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APRIL 18, 2024 FIFTH WEEK VOL. 136, ISSUE 14

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GSU-UE Members Ratify First-Ever Contract With University

By GABRIEL KRAEMER | Senior News Reporter Between March 25 and 28, members of Graduate Students United–United Electrical (GSU-UE) voted to ratify the union’s first-ever contract with the University.

Ninety percent of GSU-UE members participated in the vote, with 97 percent voting in support, according to the union’s website. The newly ratified contract came into force on March 28 immediately after the vote and is tentatively set to be effective until March 2027.

“We’re really proud,” Renée Fonseca, a human genetics Ph.D. student who served as the elected bargaining committee representative for the Biological Sciences Division, said in an interview with the Maroon. “This has been a really long process getting to this point, with hundreds of organizers involved. It’s really great

that our membership turned out and they have agreed to have this contract for the next few years to cover us and improve our working conditions.”

GSU-UE represents about 3,100 UChicago graduate students who are employed in research or teaching positions, 1,600 of whom were eligible voters. The University agreed to negotiate with GSU-UE last year after more than 90 percent of eligible members voted to unionize, the second successful vote in six years. Contract negotiations began in May 2023 and lasted until March 8, 2024, when the union announced a tentative agreement with the University.

“This agreement is the result of strong partnership and collaboration with GSUUE, and we appreciate their continued engagement,” Jason Merchant, the vice

Members of GSU-UE at a rally on the quad in November. nathaniel rodwell-simon. provost for academic appointments and graduate education, wrote in an email to University employees and graduate students on Friday. “We are committed to supporting the success of all graduate students at the University, and to working

with union representatives and university units to ensure a smooth implementation of the agreement moving forward.”

The contract guarantees Ph.D. students a minimum stipend of $41,000 per year as CONTINUED ON PG. 2

Students Sue Cook County Sheriff, Alleging First Amendment Violations

By GABRIEL KRAEMER | Senior News Reporter UChicago fourth-years Ethan Ostrow and Harley Pomper filed a lawsuit in federal court on March 24 against Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. The suit alleges that the sheriff violated the students’ First Amendment rights by retaliating after they criticized the Cook County Jail’s anti-paper policies.

Last year, Ostrow and Pomper were part of the Institute of Politics (IOP)’s Bridge program, in which students lead creative writing workshops for people incarcerated in the Cook County Jail.

The lawsuit alleges that the sheriff, who oversees the county Department of Corrections, revoked their security clearances, preventing them from returning to the program this academic year after they wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times criticizing the jail’s policy restricting the use of paper.

“The First Amendment forbids government officials from punishing people for their speech,” Brad Thomson, an attorney representing Ostrow and Pomper, said in a press release announcing

NEWS: Professors Monika Nalepa and Andrew Eggers to Join Editorial Board of the American Political Science Review

VIEWPOINTS: A Questionable Conflict of Interest

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the lawsuit. “Sheriff Dart had my clients banned from volunteering at the jail simply because he disagreed with their viewpoint. Sheriff Dart’s actions are a flagrant violation of the Constitution, raising serious concerns about whether he is respecting the constitutional rights of the people he is incarcerating at Cook County Jail.”

Matt Walberg, Dart’s communications director, referred the Maroon to a statement the sheriff’s office gave to the Hyde Park Herald in January. The statement said Ostrow and Pomper’s op-ed “amounted to recklessly misleading those in custody in a way that threatened safe-

ty in a clear effort to see their name in a paper instead of understanding a complicated issue.”

“While the Sheriff’s Office cannot comment further due to this pending litigation, we strongly deny the students’ allegations and look forward to a full presentation of the facts in court,” Walberg said.

Ostrow and Pomper planned to continue with Bridge this year, but in October, the IOP informed Ostrow and Pomper that the jail had refused to approve their security clearances. The 10 other

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“It’s really lovely to see graduate workers recognize themselves as people deserving of a safe workplace and deserving of respect at work.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 1

of July 1 and $45,000 per year as of October 1, with the minimum increasing by 3 percent each year. A $19 minimum hourly wage, increasing by 2.5 percent each year, will go into effect on October 1 for research assistants and any other graduate positions paid by the hour. All workers already compensated above the new minimums will get 2.5 percent pay increases this July and every October for the duration of the contract.

The contract also allows Ph.D. students annual payments for transportation, den-

tal and vision care, and retirement savings. Fonseca called the inclusion of the retirement savings stipend an important acknowledgement “that retirement exists for [graduate] workers and should be prioritized in some way.”

Other provisions of the contract include increased childcare benefits, incorporation of union representatives into Title IX procedures, and additional language addressing discrimination by caste.

According to Fonseca, union negotiators had hoped to include protections against discrimination on the basis of po-

litical affiliation in addition to caste, but the language did not make it into the final contract. She also highlighted more budget transparency amid concerns about the University’s finances and further changes to the Title IX grievance process as major asks that the University denied.

Fonseca said GSU-UE will now work on ensuring smooth implementation of the agreements even as it looks toward future negotiations. “It’s now our responsibility to hold parties accountable to this contract, and we’re looking to be a really focused organization when it comes to that goal,” she

said, pointing to the assembly of a grievance committee and efforts to train new union stewards. “But the root of our work now is going to be in stewardship and in political education or mobilization towards building support behind some of the future items we’d love to see in the contract.”

“It’s really lovely to see graduate workers recognize themselves as people deserving of a safe workplace and deserving of respect at work,” Fonseca said. “We’re extremely talented, capable people, as many workers are, so it’s great to see them stand up for themselves.”

Professors Monika Nalepa and Andrew Eggers to Join Editorial Board of the American Political Science Review

By LUCAS FRISANCHO | News Reporter UChicago professors Monika Nalepa and Andrew Eggers were announced as part of the incoming editorial team of the American Political Science Review (APSR), a scholarly journal in political science, on February 12. Their term will begin on June 1, 2024, and will conclude on May 31, 2028.

“Selection of a new team is a monthslong process involving both members of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and its governing body, the APSA Council, who ultimately selects our journals’ editors,” Steven Rathgeb Smith, executive director of the American Political Science Association, wrote in an email statement to the Maroon.

Nalepa will serve as co-head editor with John Gerring from the University of Texas at Austin. She helped assemble the group of political scientists who responded to APSR’s call for proposals to edit the journal. A professor in the political science department since 2014, her research focuses on transitional justice in post-communist Europe.

Nalepa received the University’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring in 2021.

Nalepa’s motivation for taking the position, she said, comes from her passion for writing.

“A lot of people sort of gripe at the onerous task of just editing draft after draft to get it just right. I actually don’t mind it at all. I use it as an opportunity to learn new things about the English language and effective ways of communication,” Nalepa said in an interview with the Maroon.

Eggers has been a professor in the political science department since 2020. His research focuses on electoral politics, and he was selected as an associate editor by Nalepa for his specialty as a methodologist. She thinks his expertise in mathematical modeling and data analytics will add a diverse skill set to the team.

“I always wanted to work with Professor Eggers in some capacity—I was on the search committee that hired him. We have known each other since graduate school, so he was a very natural choice,” Nalepa said.

Eggers added that his motivation for joining the team is based on principles of open science. Open science aims to allow the broadest scope of people to have clear and easy access to the underlying research methods which produce vastly influential publications.

Research published by APSR is the backbone of many foundational political science courses at UChicago, with many

political science majors in the College being familiar with the journal. Eggers hopes to engage with the lesser seen elements of the research, asking, “You have a paper; it’s got words, it’s got numbers, but what is behind that?” For him, this means working with the experimental design, hard data, and computer code which goes into research papers.

In addition to looking closely at the methodology that produces the research they review, the team also aims to streamline the complex publication process.

According to Eggers and Nalepa, the board is sent more than 1,000 manuscripts from political scientists around the world each year. If a manuscript is deemed ready for review, APSR will present it to a specialist in the appropriate subfield who they believe can provide meaningful feedback.

This feedback can range from edits of minor details to requests for entirely new experiments. From there, the board will decide whether the feedback can be satisfactorily responded to. If it can, they will invite the author to revise and resubmit.

Depending on the speed of the responses between writers and editors and the extent of the feedback, this process can take years.

“There is a crisis of peer review. Journals are struggling with everything from finding reviewers that are reliable to getting those reviewers to respond on time,” Nalepa said.

As a part of the proposal, the editorial team had to plan a set of reforms they will institute to enhance the quality and efficiency of the publication.

“We will actually ask fewer reviewers to comment. So, because we feel that our team is so large and has so much expertise, we won’t need that many reviewers,” Nalepa said. Other reforms will include shifting away from print copies and the editorial board committing to take an active part in the process by reviewing a set number of manuscripts a year. The team will also be implementing a system to track how often researchers who frequently submit their work decline to review the work of others.

Reflecting on the role, Eggers shared a sense of obligation to his peers and his field.

“When friends of mine have heard that we are joining this team, they say some mix of congratulations and condolences,” he said.

“It’s an honor in some ways, but it’s also something you do for the benefit of the field.

I want to do something good for the field. After I do this, I can focus on writing my own stuff,” he said.

Nalepa also shared her own excitement for the unique perspective she will gain from the position. “What I’m looking forward to is just seeing what new work is done in political science. There are very few jobs in the discipline that give you that perspective.”

THE CHICAGO MAROON — APRIL 18, 2024

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“Our criminal justice system warrants scrutiny by the media, advocates, and the public.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 1

students in the workshop were cleared.

“This was a huge part of our lives and community and the highlight of our week in our time in college,” Pomper told the Maroon. “It’s work that we want to keep doing for the rest of our lives, and so this was a significant loss.”

In their op-ed, published last May, Ostrow and Pomper criticized what they described as the Department of Corrections’s move to “almost entirely ban” paper in the facility.

“While facilitating programming at the jail, we have witnessed the rich personal development of our friends on the inside and have seen how the ban has been devastating to their already strained access to legal support, educational programming and relationships with people on the outside,” they wrote.

In interviews with the Maroon, Ostrow and Pomper said the restrictions on paper were impossible to ignore.

“This became the overriding topic of conversation,” Ostrow said. “Pretty much every workshop we’d spend nearly the entire time—particularly in division six of the jail—just talking about the paper ban and associated restrictions that the sheriff’s office had levied on people.”

Ostrow added that he and Pomper could see no logic behind the jail’s actions.

“People’s family photographs, Bibles, Qurans, whole collections of writing that they’ve done over the years would be arbitrarily confiscated,” he said. “To us, this smacked of an authoritarian environment that had no reason to crack down on these very personal items besides to just scare people and instill fear.”

A week after the Sun-Times published Ostrow and Pomper’s op-ed, Dart wrote a response in the newspaper, defending anti-paper policies as necessary to keep illicit drugs out of the jail and disputing many of the students’ claims about restrictions. “[The jail is] facing a new threat: paper laced with deadly household chemicals that can be smuggled through the mail, visitors, volunteers, staff and even defense attorneys,” he wrote. “We are finding these dangerous drugs—power-

ful synthetic cannabinoids mixed with nail polish remover, rat poison or pesticides—sprayed and dried on children’s drawings, Bible pages, store-bought cards from sweethearts, legal files, and pictures of friends and loved ones.”

Dart denied implementing a wide-ranging ban on paper or arbitrarily enforcing rules, as Ostrow and Pomper had alleged, writing that the jail had “gone to great lengths to ensure this by implementing new screening protocols instead of ham-fistedly banning all paper,” and contradicted Ostrow and Pomper’s claim that most inmates were not allowed to touch their legal documents.

The sheriff also disputed Ostrow and Pomper’s characterization of “infrequent and uneven” opportunities for incarcerated people to access tablets in their oped, writing that “approximately 82% of defendants have access to tablets every day for numerous hours.”

Without naming Ostrow and Pomper, Dart accused opponents of the jail’s paper ban of “embark[ing] on an intentionally misleading disinformation campaign aimed at scaring the public into thinking the jail is banning books or withholding important legal documents from those in custody.”

Ostrow and Pomper said the sheriff mischaracterized their intentions. “People were dying, and that was absolutely a serious concern,” Pomper said. “Our goal with the op-ed was never to overplay the severity of what was going on, but just to say that this policy that they had introduced had a whole host of consequences that we didn’t feel like they were properly taking into account.”

Ostrow and Pomper expressed disappointment with the IOP’s unwillingness to advocate on their behalf in the dispute.

In an email Ostrow and Pomper provided to the Maroon, Purvi Patel, the IOP’s director of civic and campus engagement, told them in mid-October that the students’ return to the program was “not [her] first priority” and declined to meet with them on the issue.

The IOP did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Ostrow said the People’s Law Office,

the law office that represents the students, sent a letter to Dart asking him to attest that their security clearance cancellation was not on account of speech.

Dart did not respond. However, in January, Dart’s office issued a statement to the Hyde Park Herald responding to the allegation, which was later sent to the Maroon.

“Our criminal justice system warrants scrutiny by the media, advocates, and the public,” the statement said. “But the jail cannot allow individuals access when they have previously demonstrated a clear intent to use that access to spread disinformation in a way that undermines the safety of staff and individuals in custody.”

The lawsuit cites Dart’s statement as evidence that Ostrow and Pomper “were denied security clearance based solely on their speech.”

Pomper said they still hope to return to the jail before the end of the academic year.

“The current goal of the lawsuit is for us to get back inside and for them to alter their decision regarding our clearance,” Pomper said. “Of course, we’re nearing the end of the year, so the step after that if they don’t immediately settle would be to file an emergency injunction, which would get us back in before the end of the year, and if this continues on, we would continue to sue for damages. But overall, our goal is really that the sheriff’s office will recognize that revoking access for speaking out is a form of retaliation—[it] is a First Amendment violation.”

Dart originally had to respond to the lawsuit by April 17. On April 16, Dart’s lawyer requested an extension until May 1.

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Uncommon Interview: Center for Effective Government Democracy Fellow Jennifer Pahlka

By AMY MA | Senior News Reporter Jennifer Pahlka is former White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer and founder of Code for America. She is also a 2023 Democracy Fellow for the Center for Effective Government (CEG), a think tank housed in the Harris School of Public Policy which aims to strengthen institutions of democracy and improve the capability of the government to solve public problems. The Maroon sat down with Pahlka to learn more about her.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Chicago Maroon (CM): Could you walk me through your career?

Jennifer Pahlka (JP): I came to the government sector sort of accidentally. I worked in the tech media business for a long time, starting with the Game Developers

Conference and then the Web 2.0 conferences. Through that, I started working on the Gov 2.0 conference, which is how I got involved in government. I got interested in the idea of how to apply the principles and values of Web 2.0, like participatory web, to the thing that’s supposed to be the most participatory part of our culture—our government. Through that, I got the idea for Code for America, which I founded in late 2009. [Code for America] was about bringing tech and government together and helping to make interfaces for the government simple, beautiful, and easy to use.

I ran [Code for America] for a couple of years and then took a year leave of absence and went to the White House. I got to work for the second ever Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. as a Deputy Chief Technology Officer. Then, I went back to Code for America and continued to run that or-

ganization until I stepped down six weeks before the pandemic shutdown. I handed [Code for America] off and wrote a book, Recoding America. I’m affiliated with a couple of think tanks in DC, and I’m now working on this idea of how we should build state capacity—the ability of the government to achieve its policy goals.

CM: What were some projects and programs that Code for America established?

JP: I started out with the realization that the web was full of user-generated, lightweight, simple apps. This was the era where… you can build something really simple but also with and for users. The way that we were building technology in the Web 2.0 world actually had its highest and best use applying it to government.

I can give you an example. Our first year, we were working with the City of Boston. One of the projects that we did there was that they had just changed the policy around school assignments. A key part of

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that policy was that you were more likely to get placed in a school that was a specific distance from your home, but they had no way of communicating that except an 18-page printed brochure. That, of course, doesn’t help you since it’s a mapping problem.

So, our fellows jumped in and built an application where you could just type in your name, the age of your kid, your address, and it popped up a map that showed the schools that you were likely to be preferenced for. It took our fellows about 10 weeks to build this and it looked more like a Web 2.0 application than a normal government software. When it was done, we were told that if it had gone through the regular channels of procurement, it would have taken at least two years and cost at least $2 million. It was just wildly successful. And the woman who ran Boston Public Schools at the time said, “you’ve just changed our relationship with parents—they trust us now.”

CONTINUED ON PG. 5

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“You really need to do public service to have empathy people for the people who do it.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 4

If you’ve done it the traditional way, where you have the policymakers here and eight steps until the developer… if [the developer] realizes [there is] a problem, they are not able to [easily] tell the policymakers.

That’s why you get so many websites, applications, and forms from the government that just seem like they were created in a vacuum without understanding what the needs of people are.

[Code for America] kind of evolved over time into an organization that works on a much longer-term basis with city, state and federal governments to do things like make it easier to apply for social benefits or clear your criminal record.

CM: Since these digital platforms have an ability to make governance a lot more effective, why hasn’t the U.S. done more of this innovative digitizing work?

JP: I think somewhere down the stack is the issue that the policymaking process and the delivery of those policies are two very separate things. What normally happens is policymakers do something, and somebody develops a lot of requirements that aren’t about what users need. I call that, in my book [Recoding America], policy vomit. And then it gets handed off. There’s this long requirement process, a long bidding process; a vendor wins the bid and gets hired to do it.

Years later, with all of this stuff in between, there’s a group that has no connection to the people who wrote the policy. They’re not talking to them. There’s no connection.

That contract developer makes something close to the specs, but they’re not actually close to policymakers or the users. They’re just developing something off a piece of paper that they’ve been handed. And if they can fulfill the requirements, they get paid.

So, it’s this long cascade with all of this stuff in the middle instead of policy and implementation working together in time to say, “okay, this works.”

CM: What lessons did you learn from working at the White House and establishing the United States Digital Service (USDS)?

JP: I came [to the White House] with a very specific mission, which was to set up a U.S. equivalent to the Government Digital Service in the U.K. I don’t think that’s what

most deputy CTOs do, because mostly what they’re doing is policy work. I built an institution to do delivery work.

One of things I learned is—I had been working with public servants for several years at that point, and I thought that I had a lot of empathy for them—but what I learned is, you really need to do public service to have empathy for the people who do it, because it’s so much harder than it looks. I left [the White House] transformed in terms of my respect and care for those who actually work in government.

Second, I learned that this resistance to bringing policy and delivery closer together is much stronger than I thought. What I could see in the past was that the policy institutions really have this allergy to being involved in delivering. They feel like policy institutions should focus on policy and not get involved. That resistance to having something that seems like detailed implementation is softening. But it comes from this belief that the policy institutions are the intellectuals, and then people doing the delivery in British civil service are called mechanicals. I think that kind of thinking has translated to the U.S., where we think of policymakers as the most important people and their status as degraded by being involved with implementation. And it’s [that] kind of thing that needs to change in order for us to do digital well and actually achieve our policy goals.

CM: Did your realization of a need for a culture shift influence your decision to write Recoding America? Can you talk more about what you advocate for in that book?

JP: Yes. In Recoding America, I tried to show examples of why what’s wrong with government technology today is not just that which people assume—like oh, there’s bad practices, there’s bad vendors. It really runs much deeper than that.

There’s a story I tell of early 2014, when I was working in the White House to set up USDS. One of the projects we did to show how we were going to approach problem solving was with the Veterans Administration. They had a big problem with the Veterans Benefit Management System. It was running very, very slowly. So, I started this meeting with this guy who’s a senior official there. He said, “I’m so glad that

Center for Effective Government Democracy Fellow Jennifer Pahlka speaking at an event at the Harris School of Public Policy. courtesy of center for effective government. they sent someone from the White House to confirm that everything is okay.” And I was like, “I don’t think everything’s okay.”

But I learned the next day that everything was okay, because he had defined latency in the system as over two minutes. So, if you clicked on a link, and you waited a minute and 59 seconds for the page to load, we’re not allowed to report it as latency. He wanted to show that to the White House and say the problem was fixed.

As he was explaining, we were asking this guy all these questions about how the management system had been built. Over and over again, the senior officials said to me, “that wasn’t my call, you’ll have to ask the program people. I don’t know, you’ll have to ask the procurement people,” etc.

And I said to him, “with all due respect, why don’t you have an opinion on these things?

You’re the Senior Technology official.”

And he said, “I’ve spent my career teaching my team not to have an opinion on the business requirements. If they asked us to build a concrete boat, we’ll build a concrete boat.” At the time, 16 veterans a day were committing suicide, most of them without having gotten their benefits, because there was this huge backlog. And he was abdicating responsibility for the technology’s sys-

tems because what he was saying is, all we do here down at the bottom of the waterfall is what people above this on the ladder tell us to do. And then I asked why, and he said, “that way, when it doesn’t work, it’s not our fault.” But that does not work. That results in concrete boats.

CM: I guess that brings us to the present day. Why did you choose to become a Democracy Fellow at the Center for effective government?

JP: I heard from the leadership of the Center that they care about implementation, they care about the outcomes of policy as much as they care about policy. And I want to be where people care about that.

The thing that I worry the most about in the world is that because we have been passing laws and policies but not really implementing them, [these laws] have not been fulfilling their intent in ways that people actually feel in their real lives. We are degrading trust with the public. And I think that we are enabling this frustration and this desire to blow the whole system up, which is very dangerous. But you can’t just blame people for being frustrated with the government when that’s their lived experience. I think the most important thing we need to do to CONTINUED ON PG. 6

THE CHICAGO MAROON — APRIL 18, 2024

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“We are lying to ourselves when we celebrate a policy when we don’t follow through and do the implementation.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 5

save democracy is to make the government work in such a way that people feel that it works. If they don’t feel it in their real lives, they are not going to be happy. We are lying to ourselves when we celebrate a policy when we don’t follow through and do the implementation.

CM: And with that goal in mind, what are you aiming to do during your fellowship?

JP: I’m meeting with a bunch of fellows and a bunch of students. I’m also looking for research partners here. The work that I’m doing right now is sort of predicated on the thesis that we’re in a crisis of state capacity. We can determine policies, we can pass laws, but there’s all this erosion of capacity because we don’t really implement [policies]. I think people associate me with technology, and I think that’s a part of it.

But what I’m really looking at is all of the things that contribute to us not being able

to implement policy to state capacity.

I think there’s really three ways that you can improve state capacity: You can have more of the right people; you can focus them on the right things; and you can burden them less. I’m doing projects under each of those banners. I approach policy through a practice lens… I can read legislation, and I can tell you what it says. But that doesn’t say anything about what people actually go through… I think that’s especially true for civil service rules. You can read the rules that govern our hiring processes in government, and they say a lot of valuable things about the meritorious unbiased process. And when I read those things, they all sound great. But what happens in practice is extremely unmeritorious. So, I prefer to study what an HR person does on a day-today basis, because they’re wildly different from what the law and policy say they’re supposed to do. I call that “culture eats policy.” What’s actually happening is that

we select on the basis of insider knowledge.

And we actually hurt veterans’ reputations in the process. There’s enormous amounts of data collection that I want to do and I’m hoping to find research partners to help me with that.

CM: What advice do you have for students or young professionals interested in pursuing a career like yours, whether at the intersection of tech and governance or just improving the effectiveness of governments overall?

JP: I think you are all going to go into your fields with a lot of status and respect because of the education that you’ve gotten here. And what I would hope you would all do is not let that status keep you from understanding the problems you’re trying to solve from the ground up. Go sit on the front lines of delivery and see what’s actually happening, and you will be a far better policy analyst. If you don’t know how the work actually gets done, your proposed im-

provements are unlikely to have the effects that you expect.

What tends to happen is that if you get good grades, and you’ve gone to a prestigious school, you get offered a high-level position and you never take the time to really understand how the work gets done.

You cannot be effective in your oversight role if you don’t really understand what’s going on.

Experience the world the way less-privileged people do and find a way to stay connected to the actual users of our system.

I got taught that by our Code for America fellows. They would insist that if we were going to work on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, I would try the SNAP application myself.

And I credit them for giving me that discipline. If you’re going to talk about this, you need to have done it. And it just so seldom happens that the folks in charge understand the experience of the users.

Event-Planning App Lynkr Wins Record $160,000 in College New Venture Challenge Funding

By AUSTIN ZEGLIS | Senior News Reporter On March 1, the team behind social event-planning app Lynkr won the 12th annual College New Venture Challenge (CNVC), a competition where undergraduate-led startups can win funding from the University’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

The app allows students to plan and invite fellow students to parties and other campus events. Among Lynkr’s features include the ability for organizations like fraternities and clubs to create and join “groups” on the app, a log where users can see the events they’ve hosted and attended, and a searchable page of events being planned by groups across campus.

Participation in the CNVC requires enrollment in the Booth School of Business course Developing a New Venture during winter quarter. The competition itself includes a pitch to a panel of investors and

entrepreneurs that takes place at the end of the quarter.

Lynkr’s team during the CNVC included second-year Founder and Chief Executive Officer Emily Wheeler, second-year Head of Operations and Growth Geneva Kirk Drayson, fourth-year Head of Finance RJ Czajkowski, and separate student-run teams for both social media and growth and operations. Wheeler and Kirk Drayson are the only members of the CNVC team who will remain a part of Lynkr post-CNVC, and in an email to the Maroon, Wheeler confirmed that she will be taking a leave of absence from UChicago this fall to work on Lynkr full-time and help “grow it to its full potential.”

Thirty-nine teams applied to participate in this round of CNVC, of which 13 teams were chosen to advance to the classCONTINUED ON PG. 7

Head of Operations and Growth Geneva Kirk Drayson, Lynkr Founder/CEO Emily Wheeler, and Head of Finance RJ Czajkowski at their final CNVC pitch. courtesy of emily wheeler.

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“Lynkr is trying to spread... inclusivity, making sure everybody feels the sense of community...”

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room round. These teams were further narrowed to seven finalists that took part in the final round of pitching and presented their business plans to a team of judges, which, according to the Polsky Center’s website, included Chicago-area investors, entrepreneurs, alumni, and faculty.

All seven finalist teams received funding, but as the first-place winner, the Lynkr team took home $160,000 of funding, the highest amount ever awarded to an undergraduate group in CNVC history. Throughout its twelve-year history, the CNVC has accelerated the development of hundreds of businesses still in operation today according to the Polsky Center’s website, one of the most successful being the food delivery platform, Grubhub.

“It was honestly just a lot of excitement.

At no point was it terrifying,” said Kirk Drayson. “The dynamic between me, Emily, and RJ was always really positive—we bounced off each other really well, and it was always really fun. And when we went into the [presentation] room, all of these

Lynkr fans trickled in for our presentation lining the sides of the room in pink bucket hats. It was great to have all of their support.”

Lynkr’s focus on college students is a major part of why it stands out among its competitors, according to Wheeler and Kirk Drayson. Wheeler specifically mentioned that the team wanted to address many of the grievances that college students have with pre-existing event-planning websites and apps.

“We include the ability to invite entire groups with one click,” Wheeler said. “Let’s say you wanted to invite the Organization of Latin American Students—you can search for that and click them and invite them all in one go. We also have blocklists, whitelists, the ability to request an invite to an event, and other things that platforms like Eventbrite or Ticketmaster wouldn’t cater to. And we also have a ticketing feature, so clubs and organizations can not only plan their event on Lynkr, but charge for it and do all that in one go.”

“A lot of these platforms are not only fo-

cused on just the user, they’re also sort of overly focused on Greek life,” Kirk Drayson said about Lynkr’s existing competitors. “So the message that Lynkr is trying to spread is inclusivity, making sure everybody feels that sense of community regardless of social status.”

Given how focused they are on catering the app to students’ needs, Wheeler also emphasized the team’s desire to grow the user base past college students.

“I think those college-specific features really helped Lynkr stick out from other platforms, but one of the things that our team was thinking about was growing with our users beyond college,” Wheeler said.

“We think it’s such a shame that when you graduate, you lose that sense of community.

And so we’re hoping that as we grow with our users, they can join alumni groups, parent groups, pickleball groups, or whatever.”

Despite their success in front of investors, Lynkr has seen some pushback among students online. Anonymous posts on the social media app Sidechat have called into question whether Lynkr offers much more

than existing platforms like Facebook’s Events page and whether the team should have won the CNVC. However, Wheeler says this attention has actually helped Lynkr instead of hindering it.

“It’s interesting, because when we’re communicating with groups on campus, people are really, really excited about [Lynkr]. And Sidechat has actually been surprisingly pretty good for us—on the days when Lynkr has come up, we’ve gotten hundreds of downloads just from people having active conversations about it. So I think it’s been an overall positive,” Wheeler said.

As the team moves forward, Wheeler is looking at brand partnerships as the next step in the company’s development.

“Brands like Red Bull and Celsius are trying to get their name out to Gen Z, so what we’re trying to do is pair these brands with student groups so brands can get their name out and student groups can get free things,” she said. “We’re working with brands that span from large companies like Red Bull to local small businesses that are just trying to get their name out there.”

Guardians of Creativity: Glaze and Nightshade Forge New Frontiers in AI Defense for Artists

By NICOLE ROESLER | News Reporter Ben Zhao, a Neubauer professor of computer science and director of graduate studies in computer science at the University, and a team of computer science Ph.D. students have created a system to protect human artists from style mimicry by AI models. The system, named Glaze, works by making subtle changes to artwork that are imperceptible to human eyes but dramatically alter its appearance to AI models.

This prevents AI from using the artwork in its training data.

Free to use and operate, Glaze serves as a new dimension of art protection that is difficult to reverse engineer. Additionally, a free web version named WebGlaze makes Glaze more accessible to artists without access to powerful computers and is in-

vite-only so as to restrict it to artists who do not use generative AI in their art. Alongside Glaze, Zhao’s team also developed Nightshade, a tool designed to counterbalance the power asymmetry in the realm of generative AI models and their trainers.

“While Glaze serves as a defense mechanism against style mimicry, Nightshade functions as an offensive deterrent against models that scrape images without consent,” Zhao said. “Together, they offer a comprehensive arsenal for artists to safeguard their creations and combat the exploitation of their intellectual property.”

Since its release, Glaze has been awarded the Special Mention award in TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023, the Chicago InnoCONTINUED ON PG. 8

The team behind Glaze and Nightshade, in their Crerar lab. tiffany li.

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“By disrupting the phenomenon of AI mimicry, Glaze empowers artists, fortifying the preservation of their unique identities and creative integrity.”

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vation Award 2023, and the 2023 USENIX Internet Defense Prize, among others.

Zhao met with the Maroon to share Glaze and Nightshade’s origins, objectives, and potential implications.

“Our overarching goal is to furnish artists with a robust defense mechanism against AI mimicry, thereby ensuring the enduring vitality of artistic expression,” Zhao said. “Through fostering collaboration and dialogue, we aspire to harness the potential of AI for constructive purposes while mitigating its potential hazards.”

Zhao said the idea for Glaze came when his team attended an open forum where artists raised concerns regarding AI and intellectual property infringement. He also explained the importance of being aware of the needs of artists when creating and refining this project.

“I think [what] really colored how we approached this project was how heavily we’ve been involved with real artists from the getgo. A lot of people, including ourselves in the past, would have basically picked up this technical problem and said, ‘Let’s address it with a technical solution, and that’s the end of that,’” Zhao said. “So getting involved with over 1,000 projects [with professional artists] for the first paper that involved Glaze… has been absolutely enlightening because it’s things that you just cannot imagine if you don’t have real people telling you about what their experiences are.”

“We realized the imperative to confront the ethical implications of AI in art, particularly the insidious threat of style mimicry, which poses a grave risk to artists’ livelihoods,” Shawn Shan, lead Ph.D. student for the Glaze project, said. “By disrupting the phenomenon of AI mimicry, Glaze empowers artists, fortifying the preservation of their unique identities and creative integrity. It embodies a critical stride towards safeguarding artistic expression in an increasingly digitized realm.”

The landscape of technology and art stands poised for a transformative paradigm shift guided by principles of innovation, collaboration, and ethical practice.

In navigating this shift, Shan clarified how Glaze separates itself in this era of AI uncertainty.

“One argument could be to pass a perfect law to protect human rights globally.

But that’s still not enough, because there’s so many people outside of those jurisdictions that still get impacted by generative AI. They are the ones who really need some tools to protect them. So that’s how we see Glaze,” said Shan.

However, the journey of Glaze has not been without its challenges.

“Maintaining algorithm security and privacy while building trust with artists has been paramount,” Zhao acknowledged.

“We’ve faced resistance from AI enthusiasts who spread misinformation about Glaze, presenting challenges in gaining widespread acceptance.”

Reflecting on the broader implications of Glaze, Zhao offered a nuanced perspective on its significance. “We designed these tools for individual artists to help individual creatives…. But it’s becoming [clearer] that it’s not just individual creatives who have things at stake here,” Zhao said. “Now, increasingly, whether they be movie studios, companies in the music industry, or gaming developers, all are realizing that this is a risk to them.”

Zhao said the artistic community is particularly vulnerable to the economic impacts of AI mimicking their work.

“There is sort of a misguided perception that some artists are elitist, [and] sit all day in galleries [while], you know, playing with their jewelry. But the reality is quite different. Most artists are barely making ends meet because they’re doing it for the passion, not for money. But having a different perspective and dimension from [larger] companies that are entering this process and being concerned, I think, will expand the conversation. I think it will change how people feel about this overall struggle,” Zhao said.

As Glaze continues to evolve and adapt, the researchers anticipate a profound impact on the future of technology and art.

“Glaze serves as a beacon of hope for artists grappling with the specter of AI-generated mimicry,” Shan said. “Despite the challenges that may lie ahead, the prospect of safeguarding the artistic community’s integrity renders the journey unequivocally worthwhile.”

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UChicago Alum Secures Deal on Shark Tank

By DEREK HSU | Senior News Reporter UChicago alum Daniella Morgan-Pascualvaca, A.B. ’22, appeared on Shark Tank on March 1 and secured a deal with investor Mark Cuban for Mella Pet Care.

Morgan-Pascualvaca is the chief of staff for the veterinary medical device and telehealth company and made the Shark Tank appearance alongside Mella’s CEO Anya Babbitt and COO Ben Seidman. She spoke with the Maroon about her journey with the company and appearance on Shark Tank, which she describes as being on the “bucket list of almost every entrepreneur.”

The First Accurate Underarm Thermometer Mella started with identifying a problem that needed a solution: Veterinarians were using rectal insertions, an invasive and time-intensive technique, to record the temperatures of pets who were at risk of infection, inflammation, or other medical conditions. Mella’s flagship product, an underarm thermometer for veterinarians, created a better experience for both vets and pets.

“We wanted to give [veterinarians] a way to see more pets and make each of their pets’ lives more comfortable,” Morgan-Pascualvaca said.

With the success of their noninvasive technology, Mella added an at-home version for pet owners to their line of products, with which pet parents can use the recorded temperature as a first line of defense. The thermometer is placed under the foreleg or hindleg of the pet, with results simultaneously being synced to Mella’s app to track normal or abnormal temperatures. The company now boasts an “ecosystem of digitally connected devices,” including a home pet scale, and operates in “1,300 clinics and 1,000 households in 15 different countries.”

As the “first accurate underarm thermometer,” Morgan-Pascualvaca attributes the positive press to Mella’s early success marketing to national and international distributors. Rather than solely being a hardware-software company, she sees a major tenet of their work as education-based. The company runs a blog and podcast to educate pet owners on the importance of monitoring their pet’s health.

“Most pet parents are going once a year to the vet,” Morgan-Pascualvaca said.

“But during those other 364 days of the year, you’re not having this interaction with the vet. [The podcast] helps mediate those conversations and ask those frequently asked questions for pet parents.”

Mella’s Metcalf Interns Morgan-Pascualvaca, who graduated in 2022 with a degree in biology and economics, joined the team with a background in veterinary medicine. “Temperature, along with heart rate and weight, are the three main vital signs,” Morgan-Pascualvaca said. “As a pet assistant, it fell on me to [record the temperature], and it was the worst part of the visit because the pet is going to bite you, scratch you, or squirm.

And afterwards, the pet is going to cower in the corner and hiss and growl at the vet for the rest of the visit.”

Mella has collaborated with UChicago’s Jeff Metcalf Internship Program for product development and marketing.

Morgan-Pascualvaca joined Mella as a Metcalf intern in autumn 2020. She said that she was instantly given responsibilities. “You’re really almost part of the executive team as an intern,” Morgan-Pascualvaca said.

She credits the Metcalf Program and entrepreneurship classes offered at the Booth School for her current job as chief of staff at Mella.

Two students in the College, second-year Oia Eng and third-year Pauline Borisova, currently work at Mella and receive funding from the Metcalf Program.

Borisova, who applied in autumn 2022, sought to join a startup with “hands-on experience,” focusing on those local to Chicago. In an interview with the Maroon, Borisova said that she is appreciative of the range of responsibilities given to her, of which her ongoing project is developing a more user-friendly mobile and desktop app. She and Eng work with the designers to think about how the app layout translates to a desktop format and whether users will use certain features.

While Eng initially started in marketing, she has transitioned into product development, something she expected entering a startup.

Morgan-Pascualvaca and Mella’s founders celebrate with Cuban on Shark Tank. courtesy of mella press kit.

“I thought it’d be a great experience to work at a startup because you’re able to wear a lot of different hats rather than being stuck in one role… It’s helped me think about a company holistically because I’m not only doing marketing campaigns, but I’m also thinking about what is a good timeline for the app,” Eng said in an interview with the Maroon.

Catching a Shark Babbitt, Seidman, and Morgan-Pascualvaca pitched on behalf of the company to the show’s five “sharks,” a term used for the show’s investors. They ultimately secured a deal with Mark Cuban, who is noted for his sale of internet radio comany Broadcast.com and for being a minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, with a 6 percent stake in the company worth $250,000. The deal valued Mella at $4.2 million.

The process to get into the “tank” in the first place, however, was just as difficult as “catching” a Shark. According to USA Today, about 35,000–40,000 applications are submitted each year, with only 88 airing on television—a 0.02 percent chance. Morgan-Pascualvaca recalls getting cherry-picked by a casting director. “[The casting director] said, ‘You have one of the coolest products I’ve ever seen.

We’ve never had anybody on the show

who’s talked about pet products in this way,’” Morgan-Pascualvaca said.

While Mella was able to bypass about “75 percent of the process,” there still remained comprehensive 40-page personal essays, background checks, and video pitches on top of the standard 50-page business application.

“They asked so many questions about ourselves, how we work as a team, not just the financials of the business itself but who we are as people,” Morgan-Pascualvaca said. As the pitch date drew closer, Mella’s presentation team had to practice in front of an increasing number of producers over Zoom. “A lot of success was due to the fact my dad is a social media coach,” Morgan-Pascualvaca said. “We would rehearse the pitch 50 times and he’d go, ‘It’s not there yet. Try again.’”

Morgan-Pascualvaca said having Cuban as a partner has been significant to the growth of Mella.

“He’s always there. He answers emails within five minutes. It’s almost like having another partner in the business as opposed to a celebrity billionaire,” Morgan-Pascualvaca said.

With the partnership becoming official, she is optimistic that Mella can benefit from the increased media exposure and continue its core values of educating vets and pet parents.

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VIEWPOINTS

A Questionable Conflict of Interest Baicker’s Big Pharma Position Merits More Scrutiny

By RAND PERRY This spring closes UChicago’s first full year with Provost Katherine Baicker, who brings an impressive résumé to her new role. However, one aspect of her career has received little scrutiny: since 2011, she has served on the board of directors of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, one of America’s most notorious insulin profiteers. Baicker’s role overseeing both Eli Lilly’s insulin price gouging and the company’s shadowy political dealings merit attention and discussion from the University community.

Eli Lilly, along with Sanofi and Novo Nordisk—the “Big Three” insulin companies—together control 90 percent of the insulin market in the U.S. and 99 percent of the market worldwide. They have incredible pricing power because many people who rely on insulin cannot safely use less of it in response to a price hike; their lives are at stake. Insulin costs less than six dollars per vial to produce—yet in 2011 (when Baicker began her tenure on Eli Lilly’s board), Eli Lilly charged a list price of $122.60 for one 100-units-per-milliliter vial of Humalog, their flagship insulin. By 2019, the price of a vial had ballooned to $275.

These soaring prices have had dire consequences: more than one million Americans with diabetes are forced to ration insulin due to cost, risking life-threatening complications. Closer to the University, almost one in five residents of Chicago’s South Side are diabetic. Insulin access is a matter of life and death for millions—a fact that Eli Lilly has

ruthlessly exploited.

Baicker does not singlehandedly set insulin prices. However, the board elects the company’s executives, including CEO David Ricks, who concurrently serves as chair of the board. Baicker’s responsibilities as a board member include “providing general oversight of the business” and “approving corporate strategy.’’

Damningly, the board itself admitted in 2019 that it directly “review[s] and discuss[es]” Eli Lilly’s insulin pricing strategy with company executives. Furthermore, during Baicker’s tenure, the board has signed off on a combined $38 billion in stock buybacks and shareholder dividends even as the company astronomically raised its insulin prices. Put simply, under Baicker’s oversight, Eli Lilly has been quite literally making a killing. And Baicker has shared amply in these profits: each year, she earns a total retainer of $133,000, plus $200,000 worth of company stock. This stockbased compensation incentivizes Baicker and the board to take actions that grow their personal portfolios: per her latest SEC filing, Baicker owns $13.5 million worth of stock in Eli Lilly.

Baicker’s role at Eli Lilly presents ethical quandaries for us as a community. As Provost, she oversees and manages the University’s budget, including that of institutional efforts to increase access to diabetes care on the South Side. The Office of the Provost also holds ultimate, broad oversight of the University’s research, including the Center for Chronic Disease Research and Policy, which aims to

influence public policy related to the financing and adoption of diabetes treatments. It is entirely possible that one of the University initiatives under Baicker’s purview could produce scholarship that threatens Eli Lilly’s bottom line or public image. Baicker should publicly address her role in Eli Lilly’s insulin price hikes, and—given her substantial financial stake in Eli Lilly’s continued profitability—should clarify how she will manage potential conflicts of interest.

A much broader conflict of interest stems from how Baicker, in partnership with the rest of the board, exercises oversight of Eli Lilly’s “political expenditures and lobbying activities.” Through its direct corporate expenditures, its affiliated political action committee, its charitable foundation, and its membership in trade organizations such as Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), Eli Lilly has poured tens of millions of dollars into campaign donations and lobbying efforts against legislation that would bring down the price of prescription drugs for ordinary Americans. In the 2022 election cycle, Eli Lilly spent $7.5 million on lobbying and $1.3 million on campaign donations, and PhRMA spent over $30 million on lobbying.

(Baicker’s board colleague and Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks sits on PhRMA’s own board.) The ostensibly charitable Eli Lilly Endowment has used its “community development” fund to quietly funnel millions of dollars to think tanks and research institutes who lobby against any

government regulation of insulin prices.

These activities reveal inconsistencies behind many of Eli Lilly’s public statements.

For example, in March 2023 the company announced a $35-permonth cap on the out-of-pocket cost of its insulin. However, the impetus for this move was not altruism but rather government regulation through the Inflation Reduction Act, which mandates a $35 out-of-pocket cap for Medicare beneficiaries and implements new Medicaid rules that would have forced Eli Lilly to pay up to $430 million in charges had they kept their prices inflated. These regulations have broad public approval.

Despite this, Eli Lilly, through PhRMA, is currently suing the federal government to prevent the law’s drug pricing regulations from being implemented.

A more sinister example: after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Eli Lilly announced that it would cease donating to Members of Congress who had voted to overturn the election, saying that these Members promoted “sedition.” Less than a year later, Eli Lilly abruptly reversed course and now continues to donate tens of thousands of dollars to the lawmakers it had condemned as threatening democracy. Eli Lilly’s directors, including our provost, have apparently decided that the potential loss of our democratic system of government is a small price to pay for a boost to their quarterly earnings.

This ought to spur the University community into debate and discussion. Is it right that

the University’s biological research and policy centers are now overseen by someone who has spent a decade profiteering from lifesaving medications? Is it right that we are represented at the University’s democracy-related events by someone who bemoans election deniers in public but still slips them money in private? Through polite but firm questioning at the public events where she represents the University—represents us—students should press Provost Baicker to clarify her roles’ vastly diverging values and aims. This tension between public service and private profit, democracy and plutocracy, arguably constitutes the central theme of the University of Chicago’s history. But despite the University’s past, it is the choices we make and the paths we take right now that will shape the University’s future—and our own.

Rand Perry is a graduate student pursuing a Master’s in Public Policy (MPP) at the Harris School of Public Policy.

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ARTS Artistic Transformations in Meiji Modern at the Smart Museum Arts Reporter Katherine Chen discusses the artistic perspective of the Meiji period, on display in the Smart Museum’s spring exhibition.

By KATHERINE CHEN | Senior Arts Reporter Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan at the Smart Museum of Art offers a glimpse into a transformative period of Japanese history. Spanning from 1868 to 1912, the Meiji period was characterized by rapid urbanization and escalating geopolitical tensions. Artists of the time seized upon the uncertainty to explore new possibilities and reshape traditional mediums.

At the heart of the Meiji Modern exhibition lies a comprehensive collection of artwork that present the philosophical complexities of the period. On display are paintings that buttressed the aggressive ideology of militarism adopted after the Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, illustrations embedded with the struggles of modernity amidst the preservation of traditions, and many

pieces that overtly incorporate Western elements to mark Japan’s heady embrace of Western culture.

Many paintings in the exhibition depict the pervasive influence of war and nationalistic aggression. Kobayashi Kiyochika’s “Our Field Artillery Attacks the Enemy Camp at Jiuliancheng” details a rainy setting in the First Sino-Japanese War between Qing China and Meiji Japan, and Ogata Gekkō’s “General Ōdera Attacking the Hundred-Foot Cliff with All His Might” commemorates the general who led Japan in the Battle of Weihaiwei. Both paintings evince a propagandistic move of the Meiji government to glorify its soldiers as war heroes, like the samurai who were worshiped during the Edo period. “Wave Crest Supporting the Tide-Ruling Jewel,” a rock crystal sphere

Japanese artworks on display at Meiji Modern at the Smart Museum. gail gomez.

sculpted by Yukihiro Akama, draws parallels between the Meiji imperial navy and the Japanese mythological figure Umi no Sachihiko, a deity of the sea.

The coexistence of artistic modernity and tradition can be found in “Lamp Globe with Design of Spiny Chrysanthemums,” attributed to Hattori Tadasaburō.

The globe is made translucent by the shōtai shippō technique, which makes the light source inside the sphere clear and henceforth fit to be a lamp. During the later Meiji period, gas lamps were replaced by those powered by electricity, like this one. The technological advancement evident in this globe characterizes the far reach of modernization during the era, while the spiny chrysanthemums that decorate the outer surface are classical Japanese motifs preserved in the midst of abrupt urbanization and westernization in Meiji Japan.

During the Meiji period, opening the door to the West was at times rife with doubts and struggles. One notable piece that exemplifies this is “Temptation,” a painting by Kimura Kaishū. The artwork shows a blindfolded Japanese woman taking the hand of a poorly dressed foreigner who gestures in a direction that symbolizes the West. This suggests that the “temptation” referred to in the title is the allure of the Western world. However, unbeknownst to the Japanese woman, the foreigner is leading her to gaki, or “hungry ghosts” in the Buddhist rendition of hell. The gaki are layered with hazy gray hues to accent the perilous predicament of heading blindly to the West. Positioned above the Japanese woman is a Japanese deity, the sole figure in the painting, illustrated entirely in white to highlight its goodness and divine beauty. This traditional deity urges the blinded woman in the opposite direction. The demonization of the unfamiliar West and the unwavering adherence to the faith of the East encapsulate the reservations held by the Japanese concerning the adoption of Western customs.

The Meiji Modern exhibition showcases the fusion of traditional aesthetics with modern influences during the Meiji Era, delving into the nuances of a period of profound change by addressing darker themes such as Japan’s imperial ambitions and an emerging anxiety surrounding increasing engagement with the West. The exhibition invites viewers to witness the dynamic adaptation of traditional art forms to the demands of a rapidly changing world—from conventional to contemporary and from strictly Eastern practices to a historical, cosmopolitan amalgamation. With 19thand 20th-century Japanese art as a focal point, the exhibition skillfully offers a lens into how history and art strikingly make their mark on each other.

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Talking Alchemy, Southern Gothicism, and Coyotes with Dylan LeBlanc Senior Arts Reporter Harmonie Ramsden sits down with Dylan LeBlanc to discuss his touring record Coyote, his inspirations, and his plans for the future.

By HARMONIE RAMSDEN | Senior Arts Reporter Dylan LeBlanc is finding himself. The singer-songwriter released Coyote in October 2023, a 13-song record detailing the story of a fictional man on the run discovering his identity amidst strife. LeBlanc is currently on a world tour, telling Coyote’s story from Chicago to Royal Tunbridge Wells. The artist has played with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, First Aid Kit, and The Civil Wars. Now, he’s learning to balance artistry with family. The Maroon Senior Arts Writer Harmonie Ramsden sat down with Dylan LeBlanc to discuss his touring record, inspirations, and plans for the future.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Harmonie Ramsden (HR): Can you speak to your artistic inspirations?

Dylan LeBlanc (DL): John Prine and Willis Alan Ramsey. Obviously classic rock and a lot of country influence as well. I like Merle Haggard, stuff like that.

And then I like more modern stuff. I like Magnolia Electric Co. and Jason Molina. I liked all that stuff growing up.

HR: Would you say there’s a certain genre of music that tends to feed into your artistic creation? Do you define yourself by a certain genre?

DL: I mean, a lot of people put me in the Americana category. I just call it singer-songwriter, because that’s what I am. I like to write songs and to sing.

HR: You’ve lived in a few different places, predominantly in the South. I was wondering how each of those places feeds into your music. Your fiancée is from Norway; has that influenced your music as well?

DL: I mean, it certainly has an influence on my music. I live half of the time in Northern Europe with my daughter and my fiancée. I think [my style is] deeply rooted in folk music from growing up and

the Southern Gothic narrative that I like in my music. I’ve always enjoyed Southern Gothic, writers like Flannery O’Connor and William Faulker, to name a few.

They were very influential in my writing process. I’m influenced by a lot of different things on the daily. I feel like, subconsciously, every artist is going to be influenced by anything they like. It’s something that naturally happens. You’ve got to give credit where credit is due, of course.

HR: Your father is also a musician.

Were you inspired by him? Do you try to be different from him? Has that changed over the years?

DL: We live in different genres. He’s a pretty straight-ahead country songwriter. But his artistic integrity is incredible, it’s very strong. He’s an incredible artist.

I always looked up to him growing up. I worked with him on this record. He’s an incredible session player. He plays incredible instruments.

HR: Did you learn your instruments from him?

DL: He taught me my first chords on the guitar. I only play the guitar. I can play mandolin a tiny bit and I can kind of play the lap steel, an electric guitar. I can’t play any piano, which is my favorite instrument, probably. I was definitely inspired by him, and he taught me the discipline of learning the music. I got lucky to have a musician in the family to teach me that.

HR: You’ve explained previously that Coyote was inspired by this encounter where you were fighting to survive. You and a coyote faced off on a cliff, and both decided to go your own way. Is that something that translates into the album or the persona of Coyote, the album’s main character? Were there any other influential events that shaped the album?

DL: I mean, where I grew up. I grew up in the really rough-and-tumble hometown of Freeport, Louisiana. It has one of

Country singer-songwriter Dylan LeBlanc. courtesy of abraham rowe. the highest crime rates in all of America, and there are only about 200,000 people there. There are a lot of casinos, and it’s a tough town. That definitely inspired the criminal element of this album. And I just love gangster stuff. I read a lot of gangster novels, and I spent a lot of time with people who live on the edge. The experience that you’re talking about­—I wouldn’t call it a fighting-for-survival situation. But I was on the edge of a cliff, hanging onto some trees, and a coyote came past. We had a stare-off; he went on his way, and I went on my way as well. That was just a cool moment. I feel like that animal and I connected for just a minute, sized each other up, and decided to go our separate ways. I felt like I connected with the animal, which was definitely inspiring for the name of this album and the title track.

HR: From Renegade to Coyote, how did your writing and production shift?

DL: I had a decent budget to hire some really great players on the new record, so I definitely took advantage of that. And I had plenty of time. From 9 a.m. till about 2 in the morning every day for 10 days, I was in the studio working on that record.

So, just from a production standpoint, I

worked extremely hard. Then, I had all the time I needed to explore ideas with a decent budget. That really gave me an opportunity to explore myself as a producer in the studio, which I don’t feel I’ve ever had before. It was incredibly fun; it was probably the most fun album I’ve ever got to make.

HR: How long does the process typically take you?

DL: You know, I wrote the record over the course of two years through the pandemic. I only spent 10 days recording it, but I spent more time writing it than all of the previous albums except for my first record. The pandemic afforded me two years of buckling down and just writing a lot of songs.

HR: In a recent Instagram post, you said you’re learning to love better. I’m wondering what that means to you, especially being across the world from your partner right now?

DL: When I’m not touring, I’m home with her and my daughter, so I do spend quite a bit of time with them. But that’s a good question. I think having a kid turns your goals and aspirations into a more CONTINUED ON PG. 14

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“People can change. They can change themselves for the better.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 13

selfless drive. Everything you do is, “What can this do to benefit my family?” And so there’s more of a purpose to what I do now. I think that, in itself, is a good thing.

It helps you to love better. Also, changing my attitude about certain things: trying not to pollute the energy if I can and keep my energy at a reasonable level. Both for my partner and my daughter. I can be a dark dude, and I have to really watch that.

I have to be careful to pull that energy so that I don’t affect the people around me.

So, that’s something that’s at the forefront of my mind now, as to when I didn’t care before if I was polluting the energy or not.

HR: Are there any other lessons that having a daughter has taught you?

DL: Just that everything is a little more frightening. You know, when you have a kid, you understand that this world can be a little more difficult on women. I worry for my daughter, but I also want to make

sure that she’s strong and that she can take care of herself and that she understands the way the world works. I want her to be tough enough to be able to face, on a personal and spiritual level, what comes. It’s a difficult thing to navigate in words. I just want her to be tough and to be safe. That’s a part of being a dad; you automatically worry about your kids. I want her to know that she can always tell me anything. And to feel comfortable.

HR: Is there anything in particular you want people to take away from your music?

DL: The theme of the record is that even if you have done bad things, and even if you’re not necessarily okay with who you are as a person, things can change. People can change. They can change themselves for the better. That’s been true in my life, and each year I get a little better.

There are certain things about me that I feel differently about than I did three or

four years ago. I don’t feel pain like I did; I’m not hurting quite as bad. When people are operating from a place of pain, they are going to cause pain to other people. The nicest thing that one can do for oneself is to eliminate their pain and to take care of themselves first. That way, they don’t cause pain to other people because they’re not hurting. I think that’s the theme of the album.

HR: That’s beautiful. Are there any specific themes you’re looking to speak about in your next album?

DL: I write a lot about self-discovery through pain. I mean, that’s one of my main themes in life: that you can turn your pain into something good. I like the theory of alchemy, turning base metal into gold.

Those things fascinate me and anything that benefits the soul fascinates me. This is why people who do really bad things fascinate me, like the character on this album.

The idea that they change, you know. I’ve

seen a lot of people, I’ve hung out with a lot of people, a lot of gangsters, a lot of people who have turned their lives around. To me, it’s miraculous. It’s nothing short of a miracle when people who are involved in things like that—drugs, alcohol, whatever—can get their lives together and start doing good. Because that’s amazing.

It’s very rare. It rarely happens. They all say the same thing: it’s mysterious. They just had enough of what they were doing and started doing something else. That is fascinating to me, the mystery. I’m not religious, but I do think prayer and the universe are powerful things. Asking the universe for exactly what you need and then sending the vibe out to whatever is out there. Whatever that may be, I have no idea. That’s something that’s interesting to me as well. I like the idea of that. I think it does something for someone on the inside. I think it builds strength internally for people. It certainly has for me.

Olivia Rodrigo Spills Her GUTS Senior arts reporter Sofia Hrycyszyn catches a landmark moment for young superstar Olivia Rodrigo on her GUTS World Tour.

By SOFIA HRYCYSZYN | Senior Arts Reporter Instead of the usual guys hawking shooters out of giant coolers, there were women standing behind tables littered with sparkly gel pens. Turning a tight corner, I was nearly overrun by a horde of nine-year-olds decked out in shades of pale purple. Two mothers flanked the group, heads on a swivel. I wondered how the two chaperones had been picked—did the mothers set up a boxing ring or draw straws? The line for booze was either going to be really short or really long.

On March 20, United Center was sold out for Chicago’s second night of Olivia Rodrigo’s “GUTS World Tour,” named for her 2023 album. The pop starlet shot to fame with SOUR, her debut 2021 LP. Released when Rodrigo was 18, SOUR came from a place of first heartbreak and naivety, while GUTS suggests growth. While GUTS’s best songs are still presumably

about the same breakup that featured in SOUR, the new album also tackles topics like unattainable beauty standards and social insecurity in a way that’s digestible for her young audience.

The night opened with Chappell Roan, a rising pop artist with flaming red hair and roots in the Midwest. Twirling a purse in one hand and high kicking across the stage, Chappell brought an energy that has propelled her from The Subterranean, a small, 400 capacity venue in Wicker Park, to the United Center in under a year. So for those of you who were waiting in the concession line: “How dare you miss Chappell for a hotdog,” a fellow reporter remarked in the press pit.

Rodrigo blasted onstage with “bad idea right?,” a piece about fighting the urge to hook up with her ex. She chanted along CONTINUED ON PG. 15

Rodrigo’s performance was both intimate and larger-than-life, in many ways reflecting her journey of being propelled into stardom. sofia hrycyszyn.

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“Rodrigo knows her audience, and she chooses to play to her youngest fans.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 14

to the heavy drumbeat, “Now I’m getting in the car wrecking all my plans/I know I should stop…” She paused a few beats longer than the audience anticipated, allowing them to fill the space with cheers.

The drums picked up and she resumed, her vocals building into a scream. With “ballad of a homeschooled girl,” Rodrigo maintained the same upbeat, angry-teenage-girl energy, before shifting into the soft anger of her chart-topping “vampire.”

Then the tempo slowed. Waves of fog

rolled across the stage and Rodrigo took a seat at a grand piano. After launching into a beautiful solo performance of the piece that sling-shotted her into fame, “Driver’s License,” Rodrigo addressed the audience in what The Loyola Phoenix’s Ella Govrik, standing next to me at the concert, called Rodrigo’s “first grade teacher voice.” High pitched and sing-songy, Rodrigo remarked that she was 19 when she wrote “teenage dream” and scared of growing up but having just turned 21 she now “can’t wait to get older.” Rodri-

go knows her audience, and she chooses to play to her youngest fans. Her music, which often addresses body confidence and gender expectations, has messaging that is poignant and impactful for her young fans. Her delivery, however, with a kind of “teacher voice,” risks distancing her older fans.

Despite Rodrigo’s focus on her young fan base and her effort to make them feel seen and engaged, she did not filter sexual or explicit content. “Obsessed,” a track released on the March 22 deluxe version

of GUTS, has lyrics like “I’m so obsessed with your ex/I know she’s been asleep on my side of your bed.” As she sang, Rodrigo writhed on a glass portion of the stage, with the view from below cast on the massive screen behind her. Given her young audience, Rodgrigo carefully and cautiously scratched topics of sexual expression and sexual freedom—and I only hope that her choices regarding sexual content are less a product of the oversexualization of girls, and more a genuine form of female empowerment.

SPORTS UChicago Robotics Takes First Place in MakeHarvard Competition The UChicago robotics team developed an AI-powered wearable that took first prize in the MakeHarvard engineering makeathon this February.

By CARLOS SOLE | Sports Reporter In February, the UChicago robotics team won the Super Bowl of robotics— Harvard University’s MakeHarvard robotics competition.

MakeHarvard is not a typical, run-ofthe-mill robotics competition: it’s the largest 24-hour “makeathon” for graduate and undergraduate students in the world. Unlike a typical robotics competition, which allows participants to bring a built robot, a makeathon is a competition that allows participating teams a set amount of time— 24 hours, in this case—to build and present working prototypes of devices based on a common topic given by the judges.

This year’s topic was artificial intelligence, or AI. UChicago’s team submission in the competition was called “Project Pair.”

“Project Pair” is an AI-powered wearable device that can be attached to a baseball cap to assist the visually impaired with identifying people around them. To do this, the device uses an audiovisual system to register the names and facial structures of the people it looks at and stores the data for future recognition. Using

this information, if the device sees a face it already has the data for, it will state the name of the person into the earbuds of the person wearing it.

“In technical terms, the wearable takes audiovisual input from a video stream, processes the input with AI, and outputs the processed result as audio,” said fourthyear Jackson Lee, the president of UChicago Robotics.

The team attributed their success to team leadership, though the incomprehensible levels of intelligence in the group probably helped (even if the team was quite humble about this fact).

“The division of responsibility led to our success. We each worked on a single critical feature. Trey [Clark] worked on AI processing, Larry [Li] worked on the audiovisual system, and I worked on video processing while Robert [Pitu] designed the hardware,” third-year Gideon Mitchell said.

Regardless, this major victory was both the culmination of years of hard work, and a new beginning. For both first-year Robert Pitu and fourth-year Lee, their success

The UChicago Robotics team with their winning trophy (and their wearable robot!). courtesy of uchicago robotics .

in the competition was highly gratifying, though for different reasons.

“This is my first year with the team, and I am happy to take part in the bright future of the team. It is clear as day to me: our accomplishment marks the start of a new chapter in the team’s future,” Pitu explained.

“For many, it was a first to attend. For me, now in my fourth year, it was a fitting end,” Lee said.

The team’s victory not only solidified UChicago’s position as a robotics powerhouse but also fostered a sense of camaraderie and pride within the UChicago robotics community. Makeathon or not, participating in any robotics competition—let alone winning one—requires dedication, adaptability, and perseverance.

With their sights set on new horizons, the team stands ready to conquer any challenges that lie ahead.

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CROSSWORDS 74. Meta-HEAP

By PRAVAN CHAKRAVARTHY | Head Crossword Editor ACROSS 1 NewsHour producer 4 Opposite of con, anti, and amateur 7 Disconcert 11 “Awesome!” in slang 13 “Yikes, a mouse!”

14 Got a 100 on 15 H, in this clue’s answer 18 May in the U.K.?

19 Chicago ___ Station (Amtrak hub) 20 Sad, in San Salvador 22 E, in this clue’s answer 29 “Gadzooks!”

30 “Gadzooks!”

31 ___ letter (professor’s offering for a job) 32 One who can keep books: Abbr.

35 Chiquita competitor 36 Short-sleeve shirt, for short 37 Spicy gossip, colloquially 40 A, in this clue’s answer DOWN 1 Discreet “Hey you” 2 “Yuck!”

3 Ctrl + S 4 Watch-dog, perhaps?

5 Go over again 6 Gives approval 7 Satyr, in Rome 8 Fiber- (and vowel-) rich berry 9 All-time number of electrical engineering graduates from UChicago 10 Biblical garden 12 Titular tortoise in a Dr. Seuss book 16 Notable foam-based weaponry seller 17 Not straight 21 “No Scrubs” girl group 22 European layer cake 23 One of three on a tricycle 24 Run, as a game show 25 Relating to ebb and flow 26 Fight ender: Abbr.

27 What can provide shock value in the ocean?

28 Sourdough alternative 32 Figure skater Nathan 33 Botany ___ (notable UChicago absence) 34 Tagged, as on a post 38 They/___

45 46 47 50 51 52 55 56 60 61 65 69 71 72 73 74 75 76 39 41 42 43 44 47 48 49 53 54 55 57 58 59 61 62 63 64 66 67 68 70

Immersed Berkeley, on the field Collections, as of chewed gum Reaches out on Instagram “This is news to me:” Abbr.

Name given to Beethoven’s Third Symphony Lord P, in this clue’s answer She was born out of Zeus’s forehead Hate with a passion Rock salt and methanol, for two What this clue’s answer doesn’t have Football team that once played in St. Louis Author Gyasi who wrote “Homegoing” Uber ___ Double Stuf treat Lifesaving surgery locales: Abbr.

Tree that sounds like a pronoun Actor Omar in “House” What prospies do When the balcony scene happens in “Romeo and Juliet” Megacity on the Nile Actress Burstyn or Pompeo “Moonrise Kingdom” director Anderson “thank u, next” singer, to fans Expose on the Web Billboard, for one Fitting Salvador Dalì or Charlie Chaplin feature, for short “It’s not looking good” Viewed to be Still competing Rounded, natural hairstyle Animal that might cause a yawn?

Philosopher whose name sounds like a core requirement Roughly Website where “the meaning of life” was sold for $3.26 in 2000 Repetition-based learning model Austin-based film festival, for short One of eight on a spider

Last week’s solutions are available at http://bit.ly/443qUN9.

Solutions to this week’s puzzle will be in the next issue.