Society ignores racial realities

By Frank Lin / February 8, 2008

The way we learned about slavery in kindergarten has always stayed with me. Maybe there was something in the water back then; maybe it was the poetry of being at the epicenter of the civil rights movement, Birmingham, in a school that occupied what may well have once been a cotton plantation; maybe it was...

Generational drift? It’s all about context

By Frank Lin / January 11, 2008

To appreciate an experience like that of the University of Chicago, all you need is a bit of context. Context is what separates the coldness of the grey neo-Gothic architecture from the pill-bottle sanguinity exuded by many an orange cylindrical campus center found on universities across the country. Context is the diploma at the end...

Democrats must avoid Hillary

By Frank Lin / November 2, 2007

One of the nice things about human sleep is that, really, we get to fill the time with whatever we want. This phenomenon is so alluring that Barack Obama thought to name both of his best-selling books after it. So imagine my surprise last week when, at the tail end of a midmorning nap, I...

Deputy Provost Roth to lead Humanities Div.

By Frank Lin / May 1, 2007

Martha Roth, one of the world’s leading specialists on ancient Mesopotamian languages and Editor-In-Charge of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, will become dean of the University’s Humanities Division beginning July 1. She will succeed Danielle Allen, who has served as dean of the Humanities since 2004. “Martha has brought incredible energy, confident leadership and sound judgment...

College increases tuition 5.4 percent

By Frank Lin / April 3, 2007

The total cost for one year of study in the College, including room and board, will increase to $47,007 next year, up 5.4 percent from this year’s total of $44,613. The Board of Trustees authorized the increase on March 1 during its annual winter quarter meeting. Undergraduate tuition for the 2007—2008 school year will increase...

Milton Friedman dies at 94

By Frank Lin / November 17, 2006

[img id=”80117″ align=”alignleft”] Milton Friedman, A.M. ’33, Nobel laureate, professor emeritus in economics at the University of Chicago, and one of the most prominent economists of the past century, died in San Francisco Thursday morning of heart failure. He was 94. Friedman’s vigorous advocacy of a smaller central government and an unhampered free market helped...

U of C wins share of Fermilab

By Frank Lin / November 7, 2006

The University will partially control the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, considered one of the world’s most prominent research laboratories, the U.S. Department of Energy announced last Wednesday. Under a five-year contract with the Department of Energy worth over $1.5 billion, the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC, will manage and operate the high-energy physics laboratory starting January...

Shoddy cell phone reception irks students

By Frank Lin / October 31, 2006

[img id=”80091″ align=”alignleft”] Third-year Jonah Phillips leaves his suite in Max Palevsky Central on a recent evening for Hutchinson Commons to meet a friend—and to take a phone call. “He probably wouldn’t be able to get through if he called me here,” said Phillips, a Verizon Wireless customer, whose dorm room is on the second...

Darfur adviser advocates student action

By Frank Lin / October 10, 2006

Students are integral in bringing more national attention to the situation in Darfur, said John Prendergast, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, in a talk Thursday entitled “Genocide in Our Time: The Ongoing Crisis in Darfur.” The event, sponsored by Students Take Action Now: Darfur (STAND), was the third of its kind in...