Smile Design Every Other Week
The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon
The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon
Smile Design Every Other Week
The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon
Stories and content by Claire McNear

The other side of the log-in wall

By Claire McNear / August 25, 2009
The public parts of the U of C's website are indeed nice to look at and easy to navigate and full of, uh, "life and diversity", but most everything designed specifically for student use (e.g. cMore, course evaluations, time schedules, the pre-SG revolution apartments page) is stuck somewhere in 1998 with Craigslist.

Good work, PR team!

By Claire McNear / August 21, 2009
The UChicago Magazine Twitter account tweets today, "As UChicago's upward trajectory + global economic crisis intersect, the University lowers budgets but not expectations.

“Dear Viktor, you’re dead, love Dmitry”

By Claire McNear / August 20, 2009
I'm not going to even try to beat The Economist's headline.... Little known fact: Russian President and sinister statesman extraordinaire Dmitry Medvedev has his own video blog, on which he sends threatening messages to other political leaders.

UCMC head to resign

By Claire McNear / August 14, 2009
The Trib reports that James Madara, CEO of the U of C Medical Center as well as dean of the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine, will resign on October 1.

News shorts 8/6

By Claire McNear / August 6, 2009
Apparently inspired by Lynn Sweet's everyone-in-Washington-is-from-Chicago-EVENTHEPRESIDENTOMG column on July 26, the News Office has put out a piece about all the Labbies who've joined the administration.

RIP John Hughes

By Claire McNear / August 6, 2009
John Hughes, writer/director/producer extraordinaire and the genius behind such Chicago-based classics as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Home Alone, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Weird Science, died today. He was 59.

News shorts 7/31

By Claire McNear / July 31, 2009
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.

More airborne Hyde Park alumni

By Claire McNear / July 28, 2009
Today is my birthday and my mother - now an active Facebook user and possible blog reader - mailed me a book of notable events that have occurred on this day over the years.

News shorts 7/27

By Claire McNear / July 27, 2009
A car crash last night at 63rd and Woodlawn left one dead and four injured. Apparently the driver of one of the cars was drunk.

News shorts 7/23

By Claire McNear / July 23, 2009
President Obama is in town today, and the neighbors around Penny Pritzker's home - where a private fundraiser dinner is taking place tonight - are whining about the security preparations.

Banksy in the Reg

By Claire McNear / July 9, 2009

There are a few ways to tell you've found a University of Chicago student while in the Loop: frantic avoidance of eye contact, faces covered in ink from falling asleep on notepads, full knight regalia,...

Summer updates

By Claire McNear / July 8, 2009
The Maroon is on hiatus till September, but the action in Hyde Park, the city of Chicago, and at the U of C is not. Keep up to date at the Viewpoints blog.

233

By Claire McNear / July 4, 2009

(they're bald eagles!)P.S. Read this if you haven't already.

The case against high-school diplomas

By Claire McNear / June 18, 2009

A piece in The New Republic today is probably making former U of C president (and father of the Core and all that is "so U of C," tie-dye kid notwithstanding [not literally though]) Robert Maynard Hutchins...

Chronic failure

By Claire McNear / June 18, 2009
In what can only be attributed to crumbling before the competition (or perhaps just reading Viewpoint

Pillow Games

By Claire McNear / April 7, 2009
Mayor Daley has bigger things to worry about than Olympic committees and pillow fights.

The Way Things Work: Nuclear waste

By Claire McNear / March 5, 2009
The U of C's nuclear experiments—as well as modern efforts to clean them up—trace their roots to a killjoy administrator, an Italian physicist, and a gang of singing teenagers.

Gardening class

By Claire McNear / October 17, 2008
It’s at about this time every quarter when I begin to feel about classes the way I do about the plant.

Gardening class

By Claire McNear / October 17, 2008
It’s at about this time every quarter when I begin to feel about classes the way I do about the plant.

Going on 30

By Claire McNear / May 30, 2008
Nothing sits on the other side of that gray-haired void except for boredom and arthritis: Turning 30 means that you will never have fun again.

Sticking it to the Man

By Claire McNear / May 12, 2008
[img id=”80600″ align=”alignleft”] Books are good things. Libraries, like books, are good things as well—they give the books a nice roof to save them from inclement weather and provide other books to keep them company; they also give those of us with eyes and opposable thumbs a pleasant place in which to enjoy our reading....

Mother’s Day

By Claire McNear / May 12, 2008
As the new kid on the block, I thought I'd take the O-Week approach to things and come not by myself

Hyde Park’s feral cats gain local and citywide sympathy

By Claire McNear / May 9, 2008
[img id=”80594″ align=”alignleft”] Like many areas of Hyde Park, the East 62nd Street alley is a space in transition. Filled with dumpsters and overgrown patches of weeds, it is sandwiched by newly minted apartments and older buildings fallen into disrepair. Notable, however, is the absence of rodents. This alley is distinct from others in the...

Campus flora help U of C usher in spring

By Claire McNear / May 1, 2008
[img id=”80565″ align=”alignleft”] Springtime in Chicago brings flowerbeds full of daffodils and tulips, the first leaves on campus trees, and lawns ripe for picnics and naps in the sunshine—all under the watchful eye of University Planner in Facilities Services Richard Bumstead and the facilities department. The facilities department oversees annual spring restoration efforts on campus,...

Seven-day activists

By Claire McNear / April 28, 2008
[img id=”80549″ align=”alignleft”] Last week marked my 978th consecutive week on Earth. Much like the previous 977 weeks, it was characterized by the beleaguered existence of the Amazon Rainforest, ice in Antarctica, and 1,196 species of geckos; unlike the other 977 weeks, last week this mattered, but, in true U of C activism style, only...

Dynamic debate duo places third in nation

By Claire McNear / April 22, 2008
While the general University populace took to the quads this weekend to bask in the sun, fourth-years Stephanie Bell and Bridget Fahey took seats at the front of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) lecture hall at the American Parliamentary Debate Association’s (APDA) 2008 National Championship tournament. After six rounds of debate, the duo ended...

MAC Property to phase in rent hikes

By Claire McNear / April 18, 2008
A year after acquiring the properties previously owned by K&G Management, Hyde Park’s largest realtor, MAC Property Management, has begun a phased increase of unit rental fees. The increases, which are as high as 15 percent for some properties, affect a number of units across Hyde Park, though the majority will not face any changes—yet....

For bitter and for worse

By Claire McNear / April 14, 2008
[img id=”80475″ align=”alignleft”] …And John McCain wins the election. In the extended run-up to November’s presidential toss-up, it has appeared inevitable to many that after eight long years a cleansing blue wave will sweep over the crimson that has stagnated in the White House since January of 2001. “The Bush Administration has been so disastrous,...

Rise of the machines

By Claire McNear / March 10, 2008
The machine wars are on. I would not say this if I had no evidence. I like to think that I’m a forgiving person, and I would love to be able to trust—or at least not wage war with—the machines that make my life so much easier. But recent events have made peace a truly...

The fifth element

By Claire McNear / March 4, 2008
[img id=”80408″ align=”alignleft”] I love the U of C. I really do. But the University of Chicago, like so many institutions of its caliber, possesses students from across the spectrum of education. Each is, of course, a gem in his own right, but many are severely lacking on one or more fronts, however brightly they...

Running from the PC Police

By Claire McNear / February 19, 2008
[img id=”80331″ align=”alignleft”] The year before I arrived at my high school in California, there was a notable incident. Until that year, the Honors U.S. History class had performed an annual Civil War battle reenactment on the field, divided between the opposing “troops” of the Confederacy and the Union. During the year in question, the...

Nameless characters haunt Williams’s lost work

By Claire McNear / February 5, 2008
A minute into The Day on Which a Man Dies, the audience was transfixed: The show begins with a curtain made of paper being torn violently to the floor to reveal a near-naked man painting with exaggerated concentration. It was a dramatic start, to say the least. The production is the latest from David Kaplan,...

U of C wins recognition for top Peace Corps yield

By Claire McNear / January 29, 2008
The U of C was recognized earlier this month with a service distinction from the Peace Corps, which honored the College for sending the greatest number of graduates from universities of its size into service. With 34 active alumni recruits as of September 30, the U of C surpassed both Gonzaga and Willamette universities, with...

Bursting the Bartlett balloon

By Claire McNear / January 25, 2008
There is a balloon inside Bartlett. Many have noticed it, though few have discussed it, out of fear, perhaps, that those charged with the maintenance of such things will once again assault the University with demands for more money. But the time has come to take action against this elephant in the room—or this balloon,...

A-level reopens to student fanfare

By Claire McNear / January 15, 2008
The Regenstein library’s all-night study space reopened Monday night, returning the A-level location to its former nocturnal glory as both a librarian’s worst enemy and a manic pre-med’s best friend. The A-level, located in the basement of the Reg, had served as a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week study space until the beginning of last year, when the...

After caucuses, Iowa must go

By Claire McNear / January 11, 2008
After the conclusion of the American Civil War, a four-year crisis that cost the country 620,000 men, devastated the economy, and even went so far as to disrupt the construction of the gaudy ego-stroker that was the partially completed Washington Monument, the Supreme Court ruled in the 1869 case Texas v. White that the secession...

Ending the vicious cycle of violence

By Claire McNear / November 15, 2007
A danger abounds on campus. It speeds around in all directions, racing to and fro, hunting the weak, slow, and defenseless, and forever endangering the kindly bipedal community of the University. It stalks its unwitting prey, creeping behind and beside and pouncing when attack is least expected; it clacks its fierce metallic teeth and charges...

Ex Libris cited for health code violation

By Claire McNear / November 13, 2007
[img id=”80275″ align=”alignleft”] Ex Libris, the student-run coffee shop in the Regenstein Library, was fined and forbidden from storing perishables in one of its refrigerators following a routine city health inspection last Thursday that uncovered a refrigerator running at temperatures well above health code standards. The inspection, the first since last spring, was carried out...

Governor’s emergency funds prevent CTA doomsday again

By Claire McNear / November 6, 2007
“Doomsday” for Chicago commuters has been averted once again. In a last-minute stay of execution, Governor Rod Blagojevich allotted $21 million in grants Friday to the ailing Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), which was slated to introduce a harsh first round of fare hikes, service cuts, and employee layoffs last Sunday. The new funds will allow...

Halloween more than just Snickers

By Claire McNear / November 2, 2007
For children across the United States, October 31 is a day of shimmering Americana. With the aid of vacuous pre-coffee parents, they don the guises of cowboys, princesses, dragons, unicorns, witches, ghosts, and Harry Potter, and parade to school for a day of general inanity in advance of an evening of blunt, candy-seeking menacing. Onward...

Area woman pleads for bird’s return

By Claire McNear / November 2, 2007
[img id=”80271″ align=”alignleft”] Over the past three months, Karen Bradley has received more than 200 phone calls attempting to reunite her with a friend, a love, and a pet: her six-month-old bird named Baby. Callers have responded to signs that Bradley posted throughout Hyde Park, featuring a picture of a speckled starling under the banner...

Columbia prof discusses network access

By Claire McNear / November 2, 2007
Columbia University Law Professor Tim Wu explored the historical forces that have led toward communication regulation during a speech on net neutrality and the evolution of network designs at a talk last Saturday hosted by the Chicago chapter of The Triple Helix. His talk focused on the basic dichotomy within network design, from a single...

“Doomsday” nears for Chicagoland commuters

By Claire McNear / October 26, 2007
On Sunday, November 4, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) will enact a slew of fare increases and service cuts. Their impending implementation has loomed over Chicago public transit commuters for months. Thirty-nine bus routes will be eliminated across the city, leaving 314 fewer buses in service during weekday peak hours. These cuts will result in...

Middle East scholar discusses “Preventing a Nuclear Iran”

By Claire McNear / October 19, 2007
by Claire McNear News Contributor Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and member of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, spoke Tuesday at an event sponsored by the Chicago Friends of Israel entitled “Preventing a Nuclear Iran.” Rubin, who has a Ph.D. in history from Yale University and has spent a...

It’s always foggy in San Francisco

By Claire McNear / October 18, 2007
I have found in the month that I’ve been at the University of Chicago that my original home of some 18 years has shifted 20 miles south. No longer am I from the sunny suburbs of Greenbrae, California—no, I am now a proud resident of the foggy metropolis of San Francisco. That is not to...
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