from the DIII World Series in 2011.

“We’re not fearful of Trine,” Kmak said, “but we know we have to play as well as we are capable of playing.”

Trine is led by pitchers Andi Gasco (21–5) and Carly Searles (5–2), who have proved to be two of the Thunder’s best hitters, as well. They have earned run averages of 1.56 and 3.00 respectively, and are batting .436 and .435; even if only one will be on the mound, the Maroons can expect to see both at the plate.

At Alma, the fourth-seeded Maroons play at 2 p.m. Eastern time. If they continue to win, they’ll play at least one game a day until the regional ends on Sunday.

According to the American College Health Association, 16 percent of college students smoke. Interestingly, I cannot find a comparable statistic for University of Chicago students anywhere online. Though the University may have this figure, it is not widely available. This is highly anomalous among our peer institutions; casual investigation easily yields that 10 percent of Harvard students and only 4 percent of Stanford students smoke.  But a search for “uchicago smoking” yields only news articles about smoking cessation research.

The University’s official policy on smoking is decidedly terse. It states that “the University of Chicago is a smoke-free environment, therefore smoking is prohibited in all buildings,” adding that “Smoking is permitted outside a building but not within fifteen feet of the entrance.” I applaud the University for having a clear and unambiguous policy. But, at the same time, I am rather perturbed by its brazenly lax enforcement. Any student who has been on campus more than a week can attest that this policy is flagrantly violated every day. I challenge the reader to observe the steps of the International House from 8 to 9 p.m. on a weekday. It is almost certain that she will see a group of smokers congregating no more than arm’s length from the door.

It is interesting to note that the University’s smoking policy is in compliance with the 2005 Chicago Clean Indoor Air Ordinance. This ordinance states that individuals face a $100 fine for smoking within 15 feet of a building entrance. Even more noteworthy, however, is the fact that the University itself can be held liable for not enforcing the ordinance. Yet, even though the University has legal and financial liability regarding smoking, it maintains a decidedly complacent attitude toward this ordinance.

It is puzzling that this is the case. In comparison, the University regulates another common vice practically to death. The U of C’s official alcohol policy is almost 2,000 words long. It contains specific proscriptions regarding the serving and consumption of alcohol on campus. Every new student must complete the AlcoholEdu program, and most College houses have clear guidelines regarding “parties.” Ostensibly, this is to shield the University from liability and to promote health among students. If that is the case, it is mystifying that the University does not take similar steps regarding tobacco use.  As with alcohol drinkers, student smokers add to University healthcare costs and create a less healthy community. However, the University simply does not have the same risk mitigation protocol in place for smoking.

The University also lags notably behind its peers in not attempting to minimize smoking’s harm. Columbia University offers its students free consultations with tobacco cessation specialists. The University of Michigan has banned smoking entirely on its campus of 28,000. UMich has been joined by other top schools like Emory and UC Berkeley and over 500 other campuses in the United States. Jarringly, in contrast, the University of Chicago has not taken any action beyond what is mandated by law.

It should be clear by now that I am anti-smoking. But I would like to draw a distinction: I am not anti-smoker. Though I disagree with the action itself, there are a number of logically compelling arguments for smoking. Perhaps most salient among those is the opinion that smoking fills a unique social role. A smoke break is a rare, socially acceptable way to temporarily excuse oneself from an engagement. (Last I checked, ducking outside to drink alcohol or shoot heroin was generally frowned upon.) Additionally, it acts as a social lubricant and promotes a sense of camaraderie among those who smoke. Some would say that smoking “socially” is a good thing.

I acknowledge the merit in these arguments. What bothers me, though, is that ideas like these are nowhere to be found in the greater discourse of the University. Simply put, nobody here talks about smoking, a topic that deserves a spot at the top of our collective attention.  To me, the silence about smoking runs contrary to the very nature of our school. Instead of probing the social, moral, and cultural realities that have caused smoking—a fundamental modern health issue, and the  No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States—to persist in our society, we are currently content to let them smolder. In light of this university’s robust academic tradition, this just seems wrong.

I believe this can be easily remedied. What the University needs to do is gather definitive statistics about the smoking habits of its students. It should not only come up with a percentage, but also examine the context and motivations of students who smoke. Without critical information like this, a productive dialogue is impossible. The University must also make reexamining its policies a top priority, as the current situation is suboptimal for all parties: Smokers are liable for a fine, the University is in contravention of a city ordinance, and non-smokers are exposed to secondhand smoke. The University must reformulate its policies based on balancing the needs and concerns of smokers and non-smokers alike. This includes taking actions like creating designated smoking zones, strategically positioning ashtrays and more prominently advertising smoking policy. So far, though, the University’s stance on the matter has been wispy and ephemeral, not unlike a plume of smoke.

Taylor Schwimmer is a second-year in the College majoring in public policy studies. 

The first is one I’ve encountered the most, and is indeed the strongest point Fraser makes, which is that there are more pressing issues on the Southside than trauma care which require more immediate attention. More lives could be saved per dollar spent, to cite two of her examples, if we created programs to target the risky behaviors of smoking and lack of exercise. And indeed if it were a question of such simple calculus, I would put down my protest placards and bend before logic. But there are several reasons why it is not so simple.

Fraser tries to make the case that it is regrettable but necessary that in any healthcare system with limited resources a price must be put on lives to ensure that the most possible lives be saved; and, that within such a system some people will lose loved ones and they will feel that this loss is unjust. While this is reasonable, she then writes something I find very troubling: “This feeling of injustice is strengthened by the fact that there are so many people whose fates are not determined by how much the medical establishment is willing to pay.” Now we must ask, is this a “feeling” of injustice, when we admit that our system does not put any effective price on many lives while triaging others on the basis of their wealth (or lack of wealth)—or is it simply injustice in the clearest and most concrete sense of the term?

It is pretty much beyond dispute that the reason the U of C closed its center in the eighties is because they were seeing a high volume of uninsured or underinsured patients. But this is the same reason it is difficult for Southsiders to get any kind of care, not just trauma care. Enacting an anti-smoking program, however helpful it may be, does not increase access to care or highlight that the root of the problem is structural. High smoking rates and other risky behaviors do not occur in a vacuum; what must be changed is the structural disadvantage the Southside is placed at. What Ms. Fraser is proposing is more like enlightened despotism, born of either despair or complacency towards addressing the roots of our healthcare inequities.

She writes, “Unfortunately, we are stuck within the bounds of an often unjust and dysfunctional system. There are not enough resources, and those resources are not allocated equally.” And concludes that, “Repairing the disorganized state of the American medical system is far in the future, if it is to happen at all.” But this is precisely what must be done, and in the meantime I see no reason to stop demanding a system that provides equal access to care and values each life equally. That is the nature of this issue at its most fundamental.

Cynicism is not the mark of a sophisticated ethical stance; it is the mark of complacency and ethical laziness. Of course our healthcare system can change. We live in the world’s first revolutionary democratic state: What right have we to say that there is nothing to be done because we are “stuck” without putting forth the first effort at releasing ourselves?

Potentially because it is not “we” who are truly stuck—as Ms. Fraser points out, she herself has no difficulty receiving care. Now, if we fought for more money for anti-smoking and exercise programs as Ms. Fraser suggests (while not believing it is possible to achieve success anyway), we would not be increasing access to care.

We would also not be addressing the high anxiety that contributes to young people beginning smoking in the first place, anxiety perhaps caused—among the other stressors of poverty—by the fact that the number one killer of black men ages 15 to 34 is homicide. The violence evident everywhere on Chicago’s Southside might also contribute to low rates of exercise, simply because people don’t want to be outside. I’ve heard one woman speak about how she brings her children to play in Hyde Park rather than her own neighborhood playground for safety, but her son doesn’t want to go anyway since he saw a member of his family shot in a park; all parks now terrify him. There seems something deeply condescending in asking people to change their “behavior” before providing more resources to address the root of those behaviors in the first place.

Certainly a trauma center won’t fix all the issues surrounding violence on the Southside, but it could help, and this movement won’t stop there. The fundamental reason this is not about behavior is because behavior has nothing to do with political power. This movement is about demanding equal access to care through building political power, not enacting “public policy” that alone will never solve the myriad problems the Southside faces, and that does not come from the people. The medical establishment no doubt has good intentions, but it will never do all that it can until it is in its interest to do so. If things remain as they are, it never will be; things must change.

Michael McCown is a second-year in the College majoring in philosophy.

The College currently offers 55 official programs of study, and while that might seem like a modest figure considering our lack of vocational majors (or the multitude of available programs of study at a place like Brown) this list of 55 is far longer than it needs to be. Consider, for example, the wealth of options confronting an undergraduate with an intellectual predilection for, say, religion. There’s the New Collegiate Division’s Religious Studies program, which offers an interdisciplinary approach to religion and how it relates to and is affected by human cultures. There’s also Religion and the Humanities, a program that aims to imbue a greater understanding of religion and its relation to the human condition, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary methods. So what would the salient difference between these two majors be? Uh. From what the college catalogue has to say, it looks like the only formal distinction between these programs is the fact that Religious Studies has a more rigorous series of requirements, culminating with a BA thesis as opposed to a simple senior project in Religion and the Humanities.

But let’s not stop there. If early Christian literature is your fancy, then fear not—there’s a program of study in Early Christian Lit just for you. Unfortunately, it has exactly zero courses listed under its name in the college catalogue. To compensate for this, Early Christian Literature majors can combine their major with that of Religion and the Humanities, which has a full three courses listed, two of those being seminars for the senior project. The other listed course is Introduction to Religious Studies, which coincidentally happens to be a required course for Religious Studies majors, who have a quite extensive course list to choose from, covering multiple religions across several different disciplines. In other words, it looks as though Religious Studies undergrads could triple-major just by dropping an email to their adviser the week of graduation.

Perhaps more serious than catalogue inflation, though, is the balkanization caused by such an exhaustive list of programs of study. Take the example of Gender and Sexuality Studies and Sociology. Gender/Queer theory is an important contribution to the field of sociology and has been expanded upon and enriched by decades of study and research; giving it its own major is not unlike creating a major for game or chaos theory separate from Econ (although a more exact analogy might be creating a separate Game or Chaos Theory major in which you can get credit for a course on Jurassic Park). By separating Gender/Queer Theory from Sociology and making it interdisciplinary-saturated, so to speak, both Gender Studies and Sociology majors suffer: Gender Studies students don’t get introduced to much of the methodology or statistical work required of the Sociology program, and burgeoning Sociologists can conceivably navigate through their undergraduate tenure without ever having to encounter gender or queer theory. Perhaps worse yet, it creates undeniable stigma: Gender Studies is too abstract, too theoretical—something that serious Sociologists should stay away from.

All this is not to say that having a wide selection of majors or interdisciplinary programs is a bad thing; far from it. It’s quite probable that the reverse situation would be even more undesirable: Fewer than 10 programs of study, unwieldy departments and little or no opportunity to put disciplines in dialogue with one another, in a sort of bizarro-world reversal of the Core Curriculum. In fact, most undergraduates—the author of this article included—would argue that having a diverse selection of majors and the opportunity for some disciplinary cross-pollination is reassuring and even a little relieving at times. Ultimately, some balance is best, but in the meantime the current situation appears a little more comic than anything else. The College catalogue is wrought with some majors that are whimsically directed towards non-existent demographics and others that can leave one a jack of many academic trades and a master of none. At the very least, a little scrutiny might be in order in some administrative offices.

Henry Ginna is a third-year in the College majoring in Law, Letters, and Society. 

Obama revealed the new campaign slogan for his 2012 effort, “Forward,” a clever political ploy that tries to reframe conventional political wisdom. Traditionally, candidates have asked whether voters were better off now than four years ago, but for many voters this time around the simple answer is “No,” a feeling fueled by economic uncertainty. Since this is the first presidential election that I will be able to vote in, I have a hard time evaluating how things have changed over Obama’s first term. I was only a junior in high school when Obama was elected, and, needless to say, at that point I had very little perspective on the important issues of the day.

Sadly, I don’t think much of my perspective has changed. College has been a bubble that has removed me from many prevailing political issues. When evaluating whom I’m going to vote for in November, my views are admittedly shortsighted. With all the other commitments I have with school, family, and work, it takes a concerted effort to fight political apathy. And it’s not just me; this feeling is widespread among young voters. A recent Gallup poll found that Obama enjoys wide support among young voters, leading Romney by 35 percentage points in this demographic. But, Gallup notes, “The practical value of Obama’s broad support among young voters is lessened by the fact that only six in 10 of these voters say they are registered to vote, and that fewer than six in 10 who are registered say they will definitely vote in November’s election.” I don’t like being part of a group that is undependable, especially when there’s so much at stake. We are in danger of letting our long-term interests be underrepresented in politics.

As young people, it is vital for us to be both politically aware and involved. Based on our future life-spans alone, we have so much to gain or lose from the policy decisions that are made today that we simply can’t afford not to have a say in the political process. Politicians go where the votes are, and I’m afraid to say that the votes are not with us. According to the Pew Research Center, beginning on January 1, 2011, 10,000 members of the Baby Boom generation reached the age of 65 and from that day on through the next 19 years, 10,000 baby boomers will reach retirement age per day. When I first heard these statistics, I was both shocked and dismayed. This demographic shift will put an increasing strain on social welfare programs and swell the ranks of a voting group that can already be counted on to make its voice heard reliably in the political process. For many baby boomers who don’t have stable retirement plans, social welfare programs will become of critical importance and a strong motivator for political participation. Essentially, our generation is competing with the interests of the generations before ours, who necessarily have very different goals when it comes to long-term prosperity versus short-term benefit. The implications of this struggle have the potential to destroy the foundation of the future.

Underneath all my concerns, I am calling for greater activism in politics from today’s youth. No matter who you believe is the right candidate to represent your interests, just make sure your voice is heard. It’s only through your own individual participation that our generation can go from having low turnout (a.k.a, little influence) to being critical players in the political system that is, and will continue, determining our future. Through collective action, we can make our interests a national priority by shaking off our widespread political apathy and demanding reforms to programs and policies that are currently implemented without future generations in mind. We must refuse to let our political system be hijacked by those who would ignore the long-term health of our—yes, our—country and instead put forward new ideas and solutions that can make America a prosperous country for centuries to come.

Dillon Cory is a second-year in the College majoring in political science. 

For one, it’s clear that leadership has become an obsession. Forget this weekend’s Scav Hunt; we all know that the biggest item on our list is a leadership role in at least five brand-name institutions. [500 points, plus 10 bonus points for club founders]

Leadership has also become a sort of last-ditch attempted answer to the “man in the gray flannel suit” epidemic that began by terrorizing corporate egos and has now trickled down to college and high school campuses across the country, transforming us all from conformist corporate slaves into egocentric but oh-so-important “leaders.”

Over the past couple of years, RSO Executive Boards have accordingly ballooned to accommodate members’ growing managerial ambitions. Though it’s difficult to imagine a club with ten members needing an Executive Board of five, that’s exactly what’s happening—every single person who does something realizes that she needs to have a title to account for it. Today, you can’t make monthly posters without being a “Director of Design,” or take twenty minutes to put them up without being an “Outreach Coordinator.” Today, it takes nothing less than a “Webmaster” to set up a Facebook event page; nothing less than a “Secretary” to send out two-sentence reminders about this week’s meeting.

The number of distinct RSOs has also surged. In addition to Student Government’s plethora of committees and the many groups still awaiting approval, ORCSA’s RSO database currently lists over 500 RSOs—each with its own set of founders, leaders, and executive members, each claiming to cater to a niche of student interests all its own. But it’s hard to see a genuine, pressing need for our campus to house at least three distinct consulting clubs, three debate teams, and twenty different dance troupes.

More striking, however, is the effect that our relationship with leadership is having on our notion of commitments in general. Rather than encouraging us to engage with one or two organizations where we may not earn any kind of managerial role until third or fourth year, we’re pressured to quit while we’re at it and commit to something where we’re sure to be an Executive by next month. From my own experience, many of the people who express interest in working with the Undergraduate Law Review contact us about “possible editorial positions” or “leadership roles,” and not about simply contributing articles to the publication. But a publication needs more articles than it does editors; without content, there’s nothing to edit, let alone publish.

In addition to approving every RSO under the sun, save Occupy, our University promotes this kind of thinking through its ever-growing offering of “leadership” opportunities – the Student Leadership Institute that sought to “make leaders out of 25 students,” for example, or the International Leadership Council that aims to “connect the leaders of tomorrow.”

However, it’s clear that the problem lies not with the University, per se; our school is simply preparing us for a real world—corporate, academic, or otherwise—that is obsessed with leadership.

Despite the appropriate interest that surrounded the vocal departure of Goldman Sachs’s Vice President Greg Smith, for example, many were equally quick to point out that, hey, Goldman actually has 5,412 employees at or above the level of a “Vice President.” Even though most of these “Vice Presidents” don’t actually wield that much power (some are even deemed entry-level roles), most companies continue to hire them in droves, leading to the addition of emphatic words like “Senior” or “Executive”—and for the really important people, even “Senior Executive”—to emphasize when someone actually does something. Microsoft has a President, an Executive Vice President, a Senior Vice President, and a Corporate Vice President. Oracle has a CEO, two Presidents, and twenty-three Executive Vice Presidents.

This obsession with leadership breeds organizations that ultimately consist of nothing but their executive boards. It blurs lines of responsibility and feelings of accountability, producing groups of equally egoistic “leaders” who can’t actually get anything done. Though this paradigm lets everyone list “leadership role x” on her LinkedIn profile and answer that crucial question about leadership experience, the reality is that we can’t have our ego cake and eat it, too. At least, we need to bake it first.

Both on and off campus, greater value should be placed on achievements rather than appellations—on hard work, perseverance, and innovation, rather than the tenacious pursuit of a tough-sounding title. Employers are already trying to do this by asking prospective employees what they did in a role rather than what the role was called. Our University has also launched competitions like the Social Innovation Competition, which emphasize hard work, innovation, and creativity above meaningless titles. But these are not enough. Hard work and innovation should be esteemed at all levels —top, middle, and bottom.

Of course, it’ll take a major cultural shift to help make this happen. Until then, we—students, RSOs, the University—will have to keep fanning the flames of ever-inflating titles and the ever-growing emphasis on leadership roles.

It’s not that “everyone isn’t cut out to be a leader,” and it’s not that leadership isn’t important or isn’t hard work. It is, and rightfully should be. But that’s not the point; the point is that a leadership title is, in itself, a meaningless moniker. Even more difficult than holding a title is being successful, dedicated, and influential. It’s even harder to persevere in the face of a challenge or to express creativity on one’s own without the safety net of status.

We are always told not to judge a book by its cover, so why are we now being pushed to judge an opportunity by its title? Ingenuity doesn’t need a title; ingenuity is a title all of its own.

Anastasia Golovashkina is a first-year in the College majoring in economics.

This isn’t to say everyone should participate. There’s no doubt that Scav has a certain niche appeal, and not everyone can devote the weekend to zany projects and sleepless nights. Dr. Chris Straus (A.B. `88, M.D. `92), a former resident of Snitchcock and current Associate Professor of Radiology at the Medical School, founded Scav in 1987 and didn’t even expect it to last more than a couple of years. Now, in its 26th year, it is officially the world’s largest scavenger hunt and a nationally recognized tradition. But there are still a few assumptions about the hunt that mislead our student body.

One is that the items and event solely cater to the “that kids” and the antisocial nerds on campus. These comments often come from students who have never taken a look at the list, which includes such a diversity of options that literally anyone, with any interest, can find something worth doing. This includes the artistic, the athletic, and the informally interested—past and current items include running a sub–four-minute mile (2011), acquiring a Congressional Medal of Honor (2011), and making a Winnie the Pooh mosaic out of gummy bears (2012). It’s fair to say that most of the items are not completed by hardcore Scavvies, but by the more casual participants who wander into a dorm common room and pick up a project related to their interests.

Another misconception is that for all its organized chaos, Scav really doesn’t contribute much to the community beside intrusive obstacles on the quad and seemingly crazy people barging into class. But take, for example, today’s annual Scav Blood Drive. Over 200 students donated blood last year, and it serves as the single largest intake of blood by University hospitals for the entire year. Then there’s the fact that, for five days, students who have never previously spoken to each other build, paint, Photoshop, set things afire, and work together just to have a good time.

In short, it’s difficult to comprehend what exactly so many people find offensive and despicable about Scav. Intimidating? Perhaps. Strange? Granted. Like most other activities and RSOs (and yes, Scav is an RSO), it will appeal to some and alienate others. This being said, appreciate the fact that there is literally no other school in the world where you will see a breeder reactor on the main quadrangles, a Stradivarius violin brought onto campus, or a bartending piano. It might just be worth your while to follow B-J’s Scav mantra: “If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.”

The Editorial Board consists of the Editors-in-Chief and the Viewpoints Editors.

Highest Point Values:

146. Play me a drink, Sam, for old times’ sake…on your piano that dispenses a beverage component with every keystroke. Changing the melody should change the mixology. Instruments and their compositions will be judged both on the quality of the cocktails and the musicality of their recipes. [250 points, 25 extra points if your keyboard can play a different melody to create a different drink]

264. King’s Landing and The Twins are all right, I guess, but we’d rather see something a little more neo-Gothic. Produce a map of the UofC campus that when triggered erects a clockwork version of a campus building of your choice. [175 points]

251. Red Grooms may no longer reside in Chicago, but show us that his influence lives on here. Create a sculpture that displays the spirit of Chicago in the way that Grooms’s latest piece captures the spirit of Miami. [125 points]

Body Parts:

210. Your appendix, in a jar, at Judgment. [34 points]

77. Hearts are beautiful things. They simply and elegantly drive the flow of lifeblood, representing strength, endurance, and even love. Break one. It need not be human, but it must have once beat with the passion that you symbolically shatter. [8 points]

314. It is hard to say which we hate more: wasting time or gingivitis. Come up with an effective way to brush and floss your teeth simultaneously. [16 points]

165. Side mullet. Business on the left, party on the right. [7 points]

134. How many toothpicks can you fit in your beard? [0.1 points per 10 toothpicks, max 4,000 toothpicks]

155. When you were a kid, did you ever cover your hand in glue just to peel it off when it dried? Now that you’ve matured, it’s time to shed your childish ways and molt a complete human glue-skin! You can skip your face, but your adhesive husk should be assembled to form a complete epidermis with identifiable limbs and digits. [31 points]

Around Campus:

160. It’s no secret we think the University of Chicago is terrific, but apparently some people just aren’t convinced. Using string and the architectural nooks and crannies of the Quads, weave an inspirational slogan into a web that would make a Shelob-sized Charlotte proud. Your gossamer propaganda should be spun by 10:00 a.m. on Thursday morning if you want a shot at that blue ribbon. Please make sure not to block walkways or deface buildings with your creations. [30 points, 10 extra points if you wow us with a new design by noon on Friday]

275. Up at the Law School they work all day. Out in the sun they slave away. Couldn’t they use the distraction of mermaids in their fountain? [8 points]

163. Did you ever build those balsa bridges in high school physics? Well, let’s raise the stakes. Deploy and cross our bridge made of nothing more than balsa and glue across ten feet of Botany Pond on Friday at 2:00 p.m. [60 points]

127. A Quistmas Story: The Jose Quintans lampshade-hat (you know the one we want), perched atop a lamp base that is an accurate cast of a heeled, hairy, fishnetty man-leg. [18 points]

207. Plenty of movies have a scene where the entire village sings about a main character behind his back, and when he turns around everyone has to disperse and start muttring about 10 o’clock lunch appointments and things like that. Stage your musical number, lasting at least a minute, behind a professor as he walks to class, only to disperse when he turns around. [14 points]

Scandalous:

73. Step 1: Obtain some graphing calculators. Step 2: Combine their displays to make anaughty picture that will scandalize the Judges, using only graphed functions (provide a list). Step 3: Giggle like a schoolchild! [8==D points]

66. Maybe the Church of Satan is having trouble catching on because they don’t have any of those fun worksheets for kids to color and solve puzzles in during Black Mass. Help them out by designing one, and please use proper sources for your information. Our children are our future! [2.666 points]

55. A Jacob’s Ladder that, when flipped, tells the story of your team’s descent into hell. [9 circles of points]

170. Show Vita what the UofC audience really wants: Nerdy Girls Pretending to Be Dinosaurs, the glossy 8-page photo spread. If I were you, Iguanodon some clothes because showing your Vagaceratops will earn you no additional points. [8 points]

58. IT BIG AND DRITY. [2 points]

Additional Highlights:

9. 62.11 2.7 163.21 31.14 274.4 1 115.8 348.15 3.6 248.2 182.13 [5 points]

13. An origami crane of wingspan no more than 1 cm. [15 points]

18. A pen that has been used to sign a bill into law. [18 points]

33. A xyloexplosive! [0.25 points per foot over 10 feet, up to a maximum of 40 points]

50. A Justin Bieber 2.0 Justin-worn memorabilia trading card. [25 points]

71. A rabbit made of grass? A lion made of wildebeest meat? Create a sculpture of a chordate from its food source. [11 points]

83. They were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. One battle-ready Xerox machine, optimized for office warfare. [12 points, and they have a plan]

129. Clifford the Big Red Dog, with revised text by Louis C.K. [25 points if Louis C.K. writes it for you, 3 points if you do it yourself]

139. Honey Badger secretly DO care: Honey Badger’s PSA about whatever crazy nastyass world problem Honey Badger gives a shit about. [4 points]

220. The recognizable skyline of a city, made entirely out of currency from its home country. [6 points for a US city, 10 points for a foreign city]

223. As tweens in the Oughts, our first experience with the Greek Chorus was animated Lizzie McGuire. But that show never reenacted the Greek tragedies appropriate for its format! Film up to two minutes of The Very Special Episode: Lizzie McGuire does Medea. [8 points]

293. Get a meeting with the mayor of Chicago. [25 points]

159. An autopen that signs your name at Judgment. [55 points]

186. A bookshelf that spins around to reveal the entrance to a secret lair. [24 points, plus 6 bonus points if the spin is triggered by pulling a particular book from the shelf]

330. Blue Cheese Man Group. [1 point]

255. How can there be a Kidz Bop version of “Whip My Hair” when Willow Smith is younger than the Kidz Bop singers? Set things right with the Fetuz Bop rendition! [5 points for the video to “Whip My Cord.” 5 bonus points for also going in the other direction with the Young @ Heart version, “Whip My Pendulous Neckmeats.”]

164. Sometimes, the Internet makes you so angry you cannot type straight. Fix this problem by creating a sturdy keyboard with fist-sized keys. At Judgment, the device should allow me to leave a rude and inane comment on YouTube by punching the keys. [35 points]

Photo: Sydney Combs

University of Chicago Woodlawn Campus Charter School hosted famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma and musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Friday night. Ma has been stewarding the school's fine arts program for seven years.

As the night went on, students performed musical pieces and a dance medley, while student artwork hung in a gallery nearby. During the concert portion, Ma was inspired to perform the Prelude from the Cello Suite No. 3 in C Major by Johann Sebastian Bach by his work with UCW, and the students performed a song that they had composed in response to a challenge Ma posed the last time he was there: Take the school creed (which is recited every morning), and set it to music.

For the past seven years, Ma has worked closely through the Urban Education Institute (UEI) to promote arts education at UCW, which enrolls students in grades six through twelve.

His involvement with the school began at a lunch with UEI director Timothy Knowles and Chuck Lewis, a governing board member for the U of C Charter Schools.

“They showed me the statistics,” Ma said. “Out of 100 boys in CPS [Chicago Public Schools], by the time they’re 25, six will have graduated from college. I saw that and said, ‘I can’t live in a parallel world where this happens.’”

Since then, Ma has played an integral role in forging a partnership between the UEI and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he has been a creative consultant since December 2009.

“We’re trying to see whether arts integration works as a core subject. We’ve been talking to principals and teachers because we think this kind of stuff—disciplined imagination—works. This is what gets people excited,” Ma said.

And arts education, Ma believes, is integral to UCW’s ability to keep its students engaged and in school.

“What’s exciting about Woodlawn is that it has a 97 percent graduation rate,” he said. “One thing that it’s doing right is expression. Once you have individual expression, that’s when the collective will and the intersection happens. The secret is collective will and an absolute respect for individual expression. That’s how you get to the next level.”

Ma has been instrumental to that success, according to Knowles.

“Yo-Yo has been a conspirator in our endeavors. He has been a very big part of our work,” Knowles said.

Partly due to Ma’s influence, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been supporting the fine arts department at UCW, bringing in musicians and teaching artists, according to UEI spokesperson Katelyn Silva.

“The CSO has partnered with our school for a class. This is one piece of an academic puzzle that we’re really excited about,” she said.

One of the teaching artists is Philip Boulanger, a cellist who performed with UCW students during the concert. He explained that his involvement “stemmed out of the UEI and CSO partnership.”

“We’ve been here since December and January working with them every week,” he said.

The effect of Ma’s support hasn’t been limited to the music curriculum, according to UCW’s fine arts director, Ahava Silkey. The dance program has flourished as well, expanding from a nine-student affair two years ago to a full dance company with three classes and a dance studio.

“We’ve come a long way in a short time,” said Lewis.

Brooke Williams, an art instructor who organized the exhibit that accompanied Friday’s concert, said that the classes at UCW are likely the first time these students have been able to study art.

“A lot of these kids don’t get to have art until high school,” she said.

Devon Goodloe, a high schooler at UCW whose work was featured in the art show, is one example.

“I used to do it just as a hobby,” he said, “but now I’m taking a class.”

Friday was Ma’s fourth time visiting UCW.

“I love this place because of the energy. The intersection of caring and commitment and disciplined imagination—I’m moved by it,” he told the audience in his closing remarks. “When we talk about excellence, it’s not an abstract thing. We saw it. We heard it.”

Photo: Julia Reinitz

Carl Dix and Cornel West discuss unique obstacles facing our nation’s youth and what potential solutions can be brought to bear in resolving them at Mandel Hall on Monday evening.

“People ask me, ‘Brother, you’re a revolutionary Christian…. What are you doing hanging out with a revolutionary communist?’” West began.

“This is an important conversation we are having tonight,” Dix opened. “Spin the globe and stop it with your finger. Anywhere you land, there is unspeakable horror: abject poverty, starvation, sex trafficking…. That is our world.”

Yet Dix saw potential in the future. “We are in a time of heightened attack, but also one of heightened resistance. We use that momentum to envision a world entirely different from that of today—one without all its horrors,” Dix said.

To Dix, communist revolution is the only way to fully eradicate today’s social problems. Dix identified injustice in New York City’s “stop and frisk” policy, the nation’s incarceration rates, and the recent murder of Trayvon Martin (whom he evoked by wearing a black hoodie onstage). He linked these back to American capitalism and imperialism.

Although he praised the Occupy movement, he thought it did not go far enough. “Now we’ve finally recognized the inequality, but the next question is what do we do about it?” Dix said.

Dix, a Baltimore native, cofounded the RCP in Chicago in 1975, and ran for president as an “anti-candidate” in 1984 and 1988.

He is also closely tied with Bob Avakian, chairman of the RCP, whose adherents regularly hand out fliers on campus.

West, taking a different approach, praised democracy as a workable system, despite its shortcomings. “Our task is critically examining our every assumption. Deep prejudices need to be critically scrutinized. They need to be ‘Socratized,’” West said, referring to Socrates’ vision of the “examined life” in the Apology.

“The fundamental problem of today is oligarchy and greed run amok. We have to decide which side we’re on,” West said.

West saw Occupy as a triumph of democracy rather than a step towards communism. “It’s about finding one’s voice in the midst of cacophony, in terror and catastrophe,” he said.

West, professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, regularly appears on the Bill Maher Show, Colbert Report, CNN, and C-Span, and has authored 19 books.

Hailed as a loud voice for justice by some, West has also been criticized as a polemicist posing as a philosopher. Former President of Harvard University Lawrence Summers reproached West, then a University Professor, for recording a rap album and campaigning instead of doing serious scholarship.

Both speakers exhorted the audience to action as the way to their desired future.

“If we respond to present injustice with silence, we’ll have one outcome. If we meet it with determined resistance, we’ll have another,” Dix said. “Today we help write that better future.”

West was guarded, but hopeful.

“The future is open-ended and entirely unpredictable. Who would have seen Occupy coming? Who would have thought that in this country of all places we would be scrutinizing the capitalist system so radically?” West said. “For better or for worse, the future depends entirely on the choices we make now.”

Photo: Julia Reinitz

Carl Dix and Cornel West discuss unique obstacles facing our nation’s youth and what potential solutions can be brought to bear in resolving them at Mandel Hall on Monday evening.

Social sciences graduate student Toussaint Losier circulated an online petition in response that attracted nearly 500 signatories.

When the University pulled its support, the petition read, “This university’s commitment to this value was undermined,”

In an April 27 e-mail, Dean of Students Kim Goff-Crews wrote that the event was put on hold after faculty expressed concern about the logistics of the event. The issue was resolved by April 30. Nearly 20 RSOs and affiliates sponsored the talk, which was organized by a student committee, and Chair of political science Bernard Harcourt moderated.