61ST STREET COMMUNITY GARDEN MEMBERS PROTEST IMPENDING MOVE: The University has issued an official move-out date for the 61st Street Community Garden. Gardeners must be out by October 30; the University-aided transplant to another Woodlawn location – which we applauded in April – will begin on November 30, “before inclement weather arrives.” The garden, long leased to neighbors by the U of C, is being uprooted to make room for the Chicago Theological Seminary. (The current Seminary building, which houses the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, will be taken over by the nascent Milton Friedman Institute.) Members of the garden remain unhappy with the move: In a letter to fellow gardeners, Jamie Kalven, Dan Peterman, Jack Spicer, and Connie Spreen encouraged members to write to the Hyde Park Herald, writing, “Although we appreciate the University of Chicago’s offer to relocate the 61st Street Garden to another site in Woodlawn, this is not a simple matter. The rich soil we have created over the years is not easily sorted, sifted and reinstalled at another location. Nor is the rich social fabric we have created likely to survive a transplant undamaged.”
SUSAN ART: BASEBALL BEER CHUCKER? Deadspin’s “Why Your Stadium Sucks” series features U.S. Cellular Field today, and includes this story from a reader:
It’s the 2007 season, I’m a White Sox season ticket holder in the upper deck. It’s a Sunday night game for ESPN, 3rd inning or so, and we let some people returning to their seats pass by our group. One of the passing fans accidentally dribbles a couple drops of beer on the middle aged woman in the row in front of her. The woman turns around, and chucks an entire full cup of Miller Lite on me. I know it’s Miller Lite because I could taste it, that’s how much it was. Not knowing what happened, I assumed I spilled my own on myself (notice the theme here…drinking). This woman the whole game is hammering down beers as if Prohibition goes into effect the next day. At the end of the game, the woman leaves her email address on her ticket and mentions she is sorry for throwing a beer at me and I should email her for her tickets to a game later in the season. The email address ended in ‘@uchicago.edu’. Noticing she is far too old to be a student at The University of Chicago, I researched the name and address via Google to see if she was faculty. Not only was she faculty, she was a dean of students. Only in Illinois would this bribe be acceptable, Blago would have been proud.
Could it be Dean of Students Susan Art?
UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER WINS PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM: The White House announced 16 winners of this year’s Presidential Medal of Freedom yesterday. Among them are Ted Kennedy, Harvey Milk, Stephen Hawking, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Dr. Janet Davison Rowley (B.Phil. ’44, B.S. ’46, M.D. ’48), a cancer researcher and geneticist from the University of Chicago. She’ll take the United States’ highest civilian honor for her work on demonstrating the genetic nature of cancer. Awards, of course, are nothing new for the 84-year-old researcher, who graduated from medical school at the age of 23: She won the Lasker Foundation’s Clinical Medical Research Award in 1998, the National Medal of Science in 1999, and earlier this year picked up the Gruber Prize in Genetics. The Presidential honors will be presented in a ceremony at the White House on August 12.
CHAPIN HALL FOUNDER DEAD AT 72: Harold Richman (Ph.D. ’69), founder of Chapin Hall, passed away yesterday at the age of 72. Over four decades with the University, Richman served variously as a professor, the dean of the School of Social Service Administration, and the director of Chapin Hall. A bachelor’s degree in American history and literature from Harvard and a Ph.D. in social welfare policy from the U of C served him well: He was heavily involved in child welfare issues on both local and national levels for years, worked as a White House Fellow, and was a member of Jimmy Carter’s Commission on Mental Health, among other accomplishments. His legacy is preserved in the form of Chapin Hall, a policy-research center that aims “to build knowledge that improves policies and programs for children and youth, families, and their communities.” The center, which Richman established in 1985, has started a fund in his honor.
