The Council on University Programming (COUP), which organizes Kuviasungnerk/Kangeiko (Kuvia), announced it will not host the annual winter tradition in 2025, in solidarity with a UChicago student arrested in relation to the October 11 pro-Palestine protest.
In a January 8 statement posted on Instagram, COUP stated that “this decision was made in response to the arrest of a vital COUP member on our leadership team.” The student was “personally in charge of Kuvia 2025, serving as its primary planner, and their removal has created immediate and severe logistical challenges.”
The student, identified as Mamayan Jabateh in a UCUP press briefing, was arrested on December 11 on two felony charges, including “aggravated battery of a peace officer.” Jabateh served on the executive board of COUP prior to their eviction from campus by the University. Jabateh is the second UChicago undergraduate who has been evicted from on-campus housing and placed on indefinite academic suspension in connection with the October 11 pro-Palestine protest.
Kuvia is a long-standing UChicago tradition, typically taking place during the second week of winter quarter, in which streams of students walk to Henry Crown Field House in the early morning to perform sun salutation yoga poses and participate in various RSO-led activities. The weeklong festivities culminate in a walk to Promontory Point to perform salutations, and students who attend all five days are rewarded with a Kuvia-themed shirt. Monday would have marked the 42nd celebration of Kuvia.
COUP’s decision reflects increasingly strained relations between campus activist groups and the University in recent years, as marked by multiple building occupations, a weeklong encampment on the quad, and continued protests.
The funds allocated toward Kuvia will remain in COUP’s RSO account to be saved for next year’s Kuvia, according to COUP Co-President Pietro Juvara.
Juvara stated that COUP has no plans for a future Kuvia event this year and does not anticipate asking for additional funding from the Program Coordinating Council (PCC), which is responsible for establishing budgets and providing support for performance groups on campus like COUP. However, PCC still plans to organize other COUP-related events.
“COUP has no plans to cancel any other future events this year, and we can also confirm no money from the University, PCC, and/or student government has been spent or will be spent on behalf of COUP for anything other than our events,” Juvara said. “If Snowball and Summer Breeze are executed as planned, we will request funding for those events from PCC at the end of the year in accordance with policy.”
In a statement to the Maroon, a University spokesperson wrote: “Kuvia has been a valued, student-run tradition since its inception in 1983. Campus and Student Life and the College offered support for Kuvia this year as they do for all student activities, and are prepared to do so this year if the student group chooses to proceed.”
CENSOR ME / Jan 16, 2025 at 11:22 am
Dear self-appointed “intellectuals” masquerading as The Maroon’s leadership,
Your laughable attempts at censorship reek of desperation and intellectual cowardice. Who exactly do you think you’re fooling? It’s painfully obvious that The Maroon has devolved into nothing more than a third-rate mouthpiece for groupthink, helmed by a leadership team of DEI hires cobbled together through DEI pandering rather than any semblance of merit or competence.
Your editorial decisions are as embarrassing as they are predictable, ensuring that dissenting voices—particularly those of white students and conservatives—are erased with the same vigor you reserve for silencing any perspective that dares challenge your brittle, progressive orthodoxy.
And as for that pathetic little badge at the top of your comment section—what is it supposed to achieve, besides broadcasting your insecurity to anyone with a functioning brain? It’s a desperate, hollow symbol of your failure to engage with the complexities of actual discourse. Do you really think that slapping a digital participation trophy on your platform will shield you from the well-earned criticism you so richly deserve?
Your leadership is a joke, a tepid collection of DEI hires whose primary qualifications seem to be parroting fashionable slogans and enforcing ideological conformity. The once-proud legacy of this publication has been reduced to ashes by your collective mediocrity and obsession with pandering to an audience that barely exists outside your own social circles. You’ve hollowed out what should be a rigorous platform for debate and transformed it into an embarrassing monument to your own self-righteousness.
Mark my words: The Maroon’s descent into irrelevance is inevitable under your “leadership.” You’ve alienated your readers, silenced your critics, and insulated yourselves within an echo chamber so fragile that even a whisper of dissent sends you scrambling to censor and suppress. This paper’s downfall will not be mourned—it will serve as a cautionary tale for what happens when arrogance, incompetence, and ideological fanaticism are allowed to run unchecked.
We will continue to watch, to hold you accountable, and to call out your hypocrisy at every turn. You cannot silence us.
Enjoy presiding over the ruins. It’s the legacy you’ve earned.
JB / Jan 10, 2025 at 6:14 pm
So I did 4/5 days of Kuvia last year and accidentally slept in one day. I was exited to rectify my mistake and finally earn the shirt in my third year at this school. Except I guess a small group of people can’t keep themselves from either assaulting a CPD officer (yes, the city of Chicago’s police!) or supporting someone who was so obviously in the wrong. COUP students have some growing up to do. The real world will hit like a brick.
Thanks anyways. See you guys next year.
a / Jan 11, 2025 at 12:56 pm
The “real world” is one in which you didn’t get a free t-shirt this year, and can do it next year instead. If your peer being evicted against University policy (and the law, yes, the city of Chicago’s law!) is so much less important to you than a graphic tee, you’re in no position to lecture others about living in the real world.
You write like we somehow be outraged by your situation, but fail to establish any stakes. You slept in last year? Okay, don’t do it next year. You’re not entitled to a free shirt, and much less if the person organizing the event that would give it to you can’t do so.
Beyond this one commenter that clearly also has some growing up to do, I think we can see a pattern in the many similar comments from self-involved UChicago students and alumni: namely, an attempt to pretend minor inconveniences to themselves outweigh real issues of justice, all while projecting their sense of entitlement onto the people facing real stakes.
Joe / Jan 12, 2025 at 11:49 am
“Real issues of justice”?
Perhaps you mean the attack on Oct. 7th?
The hostage taking of Israelis into Gaza?
The tunnels in gaza, wasting billions of dollars that could have been used for Palestinians?
The overthrow of murderer Asad, of which sjp and co is completely silent?
Defacing private property in the name of “Justice”?
Breaking in to IOP?
Just to name a few….