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NEWS: Low-Income Students Left Scattered by Coronavirus

APRIL 15, 2020 SECOND WEEK VOL. 132, ISSUE 21

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UCMed Treating Over 100 COVID-19 Patients, Hospital Prepares for More

By AVI WALDMAN Senior News Reporter Emma Dyer

Emma Dyer

During a Q&A session with David Axelrod and several students over Zoom, doctor Emily Landon said that the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) is now treating approximately 100 patients with COVID-19 and that the hospital is preparing for a continuing rise of coronavirus cases.

Landon, UChicago’s chief infectious disease epidemiologist, became nationally known in March for a speech she gave at a press conference with Illinois

Governor J. B. Pritzker announcing the state’s stay-at-home order. In the speech, she exhorted people to practice social distancing for the public good, and said that “without taking drastic measures, the healthy and optimistic among us will doom the vulnerable.”

According to Landon, UCMC is experiencing many of the same supply shortages as other hospitals across the country, as medical supply chains are disrupted by the pandemic and demand spikes for personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face masks.

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Grey City: Making Sure the 2020 Census Counts

Alexis Florence

SPORTS: Team Bonding Goes Online PAGE 16

VIEWPOINTS: You Should Give the University’s Game a Chance PAGE 12

ARTS: Tiger King: Why Are We Drawn to Awful People on Screen?

Like our Facebook page at facebook.com/chicagomaroon and follow @chicagomaroon on Instagram and Twitter to get the latest updates on campus news.

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UChicago Cancels On-Campus Convocation

By CARL SACKLEN News Reporter The University will not host convocation on campus this year, President Robert Zimmer and Provost Ka Yee Lee announced in a campus-wide email on April 7. In its place, a virtual convocation will be held for graduating students.

“Given the current guidance from the CDC, other public health officials, and our own faculty and physicians working on the forefront of the COVID-19 response, and the understanding of the trajectory of the pandemic, it is not practical or responsible to proceed with planning an in-person gathering of more than

15,000 people,” they wrote.

Zimmer and Lee said that the University will host a virtual convocation on June 13 in place of a ceremony on campus. “We are also prepared to deliver the physical diploma to each student who receives the degree as soon as possible thereafter,” they wrote.

Zimmer and Lee also invited members of the Class of 2020 to “participate fully” in next year’s convocation ceremonies.

“We will use this opportunity for a special acknowledgement and celebration of the accomplishments of 2020 graduates in the presence of faculty, students’ families, and the broader com-

munity.”

In an email to fourth-years, Dean of the College John Boyer echoed this invitation.

“We will also hold distinct celebratory events for members of the Class of 2020 who accept the University’s invitation to return to campus in June 2021 and participate fully in the 534th Convocation ceremonies,” he wrote in his email.

This year’s scheduled Class Day Speaker was Otis Brawley (S.B. ’81, M.D. ’85), former chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. The University has not announced whether he will speak at the virtual cer-

emony.

“Students and faculty will hear from your deans and deans of students as plans for virtual or in-person activities for diploma ceremonies develop,” Zimmer and Lee said. Students can view these developments on the Convocation website.

Many other universities have already cancelled or postponed in-person graduation ceremonies due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yale University cancelled its commencement scheduled for May, and Harvard University will host a virtual commencement at the end of May. Brown University has postponed its ceremony, and University of Pennsylvania has cancelled its commencement.

Social Sciences Division Will Use a Variety of Methods to Approach Remote Learning

By KATE MABUS Senior News Reporter As the Social Sciences Division prepares to teach online this quarter, instructors are taking a variety of approaches with technology, including both synchronous and asynchronous methods, in an attempt to maintain the immersive quality of social science learning despite the barriers of virtual learning.

The Social Sciences Division has offered support to its departments through a Computing Services website that offers online teaching instruction and resources. The division has also used the University’s virtual and in-person training sessions that have been offered since the end of winter quarter.

Across all divisions, the University has encouraged a mix of synchronous and asynchronous content. Asynchronous content will be posted through Canvas, according to Sabina Shaikh, the director of the environmental and urban studies major. The computational social sciences department also plans to use Canvas for discussion boards. Zoom video conferencing software will be used for synchronous meetings, including smaller discussion groups and office hours.

Professors in the Social Sciences Divi-

sion have also distributed surveys to students to understand their new environments and accommodate the challenges they pose. Departments are making an effort to include asynchronous content to accommodate students in different time zones and those with limited access.

“Many of our students are from China and have returned home for the spring quarter, so we are acutely aware of the challenges for international students completing their coursework,” Benjamin Soltoff, director of the computational social sciences master’s program and professor in the College, told The Maroon.

“Obviously the time zone difference will be a challenge, but we still have strong expectations for our students and the courses we teach…. We want to provide the best education possible under the circumstances.”

Instructors from the computational social sciences program are coordinating efforts to offer the best teaching practices.

“Internally, our program has a Slack channel where instructors have been sharing resources to help us adapt our pedagogy to remote learning and providing suggestions and answering questions that arise as we make this transition,” Soltoff said.

Additionally, the higher-education community has united to share pedagog-

ical advice that has been helpful, according to sociology director of undergraduate studies Jenny Trinitapoli. Resources are so abundant that the sociology department has made an effort to condense the material for their professors and is distributing model lesson plans.

Through these resources, the Social Sciences Division seeks to maintain the quality of education they could give on campus. Public policy program administrator Milvia Rodriguez said that the department seeks to offer flexibility for students while also maintaining academic rigor. “The general wellbeing of our students is very important to us and we will do whatever we can to make sure that our policies contribute to the success of the students in the program in this difficult time.”

Ultimately, teaching methods are left to the discretion of individual instructors.

Some departments, including public policy and comparative human development, expect to reevaluate methods as problems occur throughout the quarter.

The division is also reimagining how its members conduct research. The College made an effort to continue research on campus as stated in a March 16 email from Provost Ka Yee Lee. However, following the March 20 stay-at-home order

from Governor J. B. Pritzker and escalation of the COVID-19 spread, the University closed its facilities to all but essential personnel.

Many resources for social science research are virtually accessible, so departments plan to continue projects remotely. The Social Sciences Computing Service offers a research support group that assists and provides tools to allow for large-scale analysis remotely from less-advanced, personal devices.

However, remote coordination could pose limitations to social science research due to the hands-on and humanist nature of social science research. For this reason, the Chicago studies program administered by the Social Sciences Division decided to cancel their quarter-long program of classes where students study the Calumet region.

“We weren’t confident in our ability to provide the kind of immersive, high-impact, hands-on learning experience that program is known for, and…we were concerned about over-burdening our external partners in the Calumet region as they also deal with this pandemic,” Chicago studies associate director Chris Skrable said.

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“We want to provide the best education possible under the circumstances.”

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like Stata, R, LaTeX, and ATLAS.ti easily accessible from remote workspaces, she is far more concerned about students whose research relies on the Special Collections Library.

Third-year Orli Morag, a history major, had the same concern. “I use the Special Collections for almost every history paper I write,” Morag said. “So the recommendations made by the history department to try and write a thesis that relies almost entirely on sources I can find online are worrying.”

Many social science departments have been pressed to accommodate the disruption of their students’ degree plans, such as completing Core requirements and B.A. thesis presentations. Departments including public policy, urban and environmental studies, sociology and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program have moved their research symposiums online.

Trinitapoli said she’s arranged an advisory board of undergraduates, and “together we’re going to keep the Chicago Journal of Sociology running and figure out a way to hold a virtual B.A. thesis symposium, to celebrate the awesome research our fourth-year students have completed.”

Many of the faculty The Maroon communicated with expressed their awareness of the challenge COVID-19 poses to completing coursework. The public policy department has extended its thesis deadline by two weeks. Both the public policy and the environmental studies departments are also offering extended office hours as well as additional major and thesis advising.

The environmental and urban studies major is offering its two core courses again this quarter to accommodate students who had planned to study abroad this year before UChicago suspended its spring pro-

grams. According to Shaikh, the program hopes that by fulfilling requirements now their students will have the opportunity to study abroad next year.

Some programs, such as human rights, are taking advantage of virtual courses’ flexibility to invite outside scholars and professionals from around the world to join their virtual classes.

For instance, the program had planned to offer a course at Stateville Correctional Center during spring quarter. Originally, students and instructors were going to travel to the facility to participate in the class alongside inmates, but in lieu of this, the program has invited two formerly-incarcerated community fellows from the Pozen Center Human Rights Laboratory to join and inform the virtual class, according to Deputy Dean of the Pozen Center Mark Bradley. The fellows are currently in the process of completing degrees from the University of Massachu-

setts, Amherst.

“Our course will count toward their degrees as it does for our students and will nicely bring these two groups into a single learning community. We plan to do the inside-out course at Stateville next year, but believe we have found a generative solution given the situation right now that will enhance the learning of both our College students and community partners,” Bradley said.

Analysis of COVID-19 will also be incorporated into coursework. The environmental and urban studies major is offering a class taught by Evan Carter, called Pandemics, Urban Space, and Public Life, that will imagine creative interventions and solutions to the COVID-19 crisis.

“It felt important to offer a course for critical perspective and inquiry, and I think students felt the same, as we listed the course last week and it filled up in a day,” Shaikh said.

Humanities Division Instructors Asked to Be Flexible to Student Situations

By CARL SACKLEN News Reporter As teaching goes remote for the spring quarter in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the College and the Humanities Division have urged instructors to be flexible to students’ individual circumstances. The division has given its instructors the authority to decide their course’s online format, depending on the content and composition of the class.

James Chandler, chair of the cinema and media studies department, said that he expects a mix of different teaching formats to come from the migration online.

“Everybody is going to be doing different things,” Chandler said. “We’re going to have a combination of—this is the advice we’ve been given from the College—synchronous and asynchronous sessions.”

Synchronous sessions require a scheduled time every week, which is a challeng-

ing format for students living in different time zones or with varying degrees of internet access. Solely synchronous sessions would put some students at a disadvantage.

“Instructors are going to tailor what they’re doing to particular needs and capacities of the class they’re working with,” Chandler said. “Students have been issued a survey about their wishes, their various internet capacities, and what instruments they’re using.”

“If anything, the move is away from standardization so that we can respond to the needs of each individual student,” Tyler Williams, director of undergraduate studies for the South Asian languages and civilizations department, said.

The content of courses will also impact which methods are used by instructors.

Olga Solovieva, director of undergraduate studies for the comparative literature department, said that her department

would be granting a high level of autonomy to professors.

“We don’t have a departmental unifying approach because material is different,” she said. “Methods are different; some people work with texts, some people work with discussing ideas, some work with translations, and it requires different approaches,” she said.

For the Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS) department, the move to online learning presents a unique challenge, according to Leslie Danzig, director of undergraduate studies for TAPS. “Our work is very collaborative; it’s very much about real-time shared space with people, but at the same time, all the people who are teaching are artists themselves…who have a lifetime of problem-solving with constrained resources,” Danzig told The Maroon.

But that leads to some new opportunities as well. “We’re starting to think of it

less like we’re trying to transfer a studio classroom into a Zoom space, but to think much more creatively about what we were actually trying to teach and what are some other ways of getting to that, given the constraints and opportunities of what this is,” Danzig said.

However, asynchronous online discussions are less private than typical discussion sections, which usually occur behind closed doors and are considered a confidential space for academic discussion.

“I think there is going to be some cautionary advice issued about how anything that is recorded is handled,” Chandler said. “The College is working on that and I’m waiting to hear back on how that’s going.”

However, sequence requirements are unlikely to change because the departments’ focus has been moving required courses online along with the remaining CONTINUED ON PG. 4

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“Personally, I like to think of it as a challenge... to work with what we can and still bring our most honest self to the table.”

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course selection planned for the spring.

“We’re not making any changes to required courses, but of course, what we are doing is making sure that all of those courses are acceptable online,” Williams said.

“We’re going to be open to case by case review of issues,” Chandler said, “But I think we’re going to be able to mount the courses that we promised we would.”

Philosophy majors were told in a departmental email that the deadline for submitting their B.A. thesis has been pushed to Thursday, May 7.

More generally, class sizes for at least some of the humanities departments will

not be increasing, despite no longer being limited to a physical classroom.

“We are not planning to increase any enrollment caps,” Daisy Delogu, chair of the romance languages and literatures department, told The Maroon. “It’s important to be able to provide one-on-one support for students and so increasing the number of students in the courses is not really to anyone’s benefit.”

Danzig echoed this emphasis on instructor face-time with students. “We’re looking to have as much person-to-person intensive time as we can get, so I don’t think there’s anything to suggest it would be more productive to expand the number of students,” she said.

Benjamin Morgan, director of undergraduate studies for English, told The Maroon there will also not be any changes to class sizes in his department.

However, “we expect that there will be flexibility around grading policies within the major,” he said.

Similarly, Donald Harper, chair of the East Asian languages and civilizations department, told The Maroon that “we’re completely open to whatever individual adjustments are necessary so that our students can fulfill their concentrations.”

Despite the circumstances, professors in the Humanities Division are optimistic about the quarter.

“Personally, I like to think of it as a

challenge,” Vu Tran, director of undergraduate studies for creative writing, said.

“A productive challenge where I’m going to challenge myself not to replicate the same exact experience that we would have had in a live in-class environment, but to work with what we can and still bring our most honest self to the table.”

“I would say the optimism is not a naive one,” Danzig said. “There’s been a real spirit of ‘yes, and’ …. If you know anything about theater and improv, that is the mantra.”

“What comes at you, you say yes to, and then you contribute towards it. So I think that’s been genuinely the spirit that everybody is leading forwards into this with.”

Physical Sciences Division Works to Migrate Experiential Learning Online in Response to COVID-19

By ALEXIS FLORENCE Senior News Reporter Professors in the Physical Sciences Division are working to translate labs and T.A. sessions into digital classroom experiences, as UChicago moves to online instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The University announced the transition to online learning for spring quarter during 10th week of winter quarter, just before finals. As spring quarter moves forward, students in the physical sciences are concerned about how valuable in-person experience will translate online.

James Butler, a third-year statistics major, is worried that professors will not be patient or lenient with students as they figure out a new classroom format.

In his experimental physics class—which is predicated on being in a lab—the plans for adapting the labs involve students writing proposals for the instructor, or for TAs to take experimental data and report it back to students. Butler said the approach “sounds fine in theory I guess, but I’m a bit apprehensive of how it’s actually going to operate.”

In response to concerns about labs, Julia Brazas, the academic affairs administrator for the astronomy and astrophysics department, explained by email that members of her department will be adjusting labs for remote learning, but will still try to keep the experience true to the in-person labs. Brazas said instructors plan to offer various times for T.A. office hours to accommodate students in various time zones, and professors are planning to use Slack messaging and other collaboration tools to stimulate discussion of the course material.

“We have modified the labs so that students will be able do them from home while trying to retain some of the elements of our campus-based lab experience,” Brazas said. “For example, several of our labs involve taking [astronomical] images using remote observatories, so students can continue to complete these projects as they would usually, and, as in the campus version of our labs, students will continue to work in groups—though [they’ll] now collaborate virtually.”

Brazas also said that lectures will be delivered at the assigned class meeting times, but will be recorded, as instruc-

tors are trying to create synchronous and asynchronous aspects to the courses in order to accommodate students in different time zones or those without reliable access to internet.

However, third-year physics major Aware Deshmukh is concerned with the lab requirements she has seen for the upcoming quarter.

“For my experimental physics class, it doesn’t look like they’re cutting back on lab requirements at all,” Deshmukh said. “I know the department is doing its best to give us a normal experience, but remote labs simply aren’t going to go well, not the first time they’re implemented, and I wish we weren’t trying it.”

In addition to lab time, research projects on campus have been halted in response to Governor J. B. Pritzker’s stayat-home order, which has been extended through the end of April. “All non-essential research activities requiring people to be present on campus must be suspended. Access to research facilities and laboratories will be limited to essential personnel only, as identified by the lab director, principal investigator, and your Dean,” Provost Ka Yee Lee said in an an-

nouncement to the University on March 21.

On the same day, the chemistry department wrote on their department COVID-19 updates website that “critical building services are unchanged (not scaled back).”

The computer science department has also created a separate website to explain their department’s adjustments for remote learning, including a link to a UChicago Computer Science Slack workspace.

According to Brazas, her department asked the University to fund more remote learning equipment, such as touchscreen tablets and computers professors can use to replace blackboards.

Brazas said she and her peers are working with teaching support staff and using various online trainings to change their classes to an online format, but they still welcome student input for spring quarter.

“We are implementing multiple ways for students to give us feedback as we go, so we can adjust as needed to create the best learning experience we can manage, given the circumstances,” Brazas said.

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Biological Sciences Division Responds to Remote Learning Concerns

By LAURA GERSONY Senior News Reporter Professors from the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division (BSCD) hosted a Zoom Q&A session Thursday, April 2, to address student concerns as the University moves to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Jocelyn Malamy, master of the BSCD, started the conversation by stressing the division’s commitment to accommodating all students’ situations.

“All instructors have agreed and are aware that there needs to be a way for everybody to substantively do all the work and complete the course no matter what their challenges are. In some cases we’ll just have to make alternatives,” Malamy said.

A major concern for many students is completing hands-on labs without lab equipment or proximity to instructors.

Christopher Schonbaum, a senior lecturer in the BSCD and a director of labs said that instructors are hoping to modify lab sessions into a substantive virtual experience while accommodating students in different time zones or who have other restrictions.

Ultimately Schonbaum said the structure of labs are up to the individual pro-

fessors, and students should reach out to their respective instructors.

“Labs will be run,” Schonbaum said.

“What those labs will look like, just like the labs for all the different courses are structured in different ways, the labs for these remote quarters will be very different from each other, and you’ll have to talk to the individual instructors to figure out how they’ve set up their labs.”

He and some of his peers will be shortening lab times to two hours; however, some professors will opt for the traditional four-hour time slots. Schonbaum said some professors will focus more on research papers or will use data and pictures from previous years of the course, though these changes are not universal.

Second-year Phoebe Hall is taking one lab class for spring quarter and has yet to be given specific information about how the labs will be run. However, she feels the remote labs will not live up to the in-person experience.

For some classes, labs have the reputation of being the most fun and educational part, Hall said. “I bet no matter what they arrange for labs will be a disappointment because nothing can replace the value of doing the science hands-on.”

On-campus research within the BSCD has been put on hold, with only essen-

tial personnel being allowed in campus buildings to carry out critical building services. However, Malamy and Jason MacLean, director of the neuroscience major, stressed other ways for undergraduate students to be remotely involved in research, including Micro-Metcalf opportunities supported by the Career Advancement office.

Malamy also explained that plans for summer fellowships with the BSCD will continue. Deadlines for applying for summer research have been extended by a week to allow students to talk with faculty about their application. However, Malamy said that students should keep in mind the uncertainty about summer on campus.

“If the campus is not up and running in summer, there’s of course nothing we can do, but we rather be prepared and have everyone all ready to go start their lab if things do go as we hope they will,” Malamy said.

Plans for thesis projects are also continuing across the division. The deadline for the projects is still eighth week of spring quarter, but MacLean encouraged students to reach out to advisors with any questions. MacLean also stressed that no student will be unduly punished for any constraints created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Joni Krapec, Senior Program Director of UChicago Careers in Health Professions, also participated in the Q&A to speak to medical school requirements.

Krapec said she has been communicating directly with various medical school programs and said schools will accept the class and lab credit from remote classes for their requirements.

“Given the challenges that everyone is facing this quarter and given that basically every university in the country has moved to online learning, all medical schools will count any lab that you took this quarter as fulfilling their requirements,” Krapec said.

Stephanie Palmer, a professor in the physics department as well as the department of organismal biology and anatomy, stressed the need for students and professors to collaborate in an email to The Maroon.

“It’s important that we are available to talk not just about coursework but also the challenges individual students might be facing throughout the quarter,” Palmer said. “It’s our job to be responsive to those needs and flexible, while hopefully delivering some welcome intellectual––if remote––engagement with the ideas and concepts all of our students came here to soak up and contribute to.”

University Freezes Salaries and Hiring, Affirms Commitment to Low-Income Students Amid COVID-19 Turmoil

By TONY BROOKS News Editor The University will freeze most salaries for the upcoming academic year and slow the hiring of new faculty due to the economic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, President Robert Zimmer announced in an email to University staff and students. In the email, Zimmer also said that the university will continue to meet its financial-aid commitments to students.

“All student financial support com-

mitments will be fully honored and increased financial support will be provided to those College students with increased demonstrated need,” the email said.

The email encouraged the University community to contribute to the Odyssey program and said that senior administrators—including the president, provost and vice presidents—will “make a significant new personal financial commitment” to the program.

Zimmer said that the changes were prompted by concerns that the impact and length of the expected economic cri-

sis “is likely to be as great as or even greater than in the financial crisis of 2008-09.”

Zimmer said that the University expects a financial downturn to have major effects on the University’s finances, including increased financial need among students, a decrease in the value of the University’s endowment, and reduced philanthropic contributions to the University.

“New staff hiring will be strictly limited to those fully supported by external grant funding or critical to the core mission of the University,” Zimmer said.

Zimmer also said that the provost will coordinate financial adjustments in all units of the University. In addition to the hiring and salary freezes, the email said that “discretionary spending will be suspended” and “non-personnel expenditure reductions will be implemented.”

“It may be necessary to continue some of these adjustments into the future as we gain clarity about the trajectory of the pandemic and the resulting national global economic dislocations,” Zimmer said.

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Tuition Frozen, No Statement on Demands for Reduction

By EITAN KARSCH News Reporter The University will not raise the combined total of tuition, housing, and other miscellaneous fees for the 2020–2021 academic year, Provost Ka Yee Lee and Dean of the College John Boyer announced in an email to students and their families in the College on Monday. The email also said that the University will continue financial aid programs, like the No Barriers program, but did not release the finalized cost distribution for students in the College.

“The University of Chicago remains deeply committed to ensuring that students from every background, regardless of financial need, can find a home here,” Lee and Boyer wrote. “We recognize the economic pressure currently felt by many College students and families. The University will continue to do what it can to support its community during this unprecedented time.”

Instituting a tuition freeze meets one of the five demands of student group UChicago for Fair Tuition (UCFT), which for the past two weeks has advocated for a 50

percent reduction in all costs for students in the College regardless of their financial aid status. UCFT stated in a Facebook post Monday that administrators also decided to eliminate late fees for students who cannot pay tuition by April 29. However, organizers from the group say these measures to relieve the financial burden on students do not go far enough.

“We are so glad to see the university meeting one of our demands, a tuition freeze, at the college level and for some masters programs,” UCFT organizer Julia Attie wrote in

a statement to The Maroon. “However, the current financial crisis is affecting families NOW. We need immediate tuition relief and cancellation of fees for Spring Quarter.”

Attie said the group is disappointed that UChicago’s leadership has not chosen to negotiate directly with students, and she confirmed that the planned tuition strike will go ahead in order to push the administration to meet UCFT’s full set of demands. “We’re currently preparing hundreds of students to withhold Spring Quarter tuition until the administrators actively engage with our demands.”

UChicago Awarded $6,207,010 in COVID-19 Stimulus

By MILES BURTON Editor-in-Chief The University of Chicago was awarded $6,207,010 from the Department of Education to offset expenses incurred in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Half of the funding is earmarked by the Department of Education for emergency financial aid grants.

In a letter to university and college presidents on Thursday, April 9, Secretary of

Education Betsy DeVos described how the Department of Education will distribute $12.56 billion allocated to the department by the COVID-19 stimulus package signed into law by President Trump on March 27.

According to DeVos’s letter, “the only statutory requirement is that the funds be used to cover expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus.”

Half of the money each university receives must be spent on emergency finan-

cial aid grants, Secretary DeVos wrote.

“I would like to encourage the leadership of each institution to prioritize your students with the greatest need,” DeVos said.

At $2 trillion, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act is the largest economic stimulus package in the history of the United States. The CARES Act allocated about $31 billion to the Department of Education, around $14 billion of which will go towards postsecond-

ary education.

The CARES Act gives schools broad discretion on how to spend the funds in responding to COVID-19.

The Department calculated the funds that will be made available to each institution based on a formula which is heavily weighted by the number of Pell Grant-eligible students enrolled at the school. Pell Grants are administered by the federal government to provide need-based grants to college students.

Low-Income Students Left Scattered by Coronavirus

By KATE MABUS Senior News Reporter Following the University’s announcement on March 12 that Spring Quarter would be conducted remotely, students were given 10 days to vacate campus. For most, the closing of campus meant vacating campus and returning to their family homes. For low-income students, there were barriers at every step of the transition. Some say these barriers will continue through remote learning.

Second-year Yuri Sugano, an organizer for UChicago Mutual Aid, said that the transition to the stay-at-home order was complicated by economic factors. “When the news came out it was unexpected. And, of course, I considered going back home but then it’s a matter of, ‘How am I going to afford plane tickets? How am I going to

afford storage?’ It’s just problems added to problems,” Sugano said.

The Maroon also spoke with thirdyears Naa Asheley Ashitey and Kiana Hobbs, the president and vice president of UChicago’s QuestBridge Scholars, who provided commentary (independent of the QuestBridge organization) on their experience as low-income students.

Hobbs said that the decision to transition to remote learning left low-income students “scattered.” According to Hobbs, most low-income students don’t travel home for spring break because of the high costs, so last-minute flights home were expensive.

Furthermore, many low-income students are financially independent, relying on financial aid and campus jobs to support themselves, so the unforeseen economic burdens of the transition left many students’ financial stability threatened.

“Disposable income is not a term known to many low-income students. It’s not a thing that happens. If some students are lucky, they can have an emergency savings, but many students are supporting their families with that or they have to pay for food and all of these other costs. So, there’s not much leeway for lost income or surprising unexpected circumstances, such as this,” Hobbs said.

With the closing of campus, students are losing on-campus resources such as food security, reliable technology and internet access, fitness centers, and libraries.

Ashitey used the importance of Hutchinson Common’s Saturday-night meal program as an example of low-income students’ dependence on these resources. According to Ashitey, before the meal program was created, students who could not afford to dine out would starve when the dining halls closed

on Saturday nights.

Unique challenges faced by low-income students range from obtaining reliable internet and devices to attending classes and keeping up with schoolwork when fielding additional responsibilities. Ashitey was fortunate enough to have an emergency fund she could put toward supporting her father in Ghana, but has lost the savings which she planned to use toward graduate school. She shared that finals week was particularly difficult for her as she balanced all these challenges, resulting in her turning in an assignment past the due date for the first time in her college career.

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“When you come back home, those differences are now even more escalated.”

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returning home to domestic responsibility and economic instability. One student came to Sugano at Mutual Aid seeking advice on how to support his family, which he typically sends half his quarterly stipend to, now that he had lost his on-campus job.

According to Sugano, in the worst cases, first-generation low-income students must return to domestic violence. “It’s sad that no one is thinking about these problems, but they do exist,” Sugano said.

Under these conditions, the University has been taking steps to accommodate students and smooth the transition to remote learning. According to Sugano, although the University was delayed and disorganized providing relief, almost all missing campus resources have been accounted for.

The University has committed to honoring financial aid this quarter and also agreed to increase financial aid for students who demonstrate need for greater support at this time. The Office of Career Advancement is offering Micro-Metcalf opportunities to alleviate the impact of lost campus

jobs. Sugano said that Odyssey Scholars received advance quarterly stipends and that, personally, he has found the University’s technology grants helpful in securing reliable internet access for his spring quarter classes.

However, financial support does not account for the academic challenges faced by low-income students under the present circumstances. To address the issue, the University put in place an opt-in pass/ fail grading system for the quarter. While Ashitey was pleased that the University’s pass/fail option was more accessible than expected, she still believes that a Universal A system, such as the ones implemented at Smith College and Pennsylvania State University, would be more accommodating to low-income students because it prevents failure altogether.

Ashitey said she is more concerned with the lack of commentary from graduate schools on whether they will accept alternative grades and if they will treat students impacted by these circumstances with academic leniency.

“It’s hard to comment on pass/fail because in a lot of instances it’s not just undergraduate dependent. It really is dependent on where students want to go in the future.

And there needs to be a responsibility that law schools, grad schools, medical schools take in saying, ‘Hey, it’s okay if you do pass/ fail this time. We’re gonna take it.’”

Despite the importance of higher education and the resources it offers low-income students, Ashitey disagreed with the way college has been portrayed as a “great equalizer” in recent discussions about the impact of coronavirus on first-generation low-income students. She believes the term ignores the remaining inequality on campuses. Hobbs explained that low-income students are “playing catch-up” in the classroom coming from public schools that lack funding and resources.

“You can eat at the same dining hall, you can live in the same dorm but when you’re a low-income student, you’re a first-generation student. For example, if you’re a Black student, and you’re a part of all those, or you’re a queer-identifying student, the steps

you take on the sidewalk going to class…will forever be different than someone else’s,” Ashitey said. “I can go to class and be Black; I will be low-income and first-generation.

There will be assumptions about me. The classes are not taught in a way that is completely accessible to students like me.”

However, Hobbs and Ashitey agreed that the loss of on-campus resources through remote learning threatens to exacerbate the inequalities for low-income students that already exist in higher education.

“When you come back home, those differences are now even more escalated because you’re going back to a place where you’re trying to be that same university student in a place where you don’t have the same access to the resources you did have while you were on campus.”

That “doesn’t mean that it’s easier for low-income students on campus, because the fact of the matter is it isn’t. But at least [low-income students] could get to those resources on campus. Now they can’t. So, everything just gets added more and more,” Ashitey said.

UCM COVID-19 Cases Rise to Over 100 as Hospital Prepares for More CONTINUED FROM COVER

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Landon said. “We’re living shipment to shipment. We’ve had enough masks and PPE to get us through each day. We like to keep five days of supply on hand.… We’re not sure we’re going to be okay later.”

Landon estimated that the United States lost roughly two months of time to prepare for the coronavirus because of a delayed federal response, a factor that epidemiologists hadn’t previously predicted when planning for a pandemic.

“In every one of those [planning scenarios] there’s a centralized, governmental organized facility for distributing supplies, distributing resources; and a couple weeks in the Defense Production Act kicks in and everybody starts getting their stuff, and we’re just not seeing that,” Landon said. “I don’t understand why the cries from the frontline…are not being heard in a way that has resulted in mobilizing America like America can be mobilized.”

UCMC has been preparing for the coronavirus since mid-January, according to Landon, and has been implementing social distancing measures by separating hospital workstations and holding rounds meetings to discuss patient care over Zoom in order to limit contact between healthcare workers.

Landon has been working with colleagues in the Department of Economics and Harris School of Public Policy to develop models that balance social distancing to reduce disease transmission with the selective opening of some businesses to limit economic damage.

She cautioned against relying on the approach of summer to stymie the outbreak, as the change in seasons likely won’t affect the coronavirus the way it does the flu. Landon said that people should be prepared to live with social distancing in some form through the end of summer, and possibly into fall.

Flattening the curve of the virus’s progression will reduce the pressure on hospitals and save lives, but will extend

the time it takes for immunity to become common enough to slow the outbreak before a vaccine can be developed at the earliest in late winter.

“Until we get a vaccine, I think the estimates are like 40 to 70 percent of the population has to get sick [to develop immunity],” Landon said. “The area under the curve, for those of you who are studying [it], is the same whether you have a big high peak or whether you have a low peak that goes on. As high as that curve would have been without any intervention, it has to be at least that long.”

Landon warned that the coronavirus may present challenges beyond patient care. Mental health professionals are already seeing the effects of social isolation and heightened anxiety on their patients, which is a public-health issue that may worsen alongside the pandemic.

According to Landon, marginalized populations are hit hardest by coronavirus, because of their limited access to healthcare for preexisting conditions,

and that many low-wage service workers are still working in essential industries with little protection. These factors divide patient outcomes for COVID-19 along the lines of class and race.

In addition, Landon said, it’s unclear who exactly is going to pay for coronavirus treatment and how much it will cost for UCMC’s uninsured and underinsured patients, and even those with health insurance.

“The hospital is working with insurers and the government to try and get good guarantees for people that this kind of care is going to be subsidized in some way,” Landon said. “We’ve got to make it so people are not penalized for becoming healthy, [so] there is not a cost to people to coming in and preventing spread to other people.”

Landon also said that UCMC will soon have new tools at its disposal in the fight against coronavirus. The hospital is working on a serological (based on blood serum) test that detects antibodCONTINUED ON PG. 8

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“I can’t really blame the president for wanting it to work, but I do not think that it’s wise to tell people to go out and just take it.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 7

ies in the blood from people who have already recovered from coronavirus, in order to measure how the virus spreads among asymptomatic people. UCMC hopes to soon start investigational use of convalescent serum treatment, which uses plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients as a source of antibodies for severely ill patients.

UCMC has already been testing experimental drug treatments for

COVID-19, such as the Ebola antiviral remdesivir and the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which has been promoted by President Donald Trump.

Landon said that remdesivir is showing promising results, while hydroxychloroquine “has not been particularly successful” when used on severely ill patients but may show more success in slowing the disease in earlier stages of infection, which could significantly improve the odds of recovery for high-risk

patients and reduce the need for social distancing. However, Landon pointed to hydroxychloroquine’s potentially dangerous side effects as a reason to be wary when recommending its use.

“Widespread use of something that has not been proven is not a good idea,” Landon said. “I can’t really blame the president for wanting it to work, but I do not think that it’s wise to tell people to go out and just take it.”

In an emergency situation where

there is a surge in patients, Landon predicted, UCMC could nearly double the number of hospital beds it had available and take other measures to increase its capacity.

For the moment, however, her outlook is cautiously optimistic.

“We are as ready as we possibly can be,” Landon said. “We are ready for more than it looks like we’re going to see, that’s the good news. But that’s a ‘today answer.’”

University Publishes Course Catalogue With New Major Variants, New Minors, and Fewer Joint Degree Options

By JUSTIN SMITH News Editor The 2020—2021 College Catalog (the catalog), released yesterday, included significant changes to existing majors and minors. The catalog also included a variety of other changes including new minors, new names for majors, and changes in credit policies.

Molecular Engineering Students who matriculated in the Class of 2023 or later who choose to major in molecular engineering can now choose from the bioengineering track, chemical engineering track, or quantum engineering track, renamed from the prior years’ biology track, chemical and soft materials track, and quantum track. The new paths allow interested students to begin the major as late as autumn of their second year. Each track still requires 1900 units of credit, meaning the major remains the longest in the college.

All molecular engineering majors, regardless of their track, will now take the same seven introductory courses.

The molecular engineering department also added seven new minors: quantum information science; molecular, cellular, and tissue engineering; immunoengineering; systems bioengineering; molecular science and the engineering of polymers and soft materials; molecular engineering of sustainable energy and water resources; and computational molecular engineer-

ing. The department will be retaining its existing minors in molecular engineering, and molecular engineering technology and innovation. All new and existing minors in the department require between 500 and 600 units of credit and can be added by students in any year.

Quantitative Social Analysis The Committee on Quantitative Methods in Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences will be offering a new minor in quantitative social analysis. The minor, according to the catalog, allows students to “[explore] social statistics and mathematics to describe, understand, and predict the behavior and experiences of individuals, groups, and organizations of groups.” Students interested in the minor will need to take 500 units of credit, including one course in basic skills, two courses in advanced skills, and two courses in quantitative applications. All course categories include courses from the comparative human development, economics, geographical sciences, public health sciences, public policy, psychology, sociology, social sciences, and statistics departments as options for completion.

Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities The former interdisciplinary studies in the humanities major, which last accepted students in the Class of 2020, has been changed to the inquiry and research in the humanities (IRHUM) major. The IRHUM major’s new purpose is to “[offer] under-

graduates the opportunity to pursue an individualized program of humanistic study in preparation of an independent, mentored research project, which will form the capstone experience of their college education at the University of Chicago,” according to the catalog. Students must apply to the major via a 750-word motivation statement and a course prospectus. The program will require students to complete six courses in “the self-designed program of humanistic study, developed in consultation with the Faculty Chair of IRHUM and a faculty mentor.” It will also require specialized courses in academic and professional writing, and humanistic inquiry and research design. Students are also required to take two research seminars and participate in an applied mentored research experience, research proposal colloquium, and B.A. thesis writing colloquium. Students in the major must complete a thesis by the end of autumn quarter in their fourth year in the College.

Race and Ethnic Studies The former comparative race and ethnic studies major (and minor) has been changed to the critical race and ethnic studies major (and minor). The major now “offers an interdisciplinary curriculum that leads students to examine both the processes through which members of the human population have been constructed as racial and ethnic groups, and the political, historical, social, and cultural effects of this constitution,” according to the catalog. The major no longer

requires students to take multiple quarters of a single civilization sequence, instead requiring two courses in theories of race and ethnicity. The major now also requires an advanced theory seminar and allows students to count four CRES electives toward the major for a total of 1300 credits, an increase of 100 credits from the 2019–2020 catalog. The minor will also now require two courses in theories of race and ethnicity.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies The joint B.A./M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean studies will no longer be offered at the College, according to the catalog.

The requirements for the Latin America and Caribbean studies major were also slightly modified.

Core Mathematics Students enrolling in the College in autumn 2021 who earned a score of 5 on the Calculus BC A.P. examination or who place highly on the mathematics placement examination will now be invited to take MATH 18300 Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences, along with an invitation to take either Honors Calculus I or Calculus II. Previously, students interested in taking MATH 18300 in autumn quarter of their first year were required to take the Higher-Level Mathematics Placement Exam, which will still be offered for students interested in higher-level mathematics courses. Students are now able to fulfill their core mathematics requirement with Introduction to Data Science I-II.

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UChicago Maya Exemplifies Experimentation in Art

By ISAAC KRAKOWKA Senior News Reporter UChicago Maya’s two performances this year expressed a unique fusion of genres that accentuated many characteristics of different genres of dance. Under normal circumstances, the group would have been busy performing Haiku: Inside Out this past weekend. Instead, members of Maya have been keeping themselves occupied with weekly workshops, conditioning, and bonding events over Zoom.

According to graduating codirectors Alex Vangelatos and Isabella Lee, Maya derives its name from the Sanskrit translation for “illusion” and was initially an Indian fusion dance group. Maya has since developed a contemporary genre of dance that draws from styles of ballet, jazz, modern, and hip-hop, combining different techniques and methods.

“A lot of the experimentation comes from seeing what people do and what they bring to [Maya] and just playing off of that,” said Vangelatos. “That’s been one of my favorite things about Maya.

It’s very different than what I trained in growing up. I’ve learned new things and tried new things because of the people I dance with.”

The two codirectors see Maya as an escape from academic stress and find their mental health improved by rehearsal. “It gives me something else to work towards that doesn’t have to be super validated by the rest of the world. It’s not money-making, there are no grades at the end—it’s just purely our personal creative expression,” said Lee. This year, Maya held their winter show, Crossroads, in January and followed it with a lively performance at MODA in February. *Crossroads* was intended so both the dancers and audience could interpret its significance. “The message was [about]…finding yourself at a point where you feel stuck doing the same thing, feel stagnant, or just recognize that you want to try something different or want a change, then exploring what goes on when you try to make a big change in your life,” Vangelatos said.

“One thing we tried to do differently

this year that we haven’t done in the past is have this more linear narrative going on,” Lee said. “[It is] the process of coming to a crossroads, or conflict, and then your journey towards finding a resolution or being okay with that crossroads.” Choreographers chose a part of the show’s storyline to convey through their piece.

“Our winter show gives us more of a space to create a narrative. We can play with stories and how we want to convey them on a stage where everyone in the audience is viewing the same perspective,” Vangelatos said.

At their MODA show, Maya faced the challenge of catering to a larger and rowdier audience. The resultant performance was engineered for the catwalk and sprinkled with more conventional “cool to look at” moves.

“With MODA, it’s [more of ] an interaction with the audience, and as we’re choreographing, everything we’re thinking about, like the moves and how we’re spacing ourselves out, is to make sure that the audience has fun and that they’re able to see someone dancing,”

GOOD QUESTION

By CHRIS JONES

Across 1. Guitar attachment 6. Cyrillic letter 9. First man 13. Snap 14. “Smile!”

16. Gyro cheeses 17. Emotional highs 18. A good question to ask yourself 20. Animal house 21. “Just ___!”

22. Largest nonocean biome 25. Ponzi schemer Bernie 28. Valuable props. in Monopoly 30.Marxist

Trotsky 31. 55th St. restaurant 32. Particle with a charm quark and antiquark 34. Drunkard 35. Sagan of UChicago 37. Stepped (on) 39. Ideology: suffix 42. Make fun of 44. Rebuke 48. Trendy 50. Swindle, politically incorrectly 51. Plath who wrote “Daddy” 52. Many-headed serpent 54. Number one

56. Shady tree 57. Second part of the question 61. At the core 63. Love, as God of man and man of God 65. One who rides shotgun 66. Kingly 67. Starting bet in poker 68. Anonymous Internet browser for the dark web 69. Tournament ranks Down 1. Coppertone num.

2. “Cloud Gate”, colloquially 3. Jefferson Me-

morial feature 4. “Star Wars” walker

5. Swanky 6. Ones giving a hand

7. “Do as I say, not as I do” speaker 8. Heartthrob?

9. Kind of view 10. Goddesses 11. “Baked ___

Vangelatos said.

The spring show, *Haiku: Inside Out*, was unlike either *Crossroads* or MODA. Designed to be performed on a stage surrounded by the audience, Maya’s *Haiku* is an experimental performance that challenges its choreographers and dancers to create a show without a theme or narrative, according to Lee. Haiku also allowed new members to choreograph with less pressure. “There’s more freedom to what you can do,” Vangelatos said.

“It’s fun that way—you get to experiment more.”

In their final quarter of the year, Vangelatos, Lee, and the rest of Maya are continuing to host workshops and participate in dance council, which Vangelatos described as an “umbrella organization that organizes anything related to any of the dance RSOs. [It] is keeping track of workshops that different dance groups are doing and opening up to anybody in the dance community that wants to participate.” Three of this quarter’s Maya workshops are open to anybody who may want to join. cake” 12. 30 days in Spain?

14. Uses a needle 15. Party thrower 19. Buffoon 20. Runs a Dungeons and Dragons game 23. Gunk 24. Farm animal?

26. “Huh. Got it”, online 27. Like 41D 29. Frat. counterpart 32. Thing to do at the old folks’ home 33. Intrusive 36. Brutal structure?

38. MCCC halved 39. “___ bin ein Berliner” 40. Like a wallflower

41. Chicago’s place 43. Man’s name that contains the letters CREEP 45. Permitted to imbibe 46. Frog’s spot 47. Big blocker 49. Stick in a stick game 51. Ref. book abbr. for generic objects 53. What a Brit sits on 55. Trick suffix 58. ___ Chemical Laboratory 59. Corn units 60. S-shaped curve 61. Popular hoppy beer 62. Divide-by-0 result, to a computer 64. Golfer Ernie

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Making Sure the 2020 Census Counts Though operations have changed in response to COVID-19, the need for outreach remains.

By ALEXIS FLORENCE Grey City Reporter

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.

This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

These words—first uttered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—were placed at the top of the agenda for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Chicago Westside Branch’s 2020 Census meeting. On a cold Monday night in late February, at the time five weeks before National Census Day, around 20 outreach workers gathered in the Austin neighborhood on the far Westside of Chicago to discuss their outreach strategy for the then-upcoming national census.

The group is one of many across the city working to ensure a fair and accurate population count in the current 2020 census, a process that has since become more complicated as precautions have been implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Governments throughout Illinois are funneling millions of dollars into “Get Out the Count” initiatives to encourage community members to participate in the census and prevent another census undercount like that in Chicago during the 2010 census.

Federal funding and democratic representation are on the line in this decennial population count. As the first round of census response forms and postcards urging people to fill out the census remotely are being sent to homes across the country, groups around Chicago are hoping their work will make a positive difference in the count.

Learning from the mistakes of the past At 66 percent, the city of Chicago’s

self-response rate was among the lowest in the entire country during the 2010 census; comparatively the statewide self-response rate was 76 percent, according to the United States Census Bureau.

Concerns about the 2010 census in Chicago surfaced even while it was still ongoing; then–U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said in a press release in March of that year that the Bureau was “concerned about the relatively low response from Chicago. Every household that fails to send back their census form by mail must be visited by a census taker starting in May—at a significant taxpayer cost.”

Low self-response rates lead to an undercount of the city’s population and census enumerators are then tasked with conducting an in-person survey to households that have not self-reported. The U.S. Census Bureau reported an undercount estimate of 59,800 Illinoisians in 2010.

To prevent another undercount, the city is emphasizing community outreach with what are known as hard-to-count (HTC) populations. Nubia Willman, Director of the Office of New Americans in the Chicago Mayor’s office, explained this strategy in an interview with The Maroon.

“From the beginning, the focus has been on the hard-to-count populations… there was a focus and an intent to make sure that those groups are engaged with, in ways that perhaps they haven’t been in the past,” Willman said.

HTC populations are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as populations “for whom a real or perceived barrier exists to full and representative inclusion in the data collection process.”

Examples of HTC populations in the city of Chicago include people living in low-income neighborhoods, people experiencing homelessness, people in immi-

grant communities, and children under the age of five, Willman said.

According to the Census 2020 HTC Map created by researchers at the City University of New York (CUNY) Mapping Service at the CUNY Graduate Center, Hyde Park is not considered an HTC area, but most of the surrounding neighborhoods are. Census tracts throughout Washington Park, Woodlawn, South Shore, and Kenwood have all been identified as HTC. In Illinois Congressional District 1, which includes the University of Chicago’s campus, 31 percent of the population live in HTC areas.

These populations have a low self-response rate, meaning that less people self-report the members of the household through the paper census form. Under normal circumstances, this would oblige the Census Bureau to spend more money sending census enumerators directly to households across the city for the count.

However, in response to social-distancing protocols encouraged by the Center for Disease Control, the Census Bureau announced it will be suspending the use of in-person enumerators except for in remote parts of northern Maine and southeast Alaska where the surveys will be conducted from a distance of six feet to avoid the potential for infection.

This year, Willman explained, there are new ways to respond to the census that will be even more crucial for an accurate count in light of the COVID-19 pandemic: residents will have the option to fill the census out online, via a phone call, or via the traditional paper form.

The U.S. Census Bureau touts the online option as safe, environmentally friendly, and more economical than the traditional paper response forms, as it will allow the data to be more efficiently uploaded to the bureau’s digital databases. However, while Willman acknowledges

the benefits of the online response, she is wary about it being an equitable option for all Chicagoans.

“We re aware that is the preference. We are also aware there is a digital divide in the city,” Willman said.

Willman went on to explain that the city had planned to ensure computers are available in public libraries throughout the city so that residents could have a secure, reliable internet connection to fill out the census; however, as of now that option is no longer available since public libraries are closed due to Governor JB Pritzker’s stay-at-home order.

When it comes to online response, Anita Benerji of Forefront, an Illinois-based organization that helps connect grant-makers with non-profits and that has been hired by the Illinois Count Me in 2020 initiative, says there is still a trust issue when it comes to online responses.

“The biggest hurdle that folks are experiencing right now is that there are communities that are afraid of sharing personal household data online,” Benerji said. “It’s just a reality.”

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the U.S. Census Bureau has announced an extension to the self-response deadline that will allow households to respond by any method until August 14th. Paper questionnaires were sent out on April 8th and the bureau announced plans to adjust their call center operations that have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. In response to residents experiencing longer wait times to fill out the form via phone call, the bureau is reinstating a callback option. People can leave a message with the bureau and wait to be called back by a call center agent in order to complete the form.

However, another possible barrier to an accurate count in Chicago is misinformation about census questions, especialCONTINUED ON PG. 11

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“People, these here in the hard-to-count areas, their mind is on day-to-day living....They are not thinking about the damn form” CONTINUED FROM PG. 10

ly the proposed but ultimately abandoned citizenship question.

According to Willman, the possibility of a question concerning citizenship was frightening to immigrant communities across Chicago. Now, the city’s Office of New Americans is working with local community groups to mitigate the fears sparked by the proposed citizenship question.

“There is still overwhelming concern,” Willman said. “The people on the ground, who are trusted, are the ones who have been tasked to say ‘no, it’s not a question’…

We’re doing our best to mitigate that damage.”

Community Outreach as a Solution In order to create more faith in the online response option and to dispel misinformation about the 2020 census, the state, county, and city governments have created outreach grant programs to provide local organizations with money to educate residents about and promote self response in the 2020 census.

Benerji and Willman explained that the grant programs aim to work with trusted community voices to implement educational programming around the census.

“It is imperative that when you’re thinking about reaching out to various HTC populations that your trusted leaders are very much the ones that are sharing those messages,” Benerji said.

As a facilitator of the state grantee programs, Forefront, according to Benerji, will have grantees, “connecting on a monthly basis to share challenges, best practices, and to make sure that they are armed with the resources that are necessary to do this work.”

The NAACP Chicago Westside Branch was one of the recipients of the IL Count Me In 2020 Get Out the Count (GOTC) grants that were announced in April of 2019.

As a GOTC grantee the Westside NAACP, under the direction of their Census Coordinator Phyllis Logan, is responsible for census education and engagement with members of their communities.

Willman explained that the various outreach groups are expected to incorporate census outreach into the work they already do. For example, if a community organization has a monthly meeting, they are encouraged to pass out flyers with important dates about the upcoming census.

After receiving the grant the Westside NAACP had outreach workers attend community events to directly talk with people about the count.

Though the intention was to perform outreach work in-person, in response to social-distancing protocols, organizations will be readjusting their outreach efforts.

The IL Count Me In 2020 website explains that these organizations will have to, “consider digital communications strategies, phone banking, or other outreach during the virus pandemic.”

For the Westside NAACP President Karl Brinson, the census outreach is consistent with their overall mission to bring more power to Chicago’s black population.

“The work that we’re doing is the empowerment of our community and black people in general, so this is an extension of what our work is about. It just helps level the playing field,” Brinson said. “We are people on the ground, we’re the boots on the ground who are trying to…get our folks engaged in this process and make sure people count us. We want equity.”

Kevin Spears, a Westside resident and census outreach worker, said he joined in the efforts to prevent another undercount and to ensure that communities across the city receive proper funding.

“We gotta think about the people who aren’t as blessed so it’s really about making sure we get the funding to more of the poverty-stricken communities,” Spears said.

“I don’t want the same thing to happen because so many people were not counted… losing that [funding] is a big deal to me.”

Spears and Alex Lyons, another outreach worker, said that in their experiences, people in the Austin neighborhood and other Westside communities are often distrustful of the government, are uninformed about the census, or do not believe funding resulting from the census will reach their community.

“People, these here in the hard-tocount areas, their mind is on day-to-day

living, getting to work, taking the kid to school, helping the kid get something to eat,” Lyons said. “They are not thinking about the damn form.”

Lyons also said he is pleased to see city, county, and state governmental bodies providing outreach funding to local organizations, as he believes it to be the most effective strategy in spreading census information.

“The best thing they can do is give us the supplies and funds that we need to do that leg work because we know where people are, we know where events are, they don’t,” Lyons said. “We can go in some areas that the city and government people just cannot go.”

“There is way too much to lose if we don’t take this seriously.”

One of the largest concerns of an undercount is a loss of federal funding. According to Willman every resident who is not counted could mean a loss of federal dollars allocated towards programs and services that impact everyday life in Chicago.

“There is way too much to lose if we don’t take this seriously,” Willman said.

“It impacts us daily in the trains we take, the schools we go to, [and] the libraries we visit.”

A report published by the Chicago Urban League in May of last year found that in fiscal year 2016, “under the 55 largest federal programs, nearly $35 billion was disbursed to the state of Illinois based on 2010 census data.” The billions of dollars tied to census data in Illinois are used for programs such as Medicaid, student loan programs, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and highway construction.

Willman also stressed that college students need to be counted in the city where they go to school. For students who live in university housing at any institution, the school acts as a group reporter and will count students in a group count. Willman stresses that college students who live off campus should fill out the census in the city in which they go to school.

“We want you included here,” Willman said, explaining that since college students use programs and services provided by the

city, such as public transportation, they should be counted in the city in which they live and attend school.

The U.S. Census Bureau has further emphasized the need for college students to be counted where they attend school in an online announcement. Colleges will continue to count students registered in university housing. Even though students may currently be living somewhere else due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the bureau still wants them counted in their place of residence during the school year.

“Even if they are home on census day, April 1, they should be counted according to the residence criteria which states they should be counted where they live and sleep most of the time,” the Bureau said in a press release.

Benerji further explained that insufficient state funding in Illinois makes federal funding all the more imperative.

“In a state that is perennially broke,” Benerji said, “we need to rely on our federal dollars for those various social service programs that residents all across the state rely on.”

Willman went on to explain that Illinois is at risk of losing one, or even two, federal congressional representatives due to a drop in population—a risk Willman believes will be increased if there is an undercount of the population.

“It lessens the voice we have on the table when it comes to federal issues,” Willman said. “We want to have as accurate of a count as possible to make sure we don’t lose any more political voice on the federal level.”

For Alex Lyons, after the failures of the 2010 census, the upcoming count is imperative to his community with funding and representation among the reasons why he participates as an outreach worker, encouraging others to get involved.

“10 years later, the need is more severe to have a greater output as far as participation for residents,” Lyons said. “I am a Westsider, so it’s a need. Sometimes when you want to see change you need to get involved. You can’t sit on the sideline.”

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VIEWPOINTS

You Should Give the University’s Online Game a Chance Fourcast Lab’s new game is engaging the UChicago community from afar

By PETER FORBERG As social distancing measures become increasingly stringent around the globe, the University has been scrambling to transport in-person activities to digital interfaces. Academic advisers are plugging in webcams, and Career Advancement is loading in more remote work positions every day. Some activities previously unimaginable online are being digitized at alarming speeds, such as intramural sports turning to e-sports or UChicago Arts hosting online performances

and lectures. Meanwhile, some activities remain difficult to upload, including the basic social functions of being at a university. RSOs don’t always have the infrastructure, ability, or resources to move into the digital space, producing a gap where routine socialization and community affiliation used to be.

In the past 24 hours, I have had 14 discrete Zoom calls—four for classes, one for a seminar, three for academic meetings, two for work meetings, and four with family and friends.

While it brings me great joy to see the faces of my friends and

colleagues, after so many hours staring at a screen, that interactive social gap remains. But, in keeping with the University’s new tradition of online games, students and faculty have teamed up to fill that gap with a massive multiplayer social and artistic experiment.

Enter A Labyrinth. On April 6, every student and alumnus at the University received an email from Dean Jay Ellison alerting them of an invitation to play a game. This invitation, similar to ones received by incoming Classes of 2021 and 2023, was initially a code, skillfully broken by teams of hundreds of students working together in various groupchats. Their work has revealed the next step in the game: a Slack workspace and a team sign-up. The initial email, it seems, was just a teaser

for more puzzle-oriented students. The real game hasn’t even begun, and this next step in the experience claims to have something for everybody, going beyond codes and ciphers. While communication from Fourcast Lab, the alleged designers of this game, has been somewhat indecipherable up until this point, it has now become clear what this project is: the University’s attempt to reduce the social distance through games, puzzles, quests, art, and performances. Now that commonplace digital platforms for socializing are hitting limits on what they can provide for friends spread across the world, Fourcast Lab is trying something new, looking for different ways to keep students, staff, and alums connected to the school. As for me, another equally obscure email

invited me to work on the game, a process I’m still figuring out.

As a student who has worked with the designers of A Labyrinth on prior projects and spent the bulk of my college career studying online sociation, I could provide a few reasoned, academic motivations for you to join the game. There’s the argument that you can participate in a mass social experiment, a test of our community’s ability to connect, create, and explore despite the distances between us. I could argue from the point of view of a disgruntled social sciences researcher, who has been met with the general attitude from certain superiors that “the digital social world isn’t worth studying,” pleading with you to help me prove to them that it certainly is. I could CONTINUED ON PG. 13

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“It’ ll motivate us to connect in a new, strange way, rather than just isolate ourselves to our Zoom classes and bedrooms.”

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suggest that UChicago’s budding tradition of massive online games separates us from our peer institutions, and that it will be games like these that let us become frontrunners in academia’s attempts to interrogate digital tools. Further, mass participation from students can encourage the University to take more chances on experimental experiences such as these. Of course, I could (and have) made these arguments, but I can take

a different stance.

I can claim that there is something fundamentally missing from my life this past week.

I haven’t seen another physical living human being since I said goodbye to my paramedic buddy before he decided to volunteer at the new McCormick field hospital downtown. Visiting him in the Chicago suburbs, I stood on the street while he stood on his front porch, both of us shouting out our concerns for each other, not knowing when we’d be able

to see one another again. He and I, despite embarking on wildly different trajectories since high school, have kept in contact by playing games, recording short films for each other, and writing scripts for movies we’ll never make. A Labyrinth wants to be a lot of things: It wants to stand in for Scav, it wants to stand in for RSOs, it wants to stand in for seeing people on the quad.

It will surely fail in every single one of these goals. But the creators of the game are trying

to make something different, to allow us to connect in a new, strange way. More than that, it’ll motivate us to connect in a new, strange way, rather than just isolate ourselves to our Zoom classes and bedrooms. A Labyrinth, and experiences like it, cannot replace our campus life, but it can allow us to create a different type of community together—or at least try—in light of the unfamiliar world we have found ourselves in.

These digital connections

won’t improve without feedback and risks. Unlike other digital games, A Labyrinth is made with the players, allowing designers to constantly respond to the community’s feedback.

So, I hope you’re willing to take a chance on A Labyrinth, to improve it, to appreciate it, to push it to its limits, and to help our school find a community online while we wait for this time in our lives to end. Find a distraction, try something new, discover something unexpected.

Social Isolation: Unplugged 2020 Reconnecting with yourself in quarantine

By ELIZABETH WINKLER Your screen time was up 26% last week for an average of 5 hours, 45 minutes a day.

That was the week of March 15–22, 2020. On the 13th, remote finals took the place of in-person exams. On the 17th, dining halls became takeout only and a Booth student tested positive for coronavirus. Piles of discarded snacks, clothes, room accessories, a floor lamp, and someone’s human-sized stuffed teddy bear lined one wall of my house lounge.

By the 18th, I was one of two people left on my floor.

In the shock of finding myself so suddenly alone, I did what has become second nature to many of us: I turned to my phone. For almost six hours a day. For a whole week. As someone who tries to limit their screen time, sharing that week’s report makes me very self-conscious—am I so addicted to my phone that I’ve become incapable of being by myself?

Over the past few weeks of quarantine, I’ve realized again something that college’s bustle

makes it easy to forget: being comfortable with being alone is incredibly fulfilling. While using our phones and social media to reach out to physically distant friends and family is important, social isolation gives us time to focus on our inner lives in a way that we usually might not, and we should take advantage of this opportunity to get to know ourselves better—our post-quarantine selves will thank us.

We’ve all read articles about Gen Z’s dependence on technology, and, in our non-coronavirus lives, many of us limit the time we spend on devices to mitigate negative repercussions on our mental health—“unplugging” detoxes, deleting certain apps periodically, or trying to spend only a certain amount of time per day on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are all ways to keep from focusing too much on the way others present their lives on social media.

In this time of social distance and quarantine, though, “unplugging” means losing all contact with the day-to-day lives of those

outside your home, and such isolation can be as mentally challenging as any of social media’s usual side effects. Phones, somewhat paradoxically, can become tools for positive mental health, and it would be easy to take this as permission to use our devices indiscriminately.

As my screen time report shows, the first days of quarantine saw me do exactly that.

Perhaps you also spent hours on Zoom, Instagram, and Facebook trying to keep up with the rapid changes in your community and in the lives of your physically distant friends and family. And maybe you have found, as I have, that while talking to people on the phone and over Zoom brings you almost the same comfort as actual, physical conversations, too much time on social media—even when it’s used to uplift and inspire—leaves you feeling strangely unfulfilled.

I wrote the first draft of this article with pen and paper because I realized that as important as it is for me to check in on my friends and family with the help

of my phone, it is equally important for me to continue limiting the amount of time I spend on devices. Like many of you, I am taking advantage of the unique opportunity this quarantine offers: consciously slowing down and living in the moment.

Instead of scrolling mindlessly through Facebook, we read.

Embroidery, knitting, and crochet replace a TV show, drawing pushes Snapchat to the curb, and people who don’t usually consider themselves “crafty” or “artistic” have been trying their hand at collage or baking or interior decorating. (And is it just me, or did everyone suddenly learn how to make sourdough bread?)

As I’ve started setting limits on my social media use again, I’ve also started writing more. An embroidered garden has blossomed from the back pocket of my favorite pair of jean shorts, I do the crossword every day with friends (3 p.m. Zoom, rain or shine), and take more joy in everyday things of beauty—small children playing hide and seek in their yard as I run past, a cat sitting in the

middle of a carpet of bluebells, the sudden burst of spring flowers in Hyde Park, and the fact that the construction workers outside my window have almost the exact same Spotify playlist I do. Taking the time to return to these very basic activities that I love has brought me a lovely feeling of peace, and I know the same is true of others who have been taking more time away from their devices.

In social isolation most of us are aching for connection, and I think we can all benefit from starting that process by reconnecting with ourselves. Phones and social media can be valuable tools for maintaining friendships and checking in on loved ones, but we will get the most out of these check-ins if we first take the time to center ourselves and to be comfortable being alone. We have a unique and valuable opportunity to focus inward, to be creative, to read, write, draw, to get to know our roommates or families better, and to do things we “don’t have time for” in our day-to-day lives.

Let’s take advantage of it.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — APRIL 15, 2020

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ARTS Love is Blind is Blind

By LEXI FRANCISZKOWICZ Arts Reporter Under quarantine, Netflix’s Love Is Blind is an easy watch. Fast-paced, digestible, and dramatic, it is founded on an intriguing conceit—can couples create an emotional connection that compels them to propose in a matter of days, without ever seeing their future fiancées?

The first few episodes follow the contestants as they speed-date in separate “pods,” where they converse without seeing each other. By episode three, six couples have succeeded in finding a match, proposing, and moving to their pre-honeymoon vacation in Mexico, where they enjoy boat rides and fancy dinners—all paid for by the show. Is love really blind? The show tests this by

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seeing whether the couples stay together after their time in the pods and the “honeymoon” period. Contestants must move back to “normal” life, where they grapple with the challenges of the real world and the opinions of their friends and family, before deciding if they go through with marriage in the final episode of the season.

The show positions itself in opposition to online dating, which is deemed shallow and obsessed with physical appearance, race, age, and status. Yet, while the show tries to transcend categorical judgments of people, its roots in conventional notions of love and happiness undermine the very core of what it asks.

It is obvious that Love Is Blind is contingent on social categories, as differences between couples are presented

as potential obstacles to their relationships. What will family, friends, and the world at large have to say about Lauren and Cameron’s interracial relationship, or Mark and Jess’s 10-year age difference? Will Carlton’s sexuality or Amber’s shaky finances be the downfall of their respective relationships?

What is most interesting is how the show suggests love transcends social categories—through “happy objects” such as heterosexual intimacy and marriage, in the words of gender theorist Sarah Ahmed. In Love Is Blind, the ultimate proof that love is blind is marrying someone not because of beauty, body size, race, or age, but for their personality, despite judgmental looks from people in the “real world.” And yet, for a show purportedly unconcerned with appearance, Love Is Blind pres-

ents a cast of conventionally beautiful, able-bodied, and cisgender people: that is, the people deemed most societally acceptable for heterosexual marriage and children. It’s a lot like Beauty and the Beast—it doesn’t matter what they look like, because they’re all hot anyway.

Thus, Love Is Blind appears to be less of a subversion of modern-day dating than it is a return to a prescribed search for love and happiness, a real-life opportunity for the vague “happily ever after” ending we often encounter in Disney films. Fairy-tale references crop up throughout the show—in episode one, one man states, “Every girl grows up waiting for their Prince Charming.”

Contestants make continual comments about “feeling like [they] are in a fairy tale” when on their pre-honeymoon in Mexico or trying on wedding dresses. Both men and women gush about weddings as something girls grow up dreaming of. This fixation on conventional gender dynamics, heterosexuality, and marriage connotes success on the show, and like every Disney film, the happiest stories on Love Is Blind end with “I do.”

It could be wrong to conclude all contestants are on Love Is Blind looking for their fairy-tale happy ending. After all, like any reality TV show, the promise of screen time offers the potential for fame, money, TV, and brand deals. Part of the show’s allure is to watch the episodes play out and figure out why certain couples stay on the show—are they deluding themselves into thinking that they’ve met their true love? Or is it all for show so they can make it to the last episode? This adds to the superficiality of the show’s premises: Even though Love is Blind attempts to distinguish itself by looking beyond appearances, it continues to feed into the need for recognition and acceptance within cultural norms. It’s entertaining, amusing, and absurd, but not unlike many other reality TV shows in presenting conventional notions of love and happiness.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — APRIL 15, 2020

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Tiger King: Why Are We Drawn to Awful People on Screen?

By WAHID AL MAMUN Arts Reporter Three days into my two-week quarantine back home in Singapore, I finally succumbed to watching Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness because the rest of the world had already done so. This is a true-crime documentary that would otherwise have escaped my radar, yet after a seven-hour binge I found myself embroiled in deep, bizarrely passionate arguments about the show with my friends. It seems radically improbable that I would find myself so invested in a show about a tiger park in Oklahoma, but then again Tiger King is a radically improbable show. You couldn’t write its plot even if you really tried—a gay, polygamous, sequined big cat park owner in Oklahoma is accused of plotting the murder of an animal rights activist. Not one of the main characters is remotely likable or good by any stretch of the imagination—not the eccentric protagonist Joseph “Joe Exotic” Maldonado-Passage (’80s mullet and all), not the leopard-print donning animal rights activist Carole Baskin, not the comically villainous millionaire investor Jeff Lowe. Every turn in the show teems with blackmail and skullduggery of the highest order, yet I couldn’t begin to care about the ethics of it all.

I am not alone. There is something to be said about how we are drawn to watching horrible people on television. Recently, Netflix has been trying to corner this market and has turned in quite a pretty dollar—earlier this year, the hit reality TV show Love Is Blind was replete with characters who were deeply manipulative and emotionally abusive. In 2018, Wild Wild Country captivated the country with its depiction of the Rajneeshpuram cult in Oregon. And who can forget the numerous thirst posts for an actual convicted serial killer, after The Ted Bundy Tapes came out early last year?

Even by these lofty standards, Tiger King eclipses anything and everything that precedes it in terms of cultural impact and the comic banality of its horribleness.

There is no time for the camera to zero in on one thing—it jumps and supercuts from abusive, drug-addled relationships to questions of underpaid and highly dangerous labor, an actual sex cult, a suspected murder for inheritance money…the list goes

on, never lingering too long on any moral quandary. No matter what directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin assert about taking an objective deep-dive into the big cat trade in America, we are presented instead with evil as commercialized spectacle. And it’s worked—there are reports that Kate McKinnon will star in a dramatized remake of the show, and quarantined Hollywood actors have been clamoring on the Twitterverse to be cast as Joe Exotic.

I truly struggle to find one single compelling reason for the show’s present status as a cultural phenomenon. Perhaps there is something timely about watching Tiger King in 2020—something quite supersized and all-American in the ridiculousness that pervades the show. Is it really improbable, for instance, that Joe Exotic runs for political office halfway into the series? After all, he wouldn’t be the first reality TV star to assume public office. One of my favorite moments in the whole show comes at the gift shop of the big cat park, where Joe continually replays a three-second segment of his campaign video, in which he sits resplendent on a throne with a tiger at his feet. At once a cult hero and a man reduced to pathetic self-worship, Joe’s moments of self-absorption and megalomania are comprehensible and even sympathetic when contextualized against the current president of the United States.

However, the true allure of Tiger King is rooted in its amnesiac, conservative escapism. In a time where our received understandings of health care and the economy are failing us dramatically, the show kids

us to believe that we don’t have it quite as bad as what went down in Oklahoma over all these tigers. There is almost something shamefully seductive about the way Goode and Chaiklin angle their camera with disdain toward the stereotypical redneck proudly embodied by Joe Exotic. The opioid epidemic, the question of post-parole reintegration, the intersections between LGBTQ+ identity and mental health in rural America—all are very real issues experienced by very real people on the show, yet Tiger King merely uses these issues as backdrop for the manufactured drama the producers capitalize on. In this universe, the redneck gay husband with the “meth teeth” is the punchline, not the problem.

We are drawn to horrible people on screen because they are portrayed as too bad to be true, as caricatures too wildly improbable to be coterminous in our own horrible reality.

Does that make us complicit as unethical consumers? That’s a hard question to answer fully—there is definitely value in escapism in these troubled times, after all.

Better to think about the tiger men than the steeply rising rates of infection. Either way, however, the show’s attempt at presenting a detached reality separate from ours is highly tenuous. How do we make sense, for instance, of the fact that Joe Exotic is reportedly in quarantine because of the coronavirus? Or that, in the middle of a press conference held largely about the management of the virus, a reporter asked President Donald Trump whether he would consider giving Joe Exotic a

presidential pardon? Indeed, when reality meshes into hyperreality, the biggest losers are the tigers themselves—like its characters, the narrative, so flimsily bookended at the start and the end of the series by insipid appeals to animal conservation, loses sight of it altogether. It takes the imprisonment of Joe Exotic for the viewer to realize that the tigers have been imprisoned throughout the series. Perhaps that is the biggest tragedy of the show.

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SPORTS

Team Bonding Turns Virtual

By MIRANDA BURT Sports Reporter

As with the rest of campus, the University of Chicago’s athletic fields will look a little different this spring. COVID-19 led to the abrupt cancellation of UChicago’s softball, baseball, tennis, track and field, and lacrosse seasons this spring. While other sports (swim and dive, indoor track and field, and wrestling) competed in the vast majority of their seasons, top athletes had

their chance at national titles taken away.

Furthermore, other sports on campus lose out on off-season practices, team lifts, and bonding time. I reached out to the baseball, softball, and women’s basketball teams to see how they all are staying connected, training, and making the best out of the current situation.

Jake Fauske, a third-year catcher, spoke of the baseball team’s season ending after a red hot 5–1 start. “We definitely had our share of tears and hugs before everyone had to leave campus, and the seniors have

The women’s soccer team on a Zoom team meeting. COURTESY OF UCHICAGOWSOCCER

done a great job of making sure they passed on any last-minute wisdom in any way they could…. Most importantly though, it’s just been about checking on guys and making sure no one feels alone and that they have something other than baseball to look forward to.” The softball team felt similarly after their season was cut short. Many players are using phone calls and FaceTime to keep in touch. Additionally, they are getting creative with their content on their social media platforms. Second-year outfielder Sam Lauro said the team has posted videos “passing toilet paper around the country in creative ways” and is “working on making a full house video.” Additionally, the team “had a ‘picture’ day where everyone submitted photos and some people edited their photos to appear as if they were in Henry Crown.” As for the women’s basketball team, they are staying in touch through Zoom, and are currently conducting their individual post-season meetings remotely.

Just because team workouts have ceased, these athletes have not stopped finding ways to stay fit. Fauske spoke of baseball’s approach, saying that “several of [the team leaders] have come up with

workouts to do consistently to make sure we’re holding each other accountable in this extended off season.” The softball team is working out at home, using whatever odds and ends they have to make sure that they stay in shape. Women’s basketball coach Carissa Sain has ensured that the team continues to stay in shape while forging team comradery. First-year Ashley Gao spoke of the new workout format, saying, “Our coach has also given us a ‘workout challenge,’ which entails doing a quick circuit a couple times a week, partnering with at least one other teammate over FaceTime. Even though our team is unable to be together at this time and workouts have been different than usual, we are using our creativity and drive to improve this off season to make the best out of this spring quarter!”

The fields may be empty, but UChicago athletes are still looking to make the best of this spring quarter. They are all still who they are on campus: hardworking individuals who care about their teammates, working to be the best they can be. We look forward to seeing all of them back on campus in Maroon jerseys whenever possible.

At Home Training Tips: A Little Sweat Goes a Long Way

By ALISON GILL Sports Editor

Without access to a gym, many athletes and fitness freaks have been forced to get creative in order to stay on track with workouts. You may have seen videos on social media of people doing bench presses with their couch—perhaps slightly intimidating and overboard for those just looking to break a sweat.

Each week we will publish an At-Home Training Tip. If you have any you’d like to share, feel free to message the author, and we can seek to publish them in a future issue.

Use workout time as personal time.

We are stuck inside, cramped in houses or apartments with friends and family.

We all need a little bit of time to ourselves, and that has been difficult to

find. If you’re in need of a break or an escape, go workout! Carve out some time in your schedule between online classes and household obligations to fit in lifting, running, or whatever workout you prefer. If you need some academic convincing, exercising releases chemical neurotransmitters called endorphins, which interact with cell receptors in the brain to reduce pain and control emotions. This endorphin boost—often referred to as a “runner’s high”—can result in the alleviation of bodily discomfort and stress relief. All of us are struggling with the uncertainty surrounding internships, health and safety, and the general state of the world, but working out may just provide a natural and healthy brief respite from this stress. So the next time you might be feeling overwhelmed, consider exercising.

The cross country team has taken to daily Coreintine ab-workout sessions. EMMA DYER