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USG College Council Impeaches VP of Student Organizations

By OLIVER BUNTIN | Deputy News Editor and NATHANIEL RODWELL-SIMON | Deputy News Editor

Class representatives voted May 7 to impeach third-year Nevin Hall, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) officer responsible for supervising USG elections and distributing RSO funding. The vote at the emergency meeting of the College Council (CC) was 13–0 for impeachment, with two abstentions.

During a Monday, May 5 CC meeting, representatives passed a resolution calling for Hall’s resignation as chair of the Elections & Rules Committee (E&R) based on allegations shared during a closed-door meeting.

The resolution, which was obtained by the Maroon prior to the May 7 meeting, accuses Hall of engaging in “a consis-

tent pattern of violation of public trust, neglect of duty, and malfeasance of office during the 2023–2024 academic year and the 2024–2025 academic year.”

The impeachment also removed three other members of E&R—thirdyears Aidan Long, Ayla Eichler, and Evan Spear—who were described as “friends” of Hall and accused of supporting his attempt to nullify the spring 2025 USG election results.

Prior to his impeachment, Hall had served as vice president of student organizations (VPSO) since winter quarter and chair of E&R since 2023. E&R oversees USG elections, mediates disputes that arise during the election process,

and manages changes to the USG bylaws and constitution.

The emergency meeting was held in a packed classroom in Cobb Hall, with curious members of the public sitting on the floor and crowding into the hallway. Multiple class representatives described it as “the most well-attended CC meeting we’ve ever had.”

In an opening statement, USG President Elijah Jenkins alleged that, after the May 5 vote requesting Hall’s resignation, Hall revoked public access to election documents on the USG website and deleted a number of unspecified budgetary and election-related materials. Jenkins also noted that Hall had refused to answer numerous emails from USG colleagues. Hall was not present at the emergency meeting. The Maroon has been unable

to access documents on E&R’s website since at least 12:30 p.m. on May 5.

Jenkins also alleged that, after learning of the emergency session, Hall scheduled an E&R meeting for the morning of May 7. During the meeting, Hall allegedly appointed himself as E&R secretary before resigning as chair to frustrate the impeachment attempt, after which his “friends” on the committee filed a motion to nullify the results of the spring 2025 elections at his direction.

Jenkins said during the emergency meeting that he and all members of the executive committee consider the nullification invalid.

In a statement to the Maroon, Hall denied all allegations of misconduct, asserting that he never misled the CC or

State Department Reinstates Visas of International Students and Alums

By ISAIAH GLICK | Senior News Reporter

Ten students and alumni whose visas were terminated earlier this month had their visas restored by the federal government, a University spokesperson confirmed to the Maroon. The move comes as the Trump administration backs down from its revocation of the visas of thousands of international students in the United States.

Joseph Carilli, a Department of Justice (DoJ) lawyer, told a federal judge on April 25 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is initiating a new policy for the review of student visas. In the interim, DoJ lawyers have filed motions to dismiss court cases over the revoked visas, as ICE is restoring the

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Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS) records of student visas.

The New York Times quoted a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official who warned that the students may yet be at risk of seeing their legal status terminated in the future.

Brian Green, a lawyer representing several dozen international students, shared a statement about the new ICE policy provided by a government lawyer with the Associated Press (AP). “ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations. Until such a policy is issued, the SEVIS records for plaintiff(s) in this case (and other similarly situated

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plaintiffs) will remain Active or shall be re-activated if not currently active and ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination,” the statement read.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs for the DHS, told the AP that the administration “restore[d] SEVIS access for people who had not had their visa revoked.”

Along with UChicago, students at Yale University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley have reported to their respective schools’ newspapers that their visa statuses had been restored.

Previously, on April 10, the Office of International Affairs (OIA) found that

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seven UChicago students and alums had their visas revoked for “unlawful activity.” No further explanation was given. OIA concurrently sent out updated guidance to international students and offered to connect those who lost their visas with immigration attorneys.

The decision by ICE was condemned by the non-tenure-track union Faculty Forward, which described the move as “the latest in a series of authoritarian, unconstitutional, and unconscionable moves by the Trump White House to target and harass international students and immigrants, colleges and universities, people exercising their rights to freedom of speech, and other groups this administration claims are its enemies.”

“Hall ‘demonstrated a general disregard for due process’ by suppressing debate and calling snap votes on funding decisions.”

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withheld information regarding by-law changes, and all edits were prompted by requests from other USG members. Hall claimed that no RSO funds were unfairly withheld, and all funding decisions were made by the full Program Coordinating Council (PCC) committee. He maintained his comments about certain RSOs were based solely on their budgeting practices, not personal bias, and highlighted that some groups he criticized received increased funding, while a group he praised had its funding cut. Hall also stated that he believed the documents he removed were accessible by other channels.

Kevin Guo, a second-year representative on the CC, told the Maroon before the May 7 meeting that Hall had embarked on a campaign to “centralize power around himself within the Undergraduate Student Government.” On May 4, Guo submitted a memo to the CC raising concerns about what he described as a “consistent lack of candor to [the Council], which has resulted in the increasing

centralization of power in the hands of the Elections and Rules Committee (E&R) and—now—the Vice President of Student Organizations (VPSO).” Guo also wrote the impeachment resolution and compiled the evidence.

According to an edit history analysis provided to the Maroon and presented as evidence in the impeachment hearing, Hall, as part of a rewrite he characterized to be “eliminating redundancy,” made at least 31 changes to USG bylaws between November 2023 and April 2025, at least 12 of which directly or indirectly increased the powers of his positions, most notably by prohibiting the impeachment of E&R members.

An April 28 CC meeting, with attendees including Hall and Guo, addressed Hall’s changes to the bylaws. According to the minutes, Hall claimed “all these changes are things either you’ve approved me to do, [Jenkins] asked me to do, or others requested. None of this originated solely from me.” According to the meeting minutes, no attendees disputed Hall’s characterization of why the bylaws

were changed at the time.

Anonymous complaints submitted to the College Council and provided to the Maroon allege that, in his position as VPSO, Hall “expressed clear personal biases about various RSOs” prior to and during PCC meetings, and “demonstrated a general disregard for due process” by suppressing debate and calling snap votes on funding decisions.

One complaint presents Hall’s comments regarding UChicago Robotics as an example of such bias: “he spoke positively about Robotics, saying he was a ‘big fan’ of their budget proposal from the previous year, and indicated that if he chose to use the ‘equipment fund,’ it would likely go to them, even before we had met with any RSOs.” Another complaint accused Hall of making funding decisions without researching RSOs coming before the PCC and of taking over the funding appeals process.

At the May 7 emergency meeting, Guo explained that he intended to file articles of impeachment against Hall at a May 12 CC meeting. However, the

Council requested an emergency session in response to Hall’s decision to revoke document access and pursue the nullification of its elections. Jenkins agreed to the request and overruled both the usual 48-hour notice and the requirement for E&R chair consent.

In communications reviewed by the Maroon, Jenkins expressed concerns that Hall would attempt to overturn the results of the spring 2025 USG elections at the E&R meeting scheduled for May 8.

According to Jenkins, second-year Oliver Zajac will become the interim chair of E&R; he had reason to believe Zajac was not associated with the effort to overturn the election because Hall had opposed Zajac’s appointment to E&R. Grace Beatty, a first-year representative, was offered the position of interim PCC chair.

Editor’s Note: Grace Beatty, a first-year representative on the College Council, is a current staff member of the Maroon. She had no involvement in the reporting of this story.

Chicago-born Cardinal with Hyde Park Ties

Becomes First American Pontiff

By ISAIAH GLICK | Senior News Reporter

Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, was elected today as the first American pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. The new Holy Father was born in Chicago and attended Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park. He was elected after a conclave lasting two days and four votes, held after the death of Pope Francis on April 21.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Leo grew up in the Chicago suburb of Dolton and went to the St. Mary of the Assumption parish school on the Far South Side before attending St. Augustine Seminary High School in west Michigan.

After earning his B.S. in mathematics from Villanova University in 1977, he

joined the Order of St. Augustine, a mendicant order of friars dedicated to pastoral care, and returned to Chicago—receiving a Masters in Divinity degree from Catholic Theological Union, currently located at 5416 South Cornell Avenue in East Hyde Park. During that period, he taught math part-time at a local Catholic school, Mendel College Prep, and substituted as a physics teacher at St. Rita High School.

Per his Vatican biography, Leo studied at the Pontifical Saint Thomas Aquinas University in Rome before moving to Peru, where he served as judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Trujillo and taught canon law. In 1999, he returned to Chicago as the provincial prior of the city’s

Augustinian Province, where he was involved in a scandal in which a priest accused of sexual abuse was moved into the St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park, located near St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School.

In his first remarks on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the new pope paid tribute to Francis before stating in Italian, “God loves us. God loves us all. Evil will not prevail.” He thanked the College of Cardinals for electing him and praised his diocese in Peru: “A faithful people [there] has accompanied its bishop, has shared its faith and has given so much, so much to continue being a faithful church of Jesus Christ.”

Speaking on his vision for the future of the Catholic church, Leo said that “we

have to seek together to be a missionary church. A church that builds bridges and dialogue.” He also quoted St. Augustine, saying, “With you I am a Christian, for you a bishop.”

The Catholic Theological Union in East Hyde Park, where Pope Leo XIV received his Masters in Divinity degree. nathaniel rodwell-simon .

University “Exploring” Possibility of New Dorm

Amid Housing & Residence Life Restructuring, Staff Departures

By GABRIEL KRAEMER | News Editor and ISAIAH GLICK | Senior News Reporter

Housing & Residence Life (HRL) is “in the early stages of exploring” the possibility of adding a new residence hall on campus, HRL Executive Director David Hibbler confirmed to the Maroon in a statement. A new dorm would help the University reach its goal of accommodating at least 70 percent of undergraduate students in on-campus housing, according to the statement.

Hibbler also told the Maroon that two resident head (RH) positions in Renee Granville-Grossman Residential Commons (RGGRC) West that had been eliminated as part of a pilot program will be restored next academic year.

The pilot program had replaced two of the four RH positions in RGGRC West with a full-time community director, who supplemented student support offered by the remaining RHs. The community director role will be expanded to other dorms, but not at the expense of resident heads, according to Hibbler.

Renee Granville-Grossman Residential

Commons housed a pilot program that eliminated two resident head positions this year. courtesy of damian almeida baray

“While the presence of the Community Director has been widely appreciated, feedback made it clear that the greatest concern was not the role itself, but the perception that it came as a substitute for Resident Heads,” Hibbler said in the statement.

“We love to see the return of RHs,” Undergraduate Student Government (USG) College Council Chair Alex Fuentes said in a statement to the Maroon on behalf of USG. “The RHs give UChicago

a very different housing experience compared to other universities, with a wider variety of experiences for students to receive advice on, while still maintaining support from upperclassmen.”

Fuentes added in the statement that USG does not know where a new dorm would be located but expects it to be finished in 2028.

According to U.S. News & World Report, 57 percent of UChicago students lived on campus as of autumn 2023. Increasing that share to 70 percent, Hibbler said, is a “longstanding goal” that would “help build supportive cultural and intellectual communities.”

The University also announced last month that HRL’s governance structure will change, moving the office from Campus and Student Life (CSL) to the College.

“In an effort to more closely align the work of Housing & Residence Life with the overall College experience, HRL is moving from Campus and Student Life into the College, with continued management of most human resources functions, facilities and operations by CSL,” Dean of the College Melina Hale wrote in an April 24 email to College and HRL staff shared with the Maroon. “This will allow us to even better integrate student supports into this part of life at UChicago.”

According to the email, Hibbler and HRL will report to Koryna Bucholz, the current deputy dean of students and chief of staff in the College, who will become associate dean of the College for student experience. The changes will take effect on July 1.

The restructuring comes after a number of HRL staff departures in winter quarter. According to archived versions of the HRL website’s staff page, three of the seven associate and assistant directors of residence life (ADRLs), the communications manager, and the assistant director of operations for Campus North Residential Commons all left HRL between January and March.

The ADRL positions for Campus North, Max Palevsky Residential Commons, and Snell-Hitchcock Hall, as well as several communications and operations positions, remain vacant.

The Maroon was unable to reach any of the departed staff members for comment, and Hibbler declined to answer specific questions about the departures.

Two current RHs, who spoke to the Maroon on the condition of anonymity, said the turnover had decreased the support houses have gotten from HRL. “Sometimes it’s hard to get the support and structure that you might need if your [supervisor] is trying to learn their new job, new responsibilities and, like, figure out who you are,” one said.

“The actual support that the RHs are getting, just from their supervisors, just in general, has been lower,” the other RH

said. “Some houses haven’t even met with their interim person because they just haven’t had the capacity.”

DelGiorno House Council president Isha Mehta, whose house fell under the RGGRC West pilot program this year, said in an interview that she felt “super positive” about HRL’s restoration of RH roles in the dorm.

“The community director role is largely positive, and it has been largely positive in South to have sort of one guiding force of authority that is very accessible by all the students in the dorm,” she said. “The only problem I ever had with the new program was just stripping the RHs that lived in the house and were the closest point of contact [for students]. It’s just so difficult for one person to manage four houses and pay quite as much attention to what’s going on in each house.”

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UChicago Joins Second Lawsuit Against Federal Funding Cuts

By NATHANIEL RODWELL-SIMON | Deputy News Editor

The University of Chicago, along with three academic associations and 12 other institutions of higher education, filed a lawsuit on May 5 seeking to block the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) implementation of a universal 15 percent rate for coverage of indirect costs on all new research awards.

The lawsuit, filed jointly with schools including the University of Illinois, Cornell University, and the University of Pennsylvania, seeks to prevent the NSF from enacting the rate cut and to require the agency to continue approving grants within the currently negotiated indirect cost rate guidelines.

The University currently holds more than 300 NSF grants, cumulatively worth hundreds of millions of dollars. According to the lawsuit, a 15 percent indirect cost rate would amount to an annual loss of $14.5 million to UChicago’s research budget.

Indirect costs are expenses arising from administrative functions and the maintenance of buildings, utilities, and

equipment. Generally, grant money supporting direct costs of research cannot be allocated to indirect expenses.

When the NSF awards research grants to a scientist at an institution of higher education, the agency includes additional funding for indirect costs at a rate negotiated between the federal government and the institution.

Prior to the new policy, the NSF covered indirect costs of on-campus organized research at the University at a rate of 64 percent, a number in line with rates at other major research universities. For every dollar of direct funding a researcher was awarded, they received an additional 64 cents to cover indirect costs.

The University negotiated the rate of indirect costs with the federal government for a five-year period ending in June 2026.

NSF’s rate cut follows similar policies implemented by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in February and the Department of Energy (DOE) in April, both of which are currently subject to federal injunctions. Unlike the NIH rate cut, howev-

er, the NSF cap is not retroactive and only applies to awards issued after the guidelines took effect.

NSF has also terminated thousands of grants over the past month, including six awarded to University researchers, per a crowdsourced database of grant terminations.

In her order issuing an injunction against the NIH blocking its rate cut, federal District Court Judge Angel Kelley determined that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in arguing that the rate cut violated several federal regulations and was “arbitrary and capricious” as defined by the Administrative Procedure Act.

The new lawsuit challenges the NSF’s new rate guidelines on similar grounds, alleging that “NSF has not even attempted to address many of the flaws the district courts found with NIH’s and DOE’s unlawful policies.”

According to the NSF’s policy notice, the new guidelines were created to reduce “administrative burdens” on research institutions, increase the proportion of funds allocated to the direct costs of research, and create more consistent allocations

between institutions of higher education.

Vice Provost for Research Erin Adams announced the decision to join the lawsuit in a May 6 email to faculty researchers. A version of Adams’s email was also posted to UChicago News.

“NSF’s proposed cap will harm scientific research at universities and impede technological progress by limiting the federal funding available for the critical buildings, infrastructure, systems, and staff necessary to conduct advanced research, and is contrary to current federal law,” Adams wrote. “This work benefits the American public in countless ways, including by enabling fundamental scientific discoveries and new technologies, training the next generation of leading scientists, and supporting high-tech jobs and businesses.”

In a statement to the Maroon, an NSF spokesperson reiterated the new guidelines but did not answer questions about the potential for detrimental effects, how the agency would support researchers who rely on the currently negotiated rates, or whether the agency would work to reduce the administrative burden of the grant application process.

International Students React With Fear, Uncertainty to Federal Immigration Policy Changes

By CELESTE ALCALAY | Senior News Reporter

After a dizzying few weeks of visa revocations and reinstatements, the Maroon spoke to UChicago international students who were reevaluating their decisions to study in the United States. All of the students were granted anonymity due to fear of government retaliation.

“The reason that any of us travel to a different country, leave everything behind, is so that we can access better education, better opportunities,” an undergraduate student from India said in an interview.

“This stuff scares me so much,” she continued. “If I get deported, I’m just not going to be intellectually stimulated back home. There are great institutions, but none of them are on par with what UChicago has to offer.”

Last month, the Department of State re-

voked the visas of 10 UChicago students and recent alumni as part of a broad program of visa terminations. In a major reversal a few weeks later, all 10 visas were reinstated, along with those of thousands of other students across the country.

The reversal of the visa revocations was a short-lived win for students who had filed lawsuits in federal court accusing the government of acting without due process. On April 30, the government announced new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policies that expand the range of justifications for canceling a student’s legal status in the U.S.

For the student from India, the fear of deportation has added more stress to the challenge of navigating college in a foreign country. “It’s already difficult to reconcile

your identity at home and your identity here. The way that you talk, the way that you dress, a lot of things are just very fundamentally different here than the way they are back home.”

She said that she had been prepared to minimize her social media footprint and avoid criticizing the U.S. government as a foreign national in the U.S., but President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration has led to a new level of fear and uncertainty.

She had previously come to the U.S. in 2019 for a two-week summer program. Then, she recalled, her parents and teachers cautioned her: “‘Don’t leave a trail on social media of you supporting one thing or the other, because all of it can be accessed, and all of it can be used against you.’”

However, those warnings did not feel immediate to her until the last few months, she said.

“One of the things that I wrote about in my UChicago essay is that this is the one school across the country that promotes speaking for what you believe in, and I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” she said.

Since taking office, Trump has embarked on what he has referred to as a campaign “to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence,” targeting international students who participated in pro-Palestine activism during the wave of protests that swept across U.S. college campuses last spring.

Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University who led negotiations during its encampment, was arrested in March by immigration enforcement on the grounds that his continued presence

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“What Trump is doing is hawkish... but still within the bounds of legality.”

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in the country could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the U.S., despite not being accused of or charged with a crime. Khalil has since filed a lawsuit against the government, arguing that he was wrongfully detained and denied due process.

Trump’s State Department has also revoked student visas for minor infractions unrelated to protest activity. In one case, a Brigham Young University Ph.D. student from Japan had his visa revoked for harvesting more fish than his fishing license allowed in 2019.

An undergraduate international student from China said she first grew worried after reading about a case of a Chinese student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who had her visa revoked due to a speeding violation.

“I cannot see how getting a speeding ticket makes you a danger to national security,” she said.

She felt that the government had used the goal of “combating antisemitism to target Chinese students.”

“To be honest, we are model international students. We don’t go into the encampment because we are already told, ‘don’t get into trouble,’” she said.

The U.S.’s historically fraught relationship with China has led previous administrations to place Chinese students under more scrutiny than foreign nationals from allied countries due to national security

concerns. The student from China explained that, while she sees that scrutiny as justified, the recent visa revocations felt “arbitrary” in many cases.

The legal power the Trump administration wields, combined with the wide array of reasons for which students have had their visas revoked, has led her to feel “helpless.”

“What Trump is doing is hawkish and extreme but still within the bounds of legality,” she said.

“There’s not really any legal protection for us.”

Leaving Campus Six Weeks Before Graduation

Last month, a UChicago student in the last year of his master’s program at the Harris School returned home to Saudi Arabia on his government’s advice after his visa was revoked. Misho Ceko, the senior associate dean of business operations at Harris, confirmed the information in an interview with the Maroon

The student’s legal status was restored along with the nine other UChicago students and alumni whose visas were revoked, but “he did not feel comfortable staying here,” Ceko said. The Maroon was not immediately able to reach the student for comment about the details of the revocation.

The Harris Office of Academic & Student Affairs has been working with the student to ensure he receives his degree, according to Ceko, who called the student’s

return home “a tragedy.”

“He’s going to miss out on the last six weeks, which are really special. You are saying goodbye to many of your friends and walking across the stage,” Ceko said.

A Possible Decline in International Student Enrollment

Student concerns indicate that Trump’s crackdown on immigration could have long-term effects on the higher education landscape by affecting the number of international students who choose to study in the U.S. International students currently comprise 13 percent of students in the College and 24 percent of the University community.

“For incoming students, there is a lot of concern about coming and studying in the U.S. Their countries and their governments are telling them to be careful, there are advisory warnings,” Ceko said.

Professors and administrators have warned of “brain drain,” the phenomenon of slowing innovation and research production due to lost talent, if international students opt to leave the country or not to study here in the first place.

International students “contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2023 – 2024 academic year and supported more than 378,000 jobs,” according to analysis by NAFSA, an association of international educators.

A graduate student from the European Union (EU) told the Maroon that her

friends who had once hoped to stay in the country and apply for more permanent visas after receiving their degrees now plan to leave as soon as they graduate.

She also plans to return home in a few months after she graduates, amid growing anxiety about her participation in campus activism over the last year. “I’ve deleted my social media. I only kept WhatsApp,” she said. “I’ve just had enough.”

In addition to the international students already studying at U.S. institutions, those who had planned to come to the U.S. are rethinking their plans.

An undergraduate international student from Egypt said two of his friends from Lebanon and Egypt have turned down offers to study at UChicago and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. They have instead chosen to apply to institutions in the United Kingdom and the EU, such as the London School of Economics.

“I was talking to one of them, and he said he wasn’t sure whether they would actually have a safe environment to learn or would wake up one morning and see that their visa is revoked, and they’re getting deported,” he said. He added that neither of them had been involved in pro-Palestine causes.

“If international students do not show up at American universities, it will be catastrophic for higher education. It will turn everything upside down,” Ceko said. “We haven’t seen an impact yet, but that doesn’t mean [international students] are going to show up in the fall.”

UCDems and College Republicans Reflect on Trump’s First 100 Days in Office

By ANIKA KRISHNASWAMY | News Editor, CELESTE ALCALAY | Senior News Reporter, and VEDIKA BARADWAJ | News Reporter

Over the first 100 days of his second term, President Donald Trump has sought to restructure much of the U.S. government, signing a record number of executive orders. He has established the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) in an effort to decrease government “bloat,” pushed for an economic policy approach that prioritizes high tariffs on imports, and

attempted to bypass the courts to further his crackdown on immigration.

The effects of Trump’s transformative agenda have been reshaping the landscape of higher education, pushing universities, including UChicago, to rethink academic norms and funding mechanisms. Policies targeting student visas, federal research funding, and diversity, equity, and inclu-

sion (DEI) initiatives continue to affect campuses across the country.

The Maroon spoke with UChicago College Democrats co-president Robbie Hlatki and UChicago College Republicans member Eduardo Ribeiro about how they, as college students, view the early moves of the second Trump administration.

Note: These excerpts have been selected from separate interviews with Hlatki and Ribeiro and edited for clarity and brevity. The symbols �� (UCDems) and �� (UChicago

College Republicans) are used to indicate which political organization each speaker represents.

Restructuring of Higher Education

The Maroon reported earlier this month that funding for UChicago research on HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 was slashed as part of Trump’s effort to reduce “wasteful” government spending. The University has also quietly removed DEI language from its public-facing websites since Trump’s

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“...

academic freedom should

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election last November. Critics have argued that universities have a responsibility to resist federal pressure, while others welcome the scaling back of DEI programs.

Now, a growing number of U.S. higher education institutions are opposing what the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AACU) has referred to as “government overreach,” threatening academic freedom.

Funding Cuts

�� Robbie Hlatki (UChicago College Democrats): [There’s] only so much that I think this University can do to fight back—I mean, I would like to see them not make deals with the [Trump] administration and try to find ways to continue funding our research programs without federal funding.… I know it’s very difficult, but difficult times call for creative actions. I think that we should kind of press the University to take some creative actions to maintain the funding that is so critical to this institution and to our country, without relying on the federal government, and that’s a very difficult thing.

�� Eduardo Ribeiro (UChicago College Republicans): I think academic freedom should be preserved above everything else. I don’t think a government —any government, not Trump or Biden, any government—I don’t think the government should have the right to say what a professor, what a researcher, can do in their job, or, as a matter of fact, what a student can say in the classroom. I think that’s just unacceptable and breaching the First Amendment. So, in terms of academic integrity, I don’t think [Trump’s approach has] been a good idea so far.

Harvard has a [$53.2] billion-dollar endowment—that’s bigger than most countries’ [GDP].… I don’t think they should be getting any government money for almost anything. [The size of elite schools’ endowments] justifies cuts as a whole. I think they would be better off putting this $[2.2] billion [of frozen funding]… into helping all the community colleges or state-funded colleges.

UChicago has a very strong financial position, and it should be able to take care of itself without government funding. I’m not saying it does, I’m saying it should.… And I feel like the University is still helping

be preserved above everything else.”

out all students as best as possible.

DEI Rollbacks, Identity Politics

�� RH: I mean, we’re very early in the process [of Trump’s anti-DEI policies]. To be honest, I’m not privy to all the details of what the University has done in response to the federal decrees, [but] I would hope that centers like the Center for Identity + Inclusion that are really important to a lot of people on campus, students on campus, I hope those stay operational and continue to support students on our campus.

I would hope that the University does not [eliminate those diversity-focused programs]. It’s one thing to eliminate some words here or there. You know, it sucks. You have to do it. But I don’t think that’s the end of the world.

�� ER: I don’t think DEI helps anyone. Of course it helps the people that are being self-selected, but, as a whole, I don’t think we’re benefiting from DEI.

If you go to the Democrats’ website, there’s like, maybe 20 bullet points of people [they] represent, and there’s like immigrants, LGBTQ people, Black people, women. There’s not young men. I just think people caught up to that. They were like, “Why are you not representing me?”

Biden was almost guided out of the [first presidential] debate by his wife because he couldn’t go down a flight of stairs. I don’t think that man would have been shot in the ear and lifted himself up. And I think that inspired a lot of young men.

Visa Revocations

One of the most controversial moves by the Trump administration has been its revocation of many international students’ visas. In one particularly contentious case, a Tufts University student was reportedly detained after writing an op-ed for the campus newspaper criticizing the university’s response to student activism regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.

At UChicago, ten current students and recent graduates had their visas revoked. The ten have since had their Student and Exchange Visitor Program statuses restored, but new ICE policies granting the government broad power and discretion in the termination of international students’ legal status have generated more uncertainty.

�� RH: International students have diverse perspectives. They really bring a

very valuable insight into the classroom and into the workroom and studies and all that. And it’s a shame that a country that used to so value education is demonizing people for not conforming to whatever political beliefs that they agree with. And I hope—it looks like, to my knowledge—the University is doing everything they can to protect those students, but it’s scary.

It’s one thing, if you’re here committing real crimes… but [for many of these visa revocation cases] it’s free speech. And I believe that if you are in the United States, you are subject to the laws of the United States, the Constitution of the United States, and therefore you should have freedom of expression and due process. And we’re not seeing the administration— federal administration—abide by that, and that’s really disheartening, but I hope the University will stand up for those values and its own values.

�� ER: I think that the Tufts case was a little harsh, in that it kind of warned people. I don’t think he’s going to deport people because of things they say. I think that was an extreme case that he made an example of. I feel bad for the student because [she] was a pawn in all of this, I believe.

Foreign Policy

Trump has escalated his economic attacks against a number of countries, imposing a 145 percent tariff on China and other large tariffs on U.S. allies. American consumers are expected to feel the effects as prices begin to rise and global supply chains are disrupted. Trump has argued that the economic strain from inflation and price increases in the short run will make the U.S. stronger and more self-sufficient in the long run.

Tariffs and Economic Policy

�� RH: I mean, he was elected on lowering prices, and he’s not doing that, and this is only going to raise prices. I think tariffs have a role revitalizing making chips in America for national security purposes. I get it, revitalizing our auto industry, sure. But… we’re putting tariffs on coffee, and we can’t even grow coffee in the United States—it’s just stupid. And… it’s just inconsistent, what [reasoning] the administration is putting out. Is it for negotiating? Is it just how we’re going to revitalize America and make everything in America? I believe

we should make a lot of things in America, and tariffs are a tool, but I don’t think it’s right to have a blanket tariff that demoralizes the horde.

�� ER: Tariffs [increase] prices. That is true… but at the same time, you [have] got to ask yourself, why didn’t Biden drop any of [the] tariffs [Trump imposed during his first term]? This is something that was addressed by Scott Bessent, secretary of the treasury. For a 20 percent tariff in—I think he was talking about China—a 20 percent tariff causes around a 0.7 percent increase in prices… But the idea is that the companies are going to have to eat a little bit of the tariff prices. And Chinese companies are going to have to subsidize a little of the tariff prices in order for the U.S. companies to still do business with them, and of course some of the price [hikes are] going to go through the consumers.

Note: The Biden administration kept and expanded tariffs first enacted against China by Trump but rolled back steel and aluminum tariffs placed on Europe.

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Trump’s focus on cutting government spending has led to the elimination of 90 percent of the U.S.’s humanitarian foreign aid programs, around $60 billion, previously put toward U.S. disaster relief, healthcare assistance, and disease prevention overseas. Still, USAID makes up less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

�� RH: It seems like we’re going towards an isolationist framework of foreign policy, an isolationist strategy of foreign policy, and I think that is going to have really adverse effects on how we’re perceived throughout the world, and it’s going to open the doors for countries like China to influence on the world stage and become a dominant power on the world stage. And when countries don’t trust us to defend them, like our NATO allies and our allies in Southeast Asia and Eastern Asia, I just think it has very adverse effects.

I mean, the effect [of pulling back USAID] is they save money and budget. That is, honestly, I think some of the best money spent. Truthfully, I know it’s not helping Americans, but it’s helping Americans’ image, and we devote millions of dollars towards the President’s golf trips.... This

“Over time, things better go back to equilibrium again.”

[USAID] is protecting and helping—it’s human.

�� ER: I’m not a big fan of USAID, not the way it’s been used for the past few years… What was created back in the day as a soft power tool to have American interests spread around the world monetarily, not only militarily, is now being used to throw money away for no reason.… [Now, it’s sending aid to] some random country for some non-geopolitical reason. I don’t think that makes sense.

Looking Ahead

Trump’s overall approval rating has

dropped to 44 percent, while 52 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president, according to April polling numbers. Among his voter base, Trump’s approval rating has dipped but remains high at 88 percent, according to data from the Pew Research Center.

�� RH: I think I knew going into the election that it was a race between a leader who had democratic values against an authoritarian, undemocratic individual [who’s] willing to go break the law and go past the extent of the law to pass whatever policy he deemed correct on any particular day—it’s not a really consistent platform.

I mean, I think [the Trump administra-

tion is] terrible for the country. It’s really concerning, and I think it’s going to cause a lot of damage for many, many generations, and I’m going to do everything I can to fight it. And UCDems are going to do everything we can to fight it. … I hope more Americans wake up to this idea that this man never should have been elected in the first place, and a lot of it’s the Democrats’ fault.

�� ER: I think that people that voted for him and people that were expecting him to win are… surprised about how fast things are going but not at the action that he’s taking.… The number of crossings [at the border] has significantly decreased, which was something that he promised.

He put tariffs on, which is something that he’d also promised. He’s pushing for the bill in Congress—the tax bill—which is something that he also promised…. [A]ll that he’s promised, he’s working towards, or has already accomplished and maybe overdone some aspects.

I think [the Trump Administration] is generally a… good prospect for the country. Not saying I would agree with everything. There’s things I disagree [with], but generally, I think it’s good. Over time, things better go back to equilibrium again, after all the tariffs, ins and outs and all the back-and-forth he’s doing. It will all come to equilibrium.

UCUP Holds Week of Protests, Teach-ins

Commemorating Encampment Anniversary

By GRACE BEATTY | Senior News Reporter and ISAIAH GLICK | Senior News Reporter

Marking the one-year anniversary of the 2024 pro-Palestine encampment, UChicago students and community members launched a week-long protest and installation outside Swift Hall. The students, organized as the “Popular University for Gaza,” called for solidarity with Palestine and the divestment of University funds from institutions tied to Israel.

Between Monday, April 28, and Friday, May 2, the group held teach-ins, workshops, and demonstrations—some resulting in confrontations with the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) and deans-on-call—as they sought to maintain public pressure on University leadership.

Shortly after 1 p.m. on April 28, protesters gathered on the quad outside of Swift Hall, raising a banner reading “Free Palestine, Bring the Intifada Home.” UCPD officers and deans-on-call observed from a distance as the group began a series of chants over a megaphone. Deans repeatedly informed the protesters that they were in violation of University policies regulating the use of amplified sound on campus.

Around an hour and a half into the demonstration, the UCPD officers and

deans-on-call requested identification from those who had been using megaphones. The protesters initially locked arms to prevent possible arrests, with the crowd gradually dispersing as officers continued to ask for identifying information.

Shortly after 3 p.m., the demonstrators returned to the quad to attend teachins with community organizations GoodKidsMadCity and Real Youth Initiative, which ended by 6:50 p.m.

Demonstrators returned to the quad on Tuesday and Wednesday, hosting teach-ins and workshops with a variety of campus and community organizations. On Wednesday, programming included lessons on security culture, resisting gentrification in Woodlawn, and “Luigi Mangione and You,” according to agendas posted on Instagram by UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP).

Members of campus labor unions—including Graduate Students United–United Electrical and Faculty Forward—gathered in front of Levi Hall on Thursday to commemorate May Day, which has historically represented the international labor movement. Later, about 20 people gathered in front of Harper Memorial

UCPD officers and a dean-on-call confront a protester they accused of using amplified sound in violation of University policy. nathaniel rodwell-simon .

Library for a “Fightback Rally,” calling on the University to reverse the involuntary suspensions of two undergraduate students arrested in connection with the October 11 pro-Palestine protest.

Two UCPD officers, along with several deans-on-call, gathered to observe the protest.

As protesters continued to chant, UCPD officers chased after demonstra-

tors and confiscated at least one megaphone. The demonstration, which took place after 1 p.m., was again in violation of University policy regarding amplified sound. An unidentified protester flew a flag identifying with the Houthi movement in Yemen; one UCPD officer was overheard saying “as long as they’re holding [the flag], it’s free speech.”

“Don’t

try to stop people taking action to oppose the genocide.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 7

By 1:30 p.m., the protesters had dispersed, returning to the Swift Hall quad for Dhuhr prayer. This was followed by a workshop on mapping campus surveillance and conversations calling for the end of “Cop City Tactics” and “Killer Quantum.”

At 5:30 p.m., University President Paul Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker walked past the protesters to attend an Alumni Weekend event on the western end of the quad. As Alivisatos crossed the

quad, protesters chanted, “Paul, Paul, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!”

Another protester followed Alivisatos and attempted to engage him in conversation but was unsuccessful.

“I’ve read your three emails that you’ve sent this year. Seven students had their visas revoked and the best you can give is empty platitudes,” the protester said. “It just doesn’t feel like you truly care about the lives of students beyond these simple messages.”

Protesters continued to heckle Alivi-

satos outside of the Alumni Weekend tent until 5:45 p.m., when he was escorted into a UCPD car and driven away. The protesters dispersed around half an hour later.

The protesters arrived on the quad around 1:30 p.m. on Friday, handing out informational flyers instructing students how to act during and after a protest, especially if police are involved.

“Don’t de-escalate. Don’t try to stop people taking action to oppose the genocide. Don’t talk to cops or administration,” one line read.

Friday’s daytime programming included a discussion on lessons from the 2024 encampment, a workshop on past student movements, and singing. At 8:30 p.m., following a Shabbat service, protesters invited members of the community to the quad for pizza and projected the words “Free Palestine” onto the front of Levi Hall, echoing a similar projection during the 2024 encampment. Soon afterwards, the protesters dispersed for the night, officially concluding the week of demonstrations.

Faculty Urge Alivisatos to Join Peers in Publicly Defending University Values

By CELESTE ALCALAY | Senior News Reporter

Dozens of faculty members have recently signed a letter calling on the University to take a public stance against the second Trump administration’s crackdown on higher education, which has included visa revocations and research funding cuts.

“We ask that the President and Provost commit, in writing and in public, to the defense of the University and its ideals,” the letter, addressed to UChicago faculty colleagues, reads. “We firmly believe that the joint commitment of peers to these ideals, and to mutual defense of them, is our best hope for sustaining the institutions to which we have dedicated our professional lives.”

The letter indicates a growing frustration among some faculty members that the University has not joined in “collective efforts to defend academic freedom in the United States.” In the past month, over 250 faculty members signed a separate petition asking President Paul Alivisatos to sign the April 22 American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) statement opposing “government overreach” into higher education institutions.

The faculty letter points to faculty senates of other Ivy Plus universities and member institutions of the Association of American Universities that have passed or are in the process of passing resolutions reaffirming their commitment to aca-

demic freedom. On April 6, the Rutgers University Senate passed a motion calling for the creation of a “mutual defense compact” with other Big Ten Conference universities, an alliance that would allow those universities to pool funds and legal resources in light of fears of government overreach into academia. Since then, faculty senates from more than one-third of the 18 universities in the Big Ten have signed resolutions urging administrators to join.

The faculty letter also cites that several faculty senates are requesting public statements of solidarity from their leaders. At Yale University, the faculty senate circulated a letter to all faculty asking the university to commit to challenging “unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self- governance.”

The UChicago faculty letter similarly outlines six commitments for the University to make, which include affirming “the absolute right to academic and political speech, within the bounds of civil engagement, by all members of the community,” refusing to assist in “the removal of any person from the university on grounds of the content of their speech,” and resisting outside pressure that could “affect appointments, teaching, grading, research, or hiring.”

The list of demands reads nearly identically to those detailed in Classics profes-

sor Clifford Ando’s Maroon op-ed, “The Lines We Will Not Cross.” Ando, who has criticized what he sees as a continued lack of response from University administration, was the original author of the letter and first sent it to the Committee of the Council on April 2.

The committee is a seven-member group chosen from members of the Council of the University Senate. The committee’s rules of procedure allow faculty members to send memoranda to the committee proposing agenda items on “topics of general concern.” Memoranda are then brought to the entire 51-member council during monthly meetings, at which the president and the provost are usually present.

According to committee member professor Julie Orlemanski, the letter has been circulated to all council members, but discussion of the letter was not on the agenda for the council’s April 29 meeting.

UChicago has been less outspoken than some of its peer institutions in denouncing demands from the White House instructing universities such as Harvard and Columbia to place departments under academic receivership and roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Alivisatos wrote an email to the University community on April 25 addressing the “profound political contestation regarding the future of institutions of higher education” but stopped short of making concrete commitments and in-

cluded no direct mention of the Trump administration.

He wrote of “important interests at stake at this moment, as well as a set of obligations that we must and will honor.”

The University wrote in an April 28 public statement that it “has a long-standing practice of not joining collective statements written by others.” The University has in previous instances invoked the 1967 Kalven Report, which articulates its philosophy of refraining to comment on social and political issues of the day to afford its individual members freedom of expression. “While the University’s advocacy may not always be visible, it is ongoing,” the statement continued.

Alivisatos did not join more than 560 other higher education leaders from across the country in signing the April 22 AAC&U statement titled “A Call for Constructive Engagement.” The leaders of seven of the eight Ivy League institutions signed the statement, as well as those of several Chicago-area universities, including the presidents of Northeastern Illinois University, Northwestern University, Chicago State University, and Dominican University.

The number of UChicago faculty urging Alivisatos to join those leaders continues to grow.

“With higher education in the United States under threat, the University of Chicago cannot remain silent,” the final sentence of the petition reads.

VIEWPOINTS

Bait and Hook

Columnist Kaci Sziraki returns with a new board game recommendation —Fishing for Compliments—designed to reel in compliments and social connections.

By KACI SZIRAKI

I still remember the first time I set foot on this campus as a UChicago student. O-Week was full of smiles and fresh faces; everyone was excited to be part of a new community. As the quarters passed, however, and friend groups solidified, the initial enthusiasm faded, along with the passion to meet new peers. It’s strange how quickly a campus full of expression and life can start to feel like a collection of isolated bubbles. The eager energy we once had during O-Week vanished, and I felt as if my world had shrunk into a social silo of my own. Whether it be the lack of social battery, the exclusivity of friend groups, or the absence of O-Week icebreakers, students stopped making space for new connections at UChicago far too soon.

As someone who enjoys meeting new people, I struggled when I felt my circle closing in on itself. What used to be spontaneously sparking a conversation with future classmates was now awkwardly interrupting an established friend group, and fear of disrupting the settled social scene closed me off from reaching out to others. It upset me when I realized that I didn’t even know my neighbors’ names, despite passing by them every day. I rarely talked to anyone unfamiliar outside of class, and I completely avoided making conversation with those not within my direct friend group. I was trapped in a bubble, disappointed with the situation,

but an active participant in its creation.

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a simple, unforeseen solution that the bubble suddenly burst. Fishing for Compliments is a board game that I’d heard about through my roommate. When she explained that it was created by a UChicago alum James Koehne (A.B. ’19), I knew I needed to get my hands on a box. The game is designed entirely around complimenting fellow players. Upon hearing about it, I immediately thought of O-Week, when a simple “I love your outfit” or “You have a great sense of humor” could spark a friendship.

Fishing for Compliments is a straightforward game. First, a “fisher” draws a prompt, then everyone responds with a compliment on a magnetic fishshaped whiteboard. After that, the fisher uses a toy fishing rod to transfer as many compliments as possible into the game’s box and finally reads them all. The number of “fish” caught determines how many points the fisher gets, and an extra point is given to whoever wrote the fisher’s favorite compliment.

When I invited people to play the game for the first time, I purposefully asked a few acquaintances. Half of them didn’t show up: it was, after all, a random Tuesday night in the midst of midterm season. Those that came exuded a nervous energy, cognizant of our familiarity, but uncomfortable nonetheless. We braced for the awkwardness

and gathered in my Woodlawn double, my typical spot to host board games, and learned how to play together.

At first, the awkwardness persisted. People who did not know each other very well had to improvise compliments. They chose to comment on basic features such as looks, mannerisms, outfit choice, etc. These small affirmations, however, quickly spiraled into larger conversations. “You have great music taste” turned into a heated discussion over which shoegaze band was the most underrated; “You have such unique eyes” brought up stories about relatives who had segmental heterochromia; and “I’d want you on my team for basketball” opened the floor for gossip about old sports team drama.

Shy acquaintances quickly became people with unexpected, shared interests. With just a simple board game to act as an intermediary, we began to truly see each other as individuals with our own unique lives. That effortless receptiveness and wide-eyed curiosity could only be equated to the way students would connect with one another during those nostalgic first weeks on campus.

When the endless activities thrust upon us during O-Week dwindled, overcoming the hurdle of meeting unfamiliar people became much more difficult than just staying within an already established circle. Fishing for Compliments helped create a similar environment where we could laugh at ourselves

without feeling self-conscious, appreciate one another without sounding overbearing, and communicate without overthinking interactions. The game itself is not much different from any other icebreaker activity, but it helped me realize that nothing special needs to happen for people to form bonds with one another. As UChicago students, we don’t lack interest in branching out, but we lack the courage to step forward and create opportunities to connect with people. Since that random Tuesday night, I’ve made it a point to be a little braver in reaching out, talking with new people, and in-

viting unfamiliar faces to game nights. While I haven’t turned into the most extroverted person on campus or increased the size of my friend group tenfold, I have learned a valuable lesson. We don’t have to wait for something to push us out of our comfort zones and meet new people. Something as simple as a spontaneous compliment said over a board game can act as the perfect opportunity to break ourselves out of our bubbles. It might even be enough to fish out a friend or two along the way.

Kaci Sziraki is a first-year in the College.

carter lee.

My Aims of Education

A graduating senior reflects on her arc of education and the life of the mind.

By ANUSHKA BANSAL

For 14 years, my mornings started at 7:00 on the basketball court of my school. Everyone stood in queues under the 104-degree Delhi sun, segregated by grade and gender and ordered by height. We had to don a dull gray pleated skirt that went below the knee, a button-down shirt with a striped tie, and no make-up or jewelry. It was a ritual of conformity. Our hair had to be in a braid, and braids had to be tied with navy blue hair ties. Cotton ones. At the beat of a drum, student council prefects scanned the queues with a discerning eye for below-standard uniforms. I once had a fractionally long fingernail and was pulled out of the queue to run five laps around the field. My peers watched my cheeks flush from both embarrassment and exertion. The drumbeats reverberated as we then dispersed in perfect synchrony to the classrooms.

My grandfather tells me his earliest memory of school is fleeing from it. He was six years old, the fifth of his nine siblings. His early schooling took place in the by-lanes of a bazaar in Paharganj. It was English class, and the schoolmaster asked him about the difference between “gate” and “gait.” He was supposed to know, but he fumbled as his master stood there holding a three-foot wooden rod. Conformity was not only an unquestioned ritual, but it was also imposed in physical form. “Spare the rod, spoil the child,” they used to say. Seventy years later, as I was getting ready for school, he asked me the difference between “gate” and “gait” and showed me the scar on the mount of his left palm.

I grew up in a middle-class household for which education

was a symbol of pride and etched into each block of its concrete. My grandfather rebelled against our family of confectioners to earn a Ph.D. and spearhead India’s green revolution in the ’60s. My maternal lineage consisted of public school teachers, and my parents together founded an education consultancy to help students prepare for their careers. The deep roots and widespread branches of education in my family meant that the purpose of education was predetermined or at least never questioned. The degree had to be an end in itself.

For years, I was top of my class. By middle school, I knew all the multiplication tables up to 35 and memorized my geography textbook. All 57 pages of it. During school breaks, I took coaching classes in physics or solved math problems with my dad from a textbook two grades above mine. This was education, and boy was I great at it.

I could compute complex derivatives before 10th grade, but if you asked me why calculus was used or what it meant, I couldn’t say. I could speak well, but not for myself. I could write a gold star essay about global warming, but was I a conscientious citizen? School imbued in me an impressive knowledge base and my home a solid moral compass, but I never gave a second thought to how, why, or what I was learning. I could meet goals, but not set them, answer questions, but not ask thoughtful ones. How much of this was a pursuit of education rather than a performance of it?

In my early college years, I approached this dilemma in practical terms, fixating more on what to do than how to be Freshman year, I was drawn to everything and changed my major three times in the first month

simply because I could. Yet, even in a liberal arts environment, I continued to seek ways to fall in line, to conform. By sophomore year, I was the archetypal wise fool (sophos + moros) and spent as much time pseudo-philosophizing Hegel in dining halls as I did attending corporate info sessions, re-re-editing my resume, and compulsively checking my LinkedIn. Before I had even reached the halfway point of college, I landed the coveted management consulting internship. When junior year arrived, I spent my time suspended in anticipation for this role and realized that I was losing track of who I was beyond what recruiters had wanted to see. Recently, on a sleepless long-haul flight home for winter break, I read William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep In his words, much of my first two years were spent “trying to create a self—or at least the illusion of self—that was capable of being packaged.” Now, freshly returned from my internship as a senior with a full-time return offer in hand, I stand as exactly that: a package, neatly wrapped in resume-worthy achievements but feeling unsettled, open, and empty.

According to a Career Advancement survey I recently came across in the Maroon, 47.4 percent of the 2024 graduates who entered the workforce pursued consulting or financial services jobs. In 2011 at Yale, this number was 25 percent, which then-senior Marina Keegan wrote about with dismay and shock in her oft-cited article, “Even Artichokes Have Doubts.” In her article, Keegan quotes professor Charles Hill, who says that firms “consider you a crop. They harvest you, put you in their grinder, pay you well and off-load you.” When we graduate in June, about every third person

next to us will be something like a consultant or investment banker. I, too, will be among them, and yet, for all the lip service we pay to the life of the mind, I find it unsettling how many of us are so willing to walk into this grinder.

On the last day of my consulting internship, a mentor who was a few years older, and incidentally a UChicago alum, casually remarked how there’s no other job that will pay you “this much” to “just take notes on calls your first year.” The comment may have been offhand, but its effect lingered. The time and risk tradeoffs we learned about in Econ 100 came alive for me. It seemed like I was supposed to feel proud or happy, but how I truly felt was more uncomfortable and more unsure.

Arnav Agarwal, a computer science and economics major heading into management consulting in Chicago, recently spoke to me about how his preprofessional endeavors were, to a great degree, separate from his academic pursuits. He said that he is “the kind of person who enjoys learning for the sake of learning, not necessarily to derive professional utility.” On the one hand, I admire his acknowledgment of a real love for learning. But on the other hand, I struggle to understand why so many of us continue to spend so much of our time in school trying to package ourselves for a job, rather than immersing ourselves fully in the intellectual growth we say we want.

Those going into consulting or similar roles are often labeled as “insecure overachievers,” and I can’t help but think about the many ways in which that rings true for me. A senior in Keegan’s article described his internship experience at an investment bank as “a combination of the least fulfilling, least interesting, and

least educational experiences” of his life. Journalist Ezra Klein acknowledges that these companies have figured out how colleges are producing so many of us with “ample mental horsepower, an incredible work ethic, and no idea what to do next.” Maybe it’s just me, but, like the disillusioned senior in Keegan’s article, I haven’t encountered many people who seem excited about their jobs for their own sake. Whenever I hear the all-too-familiar claim that consulting offers “transferable skills,” I ask why we are going after these skills whose highest purpose is their potential for transfer. I have been taught, throughout my time here, to always read closely, engage boldly, and learn deeply. Why do I only now understand what was at stake when I scanned (OK, honestly, skipped) my sosc readings to edit version 18 of my resume? I was asked in my job interview to talk about a time I had failed, and I had a carefully crafted story ready to spew. But what about the ongoing, quieter, deeper sense that I may be failing myself?

A student in Deresiewicz’s book calls it “hard to build your soul when everyone around you is trying to sell theirs.” In an article in the Maroon, alum Jessica Zhong refers to students like myself as “sellouts.” I find this label unsettling because it oversimplifies a far more complicated reality. We all have our reasons: cultural expectations, financial stability, the desire to secure a better future than our parents had. For me, selling out is less a judgment of certain decisions and more a lack of consciousness toward what one is buying into. And the real question arises in how we can reconcile, not separate, our professional ambitions with the ideals we claim to want out of our education.

“Perhaps it’s not the life of the mind I fear losing, but who I will be once its prescriptions fall away.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 10

David Brooks said in his 2017 Class Day address that he was “deeper” when he left Chicago than when he arrived. He said that he graduated from the College with “a sense of his soul and its yearnings.” If we are serious about what our souls yearn for though, I think we owe ourselves at least one moment of reflective pause. After all, this ability to pause and deeply reflect may end up being the one transferable skill truly worth having.

Each passing day, I become more conscious of the clock ticking down to graduation, and I want to stop kidding myself. But I know I won’t. I will convince myself that I am buying some time and find a way to live with the ever-pricking consciousness that it is, in fact, my time that’s being bought from me.

Deresiewicz says it best: “So much promise, to no great purpose.”

My journey at UChicago began with the Aims of Education address during Orientation Week, where professor Agnes Callard told us, “If you want to throw a ball a great distance, you have to follow through with the motion even after you’re out of contact with the ball. The time when the ball won’t be in your hand plays an important role in how you throw it, and that is part of what determines how far it eventually goes.” This metaphor has stuck with me, and I would like to believe that the full arc of learning can unfurl long after we leave campus.

But I am afraid because soon, passionate, timeless intellectual transactions in Cobb Hall will turn into real, commodified transactions of my time for money for rent. I am afraid that, once we graduate, the ball might bounce out of our hands and into the fluorescent-lit corner of a corporate bullpen, only to stay there. Stuck.

Maybe I am more afraid because the ball isn’t quite out of my hand yet, and senior year feels like the final chance to learn for learning’s sake. Deresiewicz writes, “College is an opportunity to stand outside the world for a few years, between the orthodoxy of your family and the exigencies of career, and contemplate things from a distance.” Unlike many of my peers from high school, I had the privilege and opportunity to defer practicality for a time, to revel in this liminal space between the peace of home and the pace of professional life.

In fall quarter, one of my classes concluded with Om Prakash Valmiki’s autobiographical work, Joothan. On the last day, our professor talked to us about the exhortative, normative force of education, the ways in which it can transform you. The value of education had always been inscribed in my life intellectually, but, that day, I experienced it emotionally. As I walked out of the classroom, Valmiki’s story echoed in my grandfather’s struggles, in the arc of our family’s transformation, and in my own privileged distance from it.

Callard’s metaphor of the ball, for me, had been far deeper philosophically than I was ready to receive at that moment. In his 2017 speech, David Brooks said, “Professors pour more into their classes than the students are able to receive at that moment. The seeds they plant burst out a lot later.” Three years ago, I had walked into my first humanities Core class with naive wonder but an admittedly closed mind, a loud mouth, and an inflated sense of self-worth about having “made it.” As a senior in this class I was only taking for fun, I walked out with fewer answers and more questions, existential discomfort and humility, and a voice that so

often fumbled and hesitated.

Maybe I really am just a sheep on the hedonic path to corporate life, indistinct from the many I march with. But the truth is, I have become so excellent at being shepherded around that I no longer know how to move without it. With no quarters to structure me or grades to fuel me, how do I propel my ball? Toward what do I channel my learning? From whom do I seek validation? Perhaps it’s not the life of the mind I fear losing, but who I will be once its prescriptions fall away.

For when we graduate, art will be “for seeing evil,” no longer a Core class that coddles you with painting supplies and color theory manuals. Philosophy will be to live by, not only to write about. We will transact our labor in the economy, no longer run regressions on mock data. We will participate actively in shaping history, not memorize it for civ tests. We will practice our scientism, embody our humanity, keep to our business, and try to live the life of the mind outside its most fertile grounds. I would be

lying if I said I feel prepared for it.

My grandfather often quotes to me the parable of the frog in the well who is convinced its confines are the entire world until the monsoon rains force it to confront the vastness beyond. He gave me my name, and, as he turns 90 this year, I often reflect with him on how education came to him as the monsoon rains that pulled our family away from selling sweets in rural Panipat into a legacy of economic and intellectual possibility that enables my elite American education today.

In my family lore, the degree was an end in itself. As this end is fast approaching, I can’t help but wonder, what now? My brother calls it naivete, but I hope that we can follow the arc wherever we go. I hope we perform our jobs, like we do our education, for their own sake. Not to build a cache of transferable skills, not impatient to climb the ladder, not afraid to take risks. I hope that, occasionally, we even allow ourselves time to apply some humanities in the otherwise ruthless business world

and listen earnestly to the drumbeats that I know will continue to reverberate within us.

I know that no additional class I audit or extra office hour I attend will fill the void of my restless sense of purpose. I have been told that purpose, like faith, reveals itself only when questioned. So, I keep looking to others for answers that I know are ultimately mine to unravel. If I like to believe that faith is cultivated through ritual practice, perhaps purpose, too, will emerge from the very rituals of conformity I otherwise find suspect.

As my anxiety remains and grows, unresolved, I find consolation in knowing that I graduate with a heart and mind alive to everything in store for me. For once the ball leaves our hands, untethered, perhaps that is when it will finally gain the momentum to fling far and reach great distances, toward possibilities that have now only begun to germinate.

Anushka Bansal is a fourthyear in the College.

fareen dhuka

ARTS In Berlin, Beauty in the Life of the City and the Fall of Liberalism

Berlin wants to feel like the city in a way that recalls the early Soviet theater of Vsevolod Meyerhold and others.

By ZACHARY LEITER | Senior Arts Reporter

At Hyde Park’s Court Theatre, Charles Newell’s production of Mickle Maher’s Berlin brings real power and beauty to its exploration of warring ideologies. The play, adapted from Jason Lutes’s epic graphic novel of the same name, follows a group of Germans as they navigate life in the capital during the turbulence of 1928 to 1933, which saw the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Berlin mostly unfolds through the eyes of young Marthe Müller, who moves to the city to study drawing. Müller flits between journalist Kurt Severing and fellow artist Anna Lenke, falling in love with both and ending up with neither. In the background, a large ensemble of communists, fascists, workers, and aristocrats go about their day-to-day lives, but Marthe, Kurt, and Anna steal the show.

In particular, Raven Whitley as Marthe and Tim Decker as Kurt are terrific. Whitley’s Marthe is a blank canvas on which Germany’s warring factions play out. She is pulled every which way by Severing (who represents the Weimar liberals), Anna (the counterculture), Theo Müller (pre–World War I Germany), Margarethe von Falkensee (the aristocracy), Otto Schmidt (the communists), and Adolf Hitler (the fascists, more than Hitler himself). And yet, Whitley avoids playing naivete. She is curious, not innocent; adventurous, not impressionable.

If Marthe is Berlin ’s driving force, Decker’s Kurt is its tragic core. He is, in all his little personal inefficiencies, inconsistencies, and intellectualisms, representative of Weimar liberalism’s promises and failures. And yet, Decker plays him not as an idea or an ideology but as a man, and a sad one at that. Leaning against a table or punching away at a typewriter, Kurt remains perpetually unable to diagnose or cure the rot he sees spreading through Germany.

Berlin is a play about helplessness. How

much, it asks, can one person do against the forces of history? Even Hitler himself (or rather, herself, played by Elizabeth Laidlaw) seems to lack agency. This managainst-the-forces-of-history theme is complemented nicely by a creative design that strives for omnipresent light, movement, and noise. Berlin wants to feel like the city in a way that recalls the early Soviet theater of Vsevolod Meyerhold and others: almost a dozen actors are onstage throughout, moving tables, speaking into handheld microphones, drawing, typing, yelling, fighting, dancing to jazz, and playing the guitar. “The city is speed, it is lust, it is a river,” Marthe proclaims. And though Berlin doesn’t quite find the riverlike quality of which it frequently speaks—the production can be a little too stop-start in the second act—it is certainly full of speed and lust.

It is also full of light, sound, fog, and beauty. Keith Parham’s lighting design is serene but playful, keeping the mood appropriate but the audience on their toes. Mark Messing’s sound design is strong too, and he wisely chooses to keep much of the play’s sound endogenous. John Culbert’s scenic design similarly manages immense things with very little; Six tables, 10 chairs, and a ladder communicate the whole hustle and bustle of metropolitan life. When it comes time to bring the fascists to power, the simple drop of three white curtains evokes 12 years of Nazi imagery. Such striking moments contrast delightfully with real moments of beauty between Marthe and Kurt. One moment involving only a shuttered spotlight, a single chair, and some falling snow is simply extraordinary. Less, in the theater, is more.

This is, unfortunately, something Berlin could stand to remind itself of at times. Occasionally, the play mistakes maximalism for busyness in its movement. The decision to cast a woman as Hitler, insufficiently justified or explored, complicates

without real reward. And Maher’s script, though generally quick, witty, and poignant, gets bogged down when it dwells too long in the world of pontificating monologues. If Berlin fails to achieve greatness, it is because this production does not believe sufficiently in itself, its power, and its audience. Too much is explained, and too many threads are tied neatly together.

That is not to say that Berlin is not a valiant exercise in both theater-making and historical engagement, nor to say that

it is not beautiful. It is beautiful, and it generally does well to provoke discomfort at the beauty it has created through the depiction of violent, awful events. Berlin does not quite find the perfect path through its difficult subject matter, but, in this case, perhaps the perfect path would not have been the right one.

Mickle Maher’s Berlin , adapted from the graphic novel by Jason Lutes, is at Court Theatre through May 18.

Marthe (Raven Whitley) and Kurt (Tim Decker) in a snowstorm in Berlin. courtesy of michael brosilow

South Side Night kicks off EXPO CHICAGO 2025

Join Head Arts Editor Nolan Shaffer and Arts Reporter Jessalin Nguyen as they visit a few of the South Side institutions highlighted.

By NOLAN SHAFFER | Head Arts Editor and JESSALIN NGUYEN | Arts Reporter

EXPO CHICAGO, an annual gathering of contemporary art galleries at Navy Pier, kicked off at South Side Night on April 22. In collaboration with UChicago Arts and Block Club Chicago, 10 venues across the South Side stayed open late with special programming.

Head Arts Editor Nolan Shaffer and Arts Reporter Jessalin Nguyen give a playby-play of the night.

Smart Museum of Art

Shortly before 6 p.m., we begin South Side Night at the Smart Museum of Art (Smart). Currently on display through July 13 is Expanding the 50th: Shared Stories, a revamped presentation of the institution’s permanent collection.

Jessalin Nguyen: Walking into the Smart, I immediately feel a sense of incongruity. The lobby, featuring an installation by South Side artist Robert Earl Paige titled Give the Drummer Some! is decorated with a zebra print, circular monochrome cutouts, and eccentrically colored bean bags. Walking into the exhibit hall, the first thing I was drawn to was a giant screen on the right-hand side: Ever Blossoming Life—Gold, a 2014 digital piece by teamLab with ever-moving leaves and petals. At one point, the screen flooded into a blossoming pink; by the time we left, the piece had cycled back into a scene of budding brown twigs.

Nolan Shaffer: It strikes me that these works are very “transmedium.” There’s sculpture, painting, and digital work, and it [all] really highlights the breadth of the collection. Given that the collection has so many different styles, different mediums, different periods, how do you think the curation choices have leaned into that, without it just being a hodgepodge of things? Do you feel any sense of continuity between the works?

JN: I feel like it makes spectators choose what they want to see. The way I’m navigating this feels more like a choose-

my-own-adventure. Whatever catches my eye, whatever medium I enjoy interacting with more, is the one I go towards. So it feels less like a hodgepodge and more like you get to explore it.

NS: It is striking to see pieces from literally hundreds of years apart sitting right next to each other. It inevitably puts them in conversation with each other, which is kind of weird.

JN: I think it makes it circular, you know? There’s a sense of continuity with this older [oil painting]. [It’s a work from 1848, and] people are still practicing these art styles today. We might look at it as a more antique, traditional way of art, but it’s still practiced now.

NS: What might feel isolated, like an antiquated method of art, becomes modern and relevant again when presented in this context. As a viewer, I’m thinking, “How far have we gone in 150 years? And how can we use the latest tools in art-making and inquiry to get more out of these older works?” This exhibition really does feel in line with Smart’s mission of “rigorous inquiry and exchange that encourages the examination of complex issues through the lens of art objects and artistic practice.”

Another thing that strikes me is how different the framing is on all of these pieces. I don’t think I would have realized that if they were part of a consistent collection. It’s like there’s a lot of latent assumptions in a style or period of art that you don’t realize until it’s put on display against other styles.

First Presbyterian Church of Chicago

At 7 p.m., we make our way south of campus to the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago for a Toast to the South Side, and a group performance by Margaret Crowley about basketball, titled Milking It.

JN: I’m surprised at how big [the space is]. I’m also surprised at how many people are here, considering that there [are] so many EXPO locations [tonight]. This is a

really successful event in terms of turnout.

NS: There’s a lot of people and a lot of excited energy. The crowd is pretty diverse: there are a few people from the University that I recognize and some people who tell me they’re from the South Side, but it seems like most people here are from Chicago’s broader art scene.

JN: I think it’s nice that there is such a mix [of people]. It doesn’t seem like this is geared towards only one type of person. There are children, older people, and people in between who seem like they have just gotten off work. It seems like there is a really big community here.

NS: And there is a lot of cool art too, through the church, through the space.

JN: Even just heading up to the performance itself.

We follow a throng of people into a gymnasium upstairs for the performance. It’s packed, and there’s not enough seats for everyone, but the atmosphere is energetic.

JN: The lights dim, leaving only the candles perched in the middle of the gym. All the actors, half wearing red and half wearing blue, start at one side of the stage and run up one by one to blow out the candles. The rest of the performance seems to be split into sections, with movements becoming more and more akin to a real game of basketball—actors even mime passing a basketball to each other by the end.

JN: What did you think of the performance?

NS: I thought that some of the visuals

were a bit captivating or at least intriguing. It felt like a lot of the performance was about this interplay and relationship between the two teams, red and blue.

JN: Do you think you understood it off the bat? Because we came in not getting any sort of foreword or program. I think that threw me off coming in, [and] I didn’t know what to expect. When the two teams came out, I didn’t understand that it was going to be a sports metaphor.

NS: I thought the site specificity was cool, [since] it was a performance piece about basketball. If it weren’t in a gym, if [it were instead] on a stage, I don’t know if that message would have come across as clearly. [The whole thing] felt like the essence of basketball.

JN: Watching people move around back and forth on a court… in the end, [it’s] all just movement. Like the beginning of the piece (with abstract movements that felt like basketball warmups)—even though that was funky, that’s just movement. And at the end, when they’re going back and forth around the court with the imaginary ball, that’s also just movement. But one is normal to me (the game of basketball) and the other is “othered.”

NS: I think the performance was questioning basketball as performance, or games as performance. It’s like, if this were a basketball game, you wouldn’t have been thinking about the [outfits or shoes]. The fact that they called this a performance, we

A crowd gathers in First Presbyterian Church of Chicago for a Toast to the South Side. courtesy of max li

Performers miming the passing of a basketball toward the end of Milking It. courtesy of max li

“We’re

missing third spaces

and this feels like an answer...”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 13

sat down, and they had the candles blowing out at the beginning added an element of ritual to it.

JN: Because I was thinking of it in a more artistic perspective, I was more critical of choices, like fashion, how people were choosing to move, [and] how some people had more energy in their movements than others. But you’re right—if it were in a sports arena, I wouldn’t be critical about every detail. In fact, I’d likely support this differentiation because it would make each player unique. In that way, the sport could become more individualized, whereas this performance seemed to get at the anonymity of individual players in team sports. Before we left, we spoke briefly to Christine Matthews, arts liaison at First Presbyterian.

NS: Is there anything that you want students or University community members to know about arts on the South Side or arts at [First Presbyterian]?

Christine Matthews: The arts of First Presbyterian Church are focused on specifically South Side artists that aren’t really accepted in… places like the Logan Arts Center or other places in the UChicago campus or outside of it. This church is more of an accessible space [with] this idea

of showcasing the arts that are happening right here on the South Side, outside of any other purview, or what is deemed as “South Side arts.”

NS: Do artists submit pieces? Do you reach out to them?

CM: It’s a mixture of both. [We have] an Artist-In-Residence program… [where we can showcase] artists from the South Side.

You can find works from the Artist-In-Residence program in the GO TOGETHER exhibit, on view through June 30.

Arts Block

To wrap up the night, we went to the Arts Block at 8 p.m., an initiative by UChicago Arts + Public Life that bills itself as “a vibrant collection of cultural and commercial spaces along Garfield Boulevard.”

At A Listening Space at 305 East Garfield Boulevard, anyone can enjoy a free cup of tea and listen to selections from an extensive collection of records.

NS: This space is beautiful. And there’s literally thousands of records [and] massive speakers. We’re sitting at a wood table, there’s this beautiful retro couch over there, a piano, and a DJ deck. This whole space has been so well curated. [There are] very comforting and cozy colors.

NS: So if you’re curious about the re-

cord collection, you can come here and it’s completely free. I’m still a bit shocked by the model here.… I was like, “How do you pay?” And [the server] was like, “It’s free.” I’m like, “Oh, because of this South Side event.” And he’s like, “No, all the time.”

JN: [This place] feels so based in the community. You can just come in and vibe. We’re missing third spaces and this feels like an answer to that.

We headed next door to Arts + Public Life for the undercommons, on view through August 30.

NS: This exhibit features a collection of paintings. What stands out the most to me is the compelling narrative work and self-reflection that Carlton is doing in these pieces.

JN: I think the curator did a good job with the utilization of the [small] space.… You have 3D art, hanging canvases, and then [these other] canvases on every surface space. So you are able to really get different layers [of art].

NS: We got to speak with the artist and the curator, which was pretty cool. Carlton was very honest with us, and he was clearly very excited about his work. He has only been painting for about six years, and he’s already developed a unique visual style. In the future and in his most recent work, he’s

looking to experiment with incorporating more elements of realism.

JN: The colors are very vibrant, which [is] usually something I lean toward. Carlton was amazing to talk to because we could gain insight to the different choices that were made—why a certain character of his was highlighted, for instance. One of the most striking pieces that we saw was a 2020 acrylic on wood piece titled Stolen Culture, featuring two sets of hands with two different complexions reaching for the same stack of books. It felt very dynamic in the curation space due to its dimensions, with parts of it sticking out and creating a semi-floating effect.

Wakaliga Uganda Crafts Evocative Stories

Reporter Faer Son reviews If Uganda Was America at the Renaissance Society.

By FAER SON | Arts Reporter

The moment I walked into the pastel-colored, dimly lit room at the Renaissance Society, I was struck by the sound of gunshots. The exhibition is a maze of seven differently sized, rectangular rooms, each room screening a film from Wakaliga Uganda, a film company based in Kampala. At the center of the maze stood the largest screen. There, amid the sounds of gunfire, an upbeat melody emerged as some of the visitors to the Renaissance Society and on-screen characters sang lyrics questioning Uganda’s cultural journey: “Oh dear Uganda, where did you go?”

If Uganda Was America, the titular film,

opens in a classroom of students discussing national development. The teacher calls the United States a “first-world country” while describing Uganda as “third world.”

A student asks, “Was it always like this? Or were Uganda and America once the same world?” His classmates laugh, but the teacher acknowledges him: “Yes, of course.” At first, the discourse may seem irrelevant to the upcoming scenes. However, from a bird’s-eye view, the scene effectively covers the idea of “where we all started from,” a theme embedded in all stories. Throughout the film, the plot repeatedly turns to debate: Is this us? Are

we transcending or losing ourselves? Are immoral behaviors justified when done for the “betterment of the country”?

The film then introduces two contrasting narratives. One features a warm family gathering where children visit their grandparents, eager for stories about Uganda’s past. Their grandfather takes them to a small forest where their crops grow, sharing traditional tales and introducing them to indigenous instruments such as the sekitulege, made by tying coffee tree branches with an iron sheet. This wholesome scene stands in stark contrast to the second storyline, where a doctor in an immaculate white coat experiments on a patient, forcing him to run into a cement

wall, eventually causing his death. Despite being seemingly disconnected, both narratives address a common anxiety: the erosion of Ugandan cultural identity under external influences. Throughout the film, a recurring musical refrain ties these disparate scenes together as a commentary on cultural loss and transformation. The family scenes portray efforts to preserve heritage through storytelling and ritual, while the medical experiments represent the violent pursuit of international recognition—the doctor dreams of using her patient to win Olympic glory and elevate Uganda to “first world country” status. This feature, like much of Wakaliga

Stolen Culture, one of Brandon Carlton’s works on exhibit at Arts + Public Life. jessalin nguyen

“Wakaliga Uganda stands as a prototype of frugality and boldness...”

Uganda’s work, skillfully balances humor, action, and social critique in a style both unpolished and vibrant. It is also notable that Wakaliga Uganda functions on a budget that is typically under $200 per movie. Given the ultra-low budget of their films, it is impressive that all of Wakaliga Uganda’s films feature more than five actors, are filmed in multiple locations, and include actors who can perform theatrical skills such as stage combat. This is possible because the production team creates handcrafted props and casts less prominent actors who value the opportunity. Not only does this give Wakaliga Uganda’s films their distinctive DIY aesthetic, but their high-quality films also assure many amateur filmmakers that great films can be created under various circumstances. Wakaliga Uganda stands as a prototype of frugality and boldness for film companies, telling powerful and creative stories that

comment on global power dynamics under a restrictive budget.

At the heart of the exhibition, If Uganda Was America stands as a powerful satire that challenges viewers to reconsider the relationship between cultural authenticity and globalization. The film ultimately suggests that Uganda’s path forward lies not in mimicking Western models of success, but in recognizing and celebrating its own unique cultural heritage and creative vision. Wakaliga Uganda demonstrates that compelling storytelling transcends budget constraints, proving that authentic voices can emerge from any corner of the world, regardless of economic limitations.

As I left the exhibition, the question from the soundtrack lingered: “Oh dear Uganda, where did you go?” Perhaps the answer lies in the very existence of these films—evidence that Uganda’s creative spirit remains vibrantly alive, even as it navigates the complex terrain of tradition-

Neubauer Collegium Exhibits Costume Design and Colonial Legacies

Arts Reporter Elias Buttress reviews Neubauer Collegium’s newest exhibition, which explores the inspiration and early works of Betye Saar.

By

ELIAS BUTTRESS

The centerpiece of the Neubauer Collegium’s recently-closed exhibition, Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar, is a robe shaped by colonial legacies, its displacement from African ritual to museum display, and its pivotal role in Saar’s artistic awakening. It lies flush against one of the walls of the gallery space. Close inspection reveals the small protrusions adorning the robe to be tufts of hair. Bamoi / Bamum Robe, a ceremonial robe made of jute and human hair by the Bamum people in the late 19th century, catalyzed Saar’s shift as an artist from costume design toward spiritually charged, ritualistic assemblages. Born in 1926, Saar first saw the robe at a Field Museum exhibition in 1974 as part of the National Conference of Artists. It has a

| Arts Reporter

complicated history, likely including coercion from European art dealers to purchase it from the Bamum people in the 1920s. The aesthetic and ethical questions surrounding the robe give further power and meaning to Saar’s transformation. The exhibit notes that Saar imagined a Bamum king wearing the robe with “a little bit of everybody on it.” The robe features a leopard pattern associated with leadership and power. Saar, a pioneer in the Black assemblage movement, felt this inspired her move from costume design toward making “contemporary, powerful, [and] ritualistic” art. The work inspires the audience to ask questions about the ethics and history of colonialism’s long shadows in museums and galleries—how the aesthetics of power are preserved and how artists like

Saar interrupt and redefine that narrative.

The exhibition’s title is both a call to action and an invitation for the viewer to engage with the art on display, fitting perfectly with the exhibition’s focus: Saar’s costume design. This robe appears opposite and in conjunction with her costume design work from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Saar’s work fills the large vitrine in the gallery’s center with sketches, facsimiles, and photographs. Next to playbills of the shows she designed for are colorful drawings of costumes and composite characters she foregrounds with grace and technical precision. Elsewhere in the exhibition space is clothing she created—both before and after 1974—as well as sketches from her Field Museum trip.

This show is part of Neubauer’s Panafrica: Histories, Aesthetics, Politics, an ongo-

ing multiyear research project. In collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) and the Field Museum, this project explores the connections between Pan-African politics and culture. This project recently produced the AIC’s special exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, a review of the evolution of Pan-African thought through art. Where the AIC show failed to deliver a clear message because its themes, pieces, and layout lacked a cohesive structure, this exhibition succeeds by limiting its scope and establishing a clear goal. As outlined by curator Dieter Roelstraete in the exhibition’s opening remarks, the goal of the show is to expose the continuities in Saar’s design work before this fateful encounter and the assemblages she had been shifting her energies toward

The exhibition space includes a maze of Wakaliga Uganda’s films. Left: Wakaliga Uganda, Once a Soja: Agubiri the Gateman, 2015; Right: Wakaliga Uganda, If Uganda Was America, 2025. courtesy of the renaissance society

“ Let’s Get It On... serves as a fine introduction to Saar’s pre-1974 work.”

during the early- to mid-1970s.

A personal favorite of mine among these is Burlesque Is Alive: Stagolee (1970). A drawing of Stagolee in full, standing as if to take measure of the horizon, looks longingly past the viewer. Smaller drawings of his coat and hat join the notes Saar made to provide further details about the look. Saar notably has stapled the fabrics intended to compose the costume onto the drawing. This decision empowers the viewer to compare the colored drawing with the actual product, matching visual and imagined with tactile and concrete. While viewing this piece, I found a sense of both calm and wonder within me. Seeing an

oft-overlooked aspect of the design process for a production take center stage led me to question how costume design, like fashion, has a natural connection to art. It also led me to question how these works connected to Bamoi / Bamum Robe

While these pieces provide an excellent overview of her work prior to becoming a contemporary artist, the show at times falls short of providing more than an overview. Some of the works, such as Cheetah Dress (1969), transcend this label of “summary” and provide a great example of how her work pre-1974 matches her work after 1974. However, the vast majority viewers may only perceive her works after her encounter with the robe as “fine art,” leaving it

up to the viewer’s standards of what defines art. I was more impressed with her skill as costume designer than I was interested in making the connection between costume design and her assemblages. The exhibition also self-sabotages in a way: while evocative, the exhibition lacks the necessary context in both artwork and information for visitors to draw a substantial message from the exhibition alone. Perhaps making this distinction clearer would have delivered a stronger message for the viewer. Regardless, Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar serves as a fine introduction to Saar’s pre-1974 work and the origins of her artistic metamorphosis. This single, profound encounter serves as a microcosm through

which we can begin to understand the essence of inspiration and tradition.

What’s in a Photograph? University Theater’s 35mm: A Musical Exhibition Offers a Glimpse

University Theater’s recent production of Ryan Scott Oliver’s song cycle manages to skillfully encapsulate the power of photography and the complexity of the human condition.

By ELIAS BUTTRESS | Arts Reporter

It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but which words, and whose stories? University Theater’s recent production of Ryan Scott Oliver’s 35mm: A Musical Exhibition invites us to explore this question through music, movement, and imagery.

35mm is not your typical musical— in fact, it arguably isn’t a musical at all. Rather, it’s constructed around songs and a series of photographs taken by Oliver’s partner, Matthew Murphy. Each song corresponds to a specific image, with the photographs inspiring the music and lyrics, and in turn, the music shaping how we see the photographs.

The show exists outside the bounds of space, time, or narrative. Each photograph captures a fleeting moment—an isolated glimpse of life unfolding. There’s no indication of where or when these moments take place. While the songs reuse actors, there’s no continuous story and are no recurring characters. In fact, the characters’

names are hardly mentioned.

Instead, the songs are loosely connected by recurring themes: love, loss, and grief. 35mm is also distinctive in its staging. Performers often sing at microphone stands, creating a static but focused visual experience. This production, with only a few exceptions, adheres closely to that format.

University Theater’s production of 35mm fully embraces its conceptual roots. Entering Theater West, the audience steps into a darkroom—an intentional choice that, as Director Jo Selmeczy explained in an interview, was inspired by a research trip to the Edelstone darkroom on campus.

Lighting Designer Lydia Gafford brings that vision to life with striking detail, using dark red lighting to bathe the space.

Scenic Designer Rachel Linton’s work is similarly evocative. Clotheslines crisscross the room, clipped with photographs—one strand even includes the original images that inspired the show,

carried in by actors just before it begins. In one corner, a projector loops through these photos, casting them onto a blank board. Upstage, a cart of stop baths—used during the second stage of film development—an-

chors the space, while four mic stands are positioned downstage. The mic stands limit the actors’ ability to move freely onstage, so Selmeczy brought in a group of

CONTINUED ON PG. 17

Betye Saar’s banner from the exhibition. elias buttress

From left to right: Millie Walsh, Robert Stimpson, Maggie Onsager, Joshua Winston. courtesy of university theater

“University Theater’s production of 35mm fully embraces its conceptual roots.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 16

six dancers to add choreography to select numbers. Unfortunately, these choreographed moments were confined to the first half of the show leaving me wishing for more as the performance continued. While the integration of song and dance was occasionally uneven, it energized the numbers in which it appeared, bringing an unexpected vitality to the production.

“The show really is an experience in all senses of the word,” Selmeczy told me, describing it as a “rollercoaster.”

As the show moved seamlessly through its 80-minute runtime, I was also struck by the technical elements that elevated the production. Though minimalist in set and props, the lighting design by Gafford brought the emotional depth of each moment to life. A square light in the shape of a film frame surrounded one actor during “Stop Time,” the show’s opening number. Later, somber blues and yellows blend with hazy purples. At key moments, flashing lights punctuated the stage, infusing the room with energy.

In speaking with Selmeczy and co–Production Manager Andrei Thüler, I gained deeper insight into how 35mm came to life. Selmeczy, who had previously directed last

spring’s Dean’s Men production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, found that experience to be a valuable lesson in “how much [they] could do with not a lot—how to make something beautiful.” Selmeczy used that perspective to approach the challenges of this production with an egalitarian mindset.

Both Selmeczy and Thüler emphasized the collaborative nature of the rehearsal process, where the entire team worked together to elevate each other’s skills toward a shared goal. They credited co–Production Manager Eleni Lefakis for assembling such a talented and diverse crew. Despite challenges, such as a limited rehearsal period and being relegated to smaller spaces, the team persevered and quickly overcame these obstacles.

When asked how they would describe the mood of the production, Selmeczy replied, “Everyone is inspired by something.” In the case of 35mm, inspiration is contagious.

Whether it springs from love, grief, memory, or the sheer visual beauty of photography, the production not only highlights the emotions that move the performers, but it also invites reflection on these emotions from the audience.

Maroon Musings

What should be on your radar

this week?

By MAROON ARTS

Want arts recommendations and don’t know where to look? If the answer is yes, you’re in luck— you can check on every print edition for “Maroon Musings,” where your arts editors (and a special guest) recommend one thing that should be on your radar over the next two weeks. This week’s Musings features a UChicago faculty book release, plenty of media to add to your queue, a thrilling TV show, and a coffee shop to enjoy everything at. This week’s guest is Elena Eisenstadt, deputy editor-in-chief of the Maroon

ALBUM

Ste The Beautiful Martyr 1st Attempt by Bladee

Three new spiritual songs by Swedish rapper Bladee that evoke the Christian martyr St. George, who slayed a dragon.

Elizabeth Eck, associate arts editor

ALBUM

Hopefully by Loyle Carner

Carner’s new records — about time, lyin’, all i need, in my mind — are samples from his upcoming album that offer an alternative, intimate detour from previous work.

Elena Eisenstadt, deputy editor-in-chief

TV

The Rehearsal, Season Two

Nathan Fielder’s wild docu-comedy is back again with a mind-boggling second season that will air its finale on May 25.

Nolan Shaffer, head arts editor

PODCAST

The Point podcast

Conversations with critics on Borges, Baldwin, Batuman, and more. Hosted by editors of The Point, “a magazine of the examined life” founded by UChicago graduates.

Emily Sun, associate arts editor

LITERATURE

Marx by Jaime Edwards and Brian Leiter

The authors, from UChicago Law, present an overview and assessment of the fundamental elements of Marx’s thought.

Shawn Quek, associate arts editor

FOOD & DRINK

Build Coffee

Need a new (off-campus) study spot? Give Build a try for one of their Early Bird sandwiches or seasonal drinks, and cozy up among their wide selection of books.

Miki Mukawa, head arts editor

SPORTS Midway Mayhem: Cyclists Hit the Boulevards of the Plaisance

The Midway Plaisance hosted the annual Monsters of the Midway bike race on April 26.

By ALEX AKHUNDOV | Sports Reporter

The annual Monsters of the Midway bike race returned to the University of Chicago campus on April 26. This year marked the 31st installment of the event, which was recently revived last year after a five-year hiatus. The race was jointly organized by the University of Chicago Vélo Club and local Chicago-based road race team Okay Cycle Club.

The yearly competition is not to be confused with the identical nickname for the Chicago Bears, the hometown NFL team who are also colloquially known as the “Monsters of the Midway.” In fact, the nickname originally referred to the University of Chicago’s own varsity football squad before it was temporarily disbanded in 1939. In the meantime, the Chicago Bears had a string of successful seasons and championship runs. Despite varsity football making a return to UChicago in 1969, the Bears retained the nickname, even adopting the University’s wishbone-C logo design as their own.

Participants competed in a variety of amateur and professional categories, ranging in age from the 9–14-year-old Juniors class to the 55-year-old and above Masters class. Several cash and gift prizes were up for grabs, including merch from Plein Air Cafe, one of the sponsors of the event. Additionally, this year’s race was considered an official Illinois Cup event and a part of the Midwest Collegiate Cycling Conference, so cyclists were also incentivized to fight for valuable ranking points as part of the longer competition season.

Although the first race officially commenced at 8:30 a.m., athletes began arriving at Ida Noyes Hall for check-in much earlier. A base camp of team tents, bike racks, and mobile maintenance stations quickly formed across the lawns and on the pavement by the start line near the Woodlawn Avenue bridge. Course marshals with bright orange flags and vests spread out across the Midway, positioning themselves

at different corners and crosswalks.

Traffic on the Plaisance was blocked off from Ellis Avenue to Dorchester Avenue, setting the stage for the 1.1-mile-long course. A mass of participants lined up for the start line, ready to attack the counterclockwise track and crank out as many laps as they could in the designated race time.

The format of the event was that of a criterium race, in which riders take on a closed-circuit track for a predetermined interval of time, ranging from 25 minutes in the junior categories to 60 minutes in the professional categories. Upon reaching the end of the allocated time, the remaining number of laps (typically between one and five extra laps at most competitions) begin after the race leader next passes the

start-finish line.

At the sound of the whistle, the athletes—already warmed up and clipped into their pedals—fought against the strain of their high gears for a crawling start. By the time the riders rounded the corner at the end of the first straightaway, they had already accelerated into a blur of vividly colored jerseys.

A group of racers pedal down a straightway. alex akhundov

Riders took turns heading the peloton (the main group of cyclists clustered together to reduce drag) throughout the early stages of the race, which slowly broke up into smaller groups of riders over the subsequent laps. At various points, some of the cyclists would attempt a sudden breakaway dash from the rest of the pack, but fighting against the brutal Chicago winds made this no easy feat. The race leaders veered from left to right across the track to try and break the slipstream for the trailing riders drafting behind them.

Cyclists push to overtake each other as seen from across the Midway Plaisance. alex akhundov

A racer isolated from the rest of the field. alex akhundov

By and large, the races proceeded smoothly, aside from the occasional rogue goose or squirrel attempting to commandeer the racetrack (before being swiftly

Participants line up for the start of a race. alex akhundov.

The race begins as riders take off from the start line. alex akhundov.

The peloton enters a sharp turn at high speeds. alex akhundov

A “Monsters of the Midway” sign on the sidewalk by Ida Noyes Hall. alex akhundov

“The swaths of riders zooming past... made for an enticing spectacle.”

chased off by motorcycle-mounted marshals). After all was said and done, the last participant crossed the finish line just before 4 p.m., rounding off an end to the long and sunny day of competition.

Throughout the day, many students and other passersby often stopped to

observe the racing cyclists. Whether it was the rainy start to spring season that had left them unprepared for the copious amounts of sunscreen that would be needed for such a high-UV-index day, or the four problem sets that were probably due later that night, most onlookers did not stick around for too long. Focused on

peering through my camera’s viewfinder and telephoto lens the entire time, I certainly didn’t notice my own mistake with the former until I arrived back home with an itching, pink sunburn.

The event was also about increasing community engagement with the world of cycling, so for many a first-time spec-

tator, the swaths of riders zooming past in vibrant spandex made for an enticing spectacle. The annual Hyde Park race is slated to continue in the upcoming years.

The final results of this year’s Monsters of the Midway race can be found on the official USA Cycling website. CONTINUED FROM PG. 18

Going Global: Sophia North Profile

As former UChicago Women’s Basketball player Sophia North prepares to continue her basketball career in Japan for the Fujitsu Red Wave, she reflects on her college journey and what brought her to the decision to continue playing overseas.

By ANUSHKA VASUDEV | Senior Sports Reporter

Ever since Sophia North started playing basketball at the age of six, she had always hoped to continue competing as part of a college team. Fortunately for North, this dream would come true as she officially committed to play for the Chicago Maroons early on in her senior year of high school. However, during her first year on the team, things went differently than expected. The season was canceled due to the pandemic and, although teams still practiced every day, they had to follow strict guidelines and weren’t able to compete in any tournaments. North noted how the experience wasn’t what she had hoped for coming into college. “You come into college, and you want to make friends, you want to get a routine going, you want to explore new places. All of that was just taken away from us,” North told the Maroon.

Following the pandemic season, North was eager for a fresh start during her second year. Yet she was soon disappointed. She barely made the starting lineup and didn’t even get to play in the first few games of the season. When she was given play time, it was usually just a couple minutes. “Freshman year was tough. Sophomore year was very tough for different reasons,” North explained.

Despite the rough start to her college basketball career, North was motivated to get more playing time and become a starter. She trained hard during the following summer, and it all paid off in her third year. She started all 25 regular season games and

even competed in the NCAA playoffs, making it all the way to the Sweet 16 round.

Nearing the end of her college basketball career, North was torn between the feasibility of pursuing basketball as a profession and her love for the sport. She didn’t feel like playing professionally was a viable option because of the low pay and career instability. However, a few trips to Japan quickly changed that. North spent many summers overseas, having opportunities to play with high-level teams and participate in advanced training programs.

As she began immersing herself in the Japanese basketball scene, she became drawn to its unique playing environment. North noted that there were many women who were interested in playing competitively and a lot of opportunities for them to play high-level basketball, both recreationally and professionally. “I was playing with women who are like 40 years old, like in actual games. You just don’t really see that in America. And I really liked that culture when I was in Japan,” North commented. Slowly, North began to envision this possibility of continuing her basketball career abroad. “I love coming to Japan. If I could play professional basketball here, it’s like the best of both worlds. I get to live in the place that I love and do the thing that I love.”

She started talking to other athletes to understand what the recruitment process was like and cold-emailed teams she was interested in playing with. One of the

teams that responded to North was the Fujitsu Red Wave, who play in the W-League Premier division of Women’s Japan Basketball League. She officially became set to join them post-graduation following her recruitment and tryout process with the team.

Looking to the start of this new journey in basketball, North notes that she is one of the youngest people on the team and one of the few who isn’t based out of Japan. Unlike North, who has only ever played in the United States, most of the players in the Women’s Japan Basketball League were born in Japan or at least played in Japan during high school. While North recognizes that it may take some time to establish herself, she is excited to learn as much as she can

from the team, especially considering the FujitsuRed Wave are the reigning Women’s Japan Basketball League champions and have players who medaled in the 2020 Olympics. She’s also eager to experience Japan’s unique style of basketball, which typically involves dynamic gameplay, endurance, and frequent ball movement.

While the path hasn’t always been straightforward for North, she’s ready to start this new chapter in her life and take her passion for basketball to the next level. “If I wanted to get a desk job or something, that will be there for me in the future; that’s something I can still do years from now. But this is something I can only do now, and I have the opportunity to do it.”

After four years with the Chicago Maroons, Sophia North will begin her professional career with the Fujitsu Red Wave in Japan. courtesy of sophia north .

CROSSWORD

91. A Job Well Done

By VICTORIA KURAKATA | Crossword Constructor