Browsing the Reynolds Club posters, one can’t ignore Divest UChicago, UChicago Against Displacement (UCAD), and Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) work to put UChicago Board of Trustees’ funding on full display. Reading further, one learns UChicago is investing in Palestinian genocide and environmental degradation, gambling and losing $20 million on cryptocurrency. And then, just a moment later, you might receive an email, reminding you to get your second-year formal tickets to the rented-out Adler Planetarium.

 Only considering what is visible, UChicago manifests as an uncaring institution, gambling away or immorally investing its money, while student groups with far fewer funds and manpower organize within their community to get by. It’s overwhelming to comprehend. But given countless boards and committees that control funding, students may only know what they witness. Consequently, a facade of endless money, a real budget deficit, and a lack of transparency from the University lead to justified anger and calls for communication.

 And it’s not just what’s tacked up. No one can miss the quad’s art installations and memorials—SJP began its quad encampment on Monday, April 29. Every organization, it seems, is unionizing and striking. Almost losing a job I had been working for months, I was forced to rely on funding to continue research when the University imposed a hiring freeze. The duck pond’s never getting fixed, or at least the deadline has been pushed from Summer 2023 to an unknown time frame. WHPK’s budget has been lowered to $20,600 from pre-COVID funding at $50,000 to $60,000, stripping the historic station down to the bare bones of streaming equipment upkeep.

 And alongside this endless stream of cuts, there’s extravagance. I have been to expensive brunches hosted by the Institute of Politics (IOP) and put up in the Beverly Hills Marriott for a career trek—notably an almost $300/night expense—where nearly three hotel staffers rushed to open doors for us and we were bused to and from venues that were a ten-minute walk away. The Model United Nations of the University of Chicago (MUNUC) hosted another conference and flippantly distributed merch so I could rep an RSO for which I’ve never attended a meeting. I have seen 20 meal boxes go bad on a pride flag-painted bench and dining halls dump fifty vegan sausage patties, only to look up and see UCAD posters collecting mutual aid for South Side families. This, of course, isn’t a complete narrative. But what I see, read, and ultimately lack, is what I know.

 Clifford Ando, a classics professor in the College, notes that the University’s resolution to the deficit has not been—and will not be—neutral. In (West Virginia) Chicago is happening to you. The fight for the modern university, Ando argues that budget cuts and continued underfunding in humanistic research and the arts indicate that the University “[has] gone far down a road in which both research and teaching are assessed according to their susceptibility to be instrumentalized in pursuit of narrowly economic, possessive individualist ends.” The University appears to privilege career-based organizations and events over the arts, humanities, and the humane.

 So, amidst the hazy and sparse information accessible to us, UChicago seems to be fumbling for more cash but refusing to give up a certain appearance of endless money, suggesting that their decisions are misplaced and driven by a capitalistic approach. And though that’s not the complete story, it’s hard to know what else to think when College Programming and Orientation gives me a rain jacket I’ll never use, but the University makes no move to back out of deadly investments.

 My individual experience leaves me angry, but the ultimate problem is transparency. As one organizer put it at a recent SJP rally, “UChicago has the transparency of a lead curtain.” Running a university requires thousands of employees and committees. Any decision that affects such a mass cannot be made lightly. No department would ever ask for less money, and organizations have to spend their surplus or lose it. The complexity of budgeting makes UChicago’s funding almost impossible to navigate, but it is precisely what limits students’ perspectives.

 The Maroon’s and other publications’ coverage of the deficit tends to stick to addressing the clinical and economic—more costs than revenue, budget cuts, and hiring freezes. UChicago strives for a competitive spot amongst the Ivies, but maintaining such a reputation is costly, leading to overspending and an ultimate deficit.

UChicago’s public information is similarly limited to the clinical. One can find budgeting and financial distributions, try to understand Mozilla Firefox spreadsheets, or attend town halls, but would be hard-pressed to find a response to students’ calls for divestment or inexplicably cut budgets. One would hardly know where to turn. There are an endless number of boards that allocate funding: student government and the Annual Allocations Committee, various grant and funding boards, academic departments, University Theater, etc. Cries for divestment or prioritization of the arts and humanities feel nebulous. And while it’s apparent that the administration is addressing the deficit, it’s difficult to understand what they’re cutting and why. All we can parse, as Ando explains, is that it’s not neutral.

 Without clarity, all I know are posters that tell me the UChicago Board of Trustees has connections to Big Oil, that MUNUC is hosting another conference and handing me a sweater vest because I spun a wheel, and that the University values its reputation amongst the Ivies more than the arts and humanities. There is so much excess in some spaces and fading funding in others. Consequently, what comes across is an inability to part with an impossible and excessive lifestyle that parades wealth but undercuts its morality and care for its students.

 The University could be making divestment plans as I write this. Financial decisions are multi-level and layered and take years. There is much more unknown than known, but that’s the issue. Without clarity or communication, there is only perception. There is a limited way to understand the University’s spending save for experience. And students have a right to be enraged without concrete evidence of deliberate and equitable plans for budgeting. Communication could only help. Calls for change feel futile. Moving in place is infuriating. There is so much I don’t know, but I at least know why students are mad.

Camille Cypher is a second-year in the College