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Good Wednesday morning. It’s finals week. 
 
We’ll be in your inbox on Wednesday mornings for the rest of the summer.
 
What to watch… Fourth-year Chris D’Angelo’s five-part video series “Moments.” Each episode features a talented University of Chicago student. Here’s the YouTube playlist.
 
Unionization: Voting ends Thursday in the election which would affiliate student library workers with the Teamsters. Graduate student teaching assistants and research assistants are also trying to unionize—their case is before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) director for the Chicago region, after the University challenged their ability to do so. If the election goes forward, it will happen after the beginning of next school year. Graduate Students United had originally asked for mail-in ballot voting over the summer, but a lawyer for the union agreed to in-person voting in the fall on the last day of their 10-day hearing before an NLRB official.
 
BART police chief to head UCPD: Kenton Rainey was tapped to lead thepolice for San Francisco’s public transit agency after the videotaped shooting of Oscar Grant threw the department into disrepute.
 
Awards: The University has announced the recipients of its faculty teaching awards.

• Quantrell Awards (undergraduate teaching): Andrew Abbott, Agnes Callard, Bana Jabri, and Scott Snyder
• Graduate teaching awards: Alison James, Jason MacLean, Joseph Masco, Julie Orlemanski, and James T. Robinson

Hires: The Lab School has selected a new director. The University of Chicago Charter School has a new CEO.
 
Misleading headline: A College Fix story that was then picked up by the Daily Caller is titled “UChicago considers student demand for segregated orientation.” The story is about a list of dozens of demands to the University administration from a coalition of multicultural student organizations.

• But the Fix’s reporting does not indicate the University is seriously considering this proposal—a spokesperson simply said about thedemands, “We are reviewing and continuing dialogue.”
• AND: UChicago United is not actually proposing that orientation be “segregated.” It has called for a new pre-orientation program “specifically for incoming students of color.”

Class Day: When asked if the University is paying a speaker fee to New York Times columnist David Brooks, the distinguished speaker at its inaugural pre-graduation event, a spokesperson said “The speaker agreement is confidential.”
 
Obama museum director: The director of exhibitions at the New York Public Library Louise Bernard has been named by the Obama Foundation to serve as the museum director of the Obama Presidential Center.

• The Financial Times architecture critic reviews the design proposal: “The renderings showing a building largely buried in the park and almost overgrown are perhaps a little misleading. This is a huge complex, its costs estimated at some $500m. … Obama’s idea of what a presidential library might do is also far more ambitious than anything envisaged by his predecessors.”

IN VIEWPOINTS
 
Editor Cole Martin writes in: 
 
Student Class Day speaker Elizabeth Adetiba reflects on her time at UChicago and what it means to be black at an elite institution. "I have spent every day of my last four years at the University of Chicago attempting to prove people wrong in the face of racist and sexist micro- and macroaggressions."
 
Weaving together student narratives, contributor Anne Wang explores theChinese-American identity. "The China I know doesn’t exist, for two reasons: I have never experienced the mundane in China and the stories and visions told to me are from my mother."
 
Viewpoints editor Sarah Zimmerman argues that even if campus fraternities were officially recognized by the UChicago administration, it wouldn't stop their sexist and racist behavior. Instead, they should bebanned entirely.
 
Ph.D. student UnJin Lee argues against unionization, saying that union advocates have yet to prove that they can be held accountable for theirunreasonable demands.

IN ARTS
 
Last week, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and guests Juraj Valčuha and Christian Tetzlaff presented a lush program of works from Europe’s heartland.

An Obama Boom?: In April we spoke to Woodlawn residents anticipating dramatic changes after the arrival of Barack Obama’s presidential center. Now the Sun-Times and others are reporting optimism among realtors and developers about new demand for housing in the area.
 
Alum in the Trump administration profiled: According to a Bloombergprofile, Margaret Peterlin (J.D. ’00)—the Secretary of State’s chief of staff—has “growing clout” in the Trump administration. “Some top staffers describe theday-to-day running of the department as ‘Margaret’s Show.’” A friend who doesn’t think of Peterlin as a Trump supporter said she sees her as someone who’s thinking “Somebody’s got to get in there and help out.” Peterlin founded the University’s Chicago Journal of International Law. 
 
Axelrod on the 2020 Dem field: “It is more expeditious to put together a list of Democrats who are not thinking they are running for president in 2020, than ones who are,” the Institute of Politics director said in a Washington Post story yesterday. On talk of a businessman or outsider candidate: “I don’t think you beat Trump by coming up with our own version of Trump.

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