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RESIDENTS OF MCDONALD HOUSE FORCED TO RELOCATE

FEBRUARY 6, 2019 FIFTH WEEK VOL. 130, ISSUE 27

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Faculty Asks Admin to Investigate Lab Firing PAGE 2

sophia corning

Finding Solidarity at the Smart Museum

Wrestlers Keep Slamming the Competition

Math Prof Wins Prestigious $100,000 Wolf Prize

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

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RESIDENTS OF MCDONALD HOUSE FORCED TO RELOCATE

BY CAROLINE KUBZANSKY News Reporter

A pipe in the Ronald McDonald House on East 55th Street and South Drexel Avenue burst on Friday morning following last week’s polar vortex, the Tribune reported on Monday. Families in the house had to remove their belongings and move to a hotel half a mile away.

The Ronald McDonald House serves families who have children undergoing treatment at Comer Children’s Hospital.

The Ronald McDonald House Charity is fundraising to help cover the cost of hotel rooms, meals, transportation, and other incidentals for the relocated families.

The current priority is getting the house dried out, said Holly Buckendahl, the Chicagoland Chief Operating Officer for the Ronald McDonald Houses.

Crews are currently removing drywall, ceilings, and flooring, and are repairing appliances.

Buckendahl added that repairs would take place in a two to three month timeframe.

The Hyde Park Herald reported that the flood created about two feet of standing water in the house’s basement and did extensive damage to all three floors of the building, which contain 22 guest rooms.

Families have relocated to the La Quinta Inn on Lake Shore Drive to wait out the repairs, and are using subsidized Uber rides to reach the hospital. The house itself is also open for item donations between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Faculty Call on Admin to Investigate Lab Firing Biology Teacher Alleges Administration Discriminated Against Him

BY ELAINE CHEN News Editor

Eighty-four faculty and staff members are pressuring University administrators to investigate the termination of a widely-beloved Lab Schools teacher, a controversy the administrators have so far not publicly weighed in on.

Faculty and staff signed a letter directed to President Robert Zimmer, Provost Daniel Diermeier, and Executive Vice President David Fithian, U-High Midway, the student newspaper of the Lab Schools high school, reported. Several faculty members presented the letter on Tuesday to the legislative body of the University on which Zimmer and Diermeier sit. Fithian oversees the University’s relationship with the Lab Schools.

The letter comes as the union representing the Lab Schools’ faculty announced that it will bring in an independent arbitrator to decide whether the Lab Schools should reinstate high school biology teacher Daniel Bobo-Jones, after Lab Schools director Charles Abelmann said he stands by his decision to fire him.

The sudden termination of Bobo-Jones has stirred confusion and anxiety among high school students and their parents. While commotion around the incident has so far been isolated to the Lab Schools, many of the parents who are also University faculty members believe that University administrators should step in given the Lab Schools’ lack of transparency surrounding the termination.

“We have expectations of [the Lab Schools’] administrators to behave in a way that the rest of us at the University behave,” Chris Kennedy, a parent and faculty member, told The

Maroon. Kennedy, the chair of the Department of Linguistics and Humanities in the College, helped draft the letter to the University administrators. He has two sons in the Lab Schools who both had Bobo-Jones as a teacher.

The lack of clear explanation for Bobo-Jones’s termination “undermines the kind of commitment that we normally have to communication, to explanation, to justification of ideas and decisions that make an academ-

icine, and Oleg Urminsky in the Booth School of Business. Many who signed it are not parents of students at the Lab Schools.

Asked whether the University administrators will conduct an investigation into the termination, University spokesperson Marielle Sainvilus did not give an answer.

She said in a statement, “The University shares the Lab community’s unwavering commitment to integrity and excellence of education, and we support

sity administrators underlined the anxiety that parents have felt, noting that “the administration’s communications about the matter have fostered confusion, even alarm, and invited rampant speculation.”

Parents remain unsure why the biology teacher was fired.

The union, Bobo-Jones, and Abelmann have each offered differing explanations.

The union claims that the Lab Schools administration was retaliating against Bobo-Jones

Biology teacher Daniel Bobo-Jones was fired two days into winter quarter. sophia corning ic community,” he continued.

Kennedy emphasized that the letter is not about asking University administrators to reinstate Bobo-Jones, but about investigating the handling of the termination to “understand how the decision was made, understand why the communication was poor, and how we can fix it.”

The letter garnered signatures from faculty members in departments across the College and also in the University’s graduate schools—such as from Brian Leiter in the Law School, Deric Park in the School of Med-

Lab’s leadership in ensuring these principles are upheld by all its employees.”

Bobo-Jones was abruptly fired in early January, two days into winter quarter.

“It was a total surprise,” Kennedy said, noting that students and parents received an e-mail mid-morning about the termination without any prior notice. The abruptness of the firing immediately prompted questions like, “did he hurt somebody, did he do something improper?” he added.

The faculty letter to Univer-

for publicly criticizing Abelmann. Bobo-Jones told The Maroon last week that he believes he was fired in retaliation for claiming that the administration discriminated against him for being openly gay. He also noted that the administration’s scrutiny of him began when he first started becoming vocal against Abelmann.

Abelmann, however, said in faculty meetings and in an e-mail to parents on Saturday that Bobo-Jones was fired for engaging in grade falsification.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

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Mayoral Candidates Debate Civil Rights Issues at Northwestern

BY JADE YAN News Reporter

Seven out of this year’s 12 candidates for Chicago mayor gathered for a Mayoral Forum on Civil Rights, held by the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law on Monday evening.

Candidates debated a series of questions that centered on civil rights topics in Chicago, including police reform, Chicago Public Schools, and voting rights. They had two minutes to respond and two minutes for rebuttals.

Alden Loury of WBEZ radio moderated the event. Candidates who attended included: Amara Enyia, Bob Fioretti, John Kozlar, Lori Lightfoot, Garry McCarthy, Paul Vallas, and Willie Wilson.

La Shawn K. Ford had also confirmed his place at the forum but ultimately did not attend. Over the course of the debate, both Kozlar and McCarthy repeatedly referred to the absence of the other candidates and what this seemed to imply about their integrity and commitment. These candidates included Gery Chico, Toni Preck-

winkle, Susana Mendoza and Bill Daley, whom Kozlar referred to as “people with name recognition and a lot of money.”

The candidates were given time to introduce themselves and their platforms before the questions began. The questions focused on voter disenfranchisement, policing, and education equity.

The candidates largely agreed that the Chicago voting system is inequitable. McCarthy suggested that poor February weather in Chicago is an act of voter suppression in itself, stating that “ours is the only election held in February.” Vallas railed against the “pay to play” system, in which money is the determining factor of political success, including the idea of outside pay for aldermen. “This system is so enriching that there is no incentive to bring about reform,” Vallas said.

Enyia mentioned the need to educate incarcerated voters on their ability to vote, and Vallas, Lightfoot, and Kozlar all raised the possibility of online voting.

The question on policing referred to the candidates’ plans

Candidates at the forum, held at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. jade yan regarding police union contracts, which currently include terms that are widely viewed as problematic, including those that make it difficult to file complaints against officers. Kozlar proposed a “60–40 plan,” in which 60 percent of police officers would live in the neighborhood they had been assigned to.

He also emphasized the need for cooperation between neighborhoods and the police, and the difficulty of policing as a job, repeating the phrases “the people who terrorize our city” with “illegal guns,” multiple times. Wilson also emphasized the general principle of working together regardless of background, but also stated that most people who get

arrested are “minorities,” asking “where [in Cook County jail] are the white people?”

Some candidates disagreed on the idea of an elected school board. Chicago’s school board is currently appointed by the mayor, and an elected school board would instead enable parents and community members to vote for the board. Lightfoot supports a fully elected school board, while McCarthy favors a partially elected, partially appointed board, because “accountability without authority equals failure.”

Kozlar, who has based his campaign largely on his youth and his claim to represent the values of millennial voters, proposed an ambitious plan to abolish the

K–12 system and instead institute a K–10 system, which would allow sophomores to decide if they want to go pursue academics or go into trade. “College does not equal success,” he said.

Enyia outlined several proposed revisions for Chicago Public Schools, which included structural changes that ranged from assessing the way CPS draws its boundaries to creating a whole Department of Equity as opposed to a single representative. She also argued that the public school system currently penalizes students in communities with decreasing populations.

The Chicago mayoral election will be held on Tuesday, February 26.

Math Prof Wins $100K Wolf Prize for Decades of Research

BY PEYTON JEFFERSON News Reporter

Mathematics professor Gregory Lawler was named a co-winner of the $100,000 Wolf Prize following his research in probability theory. The award recognizes Lawler’s research in probability theory involving random walks and Brownian motion, which required decades of working to understand theoretical physicists’ mathematical models.

The Wolf Foundation presents the accolade annually to academics in six fields: agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, and the arts.

Lawler follows fellow UChicago mathematics professors Alexander Beilinson and Vladimir Drinfield, who received the reward in 2018.

“I work in probability theory, which is the mathematics of chance,” Lawler said. “It’s something which everyone works a little bit in, anyone who plays any games, or worries about the weather.”

Lawler’s field focuses on mathematical models arising in physics involving random walks and Brownian motion.

“Random walks and Brownian motion are very similar things. It’s what happens when things move very randomly,”

Lawler said. “Theoretical physicists write down mathematical models, and they may have ideas of how they work, or they may try them out on the computer, simulate them. But to prove things, to understand the mathematical theory, that’s where people like me come in.

Lawler’s research concentrated on understanding various mathematical models for long random walks with strong interactions.

“You can think of the problem of what is called a self-avoiding walk, which means walking around randomly, but choosing not to visit any point you have already been,” Lawler said. “There

are many different ways to discuss a path that avoids itself, and different paths have different probabilities.”

Mathematical models are then made based on these different paths.

“When you scale them down, you get what’s called the fractal dimension,” Lawler said. “The roughness of the fractal depends on the model; different models give you fractal dimensions.

Most of the mathematics that I’ve done has been somewhat related to trying to understand these kinds of things.”

The co-winner of the Wolf Prize is another mathematician, Jean-François Le Gall, whose

work is closely related.

“In many ways, I think the mathematical community is not just honoring me,” Lawler said. “I think it’s awarding both of us, but also a lot of younger probabilists who have come since then, who have done a lot of great work.”

Moving forward, Lawler hopes to continue his work, but also focus his attention on teaching the next generation.

“A key thing is to teach younger people, not only undergrads here, but also graduate students, so that they can continue our work,” Lawler said. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but in mathematics, one never finishes a problem, one keeps on going.”

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

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Sharing Plates May Boost Negotiations, Booth Profs Find

BY MADELEINE ZHOU News Editor

When people involved in a business negotiation share a plate, such as in “family-style” dining, they collaborate better and reach deals faster, new Booth research suggests.

Ayelet Fishbach, a professor at the Booth School, and Kaitlin Woolley, who is currently a professor at Cornell University but was a Ph.D. student at Booth at the time of the research, recently published a paper showing that cooperative dining improves business cooperation.

This form of dining requires people to coordinate their actions and be considerate towards others while getting their food; the same kind of cooperation extends to business deals, as people become less competitive when sharing food than when they eat individual dishes.

Fishbach and Woolley invited participants, all of whom were strangers to each other,

to take part in the study. They were paired off and half the pairs received one bowl of salsa and one bowl of chips to share while the people in the other pairs each had their own bowls.

One person in each pair was assigned to play management while the other was told to act like a union representative.

Their goal was to arrive at a new wage for the union workers within 22 rounds of negotiation with each round representing one day of negotiations. A costly union strike was scheduled to start after the second round.

The experiment found that on average, pairs who shared bowls reached a deal within nine rounds of negotiating while the pairs with their own food took an average of four rounds longer. The pairs that did not share would have cost their firms an extra $1.5 million in losses.

Fishbach and Woolley also found that sharing food is most beneficial to people in ongoing

Ayelet Fishbach (left) and Kaitlin Woolley (right) collaborated on the study. courtesy of booth school of business and cornell university

relationships rather than those involved in one-time transactions.

Additionally, the researchers found, there is also such thing as too much or too little food. If a meal is too small to feed every party satisfactorily, then people will feel more com-

petitive and less cooperative.

On the other hand, if a meal is large, such as a buffet, the need to consider others’ hunger goes away because there is more than enough for everyone.

“You need to make sure that the kind of meal you share requires you to see how much peo-

ple want to eat and watch how others respond to your movements,” Fishbach told CNBC. “If you don’t need to look at their plates, you won’t need to cooperate.”

Lab Schools Director Stands By Decision, Admits He Regrets Handling of the Situation CONTINUED FROM PG. 2

In the Saturday e-mail, Abelmann acknowledged the heavy speculation surrounding the termination, saying that “much of the information that has been disseminated about the reasons Mr. Bobo-Jones is no longer at Lab is incomplete and some of it is inaccurate.” He had also emphasized to parents in a meeting last week that the termination was not about safety concerns.

He stood by his decision in the e-mail but said that he recognizes “some of the ways that we handled the situation were inadequate,” adding that he takes responsibility for not

sufficiently communicating the termination to the school community.

Cindy Marchessault, a parent of a student who was taught

by Bobo-Jones, told The Maroon that parents find it difficult to understand why the administration terminated Bobo-Jones in the middle of the school year.

“Since the school said it’s not a safety issue or an impropriety, it’s still hard to believe there could have been circumstances justifying immediate termination in the middle of the school year instead of at the end of the year,” she said.

Marchessault believes the timing of the termination has negatively impacted students’ emotional well-being. She emphasized “how valuable Bobo-Jones was to his classroom students and to those in the LGBTQ community within Lab,” adding that many students have “felt that they’ve had someone in their support system taken away.”

She said she hopes to “see steps taken that show that Lab is working to provide the best possible learning environment for Bobo-Jones’s students while proactively taking steps to attend to these students’ health

and wellness needs.”

Whether Bobo-Jones will be able to return is now up to an independent arbitrator.

Shortly after his termination, the union filed a grievance with the Lab Schools administration for firing him without just cause. Abelmann denied

the grievance in his e-mail on Saturday and according to the union’s contract with the Lab Schools, the union may bring in an arbitrator, whose decision will be final and binding Abelmann said in the e-mail that he “will honor the outcome of the process.”

CORRECTION An article in last week’s issue, “20th Ward Alderman Hopefuls Answer Our Housing Questions” incorrectly identified Candis Castillo as a candidate who answered our questions. Castillo is a representative of candidate Jeanette Taylor, and provided statements on Taylor’s behalf. We regret the error.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

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Chico Calls for Eliminating Clerk and Treasurer Offices, Abolishing Aldermanic Prerogative in IOP Visit

Gery Chico spoke to IOP fellow Laura Washington. aparna jayashankar

BY APARNA JAYASHANKAR News Reporter

Getting rid of the city clerk and treasurer offices and reducing aldermanic control over development projects in wards are just a few of the ideas that mayoral candidate Gery Chico proposed at a session at the Institute of Politics (IOP) on Monday, January 28.

Chico was interviewed by IOP Pritzker Fellow Laura Washington as part of the IOP’s ChiElect programming, which exposes students to candidates and issues being discussed in the upcoming city elections.

This is Chico’s second mayoral race. In 2011, he ran and took runner-up, losing to current incumbent Rahm Emanuel.

Chico began his political career as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, when he was hired by the City’s planning department.

Since receiving his law degree at Loyola University Chicago in 1985, Chico has served as chief of staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley, president of the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners, and chair of the Illinois State Board of Education. Currently, he runs his own law firm, practicing corporate, aviation, and real estate law.

When asked about his plan to resolve the pension deficit— the $28 billion that Chicago needs to fund its employee pensions—Chico said that he plans to resolve it primarily by cutting back on unnecessary programs and positions, including those

of the city clerk and treasurer.

“Each [office] costs about $4.5 million every year, and I defy you to tell me what either does,” he said. “The clerk’s office issues city stickers for your car, your vehicle. If we can’t get that done with software, or online, we’re not thinking.”

While a drastic idea, it’s not the first time Chico has suggested it. He had already been proposing it in 2011 when he first ran for mayor.

Chico also called to abolish aldermanic prerogative, which gives aldermen final say in zoning and development projects in their ward. He said there instead needs to be more collaboration between wards and the City.

The prerogative is “just structurally wrong,” he said.

“There’s so much that the City

needs to weigh in on as a city matter.”

Chico also touched on education. He said he wants to make sure that people across Chicago all have access to good schools.

“Excellent educational opportunity is uneven across this city,” he said. “We have to bring even educational opportunity throughout the city.”

Chico proposed that he could accomplish this by repurposing closed neighborhood schools or building new facilities to keep people from leaving neighborhoods—or the city in general—due to a lack of good local schools.

He also proposed expanding vocational and technical education by building a new campus for those areas of study in Chicago.

He advocated for Chicago to be a leader in development, calling for the City to use its resources to attract developers.

“We have to reinvest in this city,” he said. “There are parts of this city that haven’t been touched in 50 years. It takes everything we got to bring resources into these areas. We can do grocery stores, we can do coffee shops, we can do parks.”

Chico also said he envisions working with entrepreneurs in the city to fill the vacant storefronts he sees across Chicago.

He said that Chicago should offer money to entrepreneurs to incentivize them to invest in Chicago and work closely with them to build strong relationships with local businesses.

He used Devon Avenue, a street in Chicago with heavy South Asian cultural influences, as an example for what he hopes Chicago will look like in the future.

“See what happens at that street at night. The street’s alive, people are going into the restaurants, people are buying clothing, at 11 o’clock at night,” he said. “And it’s safe.”

Chico added that he hopes to implement community policing, where police officers regularly work in the same area so they can get to know the locals, in order to improve the relationship that the community has with the police.

“We can do a whole lot better job in establishing relationships, building trust again, between the police and the people,” he said. “Everybody wants the police, but they want the police to behave in a way that respects them.”

The Chicago mayoral election will be held on Tuesday, February 26.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

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Tradition and Innovation Harmonize in a New Generation of Folk In Preparation for Upcoming Festival, Folklore Society Looks Forward

BY AVI WALDMAN Grey City Reporter

On any given Wednesday, around 7:30 pm in a basement room of Ida Noyes, the University of Chicago Folklore Society is hard at work. The handful of students, alumni, and community members that make up the Society are busy planning their signature event: one of the nation’s oldest folk music festivals.

Months of planning go into making each year’s festival come together. At a typical Wednesday night meeting, members presented their candidates to fill the bluegrass slot on the performer’s roster, listening to Arkansas’s Ozark Highballers and Georgia’s Dixieland Squirrel Skinners before finally settling on the Minnesotan Steam Machine. Another night featured a debate over the various merits of hiring a klezmer (an Ashkenazi Jewish tradition) player versus a group specializing in indigenous choral singing, all conducted over pizza. A spirit of friendly argument and a genuine love of folk music animate these lively discussions.

Although they might not be a major presence on campus, The Folklore Society is a deeply-rooted part of the University’s history, and quietly continues to preserve and revitalize an essential American tradition.

This February will be the 59th time The Folklore Society has staged the University of Chicago Folk Festival. The Festival spans

three days of performances and workshops with musical groups from across the country. Although the Society as a whole chooses the performers, students take the lead on everything from making musicians’ travel arrangements and drafting their contracts to managing publicity and the Festival’s budget. For local folk music fans, many of whom have been attending since their own college days, the festival is a consistent opportunity to enjoy original musical styles rarely displayed elsewhere, while occasionally being introduced to new ones: artists like oldtime fiddlers Clyde Davenport and Lyman Enloe, both of whom have been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts.

“People would come in from different parts of the country.

That’s still the case,” said Paul Tyler, an old-time performer, ethnomusicologist, and instructor at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Tyler has been attending the Folk Festival for years. “We’d take over Ida Noyes Hall and play tunes together and go out to eat and have a chance to renew friendships and catch up.”

Fourth-year co-presidents Mahathi Ayyagari and Isabella Martin lead The Folklore Society.

Martin grew up listening to country folk music at home and joined the Society as a second-year, then drew Ayyagari in to volunteer with the festival that year as well.

To an outside observer, Ayyagari comes off as the event planner, seemingly unflappable and always

The logo of The Folklore Society has been in use since 1961. courtesy of the folklore society ready with a list or agenda, while Martin seems more like an agent, a hard-nosed negotiator when it comes to bargaining over money with a musician’s manager.

A Brief History of American Folk Music Long before UChicago students hosted their first festival in 1961, folk music was a collection of countless regional styles, rooted in diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The definition of folk music is somewhat nebulous: popular culture scholar Martha Bayles defined it as music that comes in many variations yet on the whole is slow to change, passed on through oral tradition, and that emphasizes group collaboration over individual virtuosity.

Bayles said that the word “folk” itself implies that folk music is the music of the people, an organic, non-commercial outgrowth of a community’s collective creative impulse nurtured for generations.

This loose conception of folk music, however, is complicated by the heterogeneous nature of American culture.

American folk music as we know it today only came into being during the 1920s, when record companies sent scouts out into rural areas for the first time in order to record the sounds of the local, often isolated communities. Their journeys were preserved in the PBS documentary series American Epic, which describes a label scout holding a listening session in a Kentucky railway station and

another plucking a musician off of Beale Street in Memphis then recording him in a temporary studio nearby. That musician was Will Shade, leader of the popular Memphis Jug Band, so named because their instruments were originally cobbled together from household items like jugs. Shade and homegrown artists like him were a great commercial success for the record company scouts in search of a new sound.

The early musical historians dispatched by record companies came back from Appalachia, Texas, the Mississippi Delta, and elsewhere, having collected recordings of the forerunners to bluegrass, Tejano, Cajun, and blues music, along with innumerCONTINUED ON PG. 7

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“A community’s collective creative impulse, nurtured for generations” CONTINUED FROM PG. 6

able other genres.

A new generation of musicians and music-lovers rediscovered this cultural heritage during the folk revival of the 1960s, when folk music became the voice of the counterculture.

“Folk music was the music of people who wanted a different way to express the way they viewed the world around them,” Ayyagari said.

Folk had always had a somewhat political dimension; long before the 1960s, it was associated with the labor movement as the music of the working class.

But the 1960s made folk the new musical platform for the countercultural ideology—a platform popularized by superstars like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. University folk societies, centered on campuses that were hotbeds of political activity, became one of the primary movers of the folk revival. The renewed interest in folk music was another expression of the pivot away from established authority that fueled students’ political activism. It was in this climate that a group of University of Chicago students organized their first Folk Festival in 1961, driving to the Ozark Mountains to pitch their festival to prospective performers.

In his review of the first University of Chicago Folk Festival, New York Times critic Robert Shelton wrote that the cast of performers “had a broad regional, occupational background, from mountaineer carpenters to a blind street singer from Texas, a guitar-playing great-grandmother from Washington, a septuagenarian Virginia balladeer to a fiddling taxi-driver from Quebec.”

Shelton saw the Folk Festival as providing a much-needed dose of authenticity to the increasingly commercial genre.

“In a period when the popularization of folk music has led to many species of dilution and hybridization, the bulk of the music

at the festival was as pure and refreshing as a swig of spring water,” he wrote. “The key words were taproots, tradition, authenticity, and noncommercial, at the weekend three long evening programs, panels, workshops, lectures, [and] hootenannies.”

“The people who put on that concert started the folk festival with the notion that they were going to book only traditional performers, not the cityfied groups like the Kingston Trio who were going for pop music stardom,” Tyler said.

The festival’s first organizers intended to provide a space for musicians who had learned their craft from masters of their respective genres but didn’t draw mass media attention oraim for mainstream stardom. For decades, the University of Chicago Folk Festival not only offered a space for those musicians to perform, but encouraged them to share their skills in workshops and informal jam sessions with other performers.

“The University of Chicago Folk Festival was a great touchstone for the real traditional performers, who were not commercial performers but normal folks,” Tyler said. “The music to them was home. Family tradition, community tradition, not commercial product. The people like me who are into old-time or traditional music look forward to the Folk Festival every year.... The Folk Festival’s role is very important for those of us who are [traditionalists].”

The Festival Today Of course, this is 2018, and the cultural climate has changed significantly since the 1960s . The musicians and music-lovers who were instrumental in conserving and reinventing folk music during the revival—people like bluegrass icon Bill Monroe, who played the Folk Festival in 1963, and Chicago blues legend Muddy Waters—are now aging and dying off, and folk

The Chicago Klezmer Ensemble will perform at this year’s festival. courtesy of the folklore society as a whole has been supplanted among younger audiences by more contemporary alternative genres. The bands and artists playing folk music today also tend to be a different breed than the traditionalist troubadours: The singer-songwriter, who blends different styles and writes her own songs, is according to Tyler a modern invention.

“There’s a field archivist that says that the golden age of a genre of music usually lasts no more than three generations, and more often it’s two generations [who make up that period]. So you have a group of originators, and then you have people who are influenced by the originators in the next generation and maybe if you’re lucky you get another generation out of that,” said Steve Cushing, former Folk Festival performer and host of the radio show Blues Before Sunrise.

Cushing is also the author of the book Pioneers of the Blues Revival, for which he interviewed scores of blues preservationists who began their work in the 1960s.

He adds, “There are maybe half a dozen authentic bluesmen that are still alive around the country and I suspect...that in bluegrass and in other styles that that same thing has happened. The people who were really knowledgeable, the real masters, have all probably

passed away.”

Chicagoans disagree about how to interpret their own city’s folk music legacy. In January 2017, Crain’s Chicago Business published an editorial decrying the City of Chicago’s failure to leverage its rich blues history as an economic asset, pointing out the possibilities for attractions that could draw in tourism revenue. The blues clubs that do try to capitalize on that history have been accused by scholars and fans of commodifying a stereotypically “authentic” urban blues experience for an affluent white audience.

“I think a lot of [the old masters] are sad to see that this revival hasn’t been sustained,” Martin said. “The thing is, we talked about this in the meeting, about whether we should try to go for more of these new folk artists, but...people my age don’t know about them either. They just don’t listen to folk music.”

“The purpose of the Folk Fest is still to try to preserve this traditional style of music where it’s really more about honoring tradition and honoring the people who have played before you,” Martin said. “We’re one of the last remaining [festivals] that is still about bringing this traditional type of music to a younger audi-

ence, and I hope we stay that way.”

At a time when traditional folk music’s popularity is declining, institutions like The Folklore Society try to balance respect for tradition with a progressive spirit.

“The purpose of the Folk Fest is still to try to preserve this traditional style of music where it’s really more about honoring tradition and honoring the people who have played before you,” Martin said. “We’re one of the last remaining [festivals] that is still about bringing this traditional type of music to a younger audience, and I hope we stay that way.”

Some of the other surviving folk festivals include the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and the Newport, Kerrville, and Kutztown Folk Festivals.

The desire to keep an older genre of music alive stems from an appreciation of its cultural significance. Several of the styles represented at the Folk Festival are rooted in local Chicago communities, and according to Ayyagari and Martin tell a piece of the city’s history.

“Chicago blues is especially special to the South Side and it’s a specific type of music that is now internationally renowned and is very much about preserving African-American heritages on the CONTINUED ON PG. 8

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“It’s really more about honoring tradition and...the people who have played before” CONTINUED FROM PG. 7

South Side,” Martin said. She noted that the imperative to preserve blues is similar to that regarding Irish music. The 2017 Festival’s Irish music performer, Chicago native Liz Carroll, was the first Irish-American musician to be nominated for a Grammy.

“Part of the reason that Irish music and blues are important to the Chicago story [is] because on the Irish side it’s a story of immigration, it’s a story of learning to assimilate into the United States while preserving your own culture, and...both music traditions tell a stories of heritage and struggle and celebration.”

Within The Folklore Society, the debate continues over how much to compromise the festival’s original definition of folk music in order to draw in younger audience members, and whether broadening that definition should be seen as a compromise at all.

“Folk music isn’t necessarily viewed as the counterculture

anymore, and because of that it’s kind of hard to get younger people especially interested or involved in putting on the Festival,” Ayyagari said. “The people that come are mostly people in their 80s and their 70s who have been coming for the past 59 years who started coming as college students themselves. So I think it’s just really important to keep doing it so people can realize that the music then and now is still amazing, [is] foundationally of the people and is very much something that I think people can relate to.”

Over the past few years, Martin and Ayyagari have pushed the Folklore Society to try to expand ideas of what folk music can be, from promoting diversity in its lineup to showcasing international folk styles—like 2018 Folk Festival performers Jarochicanos, who brought the Veracruz tradition of son jarocho to the regular roster of bluegrass, old-time, blues, Cajun, and more. This push towards a greater international presence

hasn’t been without pushback from The Folklore Society’s purists, however, who tend to be the older alumni members and who view the Society’s mission as preserving the music that was part of the 1960s folk revival in particular.

Ayyagari noted the past dearth of diversity in the Folk Fest, despite the presence of many musicians who happen to be women or people of color on the folk scene.

Although they haven’t yet fully achieved their goal, she and Martin have been pushing to include a more diverse range of artists.

“I think the traditional image of a Folk Fest performer is a man who’s trained with the greats, but...we’ve been very much stuck in that sphere, even though there are a lot of female and people of color performers in each genre,” Ayyagari said. “Age is also a really big thing. If we get younger performers who are still trained in certain fiddling traditions or banjo traditions, they’re still

younger and that would allow us to bridge the gap between the type of folk music that is for ‘older generations’ [and music] for younger people to enjoy more.”

The Society has done more in recent years to reach out to that younger generation without sacrificing its commitment to preserving traditional music, reviving contra dances and hiring youthful acts to perform at the Folk Festival in an effort to introduce a new audience to its valuable cultural legacy.

Older folk enthusiasts are reluctant to cater too much to contemporary tastes, worrying about diminishing the Festival’s original appeal. Cushing points out that the Festival’s founders intended to focus on achieving the highest artistic quality and authenticity possible without pandering to contemporary tastes.

“I think one of the things the history of the Folk Festival did was not appeal to a younger audience. It presented the best pos-

sible musicians and music that they could find and it was up to the younger generation to come to them,” Steve Cushing said.

“It’s not a good business model... but it’s always been artistry first and commercialism second, and if they try to make it commercialism first the thing is bound to fall right down the toilet.”

Despite changing tastes in popular culture, Martin is determined the Folk Festival will continue to evolve while still fulfilling its original mission.

“I think the Folk Fest has an important place in Chicago history and in the history of folk music in the United States,” Martin said.

“It doesn’t matter if we have two students or 15 students who are interested, as long as there’s someone there I think it’s important to carry on that tradition.”

This year’s festival takes place February 15-16 in Ida Noyes Hall.

VIEWPOINTS The Immeasurable Weight of the Polar Vortex Those Concerned with Climate Change Have to Reckon With a Hard Truth: It Might Be Too Little, Too Late

LUCAS DU

It’s been cold recently. Really cold. With a low of -21 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday, Chicago was briefly colder than Antarctica and, factoring in windchill, nearly 100 degrees colder than Los Angeles. Part of me certainly regrets my naive high school adamance about not going to California for college. But another part of

me is deeply concerned.

Yes, this cold polar vortex makes for a fun story and a much-needed day off (No class! Hot chocolate! More time to make up all the school work I’m behind on!), but these extreme, record-breaking weather patterns are only becoming more commonplace, and more destructive. In the past

couple days, at least eight deaths have been linked to the bitter cold in the American Midwest. The so-called “bomb cyclone” that hit parts of the eastern United States early last year left nearly 2 million households without power. The devastating Hurricane Michael, which swept portions of Mexico and the American Southeast in mid-October, resulted in dozens of deaths, over a thousand missing persons at one point, and potentially over $4.5 billion in total damages. While President Donald Trump was dismissive of climate change last year—calling it a hoax “created by and for the Chinese”—

it remains the single most significant and plausible explanation for the extraordinary intensity of these weather phenomena.

Climate change has been a popular topic of choice among Viewpoints columnists in the past couple months. In mid-December, columnist Maya Holt published “Beyond the Shorter Shower: Individual Environmentalism Just Isn’t Enough” and, true to her word, calls eloquently for not just individual environmental consciousness, which she admits is insufficient, but also large-scale organization to combat climate change. Earlier this month, colum-

nist Ruby Rorty urged students at UChicago to be more environmentally-conscious. Climate change is “The greatest threat facing our society,” she says, and students need to take tangible action, whether it’s by using reusable water bottles or by making connections to climate change in our class discussions.

While these calls to action are certainly important, simply reducing our global carbon footprint isn’t enough. Educating climate skeptics, campaigning for environmentalist candidates, or even divesting from fossils fuels are certainly important and necCONTINUED ON PG. 9

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“All of that will help. But also know that it might not be enough...”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 8

essary steps. But policies aimed simply at limiting or even eliminating carbon emissions are too little, too late.

Even if we were able to reduce global carbon emissions to zero starting tomorrow, global temperatures would continue to rise, and polar caps would continue to melt. There is a significant delay between the amount of heat energy the Earth has already absorbed and the actual air-temperature, a delay caused by the heat-sink properties of the world’s oceans.

Earth’s temperature is already 1 degree Celsius over the pre-industrial average, and scientific models have shown that it is set to rise another 0.6 degrees even if no further greenhouse gases are released. The 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on global warming

and the Paris climate agreement both warn of irreparable damage if Earth’s temperature rises just 1.5 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial levels, so this reality is alarming.

The widely-circulated IPCC report also notes that even if we are able to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, sea levels are still set to rise up to 0.77 meters by 2100. While it is unclear what the temperature threshold is for a complete disappearance of the polar ice caps, the IPCC report has medium confidence (about 50 percent probability) that “[M] arine ice sheet instability in Antarctica and/or irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet...could be triggered at around 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2 degrees Celsius of global warming.” If the polar ice caps do melt entirely, there would be a cascade of serious en-

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vironmental effects, including catastrophic sea level rise and drastically altered global weather patterns.

This is just part of the evidence that we are in dire straits.

In addition to aggressive curbing of carbon emissions, we must also begin to formulate policies and develop technologies to deal with those effects, some of which are now inevitable regardless of how many petitions we sign, how many electric cars we buy, and how many countries switch entirely to renewable energy sources. Carbon capture techniques

need to be developed if we are to meet desired warming limits.

Cities and nations with low-lying coastlines must begin to prepare for a likely inevitable and staggering rise in sea level.

So yes, use reusable bottles, put pressure on the administration to divest from fossil fuels, and continue to push for a cultural shift toward environmentalism. All of that will help. But also know that it might not be enough.

Solving these other issues—continued warming despite elimination of carbon emissions, sea level rise—will require implementa-

tion of policies and development of technologies that do not yet exist, things beyond the abilities of most college students. Perhaps all we can do now is find some way to get involved and, for those who want to, prepare for careers in fields that will have a larger impact in finding solutions. These next 10 years will be crucial in determining whether our planet can indeed be saved. We have our work cut out for us.

Lucas Du is a second-year in the College.

10

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

The Plight of Transfer Students Transfer Students Are the Most Enthusiastic About UChicago, Yet the Administration Makes It Impossible for Them to Thrive on Campus

BRINDA RAO

The University’s Gothic quad and extensive Core curriculum appeal to more than just high school juniors and seniors.

Every year, the University receives hundreds of transfer applications from college students across the globe, who are drawn to the academically rigorous environment and tight-knit community that the University boasts. However, the University does not extend the same level of interest to its transfer students, who are treated as mere afterthoughts once they arrive on campus.

Touting an average 5.4 percent transfer-student acceptance rate, the University makes it clear that it doesn’t take transfer acceptances lightly. Transfer applicants go through a disorienting and harsh process, requiring transcripts, recommendations, and test scores spanning back from high school. And as a result of the growing high school applicant pool, transfer acceptance rates have plummeted in recent years. There’s somewhere between zero and 30 transfer students admitted per year, out of class sizes between 1,400 and 1,600.

Despite the competitive nature of the transfer process, the University proceeds to “welcome” these students in a rather unwelcoming manner. Until this year, there was no formal orientation program for trans-

fer students. Aside from a minor luncheon hosted so current transfer students could meet each other, the administration has had little interest in providing resources for students to adjust to the academic and social complexities of the University.

Anna Li, a fourth-year and transfer student, organized the first transfer student orientation program for the Class of 2021’s incoming transfer students. Having experienced the process herself, she explained, “There were few resources for us. There’s a learning curve for maturity and navigating social spaces that a lot of transfer students have already experienced.

It was frustrating and disorienting to come in and do orientation with the first years.”

While Li’s work has created a platform for transfer students to familiarize themselves with the University, the administration fails to consider many aspects of tahe transfer student experience. The portal for transfer students in the Class of 2021 included a housing form that many transfer students filled out, expecting to have on-campus housing in their first year. However, on July 12, only two months before the start of the academic year, they were sent an e-mail saying that the form was a technical error and that there wasn’t space in College Housing for them at all.

Transfer students were out-

raged and shocked by this oversight. As one explained to me, “I was really surprised by not getting housing. It was definitely dishonest on the University’s part. It seemed like there was a miscommunication between housing and admissions that left us in stressful and unfair circumstances.”

Given the University’s emphasis on the importance of house culture, it’s odd that they leave transfer students outside of this community. While the administration explained that there was not enough housing available to accommodate the Class of 2022, separating transfer students from the dorms made it clear that they were not considered to be part of a pillar of the campus community. As a transfer student in the Class of 2021 told me, “It’s very easy to make friends when you’re living on campus and everybody is interested in that. I got kept far away with little to no students.

It’s tougher to make friends and has definitely impacted my social life. I feel like I am not a part of UChicago’s community sometimes.”

While many transfer students were attracted to the University for its rigorous academics, they weren’t expecting so many academic hurdles. The University notoriously takes few transfer credits from other universities and colleges. While some universities that students transfer from might not offer comparatively challenging classes, this leaves transfer students in a frustrating position.

One student explained that out of his 23 credits from another college, the University only ac-

cepted 12 for general elective classes and one for his major.

Furthermore, there’s an evident lack of communication and methodology to how the administration doles out transfer credits. A transfer student, majoring in economics, explains that she went to the statistics department to see if they would accept some transfer credits for a minor, only for them to inform her that they never received any of her materials or documentation for those classes. Instead, they were sent to the economics department. This student was baffled as to why the economics department would decide the merit and value of her statistics classes. These cases demonstrate that the administration does not have a clear or definite strategy to taking transfer credits, allowing departments to make arbitrary and often inexplicable decisions. Carelessness and miscommunication characterize most of the University’s interactions with this community.

With so few transfer credits accepted, transfer students face the ultimate challenge of graduating on time. This is made all the more difficult because the administration requires transfer students to graduate by the year of intended graduation from their previous university. However, this information is not made clear to the affected students. Many transfer students explained that they were largely unaware of this until their academic advisers informed them once they had arrived on campus. Already forced to quickly commit to a major while speeding through

the Core at the same time, transfer students must endure the additional challenge of a timeline working against them.

Many end up petitioning for extra quarters, creating another stressor in a campus culture already infamous for its high-intensity academics.

The reality of this unbalanced system creates unforeseen consequences for transfer students. Another transfer student explained: “In the registration system I am recognized as a first-year. When I try to register for classes, I don’t have the same priority as second-year students because I’m seen as a first-year in the system. I tried to get into an econometrics class, for my major, and couldn’t get in because the system recognized me as a first-year.”

Ultimately, the University has disregarded some of the people who are most passionate about its academic, social, and intellectual culture. Transfer students often feel that it is a privilege to be accepted, but the administration does not feel the same toward them. Constructing social and academic barriers, the administration makes the process of transferring schools emotionally and mentally taxing. While some efforts have been made to remedy this situation, most have stemmed from transfer students themselves. The University must improve its policies on transfer students to truly create the nurturing environment it claims to maintain.

Brinda Rao is a first-year in the College.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

11

ARTS

Finding Solidarity at the Smart

BY LYNN CHONG AND CHRISTINE YAN Arts Reporters

On the verge of the polar vortex, the Smart Museum hosted its winter opening to a packed gallery Monday night. While temperatures outside plunged, the museum was a space of warmth and camaraderie. The first exhibition, Solidary & Solitary, displays works from the collection of Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida, who approach the acquisition of art with a unique mission: to change the conventionally white art-historical canon in so many museum collections.

Historically, white men have determined what constitutes great art, and as such, the halls of museums are often lined with masterpieces created by white men. With Solidary & Solitary, collectors Joyner and Giuffrida actively strive to change this tendency, showcasing the works of Black artists across various mediums, many of whom work with abstraction. The collection simultaneously highlights the independence and originality of these artists and examines what it means to be a Black artist.

These artists faced the expectation that their works would have to reflect their experiences of being Black, and many sought to strike a balance between doing so while still creating art for its own sake.

This struggle is visible in the work of Norman Lewis (1909–79).

After working with social protest art for some time, he moved towards abstraction in the 1940s, creating pieces like “Afternoon” (1969), a Color Field painting hung at the entrance of the exhibition. However, his style is completely distinct from the monochromatic swatches of can-

vas that may come to mind; the painting is a vibrant riot of color, with chunky, repetitive brushstrokes layered across the bottom of a brilliant yellow background.

These brushstrokes call to mind a collection of figures, a motif that recurs throughout Lewis’s work.

Similarly, in “Untitled (Circular Procession of Figures)” (1953), a group of figures swirl around what appears to be a maelstrom, inexorably drawing them in to a point just right of center. He renders each of the figures in the procession with only a few thin strokes. They are remarkable in their level of detail, especially considering their miniscule size.

Sam Gilliam, born 1933, also worked within the school of Color Field painting, but his use of medium and dimension began to push the limits of the school’s conventions. Most apparent is Gilliam’s use of a variety of materials in his work, from aluminum powder to unstretched canvas.

By using these varied materials, Gilliam plays with texture and dimension in unexpected ways, as seen in his 2010 work “Melody,” acrylic on birch. Here, he adds physical layers to his work in the form of wooden planks, which, when combined with bars of black paint, calls to mind the staff on a sheet of music. A few scattered blobs of paint evoke music notes, but for the most part the paint swirls around with no specific geometric form. The free-flowing brushstrokes mark a stark contrast to the hard-edged spaces created by the planks and bars, transcending those confines completely.

Also on view are four of the “Lynch Fragments,” a series of sculptures started by Melvin Edwards in 1963 in response to the tumultuous climate of racial CONTINUED ON PG. 12

Top, “Afternoon,” Norman Lewis; Bottom, “Labouring Under the Sign of the Future,” Ayana V. Jackson. courtesy of the smart museum of art

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

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“As if in a roundtable discussion, the displayed artworks all face one another, endeavoring to express what it means to be an individual in society.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 11

violence. Made of welded steel, the fragments are composed of various elements fused together, including spikes, padlocks, barbed wire and an axe. Despite the diminutive size of each of the fragments, they evoke a sense of force and brutality through the chains that bind them. Edem Ossai, an Obama Foundation Scholar at the Harris School of Public Policy, gave an insightful presentation on this piece, one of a series of enlightening talks delivered by graduate students throughout the galleries that night. She pointed out the symbolism of the various objects crushed together in the sculptures, reminding viewers of the human cost of imperialism and capitalism.

Components meant to cause pain or bondage, combined with the visceral quality of the unfinished steel, made the work all the more thought-provoking.

Solidary & Solitary was not the only star of the Smart Museum’s winter opening.

Adjoining it was Smart to the Core: Embodying the Self, a visual addendum to the popular Social Sciences sequence Self, Cul-

ture, and Society. The exhibition bustled with students laughing about moments from class, running into classmates and professors, and nostalgically reminiscing about the “good ol’ underclassmen days.”

The Smart’s open exhibition space is fitting for this particular collection. As if in a roundtable discussion, the displayed artworks all face one another, endeavoring to express what it means to be an individual in society. At the center, facilitating this artistic discussion, are the familiar Self textbooks, which the audience members are encouraged to annotate freely.

One of the first works presented is Ana Mendieta’s “Untitled” (1980) from the “Silueta” series, in which Mendieta outlines her body’s shape onto soil and then uses various natural processes, such as fire or tidal waves, to dissolve the imprint. The displayed photographs are the only remnants of her imprints, and Mendieta uses this to exemplify the ephemerality of her own existence as well as the interdependence of body and nature, while alluding to goddess archetypes and her desire

to return to the metaphorical womb. A dense commentary on the environment, existence, and the female body, Mendieta’s strong aversion to defining herself through a single occupation or interest is reflected by these diverse objects of discussion included in her “Silueta” series.

Adrian Piper’s “I am the Locus” (1975) expands on Mendieta’s notion of multifaceted identity by asking whether the “self” is only a concept, without reality. In this mixed-media piece, Piper photographs herself walking around the streets of New York City dressed as a Black man with the help of an Afro wig and a fake moustache.

The mixed-race artist addresses her personal experiences with white-passing and stereotyping, but the main focus lies in the performativity. Piper shows that the “self” is not only multifaceted, but also extremely malleable—able to convincingly transform with a few mere costume pieces.

Just a few steps away from Piper’s work was Kent Monkman’s “Study for Artist and Model” (2003), a vibrant oil painting of a Native American woman in hot pink

pumps and a Louis Vuitton arrow quiver confidently painting a naked white man arrowed to a tree trunk. Monkman chose to display this modern satire of gender, race, and cultural stereotyping in the Western canon in an antique gold frame, punctuating its dichotomy with the historically white-dominated perspectives in traditional museum spaces. However, Monkman’s work had a strangely divisive effect on the audience: Only younger viewers seemed to be amused by the piece.

Surely, there is a plethora of knowledge and wisdom to be gained from the theories of Karl Marx, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and other renowned scholars on the Self syllabus. However, Smart to the Core: Embodying the Self extends the Core Curriculum’s mission of diverse theoretical training by challenging UChicago bookworms to consider how the self and society can be examined and expressed outside of textbooks.

Solidary & Solitary and Smart to the Core: Embodying the Self will be on view until May 19, 2019.

525,600 Minutes of Disappointment

BY CLAIRE SCHULTZ Arts Reporter

Christmas, 1991. Two young artists sit in their freezing New York City apartment, one wielding a video camera, the other strumming a guitar. Their landlord demands they pay rent, but they refuse.

The curtain falls, revealing a stunning warehouse set, and the crowd goes wild.

This is the opening to Fox’s Rent Live, a nationally televised production of Jonathan Larson’s hit 1996 musical. Rent sets Puccini’s La bohème during the AIDS crisis. Unfortunately, unlike Larson’s source material, which just finished a “firecracker” run at the Lyric Opera, Fox’s Rent Live never stood a chance.

The production was the result of a series of strange decisions, mixed with a bizarre misunderstanding of live theatre. At the end of a dress rehearsal on the night before the broadcast, lead actor Brennin Hunt broke his foot. Fox had no understudy, and rather than de-

lay the production or air the actual live show, they instead opted to broadcast the pre-taped dress rehearsal. So, Rent Live became Rent Live-ish. Although the dress rehearsal was performed in front of a live audience, it was still, for all intents, a warm-up, with much of the cast saving their best efforts for what they had expected to be the big night. It wasn’t unfinished, but it was still a rough draft, never meant to be shown.

The logic of this choice may have been sound enough, but the joy of theatre is in its sheer unpredictability, in the risk of a one-off performance, of every possible tiny detail lining up or falling apart. If it all works, it is magic. If it falls apart, well, the show must go on. (That’s also what understudies are for.) Rent, in particular, encapsulates this ideal: On January 25, 1996, the day before the show’s Off-Broadway preview, creator Jonathan Larson died unexpectedly. Still, despite the tragedy the cast enthusiastically performed CONTINUED ON PG. 13

The cast of Rent Live performing “La Vie Bohème” courtesy of new york theater

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

13

“It wasn’t unfinished, but it was still a rough draft, never meant to be shown.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 12

the very next night. Instead of embracing the resilient spirit of the show, however, Fox seemed to fight against it by refusing to adapt to the unfavorable circumstances that preceded the broadcast.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of Fox’s decision was that, fundamentally, Rent Live could have been terrific. It had the necessary foundation for a good show: a talented and experienced cast with backgrounds in TV, Broadway, and pop, a stunning and immersive set, and the show’s original Broadway director.

When Rent Live does work, it soars. Vanessa Hudgens as Maureen is a standout, entering on a motorcycle and literally flying above the audience. Kiersey Clemons’s Joanne and Jordan Fisher’s Mark served as perfect foils, their energy visibly boosting each other’s presence. Their performance of the “Tango: Maureen” hummed with the potential of what could have been. As Collins, Brandon Victor Dixon did most of the show’s emotional heavy lifting with heartbreaking skill. “Take Me

or Leave Me” and “What You Own” were great fun, while usual standout “La Vie Bohème” rung hollow.

But it is hard to judge the performances knowing that the cast was intentionally holding back. If Tinashe’s Mimi was a little flat in the dress-rehearsal, who knows what she could have done in the originally planned production? Were the dizzying camerawork and terrible sound mixing just growing pains that could have been solved, or were they intrinsic design flaws? And would the overzealous audience, cheering at every belted high note (of which there are many), have been more mindful of the performers, or at least been quieted by staff?

About 15 minutes from its conclusion, Rent Live finally lived up to its name. The broadcast turned to what had actually been happening onstage the entire time, and it was delightful. Brennin Hunt, sporting a fresh cast, sat on a table to perform his final scenes—pretty standard staging for the show—and the original Broadway cast of Rent joined a

HOW DO YOU SPELL THAT?

BY KATRINA LEE

Mimi Marquez (Tinashe) and Roger Davis (Brennin Hunt). courtesy of et online reprise of “Seasons of Love,” uniting two generations of actors side by side. It was as if a curtain had lifted, and we could finally see what Rent Live had wanted to be the entire time. The cast, as expected, was phenomenally talented; they were emo-

tional and electric and heart-wrenching.

With a little better planning, this is what millions of people could have had: a compassionate, if flawed, love letter to the uncontrollable joys of live theatre.

22. First-class

interdisciplinary science

posed three steps down

23. Clef type

61. It’s the end of an ___

24. ___ soap or ___gold

25. Get what you want

62. Grease ___ (cake recipe in-

25. Swears

26. Peter, Anne, and Bernadette,

struction)

26. Staircase unit

to name a few (Abbr.)

63. Zero

27. Cab

29. Carly ___ Jepsen

64. It comes before 58-Down

28. Ashley Graham or Naomi

30. Review of a prof

65. Ancient kingdom on the Tigris

Campbell, e.g.

31. Alpha ___ (brightest star in

30. DC summer setting

the Bull

Down

32. Heat up again

constellation)

1. Former Senate Majority Leader

33. Cake finishers

34. Blushing

who Trump called weird

35. One of the largest cities in

38. Ward off your enemies

2. Palindromic fashion model

South Korea

40. Britney Spears question: You

3. Hip handshakes

36. Bare

want a ___?

4. Unskilled

37. Fed. agents

41. Sarcastic

5. Someone good at spelling the

39. Happy Meal component

42. One of the Gilmore Girls

theme

44. Not the fastest of animals

43. Some rappers, slangily

words?

45. 100 yrs.

6. Bond’s friend in 8-Across

starred answers

46. Turn on the lights

7. ___-mo

47. It’s in cheese and soy sauce

48. They sound like muted trom-

8. 17-Across, for example

48. Book of maps

bones in Peanuts

9. Wrinkle remover

49. Counterparts to falses on a test

51. Run ___ (go crazy)

10. Plus

50. ___ cup

52. Dug in

11. Famous medical institution in

52. Shows on T.V.

53. Source

Minnesota

54. Watch part

57. Tiny bit

12. Muscat local

55. Sidi ___, Morocco

46. Language related to the

Across

14. Rahm of Chicago

18. Eye cell

58. Up to

13. Stan Lee makes this in his

56. Birthplace of Dionysus

1. Calls again

15. Ashy vase

19. Thanksgiving veggie

59. Make someone stop in their

movies

58. See 64-Across

8. Spy org.

16. Doctor org.

20. Tyrant

tracks

21. Computer setting

59. R.R. stop

11. Comfy slipper (Abbr.)

17. Boss someone around

21. Info on a W-2

60. UChicago research center for

22. Like Pachelbel’s song trans-

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 6, 2019

14

SPORTS Men’s Basketball Falls to Rival Carnegie Mellon in a Close Game

BY MATTHEW LEE Sports Reporter

The men’s basketball team fell just short of fellow UA A member Carnegie Mellon in a 71–69 heartbreaker on Sunday night.

A strong first half saw the Maroons ahead of the Tartans 41–33 early in the second half, but a resurgent Tartan squad quickly began erasing the lead.

By the 9:46 mark in the second half, it was 51 Tartans, 50 Maroons, with a close game to follow. As the clock wound down, CMU and UChicago fought bitterly, exchanging the lead several times. The Maroons’ efforts, however, ultimately proved unable to contain a strong performance by Carnegie Mellon’s Zach Howarth, who ended with 20 points on the day.

Both teams were closely matched statistically, though Chicago held a slight edge in nearly all major categories. The Maroons went 28–62 from the

field for an overall percentage of 45.2 while the Tartans went 25–59 for a percentage of 42.4.

Chicago had a slightly lower number of rebounds with 34 to CMU’s 37, but held an edge in assists, with the Maroons racking up 18 to the Tartan’s 11.

Yet, it was penalties and free-throws that hampered the Maroon’s performance. In summation, Carnegie Mellon took 19 more free throws than UChicago. This, combined with the fact that the Tartans shot 65.4 percent from the line, proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for the Maroon men.

Despite the close defeat, several Maroons had standout games. Third-year guard Cole Schmitz racked up 20 points, in part due to an impressive 44.4 percent shooting percentage from the three-point line.

Meanwhile, fellow third-year guard Jordan Baum tallied 16 points, shooting 7 for 13 from the field while also finding the time to lead the time in assists, accumulating five. Second-year

Dominic Laravie lead the team in both offensive and defensive rebounds, with three and seven, respectively.

The in-conference defeat leaves Maroon men’s basketball at 13–7 on the season with a 6–3 record within the UAA. The Maroons hope to rebound this week as they travel to Rochester this Friday at 8 p.m. ET. Men’s basketball lost in a tight game to CMU. sophia corning

Flying High: a Spotlight on Diver Elizabeth Cron

BY BRINDA RAO Sports Reporter

Often collegiate athleticism derives from a desire to excel.

However, Elizabeth Cron, a firstyear on UChicago’s swimming and diving team, embodies the idea that a love for the sport can make anything possible. In the past week, Cron was named UAA Athlete of the Week for her incredible performances at the Triangular meet. Cron set UChicago’s school record in the women’s three-meter dive (308.32) and placed first on the one-meter

board. She gained NCAA qualifying scores in both. This incredible display comes after months of dedicated work in and out of practice. Cron explains, “The point of Division III sports is to do it because you love it.”

Cron has been swimming her entire life. In her childhood, she did both swimming and gymnastics at the club level, prompting her to try diving. Cron shares, “At first I thought I was going to hate it but now we’re here 10 years later, and I can’t imagine life without diving. There’s nothing that will be closer to the feeling of flying

than diving. You’re throwing yourself off a piece of metal into the water. It’s an adrenaline rush.”

While there are only five divers on the team, they create a family unit within the larger swimming and diving team. Cron has found camaraderie in her fellow first-year diver Alice Saparov. She explains that, as the only divers on the team in the same academic year, she and Alice understand each other and offer companionship through the adjustment to competing and practicing at the Division III level. She finds mentorship through upperclassmen

like fourth-year Anna Girlich and third-year Agnes Lo. “I aspire to be like them. They are all such a blessing in and outside of practice.”

Cron’s diving teammates appreciate and admire her commitment to the team and sport. Saparov explains, “I really enjoy diving with Elizabeth! She works really hard at practice, which motivates me to keep pushing myself as well. And whenever any of us are learning new dives, Elizabeth will always cheer us on.”

Cron cites her passion for the sport and the nurturing environ-

ment of UChicago’s swimming and diving team as the basis of her success. At most universities, swimming and diving teams operate separately in and out of practice. However, head coach Jason Weber and diving coach Becky Benson strive to create an inclusive environment for both swimmers and divers. The teams practice together, come in, leave, and eat family-style dinners at the same time. Cron says, “A lot of my friends from home do not have this. Traditionally, swimmers and divers exist on separate CONTINUED ON PG. 15

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Elizabeth Cron Talks About Her Passion for Diving CONTINUED FROM PG. 14

spheres on opposite sides of the pool. Before coming to UChicago, I had never heard a coach say swimming and diving every time he talks to the team. I want to thank Jason for aggressively including the divers. It makes this environment feel like a swimming and diving team. I know it means the world to me, my teammates, and Becky.”

Reflecting on the adjustment to the collegiate environment, Cron believes that the inclusive atmosphere has helped her tremendously. Swimmers and divers alike cheer each other on during races and dives. The coaches act as guiding forces, encouraging the swimmers and divers through practices, meets, and all aspects of college life. She elaborates, “I don’t think I would have made it

through my first quarter without the team. We zombie walk to 6 a.m. practices. Their support means the world to me. I wouldn’t have wanted college to be any other way.”

Cron has high hopes for this season. She aims to perfect a pike with two flips in all directions by the end of the season. Through rigorous training and the support of her teammates and coaches, Cron believes that this feat is possible. “Becky has helped me change my technique for the better. This sets the foundation for me to learn new things and do them well.”

Cron competes and practices with passion. Ultimately, success can derive from happiness. With exuberance and zeal for diving, Elizabeth Cron embodies this notion.

First-years Elizabeth Cron and Alice Saparov laugh during a break. courtesy of uchicago athletics

Tennis Demolishes Hope College to Remain Undefeated

BY ALISON GILL Sports Reporter

The University of Chicago men’s and women’s tennis teams continued their strong start to the season this past weekend.

Both teams toppled Hope College on Saturday to move to 2–0 this year, and the men added another victory against Kalamazoo on Sunday.

The Maroon men swept Hope 9–0, exhibiting the depth that has bolstered them to a national ranking of No. 3. The veteran group, fresh off a trip to the NCAA Final Four, dismantled the Flying Dutch for the third straight season.

Third-year All-American Erik Kerrigan dispatched Mark VanderStoep of Hope in straight sets at No. 1 singles, before later teaming up with third-year Ninan Kumar to collect a win at No. 2 doubles, 8–3. Kerrigan

capped off all-around dominating individual performances.

The Maroons won five of six singles matches in straight sets against Hope. In that sixth match, at No. 2 singles, second-year Jeremy Yuan dropped the first set but bounced back to win the second and third sets.

None of the doubles matches were closer than five games, with third-year Tyler Raclin and Yuan—one of the country’s top doubles pairings—winning at No. 1 doubles with a score of 8–2.

Carrying that momentum into Sunday’s match, the Maroons once again emerged victorious, besting No. 25 Kalamazoo 7–2. The doubles matches propelled Chicago to a 3–0 lead.

Yuan and Raclin at No. 1 doubles and the pairing of Kerrigan and Kumar at No. 2 doubles both won with an 8–4 margin. Fourthyear Charlie Pei and first-year Joshua Xu squeaked out a nar-

row victory, 8–7, in the third doubles match of the day.

Yuan, once again, complemented his doubles victory with another win in singles, as did Pei. Second-year Alejandro Rodriguez and first-year Alex Guzhva rounded out the Maroon winners at No. 5 and No. 6 singles, respectively. For the weekend, Yuan and Pei were perfect, going 2–0 in each of their singles and doubles matches.

The men entered the season with hopes of repeating as UAA champions and chasing the program’s first NCAA National Championship trophy. So far in this young season, the men certainly seem positioned to compete for plenty of hardware.

“The men took control early and never let up, which is what we wanted to see from a veteran group,” said head coach Jay Tee after the Hope match. “We still have some work to do in terms

of developing an identity, but I’m confident that we will get there eventually.”

On the other hand, the women’s match against Hope proved to be a more competitive affair.

The No. 10 Maroons eventually secured the victory 6–3, thanks to the contributions of a trio of talented first-years.

The Flying Dutch defeated Chicago’s pairing of third-year Marjorie Antohi and first-year Lauren Park at No. 1 doubles before also collecting wins at No. 2 and No. 3 singles. The Maroons won their matches at No. 2 and No. 3 doubles, and All-American Antohi picked up a crucial win at No. 1 singles to knot the score at three apiece. In the decisive stretch, first-years Eugenia Lee, Annika Pandey, and Alexandra Zhang put away the match for the Maroons in the No. 4 through No. 6 singles spots.

Similar to the men, the wom-

en entered into the season with lofty expectations, eyeing a UAA title and looking to improve upon last year’s trip to the NCAA Elite Eight. With a depth of talent but relative inexperience, the women’s team will continue to rely on the contributions of the rookies, in addition to the steady leadership of its veterans. Coach Tee acknowledged as much in his post-match comments: “We might be the youngest team in the country, so it was great for us to deal with some pressure and put a match away,” he said.

“I am proud of the way the team has come together to support each other, creating an environment that makes it feel like we have been competing together for a long time, not just a couple weeks,” added first-year Lainey Axell.

Both teams will take to the court again on Friday, February 8, against DePauw University.

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Wrestlers Keep Slamming the Competition

BY JOSH PARKS Sports Reporter

In another impressive show on the mats, the No. 18 UChicago wrestling team had three wrestlers reach the podium at the Pete Wilson Invitational held at Wheaton College on Sunday. In the oldest and largest small-college wrestling tournament in the country, the Maroons were highlighted by third-year Kyle Peisker’s (174 pounds) second-place finish—the first UChicago wrestler to reach the title match at Wheaton in three years.

With its origins dating back to 1938, the annual two-day event hosted 39 teams in total, 11 of which were nationally-ranked. Seven Maroon wrestlers received invitations, with five advancing to the second day of the event. Entering as the No. 2 seed, Peisker led the way Saturday with a perfect 3–0 showing. On Sunday, he continued by defeating his semifinal opponent 5–2 in the morning, dropping a hard-fought match to the top seed from Mount Union in the final. The stellar showing puts Peisker’s season record at 27–4, earning him UAA Athlete of the Week honors in the process.

Also reaching the podium were thirdyear Kahlan Lee-Lermer (165 pounds)

and fourth-year Patrick Mulkerin (285 pounds) in the heavyweight bracket, both notching impressive 2–1 showings on the weekend and capturing seventh-place finishes. Fourth-year John Jayne (197 pounds), second-years Jason Crary (157 pounds) and Chaise Hauck (149 pounds), and first-year David Traub (125 pounds) rounded out the Maroon’s delegation to the event.

When asked about the successful showing, Mulkerin said, “We only sent seven guys to the tournament, but to have five advance to day two was impressive. We had three place winners, which is a great showing for one of the hardest Division III tournaments in the country.” Looking ahead to Saturday’s match against Augustana, he added, “I think that despite not having a full lineup due to injuries, we’ve still had guys stepping up at every weight and starting to really peak in performance. I feel very confident going into Friday, as this current team is the best I’ve seen in my four years at this school.”

The Maroons return to the mats of Henry Crown Field House on Friday for their final home match of the season, playing host to a struggling Augustana College squad. In a trip to Augustana a

year ago, Chicago managed to cruise to a 27–21 victory, serving as the perfect tune-up before capturing the 2018 UAA title, snapping NYU’s six-year title streak.

Looking to build momentum to carry into

the postseason, Augustana will serve as the Maroons’ final test before this year’s UAA Championship in Cleveland, Ohio on February 9. Friday’s match is set to begin at 7 p.m.

Fourth-year John Jayne takes down his opponent. courtesy of uchicago athletics

UPCOMING GAMES SPORT

Track & Field Tennis Women’s Basketball Men’s Basketball Wrestling

OPPONENT

DAY

Pat Heenan Invite DePauw Rochester Rochester NYU

TIME

Friday Friday Friday Friday

3:30 p.m.

5 p.m.

6 p.m.

8 p.m.

Saturday

11 a.m.

SCOREBOARD SPORT

Track & Field

Men’s Tennis Women’s Tennis Men’s Basketball Women’s Basketball

W/L W W W L W

OPPONENT Windy City Invite Hope College Hope College Carnegie Mellon Carnegie Mellon

SCORE 1st of 12 9–0 6–3 71 – 69 66 – 54