We know that you will bring the same adaptability and curiosity we’ve admired at UChicago to your lives after undergrad. You face the blessing and curse of graduating in interesting times, but there is no class of students better prepared to make the best of the uncertainty.
Despite the worst of COVID-19 having passed by the time you entered college, your transition to UChicago still occurred amid testing and masks. You became part of this campus early in the tenure of one U.S. president and are now
Editors’ Note
leaving under another. The future of the country seems anything but settled, and we look forward to seeing the countless contributions you will no doubt make in shaping that future. We congratulate you for all you’ve achieved in your time here, and we bid you the best of luck—it has been a privilege to have been a part of this community with you.
To the graduating members of the Maroon: We will miss all of your editorial and personal contributions to the paper, from covering an encampment to reviewing works of art. You’ve not only been our mentors and leaders but also
our friends.
To our readers: In this issue, we hope to share a snapshot of where members of the Class of 2025 are going and what they’ve achieved during their time at UChicago. Read on to hear perspectives from our graduating seniors on topics ranging from their favorite places in Hyde Park to the road to completing a thesis.
Beyond being a tribute to our graduating seniors, this issue will also bring readers up to date on financial and administrative problems affecting the University. These issues include an overview of trustees’ political donations, an update on the
University’s financial outlook under a second Trump administration, a history of UChicago divestment movements, and the last installment of our investigation into last year’s disciplinary proceedings for disruptive conduct.
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Here’s Where the Class of 2025 is Headed After Graduation
By NAINA PURUSHOTHAMAN | Senior News Reporter
Note: These data were shared with the Maroon on May 5 and may have changed since.
Last year’s graduation issue introduced a new feature that examined where students go after their time at UChicago. This year, the Maroon continues that tradition, exploring trends in post-graduation plans, industry shifts, and new challenges faced by the Class of 2025. According to Meredith Daw, the executive director of Career Advancement, 98
percent of the class is projected to have a job, graduate school acceptance, or fellowship secured by commencement. This success is despite federal hiring freezes, which, according to Daw, affected more than 200 out of the 2,056 graduating students in the class.
“We were concerned going into the year because of changes in federal hiring and the economy,” Daw said in an interview with the Maroon. “But the students have done incredibly well. They’ve been flexible, and we’ve worked hard to open
new doors.”
85 percent of students who applied to law and medical schools have been accepted into at least one program. According to Daw, that number is expected to rise as more decisions come in. That rate is two and a half times the average national acceptance rate for medical programs, according to Daw. She added that most of these students were accepted into the top 20 law schools and top 20 medical schools.
According to Daw, UChicago students also performed well in Ph.D. program admissions this year. “There’s been a lot
in the media about Ph.D. offers being rescinded, but that really wasn’t the case here,” Daw said. Students received offers from schools across the University of California and University of Texas systems, as well as top private institutions like Columbia University, Cornell University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Of the students pursuing graduate or professional degrees, 52 percent are remaining at the University, while 48 percent are going to non-UChicago institutions.
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This pie chart shows the distribution of the Class of 2025 between those pursuing graduate school and those entering the workforce. nikhil patel .
The Class of 2025’s Gems of Hyde Park
By SOPHIA LIU | News Reporter
From underrated eateries to scenic running routes, reminisce with members of the Class of 2025—and maybe discover a few new places worth exploring before you leave.
Ascione Bistro 1500 East 55th Street, Chicago, IL 60615
Making this list for the third year in a row, this Italian restaurant has undoubtedly cemented itself as a staple of the UChicago student experience. For Darius Johnson, Ascione is an annual tradition, and, although more expensive than other local spots, it is well worth the price for its elevated experience and delicious food. Aadhya Gunwani also immediately brought up Ascione when asked about her favorite spot in Hyde Park.
“My roommate and I would do spontaneous meals there all the time, so I have a lot of memories there,” she said, recalling their first visit and the pennoni she ordered, which she described as “divine.” She also recommends the tagliolini from the dinner menu and the Italian fries.
Nella Pizza e Pasta 1125 East 55th Street, Chicago, IL 60615
Nella is a cozy Hyde Park favorite, known for its handmade pizza and pasta. It touts a Michelin Bib Gourmand and promises real, authentic Italian cuisine; it is not just “some American caricature of an Italian restaurant,” according to the restaurant’s website. Darius Johnson called it one of his go-to spots, sharing a fond memory of treating himself to a celebratory bellini torani after surviving the infamous “North wind tunnel.”
“For fourth-years especially, I think you should have a bellini on a Friday night [late in the quarter] because you’ve been here for too long,” he explained. “And to third-years who realize that they’re true upperclassmen now, go to Nella; have a bellini. Think of the joy to come when you have to do this all over again next year.”
Jerk Yard
1310 East 53rd Street, Chicago, IL 60615
Jerk Yard is where spice, smoke, and
soul come together. Known for its authentic Jamaican cuisine, signature jerk chicken, and polished-yet-welcoming atmosphere, this compact eatery is sure to impress.
Kristen Wallace, who is Jamaican himself, was especially excited to see a place for authentic Jamaican cuisine open in Hyde Park and highlighted both the excellent food and cultural significance of the restaurant.
“I am Jamaican, so I’m biased, but when I saw that they opened a new spot, I was very excited to try it. It didn’t disappoint. The Rasta pasta is great. The jerk sauce is great. All the sides are great,” he said.
Medici on 57th
1327–1331, 1327 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
“Quintessential UChicago” is how Aveesha Gandhi described this beloved American-style eatery. Popular for its handmade burgers, milkshakes, and wood-fired pizzas, Medici has been feeding students, professors, and Hyde Park locals alike since 1962.
Helen Wu also recommended Medici, dubbing it a “campus classic” and the perfect place for catching up with friends. Gandhi recommended pairing the Fresh Mozz sandwich with some good company.
Plein Air Cafe
5751 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637
Nestled alongside the Seminary Coop Bookstore, Plein Air Cafe—with its sunlit interior, cozy decor, and fashionably overpriced drinks—is a prime spot for UChicago students to caffeinate and catch up. Gandhi called Plein Air her “take a break” spot and, more importantly, the “best place to tell gossip.” Her regular order is a breakfast burrito with an iced matcha latte.
For Wu, Plein Air doubles as a weekend study spot and social hub.
“I constantly unexpectedly run into people I know,” she said. “It’s a nice distraction from my work to sit and chat with a random friend for 15 minutes. I’ve heard some crazy stories over a Plein Air coffee… from political fugitives, to unre -
quited love, to moral dilemmas.”
Eto’o Modern Asian Cuisine 1373 East 53rd Street, Chicago, IL 60615
Looking for some solid Asian food in Hyde Park? Look no further than Eto’o! Both Ethan Jiang and Andrew Huang recommended this restaurant for its great prices, proximity to campus, and welcoming atmosphere.
As a vegetarian, Jiang praised Eto’o’s ample tofu offerings and recommended the salt and pepper tofu. Huang, on the other hand, suggested the shashu fried rice and fondly recalled the passionate conversations he’s enjoyed there with friends on weekends.
“We were just there talking about math, and one time we were so passionate, we were sitting there for hours,” he said. “They closed at 9:30 p.m., but we were still talking, and they let us stay there [after closing]; we didn’t even re -
alize that everyone around was gone.”
Washington Park
5531 South Martin Luther King Drive, Chicago, IL 60615
Many go to Promontory Point to run, but for those seeking a quieter escape, Washington Park offers a more sheltered and serene alternative. Just west of campus, the park is expansive but often overlooked, making it a hidden gem for joggers, walkers, or anyone in need of a breather.
“It’s quieter than the Point, which is where a lot of people go to run,” Jiang said. “It’s also less windy, so when it’s cold, I think this is a better spot.”
Jackson Park 6401 South Stony Island Ave, Chicago, IL 60637
Home to scenic views, bursting blooms, and many, many ducks, Jackson
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“Our students’ credentials, coursework, and critical thinking skills continue to stand out.... Employers say [they] outperform peers from other institutions.”
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However, for students not attending graduate school, Daw added that the federal hiring freeze this year has affected some students planning to work in agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. “Some students had offers rescinded or indefinitely delayed,” Daw said. “But we were able to secure funded opportunities for all of them.”
Geographically, Chicago continues to be the top destination for graduates, but fewer are staying than before. “We used to see 45 percent of grads stay in Chicago; now it’s closer to 35,” Daw said.
New York City is the second most popular destination, with 21 percent of students heading there post-graduation. 10 percent of the class is expected to work or study internationally. Many international students are returning to their home countries, while others have secured global research or policy roles.
According to Daw, students with two or more internships or research roles were almost guaranteed to have a post-graduation plan. “Employers want
to see that you’ve done the work, even if it’s not in the exact field you’re going into,” she said.
New programming, including summer sessions and industry-themed competitions, has created more accessible roles in which students can gain academic and professional experience. These programs offer short-term, skills-based training in areas like venture capital, investment banking, healthcare investment, and private markets. Many of them are funded by employers and serve as informal recruitment pipelines.
“These are great ways for students to test out a field and get résumé-building experience,” Daw said. “Not everyone can do a 10-week internship, but this opens doors.”
Financial services remains the most popular post-graduation industry for UChicago students, with 35 percent of students entering the field. “That’s even higher than last year’s 29 percent,” Daw said. “Some students shifted into finance after government roles were frozen.”
Consulting is the second-most common career path. Science and technology roles, especially in the private sector, are also strong. “A lot of our students are
going into biotech, research labs, and scientific consulting,” Daw said. Education and nonprofit sectors remain consistent, with about six percent of the class having been offered education-related roles ranging from K-12 teaching to research and administration. Although uncertainty remains in
the broader economy, Daw noted that employer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
“Our students’ credentials, coursework, and critical thinking skills continue to stand out,” she said. “We’ve had employers say our students outperform peers from other institutions.”
Inside the Undergraduate Thesis Process
By AVA IWASKO | News Reporter
Every spring, hundreds of fourthyears turn in their theses, research-based projects that sometimes take years of preparation to complete. For students in some majors, the thesis is a requirement for graduation. In other majors, students can choose whether to write a thesis or complete an alternative project. For many STEM students, however, a thesis is not required other than to qualify for departmental honors upon graduation.
The Maroon spoke with professors, thesis advisors, and students across multiple University divisions to better understand how the thesis process differs among disciplines and to learn more about the topics on which students in
these majors are writing their theses.
English Language and Literature
The thesis program in the Department of English Language and Literature is overseen by Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow and Writing and Research Advisor Nell Pach and Writing and Research Advisor Sylvie Boulette.
Pach said that the thesis writing process usually starts at the end of students’ third years, and advisors like herself and Boulette aim to get students writing as soon as they begin researching their topic. In the autumn quarter of students’ fourth years, the English department holds exercises and workshops intended
to ease students into the writing process.
Elizabeth Harrison, a fourth-year triple-major in English language and literature, comparative literature, and Classics, wrote a joint thesis on The Trojan Women, an ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides. Harrison ended her third year knowing she wanted this to be her primary text but was unsure of what she wanted to say about it. Over the summer, Harrison pored over academic articles trying to find a compelling and original argument for her thesis.
“There was one iteration when I was like, ‘How does The Trojan Women mimic the funeral process?’ Then I read a paper that was just that,” Harrison said. “Then there were a couple other instances when I had an idea and then
I went to research it, and it was a fully formed paper already.”
By the end of autumn quarter, Harrison decided to write about how the character Cassandra in The Trojan Women was unable to lament and express herself to the other female characters in the play. She began by researching and reading anything on Cassandra and the use of lamentation in ancient Greek tragedy she could find, crafting her argument as she worked.
Pach and Boulette meet one-on-one with students as often as they need and hold regular peer workshops where they encourage students to discuss their ideas with one another and obtain peer feedback.
This pie chart shows the geographic regions where members of the Class of 2025 will be living after graduation. nikhil patel
From underrated eateries to scenic running routes, reminisce with members of the Class of 2025.
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Park is a wonderful space for outdoorsmen and homebodies alike to connect with nature. Alessandro Perri recommends going to the Japanese Garden on Wooded Island or to the less-visited harbors adjoining Lake Michigan.
An avid birdwatcher, Perri recalled one of his favorite visits to the Outer Harbor in February. “I just walked all the way along this long, long beach on the lake. And you can just see these rafts of ducks, like hundreds and hundreds of yards offshore, just like speckling the water,” he said. “Then eventually you walk far enough, and you can see industrial areas like Gary… and you can see the [Chicago] skyline to the north.”
Jiang also noted Jackson Park as a favorite, echoing Perri’s Japanese Garden recommendation and adding that the cherry blossoms are a must-see. They typically bloom in late April and early May, lasting between six and 14 days, depending on the weather. Readers who missed them this year should be sure to mark their calendars for next spring!
Union Submarine Shop
110 East 51st Street, Chicago, IL 60615
A no-frills neighborhood spot in Bronzeville, Union Submarine Shop serves up hearty, affordable subs and deli classics. Open 24 hours, it’s a reliable option for late-night bites or quick
lunches. While online reviews are mixed, many locals appreciate its convenience and generous portions.
Perri remembered a time where he and his roommate went to Union Sub at 2 a.m. and “got a large quantity of the lemon pepper wings—as many as you can get basically—and then just ate them in the car.”
“It’s a very, very degenerate thing to do, but I remember it quite fondly,” he added.
Rockefeller Chapel 5850 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637
Saving the best for last: Rockefeller Chapel is one of UChicago’s most iconic
buildings. While it’s often admired as a photogenic backdrop or the setting for Convocation, there’s much more to experience within its towering Gothic walls. With its massive pipe organ, intricate stained-glass windows, and the resonant sounds of the carillon bells, stepping inside suddenly feels like entering another world.
For Huang, the best way to experience Rockefeller is by climbing the spiral staircase to the top to take in a bird’s-eye view of campus.
“[Climbing up Rockefeller] was one of the first things I did with people from my House,” he said. “We barely knew each other, but by the time we got to the top, we were already forming real friendships.”
Fourth-Year Students Staying at UChicago for Graduate Programs
By SONIA BRADLEY | News Reporter
For many UChicago students, Convocation doesn’t mean saying goodbye to campus—it just means moving to a different building. As of May 5, 15 percent of the Class of 2025 plans to continue their studies at UChicago, according to Meredith Daw, executive director of Career Advancement.
The University currently has more than 100 postgraduate degree programs, including 63 doctoral programs and 35 master’s programs, several of which actively encourage current undergraduates to apply through special programs.
For example, the University offers a variety of “4+1” master’s programs, which allow undergraduates to take graduate-level courses during their fourth year and earn a master’s degree with just one additional year of study.
The Pritzker School of Medicine allows UChicago undergraduates to apply to the Accelerated Medical Scholars program, which invites “outstanding” undergraduates to begin medical school during their fourth year, and UChicago Law School offers the Chicago Law Scholars program, a binding admissions option for current UChicago students and alumni that guar-
antees $150,000 of merit-based financial aid to all participants.
According to Ellie Steger, a graduating fourth-year, the Chicago Law Scholars scholarship was a large part of her motivation to apply early decision to the Law School. Steger added that she is also excited about the teaching style at the Law School, which she said reminds her of her undergraduate experience.
“The UChicago Law School continues the Core-focused, Socratic seminar–esque teachings that you would experience in a hum or sosc class, which I did enjoy a lot, so compared to other [law] schools, which are more lecture-focused, I liked the idea of that,” Steger said. “Law is an argument. It would be good to start getting into that in class rather than having to jump right into it when you start working.”
The Law School’s small student body was another selling point for Steger; its total J.D. enrollment for the 2024–25 academic year is just 620 students. “I like the kind of small atmosphere, and the UChicago Law School is just one little building,” she said. “I also like that the UChicago Law School [class] is pretty small, and apparently [it] has one of the less competitive
atmospheres [compared to] other law schools.”
“They also have a lot of very interesting clinics dealing with immigration and housing and small business[es], specifically in Hyde Park,” she added. “I think [it’s] really cool to be able to… directly help the community that I clearly like.”
“A lot of my friends are actually also staying for [their] master’s. I’m also excited to put off leaving campus and final senior FOMO for three more years,” Steger said.
Steger added that her friends and peers have been supportive of her decision to stay in Hyde Park for law school. “Most of [my friends] have been really happy for me,” she said. “I’ve talked about law school all four years and finally got it. They’ve helped me with apartment hunting and such, and [have] been really great about it.”
Jarvis Zhang, another graduating fourth-year student, also plans to remain in Hyde Park after graduation, albeit on a slightly different path. Zhang, an astrophysics and mathematics double major, will be completing the “4+1” master’s program in computer science, earning an S.M. in computer science after one year of additional study instead of the typical two.
For Zhang, the 4+1 program serves two purposes: it allows him to earn a master’s degree while also giving him the time and space to apply to Ph.D. programs. “I have several research projects going on, so I need one more year to wrap it up and get publications,” Zhang said. “I am continuing another project this summer which will help me get my third letter of recommendation, so, at the end of this year, I should be prepared to apply for Ph.D. programs.”
Zhang said that, while the decision to stay an extra year was a practical one, it won’t be easy staying in Hyde Park as many of his friends move on. Still, he knows a few others who are staying for their master’s degrees. “I’m happy to [meet] new people too,” he added.
Both Zhang and Steger are excited to continue their education at UChicago from both a practical and social standpoint, even as many of their peers leave campus after graduation.
“I’m excited to return to my favorite restaurants and areas here next year,” Steger said. “I’ve become familiar with [this community] over the past four years… [and] not having to adjust to a new place while going through such a big change as law school is a relief.”
“... the thesis year is an intellectual community that you get to be part of....
You’re not isolated.... You are in conversation with other people.”
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“We really like to emphasize that the thesis year is an intellectual community that you get to be part of,” Pach said. “You’re not isolated; you’re not off on a mountaintop trying to come up with what you want to say. You are in conversation with other people.”
For an English thesis, students often formulate their research question around a particular primary text, multiple texts, or a single author.
“I like to emphasize [that] by the time you’re a junior or senior year English major, you’re becoming an expert in your field, and you’ve chosen one particular thing that you want to say something about,” Pach said. “You can really think of yourself as in a collegial conversation with the critics who have gone before you.”
Students begin the writing process with a close reading of their primary text, analyzing it through the lens of a secondary piece of critical writing. By the end of autumn quarter, students turn in a portfolio that includes the introduction to their thesis and a revised version of their initial thesis proposal.
In the winter, students begin writing their full draft, turning in around five pages at a time to their advisor. Students have the first few weeks of spring quarter to revise their drafts, with the final 25-page version due at the end of fourth week.
Pach said that, given that the thesis is often the longest piece of writing students have produced by this point in their academic career, she tries to encourage them to have fun with the process and test the boundaries of what they believe a thesis should be.
“What’s most exciting to me is students who have something that they’re excited about, who come in and say, ‘I found this crazy text in a class. We read it, but I didn’t feel like I really had enough time to do it justice in the paper I wrote about it. I want to spend a year thinking about it,’” Pach said.
Pach encourages students with double majors to write a joint thesis and “customize” the thesis-writing process
in whatever way serves them best. English advisors are flexible with different length requirements, topics, and deadlines.
Harrison said her experience with writing a joint thesis was pretty smooth, although she did at times have to communicate with both departments to get certain aspects of her outline approved, such as footnote type and the close reading portion.
Pach said that some of the biggest obstacles students face when writing an English thesis include writing anxiety, not settling on a topic early enough, having too many primary texts of interest, or simply not knowing what research tools and resources are available to them.
Pach said she wants students to have time to explore and experiment with their research question before they finalize their topic but warns students against taking too long with the deliberation process. This, along with writing anxiety, is why the English department has established incremental deadlines and frequent advisor meetings throughout the writing process.
Above all, Pach encourages students to be ambitious with their research.
“When we evaluate theses, we’re looking at not just how well you [did] it but also what the vision [was] and [if] you challenged yourself,” Pach said.
“I think [the thesis] can make your undergrad experience feel unified,” Pach added. “It’s not just you taking a bunch of classes. It’s you building toward something in which you become a little bit of an expert by the end of the process.”
Harrison said turning in her thesis felt like a bittersweet ending to her time at UChicago.
“On one hand, it’s kind of a relief because I can operate in the world without having a thing that I have to do always at all times,” Harrison said. “I can engage in activities and not be doing my thesis which has been nice.… But on the other hand, I really, really… enjoyed writing and researching and sitting in fuzzy socks and being really stressed [about] getting it done. Revising and editing, that was really fun for me.”
Harrison advised second- and thirdyears beginning to think about their own theses to start writing early, find an advisor that they have rapport with, and choose a topic they are passionate about.
Public Policy
Students majoring in public policy have the option of completing a B.A. thesis or participating in the quarter-long project seminar course. Maria Bautista, a senior research associate at the Harris School of Public Policy, is the thesis faculty lead for public policy majors.
Bautista encourages students to start thinking about their potential thesis topic in their third year so they can begin researching over the summer. Public policy students often choose topics related to their area of specialization, a three-course requirement in the major.
“This has to be a topic that you’re really passionate about, because if you’re unsure, or you’re doing it because someone told you it was a good idea, but you don’t feel that this is something that you really want to pursue, you will lose interest or the enthusiasm about pursuing the same topic for the next nine months or [the] next year,” Bautista said.
Bautista advises students on many different public policy topics every year and tries to match undergraduates with graduate student preceptors based on areas of interest.
Public policy student Jack McDonald wrote his thesis on oil and gas regulation and the environmental impacts of Texas’s oil industry. He chose the topic because he and his family used to live on the Barnett Shale in northern Texas, known as “the birthplace of modern fracking.”
“I was really interested in the process by which Texas promulgates and generates regulations and then how those regulations are enforced and implemented,” McDonald said.
McDonald began working on his project last summer while he was working for an environmental nonprofit, Oilfield Witness, and noticed discrepancies in how the Railroad Commission of Texas regulates permits for “flaring,” the pro -
cess by which natural gas is burnt during oil and gas exploration and production.
Bautista works with her students during autumn quarter of their fourth year as they write their research questions. She then tasks them with drafting smaller pieces of what will become their thesis.
In winter quarter, students typically begin drafting larger sections of their thesis with help from their faculty advisor and preceptor. Bautista also helps facilitate lectures to give students ideas about research methods and stays in constant communication with preceptors to get a general sense of what issues students are facing and what guidance they may need.
In the first week of February, Bautista hosts the Winter Symposium, a small conference where students present their research to peers and faculty. Bautista says that the symposium gives students a deadline for polishing their research and methods in an environment where they might be questioned or pushed on their topic by others.
McDonald said he enjoyed presenting his own research at the symposium and hearing other students talk about their research.
“I was just floating around Harris, seeing all sorts of different presentations and getting to see all sorts of different projects,” McDonald said. “Once my group was done, I went and saw some projects that were just in a totally different world from what I was doing.”
After the Winter Symposium, students produce another draft of their thesis to receive peer and advisor feedback, so they know what still needs to be modified or added. In the first few weeks of the spring quarter, students edit and submit their final drafts.
Bautista said common challenges students face while writing their thesis include difficulty securing interviews, framing their research question, and obtaining existing data sets. She often finds that students worry their contribution to existing scholarship on their topic is not relevant or worthy or being
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“... even research on topics that seem straightforward can yield important conclusions that contribute to existing literature on the subject.”
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shared. Still, the main emphasis of writing a public policy thesis is on producing some kind of analysis that is new and has never been done before.
McDonald said his biggest obstacle was navigating the Railroad Commission of Texas’s publicly available data on permits. To go through the over 13,000 permits in the system, McDonald wrote a Python script to automatically pull the permits he was interested in.
“That was a really, really big change that I made,” McDonald said. “That totally changed the way I was thinking about this and the scale I was able to do this at.”
McDonald urges any students writing a thesis to turn to their faculty advisors if they ever need any guidance or encouragement.
“The faculty are excited about this stuff,” McDonald said. “You come to UChicago because you’re excited about undergraduate research in part… and I think that that’s also true of faculty members. They get excited when you go to them and you talk about your [research].”
Bautista views public policy theses as particularly special because they encourage students to think about tangible policies that can solve real-world problems.
“We are trying to embrace all types of research ideas, and we just want to encourage the student to pursue what they want to do research on,” Bautista said. “We want them to think hard to get all that theoretical knowledge into something practical… and to be grounded in observations that they have from the real world.”
McDonald said even research on topics that seem straightforward can yield important conclusions that contribute to existing literature on the subject.
“Just because the thing that you’re looking at seems obvious doesn’t mean that it’s not important,” McDonald said. “Being able to prove that Texas is doing something bad with environmental regulation is like ‘duh,’ but also it’s something that is important to get out there
and study rigorously.”
Bautista further underscores the fact that public policy theses have the ability to incorporate voices that are marginalized, underrepresented, and crucial to the conversation.
“You might think that this is just a matter of connecting, of completing a 50-page document, but doing a thesis on public policy also has to do with learning about people’s experiences, struggles, happiness, motivations, and what has been beautiful is that most of the students are able to incorporate those experiences into their own work, and we are able to listen to the voices of people in different communities and economic sectors,” Bautista said.
Chemistry
John Anderson (S.B., S.M. ’08), an assistant professor and associate chair in the Department of Chemistry, oversees the honors thesis process of chemistry students. To obtain a degree in chemistry with departmental honors, students must conduct, present, and defend their thesis.
Anderson, who wrote his own honors chemistry thesis when he was a student in the College, said the intentionally flexible thesis process has not changed much since he was an undergraduate. The range of possible topics continues to widen every year as more chemistry discoveries are made, so the chemistry department purposely leaves requirements adaptable to allow for students to lean into their creativity and dive deep into their research.
Students completing an honors thesis in chemistry often start much earlier than students in other non-STEM majors, sometimes even in their first year. The department expects students to conduct unique and new research projects aimed at making new chemical discoveries.
To get chemistry students thinking about their theses early on, the chemistry department holds an open house during autumn quarter to talk to students about how to get involved in research.
Unlike other majors, the chemistry department does not allow its students to write joint theses. Because writing a thesis is not a requirement to complete the chemistry major or many other STEM majors, it only counts for receiving a degree with departmental honors.
Every year, Anderson sees a myriad of topics from students, including physics, biophysics, biochemistry, and more.
“I think one of the interesting things about chemistry, the old trope, is that it’s called the central science… because it bridges so many adjacent disciplines,” Anderson said. “One of the things that I like most about the honors thesis process is seeing the span of research and seeing all of the different things that people are doing and how it’s all anchored in chemistry.”
Fourth-year chemistry student Ry Papadopoulos began research at a biochemistry lab in her second year. As a third-year, she started working for the lab that now supports her thesis research.
Papadopoulos used in-situ infrared (IR) spectroscopy, a method by which the absorption and emission of light waves in the infrared spectral range are studied. In Papadopoulos’s project, IR spectroscopy allowed her to examine the structure of carbon electrodes in order to better understand the connection between structural motifs and electrochemical performance.
“I decided to do this work because I really was attracted to the level of precision with which chemistry can answer a lot of questions about the world in a way that can actually be beneficial as well,” Papadopoulos said.
Papadopoulos says that the thesis-writing process helped her develop as an independent scientist. A normal “thesis day” mainly consisted of running experiments and analyzing and writing up the results. She did not actually start writing her thesis until the beginning of spring quarter.
“The theses in the chemistry department are pretty exceptional,” Anderson said. “We have students that travel nationally to go to the Department of En-
ergy labs to do synchrotron experiments to get the data that they need for their thesis. We have students who write theses that have to stay confidential for two years because their results are going to go into a startup company and there’s intellectual property associated with it. We have students researching drug resistance and new technologies and all of these things. So I think this is a testament to our faculty and our students.”
The biggest obstacle Anderson sees for his students is that producing fundamentally new research and making new discoveries is challenging and time-consuming.
“It’s not just a paper that they write— there has to be real data, computational data, experimental data,” Anderson said. “It typically requires a year, or in many cases longer, for one to generate that data and make sure that it’s real, analyze it, interpret it, and understand how that fits into the broader scientific literature, so it’s a hard process.”
Papadopoulos wishes she had asked more people for feedback on her research methods and writing throughout the process. She also said her biggest obstacle had been feeling confident in her findings, given that her research, like much other research in the field, is incomplete.
“It’s understandable that this is a work in progress at that point, and you can feel uncomfortable as a scientist to report something that isn’t a complete story yet or that you might want to reproduce or confirm through a second separate experiment or technique,” Papadopoulos said. “It doesn’t need to be perfect and complete.”
Anderson sees “something magical” in the opportunity to conduct original research and discover something completely new as an undergraduate student.
“Scientific research, at least for me as an undergraduate… was the gateway for science,” Anderson said. “The first time you do a reaction in a lab, and you make something that no one has ever made before, you’re the first person in the history of humanity to have made that compound. It’s completely intoxicating, and that’s what set me on my path.”
A Timeline of Recent Federal Funding Cuts to Higher Education
By DEREK HSU | Deputy News Editor, GRACE BEATTY | Senior News Reporter, and KYLE LIN | Senior News Reporter
Since his inauguration in January, President Donald Trump has reshaped the role of the executive branch, especially in his efforts to scale back federal support for academic research.
Multiple federal agencies have canceled grants, altered programs, and shifted funding commitments, and the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has targeted what it argues is wasteful spending across the federal government.
The Maroon has compiled a timeline of federal funding cuts that the new administration has implemented and their effects on the University of Chicago.
January: Blanket Federal-Funding Freeze
January 20: Trump laid the groundwork for his administration’s reduction of federal funding commitments through 26 day-one executive orders.
In one order, he established DOGE “to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity”; DOGE would later oversee cuts to federal spending and facilitate layoffs and dismantling of projects. In another executive order, titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” he directed the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to terminate any projects related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which he termed “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.” Both orders established the justification for subsequent memos and budget proposals cutting funding and dismantling agencies inconsistent with the priorities of the administration.
January 27–30: Acting OMB Director Matthew Vaeth issued a memo announcing a federal funding freeze would take effect the following day, halting the disbursement of all federal grants and loans. In a unilateral attempt to shift federal spending priorities, the freeze would “identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements.”
The freeze would affect hundreds of millions of dollars in funding the University receives each year.
In response to the memo, University Provost Katherine Baicker told faculty researchers in a January 28 email to “temporarily suspend their non-personnel spending on federal grants as much as possible during this period of substantial uncertainty.”
On January 29, the White House released a memo rescinding its previous January 27 memo. In response to the conflicting messages, Baicker told faculty in a second email sent on January 30 to “continue your research normally unless you’ve received direct communication otherwise from your funding agency.”
Federal District Judge John McConnell issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on January 30 in response to a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of 23 states, effectively halting the Trump administration’s grant freeze. McConnell later issued another ruling on February 11, directing the White House to comply with the order and reinstate any previously frozen funding.
February–March:
NIH Cuts Funding and Cancels Grants; NSF Funding Threatened
February 7–11: The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public funder of behavioral and biomedical research, imposed a 15 percent cap on indirect-cost reimbursements, replacing previously negotiated rates that often exceeded 50 percent.
Alongside grants covering the direct costs of research, the NIH and other funding agencies typically award additional dollars to cover “indirect” maintenance and administrative costs such as laboratory space, utilities, and personnel. The new cap would affect $52 million in University funding annually.
Within days, three lawsuits, filed by the attorneys general of 22 states, academic associations, and 12 institutions of higher education including UChicago, alleged that the new policies were “arbitrary and capricious” and would harm essential funds for “live-saving medical and scientific research.” According to UChicago’s lawsuit, the new cap would affect $52 million in
University funding annually.
On February 10, District Judge Angel Kelley issued a nationwide TRO blocking the NIH from implementing the cap.
In an email sent on February 11, University President Paul Alivisatos told faculty that he authorized the University’s lawsuit because the NIH’s funding cuts “would immediately damage the ability of our faculty, students, and staff… to engage in health-related fundamental research and to discover life-saving therapies.”
“Following an election,” Alivisatos wrote, “policy changes are an expected part of our democracy. Yet today, some of these, if implemented, would have far-ranging adverse impacts on institutions of higher education and academic medical centers, including ours.”
February 11: An investigation led by U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz identified National Science Foundation (NSF) grants that it claimed “promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” according to a press release at the time. Among the flagged awards were 18 grants to UChicago researchers.
The Maroon reached out to professors whose grants were flagged by the investigation. Most declined to speak on the record due to uncertainty about how the investigation might affect their work or due to fear of retaliation. The two professors who did speak asserted that their research had nothing to do with DEI.
One professor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Maroon they received an email from the University telling them “to cease preparing new experiments.”
March 5: Kelley issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the NIH from enforcing its proposed 15 percent cap on indirect-cost reimbursements. “[The] Court is hard pressed to think of a loss more irreparable than the loss of a life, let alone the thousands of people who are counting on clinical trials as their last hope,” she wrote.
Later that month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) terminated six NIH grants, worth nearly $6 million, awarded to UChicago researchers. Included among the cuts were funding for research into HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, and health inequality.
In a statement, an NIH spokesperson told the Maroon that the “NIH is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities. We remain dedicated to restoring our agency to its tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science.” The spokesperson did not clarify why individual grants were terminated or why they were inconsistent with NIH and HHS priorities.
April–May: Humanities Grants Cancelled; Department of Energy and NSF Follow NIH Funding Cuts
April 4–11: The University Research Administration received notice that all active and upcoming grants to the University from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), totaling $3.1 million, would be terminated. One professor, whose research was affected and was paid through grant funding, told the Maroon, “The worst part of losing the grant was the fact that my colleague who was working out of Virginia—this was her [family’s] only income.”
April 11: Following the NIH, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it would be limiting financial support of universities’ indirect research costs to 15 percent, claiming that the change would “generate over $405 million in annual cost savings for the American people.” The University’s new Energy Frontier Research Center and the Argonne National Laboratory both source funds from the DOE. The DOE’s Early Career Research Program also awards grants to some UChicago researchers.
April 14–16: The Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education, and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities filed a lawsuit on April 14, seeking a TRO to block the DOE’s indirect-cost cap.
In a statement issued in conjunction with the lawsuit, the organizations wrote that the cuts would have an “immediate and dire impact on critical energy, physical sciences and engineering research nationwide.”
A federal judge temporarily blocked the cost cap from taking effect on April 16.
May 2: The Trump administration released its 2026 fiscal year budget proposal,
The NSF... has been subject to stalled grant reviews and canceled grants...
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which called to dismantle the NEH. The president previously attempted to defund the NEH during his first term, but Congress rejected the plan. The budget proposal must receive congressional approval before taking effect.
Following the NIH and DOE, the NSF also advanced a proposal that would cap reimbursement for indirect research costs at 15 percent for new research awards, effective May 5. The NSF, which supports
science- and engineering-related research, has been subject to stalled grant reviews and canceled grants, culminating with the agency informing staff members on April 30 to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice.”
Unlike the NIH and DOE caps, the NSF cap would not apply retroactively and only affects awards disbursed after the new guidelines took effect.
May 5: UChicago jointly filed a lawsuit with three academic associations and 12
other institutions of higher education to halt the NSF’s proposed cap on indirect research cost reimbursements. No order has been issued so far in this case.
According to the suit, the cap would result in an annual loss of $14.5 million to UChicago’s research budget. The suit alleged the cap is unlawful for reasons similar to the NIH and DOE funding cuts, and that the NSF had “not even attempted to address” issues that the district court had found in previous indirect cost cap proposals.
May 9: District Court Judge Susan Illston issued a TRO on May 9 broadly blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul 21 government agencies, including the DOE and NSF. In her order, Illston wrote that “courts must sometimes act to preserve the proper checks and balances between the three branches of government” after saying during a hearing that the order was needed “to protect the power of the legislative branch.”
“Really Hard Choices”: University Provost and CFO on Uncertain University Finances Under Second Trump Administration
By GABRIEL KRAEMER | News Editor, ANIKA KRISHNASWAMY | News Editor, TIFFANY LI | Editor-in-Chief, and ELENA EISENSTADT | Deputy Editor-in-Chief
UChicago launched a four-year plan at the start of fiscal year (FY) 2025 to eliminate its sizable budget deficit. Midway through the first year of that plan—in early 2025—the University was in line to cut the deficit by 25 percent by June.
“We were marginally on track to do that—until January,” Provost Katherine Baicker told the Maroon. “And then things look pretty different financially.”
In a May 12 interview with the Maroon, Baicker and Enterprise Chief Financial Officer Ivan Samstein spoke about the University’s rapidly evolving financial strategy in light of federal funding disruptions and other policy changes under the second Trump administration. They highlighted efforts to seek out alternate sources of revenue, possible long-term shifts in research funding, and considerable overall uncertainty for the University and other institutions of higher education.
The University had planned to fully close its budget deficit, which totaled $288 million at the end of FY2024, over the four years ending in FY2028. By October 2024— three months into FY2025—it had already made progress toward that target, with the deficit down to $221 million, but that outlook shifted after Trump took office, Baicker said.
One of the most pressing sources of
uncertainty is the potential fallout from federal grant terminations. According to Baicker, the University has seen around 50 grants terminated so far, totaling $40 to $45 million overall, with $10 to $15 million affecting the current fiscal year.
In FY2024, the University received $543 million in federal grant revenue, a University spokesperson told the Maroon in response to follow-up questions after the interview.
“It’s an incredibly serious impact for the people whose work is affected,” Baicker said. “If you look at the financial impact [on the University as a whole] for FY2025, it was relatively modest… but it forecasts potentially much bigger impacts in the years going forward.”
Baicker noted that the number of terminated grants has remained small enough for the administration to work with individually affected faculty members and principal investigators to explore alternative funding or file appeals. However, she added, “I can’t say that I am hugely optimistic about those appeals.”
Baicker and Samstein also emphasized that the University is preparing for a wide range of scenarios, particularly as budgets for federal agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) remain threat-
ened. The University is a party in lawsuits challenging reductions in indirect cost funding rates for NIH and NSF research grants. The NIH’s move to cut indirect cost funding has been paused by court orders.
“There [is] a whole range of things that may require some really hard choices to be made—what programs we can continue to invest in, what programs we have to rethink, or ways we have to rethink getting our core research and educational mission accomplished,” Baicker said.
In a May 15 email sent to faculty titled “University Budget Update,” Baicker and Samstein wrote that deans and officers had been asked to plan budgets for the upcoming fiscal year based on known federal financial impacts. “This requires holding total compensation flat and reducing unfunded non-personnel spending by 10 percent,” the email read.
“We don’t want to disrupt activities that we don’t have to disrupt while we wait to see what the federal budget brings,” Baicker added. “[But] we need the plans ready.”
At the same time, Baicker stressed that the University’s core values will continue to guide the administration’s decisions in the face of financial uncertainty, noting that the administration will not direct faculty to alter their research areas to better align with new federal funding priorities.
“I would never tell a faculty member what to research,” Baicker said. “Faculty members are to research as they see fit, teach what they think is right for the student body, for students to come here and
learn across disciplines…. If federal funding goes away, we have to figure out what to do as an institution about it, but those bedrock principles will absolutely remain.”
She added that these core values would shape the University’s response if the federal government made demands of UChicago, although she declined to offer a definitive answer about whether financial considerations would influence that response. Trump has threatened Harvard University and Columbia University with federal funding cuts if they refused to accede to lists of demands, including increasing efforts to combat antisemitism; ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and altering policies related to on-campus protests. Columbia accepted the list they faced, while Harvard refused theirs.
“I don’t have a list, so all I can do is articulate the things that for us are absolutely foundational and not subject to discussion,” Baicker said. “Academic freedom, free expression—the institutional things that we have articulated for decades.”
Baicker also acknowledged that although UChicago’s “diverse funding portfolio” reduces its vulnerability to individual federal cuts, it also increases the budget’s exposure to a wide range of policy shifts.
“If you look at the share of our revenues that come from endowment, from federal grants, from philanthropy, from tuition, the pie slices are more evenly distributed than a lot of our peers, which gives us a little bit broader set of opportunities to
“... depending on what funding is available, we have to be adapative...”
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try to adapt,” she said. “On the other hand, [that] means there are multiple sources of vulnerability. So when you think about an endowment tax, [when] you think about federal research funding, we’re exposed to all of those, although we’re not entirely dependent on anyone.”
According to data from the University’s most recent budget town hall, 20 percent of the University’s FY2025 operating revenue came from tuition and fees, 18 percent from federal grants and contracts, and 5 percent each from endowment payout and private gifts.
One reason the University has limited room to respond quickly to the changes, according to Samstein, is that large parts of its budget—such as student population, faculty compensation, and tuition rates— are immutable after the school year begins. “Universities have a lot less inherent midyear flexibility than most institutions,” Samstein said. “A lot of the big pieces of the financial puzzle are set, so your ability to make big mid-year changes is much lower.”
In the meantime, the University has been working closely with deans and faculty to identify alternative funding sources, including external foundations and philanthropic support. According to Baicker, foundation grants, though much smaller in scale than the federal funds, have already increased in some areas to fill the gap left by federal funding.
Philanthropy has also proved promising. “FY25 is on track to surpass FY24 and FY23 [in donations], which were themselves record-setting years,” Baicker said.
To support researchers affected by the grant terminations, the University has also been working to develop temporary “bridge
funding.”
“The goal is not to replicate the federal funding as if it’s going to come back in exactly the same form but rather to give people enough time to think, ‘Who might alternative funders be? How might I get my work done without the federal grant?’” Baicker said.
Baicker and Samstein did not provide estimates for exactly how much bridge funding the University would set aside in the case of further cuts or how long such funding would sustain affected researchers.
Potential reduction in international student enrollment amid aggressive immigration policy shifts under the Trump administration could also pose a concern for University finances, Baicker and Samstein said.
Earlier this year, hundreds of international students across the country—including 10 at UChicago—saw their visas revoked before the State Department later reinstated them. Still, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced last month an expanded range of justifications for changing students’ legal status. One of the 10 UChicago students whose visas were initially revoked chose not to return to study in the U.S. even after his status was restored.
“So far, we have not seen a drop-off in international applications or acceptances,” Baicker said. “But who knows? We won’t know until next fall who’s actually able to successfully get a visa to come, chooses to do so, and is able to do so.”
Samstein emphasized that certain programs would be hit harder by a dropoff in international student numbers. For example, international students made up 65 percent of the Harris School of Public Policy’s incoming class as of December 2024.
Before the wave of changes introduced by the Trump administration, the University had also been exploring the expansion of non-degree programs to diversify its revenue stream. Baicker said that the University has recently launched nine new programs; in FY2023, UChicago’s non-degree programs brought in $23 million in revenue.
Still, she noted that UChicago lags behind its peers significantly in this area: during the 2022–23 academic year, Harvard enrolled 68,000 non-degree students, and the University of Pennsylvania enrolled 35,000, compared to just 7,000 at UChicago.
The push toward non-degree program expansion also comes in part because the University recognizes growing demand in that area, Samstein said. “That’s increasingly the way the workforce wants to learn,” he said. “We need to build the infrastructure [for non-degree programs] now in a way that’s UChicago-centric so that it can grow and scale as the world adapts.”
“It wouldn’t make sense for us to expand non-degree offerings if it didn’t generate net resources,” Baicker said. “But it very much has to be consistent with our UChicago eminence, [our] well-earned reputation for quality and rigor. We don’t want programs for the sake of having programs. They have to fit in with our mission of providing really valuable, really high-quality education.”
Baicker and Samstein said the University’s recent interest in expanding on-campus housing capacity was unrelated to budget challenges. In a statement to the Maroon last month, Housing & Residence Life Executive Director David Hibbler confirmed that the University was “in the early stages” of planning a new residence hall on campus.
“The cost of constructing them exceeds
how much you’re able to charge students… [and] the summer months are pretty modest [in terms of] utilization,” Samstein said. “You wouldn’t build dorms purely for financial reasons.”
The University’s three most recent housing projects, Woodlawn, Campus North, and Renee Granville-Grossman Residential Commons (RGGRC), each cost the University upward of $100 million to build. The University faced unexpected costs, including in the construction of RGGRC, which exceeded its initial budget by at least $40 million.
The University spokesperson added that “campus housing is a net cost” for the University.
According to Baicker and Samstein, since the COVID-19 pandemic, more upperclassmen have opted to stay in on-campus housing, which has prompted a push to expand dormitory capacity. The University’s current goal is to be able to accommodate 70 percent of students in on-campus housing, Hibbler said in the statement.
“It is definitely not motivated by a ‘let’s have more people live on campus for financial purposes’ [mentality],” Baicker said. “It’s, ‘Let’s make sure if we want to have more people able to live on campus, it’s done in a way that works.’”
Still, despite ongoing financial pressures and the exploration of new revenue streams, Baicker reaffirmed that the University’s commitment to its foundational principles would remain.
“Will we potentially have to change finances in the future? Yes, depending on what funding is available, we have to be adaptive as a University,” she said. “But that adaptation can’t include changing what is core to us as a University.”
University Council Members Reveal Internal Confusion, Concern About Protest Disciplinary Process
By ELENA EISENSTADT | Deputy Editor-in-Chief and NATHANIEL RODWELL-SIMON | Deputy News Editor
In the 2023–2024 academic year, the University-Wide Standing Disciplinary Committee on Disruptive Conduct saw a surge in disciplinary cases brought against
students who had allegedly engaged in disruptive conduct related to pro-Palestine protests.
As individual cases played out, Univer-
sity administrators faced criticism from faculty over the Standing Committee’s governance, including allegations that Provost Katherine Baicker appointed faculty members and chairs to the Standing Committee, as well as faculty chairs to ad hoc committees for specific disciplinary cases, without
faculty consultation.
Concerns about limited faculty oversight and a lack of transparency regarding the committee’s governance structure led some council members to believe the administration was exerting disproportion-
Faculty are concerned that they will “lose their role in adjudicating... for students.”
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ate influence over internal disciplinary proceedings.
“There were ample grounds for a perception or suspicion that students were not being afforded due process,” a former spokesperson (FS) of the Committee of the Council told the Maroon this May. The FS—who held the highest position of faculty governance on the Committee—spoke on condition of anonymity for this article.
Disciplinary System Overwhelmed
Last year, the University-Wide Standing Disciplinary Committee on Disruptive Conduct operated with lower membership and higher caseloads than in previous years.
“[It] was the first big test of how these kinds of systems functioned,” said Dan Morgan, a Cinema and Media Studies professor and Committee of the Council member. The Former Spokesperson (FS) of the Committee of the Council explained that the volume of disciplinary cases last year was “several orders of magnitude larger” than in previous years, which “overwhelmed the process.”
A University spokesperson confirmed to the Maroon that the Standing Committee had 14 members during the 2023–2024 academic year.
This year, membership has increased to 26, with one additional member in reserve, according to the spokesperson.
Changes to Disciplinary Committee Leadership Fuel Concern
In addition to increases in caseloads, structural changes to the Standing Committee and ambiguity surrounding decision-making authority led some council members and faculty to believe that disciplinary procedures were operating differently from established policy.
According to the Disciplinary System for Disruptive Conduct policies, the Provost will consult the annually appointed spokesperson of the Committee of the Council before appointing members to the University-Wide Standing Disciplinary Committee on Disruptive Conduct.
By the end of the 2023–24 school year, the Office of the Provost had not consulted, at minimum, the last four spokespeople when appointing members of the Standing Committee, according to reports of a Council of the University Senate meeting held on
June 7, 2024 reviewed by the Maroon.
“After the Provost and a past Spokesperson realized this step had not been followed in practice for several years, they rectified the process moving forward,” a University spokesperson told the Maroon
The Standing Committee’s publicly listed philosophy professor Matthew Boyle and statistics professor Mary Silber as its faculty chairs during the 2023-2024 school year.
However, English professor and Committee of the Council member Julie Orlemanski, as well as FS, told the Maroon in 2025 that, as they understood the situation, neither one of these professors chaired the ad hoc disciplinary committee that was convened to hear disruptive conduct allegations related to the encampment. Additionally, neither professor made recommendations regarding the formation of this ad hoc committee.
It was unclear to FS who was acting as a faculty chair in the ad hoc committees for encampment-related disciplinary cases.
Boyle wrote in an email to the Maroon that he was involved in another disciplinary case and was therefore not asked to chair encampment-related proceedings.
Silber did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
When asked why Boyle and Silber were not involved in these disciplinary proceedings, a University spokesperson wrote to the Maroon, “A single Faculty Chair is assigned for each disruptive conduct matter. The Chairs serve on a rotation and additional Standing Committee members can be appointed as a Chair to address unavoidable issues, such as conflicts of interest or availability concerns. Each Chair works independent of the other Chairs, and students involved in the process are made aware of the Chair that is working on their matter.”
Faculty chairs are the faculty members given the most power in disciplinary proceedings; the Picker Report, which in 2017 established the University’s current disciplinary system, states that administrators should consult the chair on a variety of major case decisions. chairs make the decision to convene ad hoc committees where faculty members serve on specific disciplinary cases, such as those related to the encampment, with oversight from another faculty chair. Additionally, the chair can decide whether graduating students in ongoing disciplinary cases can receive their degrees or partici-
pate in convocation.
At a Council of the University Senate meeting held over in summer 2024, Baicker explained that a faculty member had resigned as chair of the Standing Committee in autumn quarter 2023 and Baicker had appointed another chair prior to the establishment of the encampment, according to FS.
The third faculty chair appointed midyear by Baicker was chemistry professor Bryan Dickinson, Orlemanski wrote to the Maroon in 2025.
As faculty chair for the Standing Committee, Dickinson decided to form an ad hoc committee for encampment disciplinary cases and served as its chair, Olemanski said. She did not know who the old faculty chair who resigned was, nor exactly when prior to the encampment Baicker had appointed Dickinson.
Dickinson declined to comment about why his position was not made public at his time of appointment, saying that he was unable to speak to University decisions. The University lists Dickinson publicly as one of the faculty chairs for the 2024–2025 academic year, along with law professor Richard McAdams and Ben May Department for Cancer Research professor Marsha Rosner.
At a June 7 Council of the University Senate meeting, a faculty member suggested that the vacant faculty chair seat should have been filled immediately, instead of after a delay. She said that the timing of the appointment gave the impression that the administration was making changes to governance as reactions to specific events, according to reports reviewed by the Maroon
For FS, the lack of public acknowledgment about the appointment of a third faculty chair, combined with confusion about the process for appointing them, raised concerns.
Specifically, FS was concerned that ambiguous language in the Picker Report about the appointment of a faculty chair could lead to multiple discrepancies between the published policy and how the process was unfolding in practice, they told the Maroon in 2025. The Picker Report does not explicitly state who appoints a faculty chair to the Standing Committee or ad hoc committees for specific cases.
A June 3 email from Jeremy Inabinet, the Associate Dean of Students in the Uni-
versity, Center for Student Integrity, reviewed by the Maroon, states that Standing Committee faculty chairs are appointed through the Office of the Provost.
A University spokesperson confirmed to the Maroon that, “In consultation with the Spokesperson of the Committee of the Council, the Provost appoints members and chairs of the Standing Committee.” Additionally, the spokesperson wrote that the associate dean of students in the center for student integrity chooses ad-hoc committee members from the Standing Committee “based on factors such as availability, schedules, and avoidance of conflicts of interest.”
During last year’s disciplinary proceedings and their aftermath, several faculty members and protesters expressed concerns to the Maroon about the disproportionate influence over proceedings they perceived the admin to have.
One protester who was subject to the University disciplinary system multiple times told the Maroon in 2025 that, for the post-encampment hearings, “It was clear that faculty had little to no power,” the protester said.
Mathematics professor Denis Hirschfeldt claimed to the Maroon in May 2024 that the appointment of the ad hoc chair to the disciplinary committee overseeing encampment-related cases allowed the University to withhold degrees and circumvent the preexisting committee faculty chairs.
“The concern is that… the Provost has significant leeway to sideline faculty participation and to engineer disciplinary committees that are likely to produce the outcome that the administration may prefer,” history professor Gabriel Winant told the Maroon in 2025.
Overall, faculty are concerned that they will “lose their role in adjudicating and advocating for students,” he explained.
In late May 2024, four graduating students involved in the pro-Palestine encampment were informed that their degrees were being withheld pending disciplinary proceedings against them. A student involved in the IOP occupation received a similar message on May 31. Six non-graduating students also faced disciplinary sanctions
At least 100 students walked out during the... convocation... in protest...
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for participating in the encampment.
Ultimately, the degrees were conferred, and other six disciplinary cases were dropped by early August.
In an email Inabinet sent to Christopher Iacovetti, an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and one of the non-graduating students who faced discipline, Inabinet informed him that he “and multiple other individuals disrupted the operations of the University by occupying space on the main quadrangle.”
When asked by Iacovetti to clarify what the specific allegation against him was, Inabinet wrote, “you were identified as having participated in the quad encampment and
potentially holding a leadership role with regard to the encampment and UChicago United for Palestine.” Inabinet informed Iacovetti that his case would be evaluated “on both an individual and group basis.”
In a July 2024 interview with the Maroon, Iacovetti argued that the University’s disciplinary proceedings engaged in what he called a “notion of collective responsibility,” which he said was “precisely the notion that student organizers have been trying to impress upon the University of Chicago administration for months” through their protests.
Iacovetti declined to speak with the Maroon for this story.
Michelle Ward, a Master of Arts Pro-
gram in the Humanities (MAPH) student whose degree was withheld, was presented with photos of herself wearing a keffiyeh in her apartment building lobby as evidence that she had participated in the IOP occupation.
An internal Division of Humanities email obtained by the Maroon informed faculty that Ward was identified in “video footage that shows what we believe to be her directly involved in this matter” and that “UCPD’s investigation is ongoing and may result in criminal charges.”
Ward could not be reached for comment, and the Maroon did not find any record of criminal charges brought against her. At time of publication, it is still unclear how the
photos were obtained. A University spokesperson declined to share information about the matter in August, citing federal privacy laws.
The students whose degrees were withheld were informed that they would be permitted to attend convocation-related ceremonies but would not receive their diplomas. At least 100 students walked out during the University’s convocation ceremonies in protest; police arrested one individual and allegedly used pepper spray after protesters clashed with UCPD at a closed intersection. According to the University’s account of the situation, the individual had “acted violently” against police and charges were sought for battery.
Uncommon Interview: 2024–25 USG President Elijah Jenkins
By VIVIAN LI | News Reporter
Undergraduate Student Government (USG) President Elijah Jenkins was reelected last month after a year in office. He spoke with the Maroon about his achievements so far in USG and what he hopes to accomplish in a second term.
Note: This interview, which was conducted before the USG impeachment proceedings on May 7, has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Chicago Maroon: What initially inspired you to get involved with USG and run for president?
Elijah Jenkins: [My] first year, I knew I wanted to get involved and hopefully try to create more opportunities on campus through student government, so I ran [and became] a representative on College Council. [My] second year, I became College Council chair, and then this year, I became the president.
I’d say the main reason why I ran for president this past year was really about training. After COVID hit, USG had a really big dive in membership, and part of that dive led to a lack of institutional knowledge and [member] retention. And so, there were people in my own year, and the years above me, [and] very few of their class [members] were [in USG], which means it was mostly underclassmen coming through. They’d be there for a year, and leave; there for a year,
and leave. So, my job as president was to mostly work on: “How can we change the social mechanism of USG to make it seem like less of a job and [be] more inclusive and a community?”
So, I started creating general body meetings, social things. We would do training programs for USG members to not only increase retention in USG itself, but to ensure that USG members themselves could advocate more effectively.
CM: How do you define leadership, and how has your definition of leadership evolved since taking office?
EJ: When I first came into a leadership experience, I thought that leadership was defined by impact and results. But often I feel like, at least specifically to student government, results don’t come within a year, especially for longer projects.… At least for me, especially this past year, [I’ve been focused on] seeing engagement. USG members, especially first-years now, are trying to create their own initiatives and are learning how to do so by themselves.
I think that’s [important]—helping train other people [to be] leaders at home—because I’m going to graduate next year, and I would like USG to have members who know what they’re doing. Leadership for me now is mostly about creating opportunities on campus and ensuring that the next generation is able to continue the advocacy work
themselves.
CM: What is the best thing that being president has taught you so far?
EJ: I think there are a lot of opportunities as a student government that we currently don’t engage with.… For instance, right now we’re going to do a raffle for students who are low-income or identify as unable to afford [them and] raffle out three diploma frames. Something simple like that can make a really big impact for someone, and it’s not really dealing with policy change or something like that, but [it’s a way in which] USG is able to impact the student experience. So, what it taught me, being president last year, is that USG needs to move away from simple policy change and administration change. [While] I think [that] is effective and good, [we also need to] ask, “What are small ways we can improve social experience between RSOs themselves?”
Being president this year has really taught me to make the social experience more of a top priority.
CM: What do you see as your greatest success as president?
EJ: I’m going to make this a two-part question. My greatest success as a member of Student Government was launching the Igbo course. This past November, [for the] very first year, students could take an Igbo language sequence for three quarters.
I think my biggest impact as president has been seeing the amount of returns for
next year. In spring quarter, we had a recorded amount of 59 students within Student Government—that’s including firstyears to seniors. We just did an application cycle, and we had a total of 51 reapplicants within student government. This is phenomenal because, [in] my previous years, or even last year coming to this year, we had to fill all the committees with basically new people. Seeing that [the] majority of the members want to come back [and] work [means] the work we’ve been doing this year has been effective.
CM: Are there any initiatives that you launched that didn’t go as planned? And what did you learn from them?
EJ: This year we launched the Greek Life Liaison [program]. Essentially the idea was [that] we wanted a member from
USG President Elijah Jenkins. courtesy of undergraduate student government
“So how can we
CONTINUED FROM PG. 12
[each] fraternity and sorority on campus to be involved in USG. The fraternities and sororities on campus are in student life, and they have a lot of students who care about different issues, but they’re not involved in student government. I wanted our [USG] administration to see ways in which we can impact things they’re already doing.… That was the intention.
The pushback we faced was that not that many people in Greek life want to be in USG, so we only had a total of three people collectively within USG who are [in] Greek life and working on that work. We were trying to create a whole committee out of it, but it didn’t go as planned. I think it’s baby steps, and we’ll try to launch it more next year.
CM: Would you say that Greek life and USG are fundamentally separate aspects of student life?
EJ: The student experience encompasses Greek life. We see UChicago students constantly posting videos of people at parties, so a good amount of the student population, whether a student is in Greek life or not, is actively attending the parties, and the Greek life experience is growing.
So, my goal with that is: What does
foster an environment of free speech...?”
recognition for fraternities and sororities look like? Some of the sororities want to be recognized by the University, which means there will be more administrative oversight, but fraternities don’t. Personally, I’m not involved in those fraternity and sorority life experiences, so it was really problematic to be advocating on initiatives that would affect a broad segment of the student experience without members from those bodies to begin with. That was the goal [of the Greek life committee].
CM: How has the relationship between USG and the University changed over your tenure?
EJ: I think it’s something that was a lot stronger this year. This year, I made it a goal to focus on making sure our committees are meeting more with direct administration and staff.…
The strength [of the relationship] between USG and administrators has been evolving a lot more, and I think part of the reason that we allowed more agency for [USG] committees was to grow the relationships themselves alongside our support instead of having a cabinet member be the sole liaison with administrators. I think that was part of the reason why a lot of people
didn’t stay in USG [before], because they felt like they were not being fully involved in that kind of decision making with staff, with senior leadership.
But overall, the strength [of our relationship] with the administration has grown vastly throughout the past year.
CM: Since you got reelected, what are some goals for the next term and something that you wish to continue?
EJ: The goal is to establish the Greek life committee next year.
The second thing is election turnout. That’s something we’re still facing extreme problems with. We get high [attendance] in the fall from College Council members and first-years, but, by the time it becomes spring, they’re not really that engaged with USG elections, and so another thing I want for next year is actually more public-facing events, so less internal, behind-the-scene[s] policy work [and more] actual USG-sponsored events for the campus.
Another goal is to have more members outside of USG join.
The final big thing is really looking at free speech policies on campus. Specifically, the ways in which our university currently has been engaging with free speech with the
Trump administration has been really bad. USG is putting out a petition that we’re going to give to Alivisatos in a couple of weeks— I’m trying to have the College take a stance on it.
We have students coming from across all ways of life: [international] students, first-generation students, low-income students, and the College is [expecting them to] speak out on issues when they are the only one in the room that looks like them. So how can we foster an environment of free speech that allows every single member to be comfortable and in a position to speak up and make their voice known? What I’ve been pushing for at the University is more opportunities for cultural housing or cultural centers on campus to allow the communities that are marginalized on campus to have breathing room and space to be shared beyond RSOs.
The University administration thinks that actually goes against the idea of ensuring that perspectives across demographics are being shared, but I don’t think they realize that sometimes not all communities are able to participate in this process [of free speech] 100 percent. But that’s definitely more of a long-term thing.
UChicago Law Alum to Clerk for Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch
By KYLE LIN | Senior News Reporter
Micah Quigley (J.D. ’21) will clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch during the October 2025–26 term. In an interview with the Maroon, he spoke about how his interests aligned with Gorsuch, his originalist legal philosophy, and how he grounds himself in the legal landscape.
Quigley is one of seven UChicago Law School graduates who will begin clerkships with Supreme Court Justices during the October 2025–26 term. He currently works as an associate attorney for Gibson Dunn and was previously a member of the University of Chicago Law Review.
Clerkships offer law school graduates the opportunity to work directly with a sitting judge or justice, assisting them with legal research, preparing for court proceedings, and drafting opinions and orders. Supreme Court clerkships are among the most prestigious opportunities available to early
career lawyers—there are no more than 36 clerks at any given time—allowing them to participate in the United States’ most important legal proceedings and frequently opening the door to elite legal careers.
Although clerkships also provide lawyers with an opportunity to learn from a sitting judge or justice, Quigley, who previously completed clerkships with Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Andrew Oldham and D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neomi Rao, does not believe that a clerk’s primary task is to learn.
“The role of a clerk is to be an agent of justice and help the justice ascertain what the law is,” he said. “I think there is no other agenda for a clerk… other than helping the justice.”
According to Quigley, a clerkship with Gorsuch aligns well with his interests and legal perspective. He identifies as an origi-
nalist—a legal philosophy favored by conservatives that aims to interpret the Constitution and other legal texts as would have been understood when they were written. More specifically, he sees himself as “an original law originalist.”
“[I] go back to the founding [and] figure out the valid law as of 1789. [It can contain] rules from previous English law, or rules that were created by the Constitution for the first time,” Quigley said. “[I] have to identify those rules, and then [I] have an obligation to follow those rules, except insofar as they’ve been validly changed over time.”
Quigley also adheres to the legal and philosophical theory of natural law, which he views as closely connected to originalism.
“Natural law is a certain way of looking at law that says that law and morality are connected,” he said. “Part of what natural law theory would say is that sovereigns in America—the people are the sovereign—
Micah Quigley (J.D. ’21) will clerk for Justice Gorsuch during the 2025–26 term. courtesy of micah quigley
[have] an obligation to create laws that will secure peace, allow people to flourish, and natural law requires a respect for the preexisting law that the sovereign created.”
Quigley sees both traditions present in Gorsuch’s jurisprudence and was happy to
“... proper understandings of the law are impossible... if we disregard the past.”
accept the clerkship offer from him because of their ideological alignment. “I would be honored to clerk for any justice. At the same time, I am particularly happy to be clerking for Justice Gorsuch, [who] has a fantastic writing style and follows the original law of the Constitution while faithfully interpreting the Constitution and statutes,” Quigley said.
Quigley highlighted Gorsuch’s concurring opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo as particularly noteworthy to him. In Loper Bright, the court overturned Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc., a 1984 case that established a standard of judicial deference to the reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes by administrative agencies—commonly known as Chevron deference.
“What was interesting is that Justice
Gorsuch went through in detail and explained the different ways in which aspects of stare decisis doctrine can or cannot be justified by legal practice as it existed at the founding,” Quigley said.
He objects to the idea of viewing laws that were enacted in the past as outdated. Rather, he sees law as evolving from what people have decided in the past, and that proper understandings of the law are impossible to establish if we disregard the past.
“Any law is the dead hand of the past. Like the Civil Rights Act, the people who enacted it are probably all dead,” Quigley said.
“Congress is not the same Congress that it was a few years ago, prior to the last election. If we’re not willing to bind ourselves to the past, then it’s not clear to me that we can do law at all.”
These beliefs are rooted in his undergraduate experience studying political sci-
ence and philosophy at Grove City College. Although he initially didn’t intend to study law, Quigley thought that his undergraduate education prepared him for law school. “I realized that the skill set that I was starting to develop, and my proclivities, aligned pretty well with law school,” Quigley said.
His two undergraduate majors also heavily influenced his existing beliefs in law. Political science gave him a strong understanding of the origins of American law, and philosophy challenged him to come up with logical conclusions from existing conditions.
“The philosophical framework steered me toward the conclusion that legal questions can have objectively correct answers derived through legal means, and political philosophy [gave me] an understanding of the American founding and American political tradition... and also an understanding of
classical natural law theory,” Quigley said.
Although he’s currently unsure of what he plans on doing after the end of his clerkship with Gorsuch, he indicated that he may pursue legal academia or return to work at a law firm.
Quigley also emphasized the importance of spending time outside the law “bubble,” noting that both his upbringing and time away from legal circles have helped ground him in his work.
“I was not raised in sort of the elite bubble that one finds oneself in after going to UChicago or as a lawyer in D.C., and it’s sort of nice to have grown up around just ordinary Americans,” Quigley said. “They are more grounded in what’s actually important in life, like family, for instance, than one can sometimes become in D.C., where it’s tempting to be too focused on one’s career to the exclusion of other things.”
UChicago Oncologist Kunle Odunsi Discusses Upcoming Convocation Address, New UCMed Cancer Center
By VIVIAN LI | News Reporter
Adekunle “Kunle” Odunsi, the AbbVie Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Class of 2025 convocation speaker, has served as the director of UChicago Medicine’s (UCMed) Comprehensive Cancer Center since 2021. He sat down with the Maroon this month to discuss his career, UChicago Medicine’s new cancer care and research center, and his upcoming convocation address.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Chicago Maroon: Could you describe your educational and career background?
Kunle Odunsi: After [medical school], I studied in [a] residency training program in obstetrics and gynecology. I did my first residency training in the United Kingdom, [and] that led to membership [in] the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. After that, I became really very interested in cancer, the cancer aspect of gynecology, cancer of the women’s reproductive tract. I
felt that it was necessary: there [were] a lot of gaps in research, understanding of the basis of cancer development, and metastasis.
CM: How did you get into researching ovarian cancer?
KO: [There are] two or three major events that led me to be focused on research in ovarian cancer.
Number one was way back in medical school when I had been exposed to the field of immunology—just [a] fascinating field with regards to how the immune system can recognize and kill pathogens. When we have bacterial viruses invade our bodies, the immune system has this extraordinary ability to discriminate self from non-self and destroy invaders. So from very early on, that really sparked my interest in the field.
And then as I went into my clinical programs and clinical years and studied obstetrics and gynecology, [I] had [an] interest in gynecologic cancers, based on the fact that I saw a number of patients with cancers [and] the suffering and pain that came with it. And [I saw that] even for myself, in some family members. That made me gravitate towards
cancer.
And then after I really started practicing as a faculty [member], as a clinician in gynecologic oncology, what I found challenging was patients with ovarian cancer, because many times those patients present with late diagnoses. By the time we see many of those patients, the cancer has spread to stage three or four, so that’s the number one problem. Then number two is, when we do surgery followed by chemotherapy, many [patients] go into remission, but the point is that those remissions are not long-lasting— the cancers tend to come back. And many times when they come back, they become more aggressive and ultimately lead to a bad outcome.
So I began to think about how I can help patients when they are in remission. Can we take the knowledge of immunology, where we know that the immune system can fight foreign invaders? If you consider cancer as foreign invaders as well, can we train the immune system to recognize and destroy them? That was the simple question that I asked at the beginning of my career: Can we turn the immune system against cancer in multiple different ways? And those efforts
Kunle Odunsi, director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, will speak at the 2025 convocation. courtesy of kunle odunsi
by our group and others have yielded modest levels of success. There are many cancers today that are treated with immunotherapy. It’s been the breakthrough of the last 10 years. But I believe we’re still scratching the surface. There’s much more to be done, to be discovered, to be translated to patients for better outcomes.
So what else do we need to do to improve the efficacy of immunotherapy? Even in patients who respond initially, the cancer
“Everyone... should understand that they have the ability... to make an impact...”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 14
tends to fight back. It develops resistance. So how can we overcome resistance to immunotherapy? Those are some of the ongoing questions in our group, in my lab, as well as in labs by other investigators here at UChicago.
CM: UChicago Medicine is constructing a new cancer center; could you discuss how that project is currently going?
KO: That project is one of the most exciting projects that I have ever been involved with—to have a building fully dedicated to cancer patients and care is remarkable.
My understanding is that we are on schedule or maybe even a little bit ahead of schedule [with construction], which is very exciting. So this building will become a building of hope, a building where… every patient that comes into the building, along with their families, will have hope, and they will have [the] ability to have people walk with them along the cancer journey.
Cancer is a very difficult problem. It’s not just affecting that individual, it’s affecting the entire family, sometimes the community. So in this building, patients will have access to the best care possible: compassionate care. They will have access to the latest and best innovative clinical trials. There is essentially research embedded in the DNA of the building… [the] opportunity to understand, prevent, and potentially cure cancer is the goal, the mission in this building.
CM: What opportunities will the new cancer center provide for UCMed and its patients?
KO: So the new cancer pavilion will provide tremendous opportunities. If you think about it as a hub and spoke model, where [the pavilion] is the hub of a larger network, which we now have in the region: an extensive network of clinics and hospitals where patients can have access to [the] outstanding care that is going on here in Hyde Park. So the patients will have opportunities to have access to world-class physicians, who are the best anywhere. That’s number one. They will have access to compassionate care. This new building will have [the] ability for you to navigate very seamlessly. Think about it: sometimes cancer patients have to go to multiple appointments. You see a radiation doctor on one side; you see an oncologist on the other side; maybe you need to see a psychologist on another side. Everything is consolidated in this new facility.
What I’m also proud of is that we will have programs in survivorship. How are we taking care of those who actually survive? We know that many cancer treatments have side effects that persist for [a] long [time], so [we need] survivorship [programs] and supportive care, which are different from giving chemotherapy or radiation therapy to somebody.
And finally, most importantly, is access to clinical trials. These are innovative trials that would make a tremendous impact on the lives of patients. We have one of the largest clinical trials portfolios in the country for cancer patients. With this new pavilion, we will continue to build on that portfolio and bring the latest and best treatments that are based on very strong scientific research to our patients.
CM: The South Side and surrounding areas face a disproportionately high cancer burden. Are there any actions that UCMed is taking to help address this?
KO: Absolutely…. Part of my job is community outreach and engagement. So we have a community advisory board for the cancer center, trying to understand the issues that are most important to our community and taking into account those issues in formulating our research plans, in driving some of the priorities of the cancer center. That’s number one.
Number two, we have a lot of outreach activities where we’re doing cancer health education. We engage with community leaders, with religious organizations, with not-for-profit organizations… to provide education as well as screening services. Screening is very important. [When] patients get screened, you can detect cancer early, when it’s potentially curable, [rather] than when it’s late. So one of the efforts is really to enhance screening services. We’ve also partnered with some of the federally qualified health centers, as well as safety-net hospitals, to make sure that patients in this outside community can be navigated very well into the health system for care.
The other thing that we’ve done is partner with the Urban Health Initiative. This is a South Side community health organization, a program that involves UChicago Medicine and many other not-for-profit organizations in the South Side community, where we have community health workers who are helping patients to navigate the health system so they can gain access to
care.
So there are many ongoing programs that are targeted to our South Side community in order to help with prevention through health education, early detection through screening programs, and therapies when they actually develop cancer to make sure they have access to the world-class care that’s available at UChicago Medicine. And as I said earlier, we have programs in supportive care and survivorship to have them navigate quality of life after completing their treatment for cancer.
CM: Do you have any advice for aspiring scientists based on your experiences?
KO: Science is actually very exciting. The main advice that I would give is [that] it does require persistence—persistence and constantly think[ing] outside the box—because some of the things that are existing paradigms may not necessarily hold true. So it’s important to be persistent in how you are pursuing your research question and not to give up.
For the longest time, most people believed that immunotherapy was not going to work for cancer. I told you how the immune system can work well against bacteria and viruses, and frankly, that’s how we have survived as a species. Most people believed that [the] immune system [was]not going to work against cancer, because cancer is part of the cell. [The] immune system is trained only to attack foreign invaders, not cells. So for the longest time, there was generalized skepticism.
But look what happened because of persistence of people in the field—some of them my mentors—not giving up on trying to unlock the secret of how the immune system can recognize and destroy cancer. That’s how we made progress and got to this point. So my advice is this whole thing about persistence, relentless pursuit of your question.
CM: Now, some questions about the upcoming convocation. What does education mean to you?
KO: Good question. Education, in my view, involves the whole totality of what you learn as a person. I will tell you what it is not. It is not just classroom work. Classroom work is important, and don’t get me wrong about that. It’s important to get your degree. But education is much more than that. It includes how you build your character, what your values [are], how you see yourself in society. So it’s really about the total person—
the emotional, psychological development of the total person. Education is what makes you who you are. You are educated from all angles of your life—academic work is just one component of education, in my view.
CM: What is the most important thing you want the graduating class to take away from your speech?
KO: I’m still working on my speech, but I think the most important thing is for [students] to know that they can make a difference in our society.
Everyone, especially after receiving a UChicago education, every graduating member of [the] 2025 class should understand that they have the ability to make a difference in our society, to make an impact, because they are the future of our country.
CM: What is the best advice you can give regarding saying goodbye and dealing with change?
KO: Change is inevitable. As you go from a student to a graduate, that is already a change; you’re going into the real world. So take it in your stride because, again, change is inevitable. There are going to be multiple steps where there is going to be change. It’s going to be important to adjust to change and use it also as an educational opportunity, as much as possible.
CM: What do you think is the biggest challenge that the current graduating class is facing?
KO: I think the current graduating class is coming out at a time of unprecedented changes—we just talked about change—in our country right now, where there are a lot of policy changes.
Again, it’s going to be important for the class to recognize the current environment and ask the question, what are the opportunities that exist, even with the changes that we are seeing going on right in front of our eyes? So I think the challenge for this class is how to adapt to the ongoing change. How does that impact the long-range future 10, 20, 30 years from now? And what are the opportunities for them to make an impact, a long-lasting impact on society, even within the framework of the current ongoing change?
CM: Do you have one last piece of advice for graduating students?
KO: Know who you are. Stay true to who you are. Stay true to your values. And be a good ambassador for the University of Chicago!
A Day in the Life (of the Mind): Professors at UChicago
The Maroon sat down with UChicago professors to explore their approaches to teaching, the rhythms of their work, and how they experience life at the University.
By ANUSHKA BANSAL | News Reporter
Observing the cosmos through a telescope in Chile. Feeling the electric spark of a well-reasoned philosophical disagreement in a classroom. Reading manuscripts and refining literary technique in a poetry seminar. Facilitating reflective leadership in a horseshoe-shaped business classroom.
At UChicago, students and faculty alike have historically valued the ideal of learning for learning’s sake, but what do professors’ lives of the mind look like?
The Maroon interviewed faculty across departments and levels to get a glimpse into the rhythms of their days, exploring what they find rewarding, how they navigate the demands of their job, and what sustains their intellectual passions.
Professors’ lives at the University are intertwined with the demands of teaching, research, and service. In an interview with the Maroon, associate professor Timothy Harrison of the Department of English Language and Literature spoke about how he has come to appreciate the University’s unusually collaborative culture.
“The students are amazing, smart, dedicated… [and] they come eager to talk,” he said. “What makes it really great to be here as an academic is that degree to which… colleagues are eager to discuss your ideas, read your work, critique you, make suggestions. People are in the business of making each other better in a communal and collaborative way.”
Harrison, who is also affiliated with the Divinity School and the Committee on Social Thought, has been at the University for 11 years. Since 2020, he has served as the Resident Dean of Woodlawn Residential Commons West, a role he finds both
“rewarding and fun.”
“Eating with the students all the time, having them in your house all the time for a study break, I mean you really get to know people very, very well, and you get to know about the academic and personal ecology of their lives—how complicated they are,” Harrison explained.
For some professors, the collaborative nature of academic life means that the lines between professional and personal spheres often blur. Linda Ginzel, clinical professor of managerial psychology at the Booth School of Business since 1992, sees her work and personal life as deeply intertwined. “I don’t separate them,” she said. “I work at home and do home at work—my friends are my colleagues, and my colleagues are my friends.”
Ginzel attributes much of this fluidity to the autonomy her position affords. She likens this freedom to “feel[ing] like an entrepreneur.” She tracks her long days of teaching and community building meticulously in her calendar, and values being able to shape her own time. “Academics
can work any 80 hours they choose,” she said, quoting a colleague.
A similar sense of constant immersion in academia is present in the life of Benjamin Callard, an instructional professor in the Department of Philosophy who has been at the University for 17 years. Callard is inspired by those who seek to understand “how we should be living and what this world is all about.”
“That’s what I do all day,” he said. “I spend the day arguing—with students, colleagues, total strangers.” For him, open dialogue is “the heart of philosophy.”
Callard’s office, a messy room he describes with self-deprecating humor, offers a glimpse into his life and mind as a philosopher. When asked about the space, he joked: “I think you shouldn’t ask me that question. I think you need to ask a psychiatrist or something.” Gesturing around the room, he points to what his students have dubbed his “vision boards,” plastered across the walls. For Callard, these are “things that meant something to [him] at some point,” serving as reminders of the ideas and ideals that drive his thinking.
Intellectual rigor isn’t exclusive to the humanities and social sciences. Michael Gladders is a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics whose curiosity is on a cosmic scale. His work takes him to observatories around the world, far from the confines of a conventional nineto-five. “Some days, I work two full days in one,” he said, for example, when he was observing on a telescope in Chile for 18 hours. “Other days, I just need to sleep a day to reset.”
Even with his unpredictable schedule, Gladders’s fascination with the universe is rooted in focused inquiry. “I am a sort of hardcore observational astronomer, and being at the telescope is my happy place,” he said. When asked about what he finds most rewarding about his job, he explained, “That moment when you first download the data, where it has just come off the satellite and through the relay network and onto a computer, and you’re the first person to see it, is magical for me— that discovery aspect.”
Outside of these moments of cosmic discovery, he spends his leisure time listening to music, collecting art, and playing video games. A recipient of the prestigious Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Gladders exemplifies how play, wonder, and rigor can live side by side in a professor’s life.
The demands of faculty life extend well beyond research. Teaching, too, says Gladders, requires continuous preparation and intention. “If a course is too easy, students have no agency; if it’s too hard, they lose hope.” His goal is to find the “sweet spot” where students are challenged but not overwhelmed.
Harrison focuses on “re-reading ev-
Professor Linda Ginzel in Booth School of Business’s Harper Center. anushka bansal
Professor Ben Callard in Rosenwald Hall. anushka bansal
“There is no one ‘day in the life’—it’s just trying to have that day in the life that you always wanted to have.”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 16
erything I am teaching—even if I’ve read it a hundred times—so that I can walk into class over-prepared and teach extemporaneously.” He aims to foster a classroom environment that feels “magical,” where students actively engage with ideas, and everyone leaves having gained a new perspective.
Across the Midway, Professor Srikanth “Chicu” Reddy is a poet and literary editor who has taught at the University since 2003. “I think a lot of what I do is improvisatory as a teacher,” he said. His courses often grow out of his own evolving inter-
ests as a writer and the world around him. Reddy’s office, like Callard’s, reflects this creative flux. “People deserve to know,” he said, glancing at his office’s unsettled state. When asked about a typical day in his life, he explained, “There is no one ‘day in the life’—it’s just trying to have that day in the life that you always wanted to have.”
“If you can have one of those once in a while, you’re probably doing the right thing and headed in the right direction,” he continued.
For professors, Reddy explained, moments of reward surface in unexpected times. “[It’s] in those moments when
you’re alone in your office, and you feel like you’ve solved a tricky little technical problem,” he said. “And that opens up a whole new set of possibilities for the poem you’re working on.”
This mental overflow speaks to the professors’ constant engagement with the life of the mind.
“Teaching is something that you do with your full person,” Harrison said. “The sort of teacher you are, or the sort of scholar you are, is an immediate expression of the sort of person you are. The question of being an academic isn’t a what question; it’s a who question.”
UChicago Trustees’ Donations to Republicans Skyrocketed in Last Two Years
UChicago trustees’ donations to Republican candidates increased considerably in the 2024 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by the Maroon.
By ZACHARY LEITER | Senior News Reporter
Members of UChicago’s Board of Trustees donated overwhelmingly to Republican candidates during the 2024 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records reviewed by the Maroon. This trend marks a notable shift in the donation patterns of the trustees, who had previously donated to Republicans and Democrats at similar levels.
The Maroon reviewed every individual federal political contribution reported to the FEC over almost 40 years by the 50 current members of the Board. Collectively, these trustees have made more than 4,000 political contributions totaling more than $30 million over their lifetimes. This piece focuses not on the Board as an institution but on the current makeup of the Board.
Of that total, $16,936,470 went to Republicans and Republican Party–affiliated political action committees (PACs),
while $10,994,345 went to Democrats and Democratic Party–affiliated PACs. Just $23,533 went to independent candidates, and the remaining $2,046,371 went to unaffiliated, mostly corporate PACs.
Of the more than $30 million contributed by UChicago trustees, $15,345,653 went to congressional candidates, and $6,780,648 went to presidential candidates. An additional $4,608,396 went to non-candidate-specific PACs, $2,231,047 went to national political parties, and $1,034,975 went to state parties.
The difference in contributions to Republicans and Democrats is due to a significant spike in donations to Republican candidates during the 2023–24 election cycle. During that period, more than $8 million went to Republican candidates, compared to less than $2 million to Democrats. This marks only the second recent presidential election cycle when
Political donations from the current trustees by election cycle from the 1999–2000 election cycle to the 2023–24 election cycle. austin steinhart
UChicago’s current trustees gave more to Republicans than Democrats, the other being 2011–12.
The Board’s recent rightward skew in donation habits is due in part to the
Professor Chicu Reddy in the Edelstone Center. anushka bansal
“Gracias is one of only two trustees who have explicitly given money
to Trump or to
explicitly
Trump-aligned PACs.”
Share of donations between Democratic and Republican candidates and organizations from the 1989–90 election cycle to the 2023–24 election cycle. austin steinhart
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donations of five individuals: Antonio Gracias, John Liew, Byron Trott, Greg Wendt, and Donald Wilson, Jr. But those individuals are not solely responsible. Fourteen trustees gave to Republican candidates and organizations during the 2023–24 election cycle, and 12 of them contributed more to Republicans than to Democrats.
Still, while the Board’s donation pattern as a whole leans to the right, individual trustees tend to be more liberal. Over their lifetimes, 26 trustees have donated more to Democrats than Republicans, while only 17 trustees have donated more to Republicans. Seven trustees have not donated to Democrats or Republicans.
Methodology
The FEC requires all political campaigns and PACs to report the name, occupation, and employer of donors who contribute at least $200 in a calendar year. The Democratic and Republican Parties’ online fundraising platforms, ActBlue and WinRed, are “conduits” and must report all contributions, regardless of size.
The Maroon verified trustees’ identities by cross-referencing zip codes, employers, and other identifying infor -
mation present in FEC records. This analysis only includes donations that the Maroon could fully verify were made by a University trustee.
The Maroon did not review political donations made by foundations or other organizations managed by University trustees or the contributions of honorary and emeritus University trustees.
Individual donations were not adjusted for inflation. Though adjusting for inflation would flatten the all-time curve of contributions, it would not have other meaningful effects on the data given the massive increase in size of recent donations.
PAC affiliations were determined based on reports on PAC spending by the nonprofit OpenSecrets. For recipients whose party affiliation changed while in office, identification was based on the recipient’s affiliation at the time the donation was made. All political figures have been recorded according to their official party, regardless of voting tendencies. For example, Senator Angus King (I-Maine), has been recorded as an independent, though he caucuses with Democrats in the Senate.
The Makeup of Red and Blue Contributions
The 480 percent increase in contributions to Republicans in the 2023–24 election cycle mostly went to congressional candidates. However, one trustee—Gracias—gave $1 million to America PAC, a pro-Trump PAC created by Elon Musk.
Gracias is one of only two trustees who have given money to Trump or to explicitly Trump-aligned PACs. The other is Wendt, who donated to the Trump leadership committee Save America PAC in 2020.
No UChicago trustees have contributed directly to the Republican National Committee (RNC) since Trump first ran for president in 2016, though three—University President Paul Alivisatos, Debra Cafaro, and Ashley Joyce—have since donated small amounts to the RNC through WinRed.
By contrast, 12 UChicago trustees gave to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and explicitly Harris-aligned PACs in the 2023–24 cycle. During the 2019–20 cycle, 13 trustees gave to Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Bidenaligned PACs. In the 2015–16 cycle, 16 trustees gave to Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton and Clinton-aligned PACs.
Since 2016, 15 trustees have given directly to the Democratic National Com-
mittee (DNC) or ActBlue.
The top Democratic recipients of UChicago trustees’ dollars have mostly been presidential candidates: Biden, Clinton, Harris, and Barack Obama sit at second, third, fifth, and sixth for most contributions.
Among Democratic candidates and organizations, the DNC has received the most donations from trustees, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)—the Democratic congressional campaign fundraising organizations— are fourth and seventh respectively.
Many high-profile Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.); former Speaker of the House and current Representative Nancy Pelosi (Calif.); and Senators Cory Booker (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), and Mark Warner (Va.), are also in the top 20.
On the Republican side, the top recipients are a mix of candidates and organizations. Nikki Haley, who ran against Trump in 2024, sits at second. Trump, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush are all in the top 15
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The number of current trustees who contributed to Democratic or Republican presidential candidates from 1991 to 2024. austin steinhart.
“UChicago’s trustees have a strong record of supporting
Illinoisans
across the aisle, having given large sums to Democrats...”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 18
recipients.
The top Republican candidate or organization recipient, however, is Senator Dave McCormick (Pa.), the Trump-endorsed Pennsylvania senator first took office in 2025, who received more than $2 million combined from six trustees. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National
Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC)—the Republican congressional campaign fundraising organizations— are third and seventh, respectively. Americans for Prosperity, the conservative libertarian Koch brothers’ PAC, takes fourth place.
Other high-profile Republicans, including former Speakers of the House Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan
(Wis.), and John Boehner (Ohio); former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan; and Senators Tim Scott (S.C.), Pete Ricketts (Neb.), and John McCain (formerly Ariz.), are also in the top 20.
Pete Ricketts is the brother of Thomas Ricketts, who is the executive chairmen of the Chicago Cubs and joined the Board of Trustees in 2024. Thomas Ricketts contributed more than $300,000 to his brother’s 2024 Senate campaign.
Trustees’ Contributions and Ideological Lean
The Maroon found no clear indication that trustees were more or less likely to give to pro-Trump Republicans versus anti-Trump Republicans. Haley and Scott initially ran against Trump in 2024, but strongly endorsed him after dropping out of the race. Pete Ricketts has been a Trump supporter since the latter first ran for president, and McCarthy expressed his support for Trump against Haley and others in 2024.
Hogan, however, did not vote for Trump in 2024, and McCain and Trump sparred frequently before the former’s death in 2018. Romney was the only Senate Republican who voted to convict Trump in both of his impeachment trials.
More broadly, the Maroon found no statistically significant relationship between the size of trustees’ political contributions to members of Congress and those members’ ideologies.
The Maroon determined senators’ and representatives’ ideologies using DW Nominate, the most commonly used measure of representatives’ ideological lean in political science, and the League of Conservation Voters’ national environmental scorecard, which serves as a proxy for how progressive congresspeople are. Neither measure demonstrated strong correlation between increased liberalism or conservatism and the donations congresspeople received from UChicago’s trustees.
That is, UChicago trustees were just as likely to give large sums to liberal Democrats as to conservative Democrats and to liberal Republicans as to conser -
vative Republicans.
For the graphs on the left, only members of Congress who have received donations from at least four trustees, or whose total contributions exceeded $5,000, are represented.
Support for Illinoisans
UChicago’s trustees have a strong record of supporting Illinoisans across the aisle, having given large sums to Democrats including Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, and Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.-08), Sean Casten (Ill.-06), Lauren Underwood (Ill.-04), and Robin Kelly (Ill.-02), as well as to Republicans including former Senator Mark Kirk and Representative Adam Kinzinger (formerly Ill.16) and current Representatives Darin LaHood (Ill.-16) and Bob Dold (Ill.-10).
Nine UChicago trustees have also given to Democrat Rahm Emanuel, who served as mayor of Chicago from 2011 to 2019, and is likely to run for president in 2028.
In 2014, current UChicago trustee Byron Trott “sent an email to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s personal account in which he promised to co-host a political fundraiser, before making a series of requests that included asking that the mayor provide high-level access to a new executive at Trott’s firm,” per the Chicago Tribune. Trott has served on the Board since 2003.
Trott could not be reached for comment regarding his correspondence with Emanuel. No other trustees mentioned by name in this article could be reached for comment regarding their political contributions.
Asked about policies for trustees’ political activity, a University spokesperson referred the Maroon to UChicago’s governing documents and the University’s conflict of interest policy for trustees and officers.
“Members of the UChicago community are free to donate to or otherwise engage in causes that interest them, in their individual capacities,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to the Maroon
CONTINUED ON PG. 20
Top five Democrats and Democratic organizations to which current trustees donated from 1979 to the present. austin steinhart
Top five Republicans and Republican organizations to which current trustees donated from 1979 to the present. austin steinhart.
“In
contrast to the University’s trustees, UChicago faculty members donate overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates.”
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Protests Against the Board
In recent years, UChicago’s Board of Trustees has been a frequent target of protest by UChicago United for Palestine and their constituent groups for perceived ties to Israel, Trump, fossil fuel companies, and military contractors.
In April 2025, Students for Justice in Palestine erected a tent on the quad that for two weeks displayed the bloody faces of Alivisatos, Gracias, Rachel Kohler, Michele Kang, and other trustees.
“Our Board of Trustees tent exhibition has exposed only a fraction of trustee investments in Israel, the military industrial complex, fossil fuels, and surveillance technology,” an SJP Instagram post accompanying the exhibit read.
Since 2023, the Environmental Justice Task Force has periodically distributed flyers around campus that read “#FUCK THE BOARD.” Each flyer has a photo of a trustee and a description of their employment.
Half of UChicago’s current trustees work in investment banking or private equity. Most others work in business, medicine, or technology. Alivisatos is the only academic currently serving on the board. Gracias, the founder and CEO of private investment firm Valor Equity
Partners, recently joined Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, a position from which he is targeting social security and illegal immigration.
Gracias is not the only trustee to have served in government. From 2009 to 2017, Valerie Jarrett served as a senior advisor to President Obama. From 2002 to 2007, Daniel Doctoroff served as deputy mayor of New York City for economic development and rebuilding. From 2002 to 2006, Andrew Alper served as president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. From 1977 to 1981, David Rubenstein served as a deputy assistant to President Jimmy Carter for domestic policy.
Trump Targets UChicago
UChicago is one of many universities to have come under scrutiny by the Trump administration in recent months for perceived liberal bias. In April, the Department of Health and Human Services terminated nearly $6 million in University research grants, and the State Department briefly suspended the visas of 10 UChicago international students and recent graduates.
The University is also one of 45 schools currently under investigation by the Department of Education for en-
gaging in “race-exclusionary practices in [its] graduate programs.”
In contrast to the University’s trustees, UChicago faculty members donate overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates. Between 2015 and 2023, almost 97 percent of political contributions by University faculty went to Democratic candidates and PACs.
The University of Chicago, alongside most major American institutions of higher education, is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization and cannot institutionally contribute to political candidates. Such neutrality is consistent with the 1967 Kalven Report, which determined that the University’s neutrality on social and political issues afforded “the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action.”
But neither the University’s Conflict of Interest Policy for University Trustees and Officers, nor its Bylaws and Statutes, discuss trustees’ involvement in politics or government.
The Maroon found no statistically significant change in donation patterns— in either quantity donated or political lean—between the five years before and the five years after each given trustee joined the Board. This suggests that trustees did not change their donating
pattern after joining the Board.
Trustees’ Political Contributions in Context
Nine trustees have given at least $1 million in their lifetimes. 27 trustees have given at least $100,000.
The top three contributors are Wendt, Gracias, and Donald Wilson, Jr. with more than $6 million, $5 million, and $3 million contributed, respectively. 90 percent of current trustees have made at least one political contribution in their lifetime, while, nationwide, around 1 percent of Americans donate in each election cycle. Most donate less than $100. Since 1985, the average trustee has donated around $30,000 per election cycle.
Nevertheless, UChicago trustees’ contributions remain a drop in the bucket nationally. In the 2023–24 election cycle alone, presidential and congressional campaigns collectively raised almost $6 billion.
And trustees’ political donations pale in comparison to their philanthropic and academic giving. Combined, they have given more than a billion dollars to the University, medical research, and the arts.
Mazie Witter contributed reporting.
The professions of the current Board of Trustees at UChicago. austin steinhart.
The top political donors from the current trustees at UChicago. austin steinhart
Where Are All the “Real Chicago Intellectuals”?
Students, alumni, and faculty reflect on perceived shifts in UChicago’s undergraduate culture —away from “intellectualism” and “quirkiness” and toward pre-professionalism.
By ANIKA KRISHNASWAMY | News Editor
At one of those cramped, sticky tables tucked in the back corners of Bartlett Dining Commons, a group of second-years debates whether or not the Italian brainrot characters could be considered the basis for a Durkheimian totemic religion. Nearby, a student diligently updates their LinkedIn, artfully crafting a new post about how they are “excited to announce” their 2026 summer associate offer from JPMorgan between bites of overcooked pasta (they hesitate a bit before posting, wary of the flood of coffee chat requests that will surely follow).
It’s a scene that could only happen at the University of Chicago—“earnest” philosophical debate and unapologetic preprofessional-ism seated side by side— though some students and alumni might say it hasn’t always looked like this. For much of its history, any overt careerism at the College was met with skepticism, sometimes even scorn. But, in recent years, the community has become increasingly concerned that UChicago is no longer a home for pure intellectual inquiry, that its students are no longer as “quirky” or devoted to the storied life of the mind—the ideal of learning for learning’s sake—and are instead more focused on building résumés for the world beyond the quad.
Outside Impressions of the University
The University of Chicago often promotes itself as quirky or different, though “uncommon” is the word it prefers. And, truly, this is how the public tends to see it, with many college consulting services dubbing it the “oddball” Ivy Plus school.”As Sylvia Plath wrote in her 1963 novel, The Bell Jar : “I had never been to Chicago, but I knew one or two boys who went to Chicago University, and it seemed the sort of place where unconventional, mixed-up people would come from.”
That image hasn’t faded much since. In fact, UChicago actively works to cul-
tivate and maintain it. Its student organizations host events like “Uncommon Nights,” its admissions office blog is titled the “Uncommon Blog,” and, of course, there’s the infamous “Uncommon Essay.” Colloquially referred to as the “quirky essay,” it is one of the main avenues through which the public forms its perceptions of UChicago. From zombie apocalypse survival guides to where Waldo really is, the prompts are widely shared and often draw comments for their “absurd[ity],” but they also seem to signal: this is a school for weirdos (pardon my French).
“I think generally people are… weirded out by UChicago kids—they think they’re kind of weird,” fourth-year Ricky Gonzalez explained.
Juan Pablo Páez Chaves, also a fourthyear in the College, reflected on his preconceived notions about the University before attending. “I certainly, like everybody else, had the idea that this was a very quirky school, and the Uncommon [Essay] was certainly a [contributing factor],” he said. “And I did see from all the promotional activities and [traditions] that the student body would be very highly intellectual, quirky, and whatnot.”
This perception has been around for decades: “One thing I was very struck by [while applying] was the idiosyncratic essay questions,” Alexander Korbonits (A.B. ’10) said. “It seemed more human and personal than simply listing down your SAT score or sending your transcript, grades, classes, and GPA from high school. It was really more like: ‘Who are you as a thinker and as a student—what do you do? What interests you? What piques your intellectual curiosity?’”
Yet, there’s also a longstanding undercurrent to that image: the constant fear that the University’s distinctiveness is being watered down. Former Dean of the College John Boyer noted that this anxiety is actually something of a tradition in its own right: “There wasn’t a year that went by when I was dean when I wasn’t
interviewed by a Maroon reporter with a slightly different question, namely: ‘I’m a third- or fourth-year student, I’ve heard that the new first-year class is very different. They’re not worthy of the College, they’re more preprofessional, more vocationally oriented.’”
Still, that ethos of curiosity for curiosity’s sake that Korbonits refers to has staying power. Just last year, The Atlantic called UChicago “the last bastion of people who do read things.” It’s an exaggerated reputation, certainly—“highly intellectual” teenagers and 20-somethings sound somewhat ridiculous—but it’s also what many students expect when they arrive.
The “Fun” in “Where Fun Goes to Die”
Like those frostbitten Chicago winters that seem to stretch into April and May, UChicago has long been haunted by its unofficial slogan. According to Boyer, the moniker dates back to the 1990s, when UChicago was at the bottom of a national ranking conducted by Harvard students measuring campus “party life.”
“We were with West Point and Brigham Young—[at the] bottom,” Boyer said.
At the time, the University’s vice president for news and information came to Boyer, declaring the ranking and new moniker “a real problem.” Boyer’s response?
“Given the questions they’re asking [in the survey], wouldn’t parents be proud to send their children to a place like us?”
Unfortunately for that vice president, the slogan would stick, with students even printing it on T-shirts to sell to their housemates for a little extra money. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, I could go and try to confiscate the T-shirts,’ but that would be ridiculous,” Boyer said.
Some designs would even become canonized in the history and culture of UChicago undergraduates, like “The level of hell Dante forgot,” or “That’s all well and good in practice… but how does it work in theory?”
Although T-shirt-making has become
somewhat of a relic lost to time, its spirit and that distinctive version of “fun” endure. “Most of the students I meet have a lot of fun [here], but they’re also getting a real education and they’re going to end up getting a great career, so I think that’s what you care about,” Boyer said.
Korbonits recalled his time at UChicago being marked by those “nerdier” pursuits. “Sometimes we’d want to talk about content until two in the morning,” Korbonits recalled. “That was our version of fun.”
Though the slogan initially gave him pause, he came to find that campus life was full of a different type of fun: “critical thinking.”
“[We loved] talking about Kant or helping someone with their calculus homework or doing math on a whiteboard,” Korbonits said. “You know, it was a very nerdy, special place. I hope that hasn’t been lost.”
That spirit lives on today, at least for Gonzalez. “I love this anthropologist, David Graeber, and I was reading his book at a pregame—it was at my place,” Gonzalez said. “And somebody said, ‘Dude, that’s so UChicago.’”
“I like to think I’m different from maybe a Scav kid, but I’m definitely dorky,” he continued.
Historically, UChicago students have had inventive ways of deriving fun; even I have produced a Kant meme or two, to much critical acclaim on Sidechat. At the heart of “fun” at UChicago lies a distinctive spirit: taking stupid things extremely seriously or taking serious topics and making them stupid.
Scav, one of UChicago’s most beloved traditions, may be the clearest expression of UChicago’s approach to fun: take the ridiculous seriously and make the serious ridiculous. The four-day annual event has seen students attempt everything from reciting excerpts from Beowulf at fraternity parties and collecting worms at 3 a.m. to building a working nuclear reactor in a dorm room and miniature dioramas
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“It’s possible, [Boyer] argues, to increase enrollment without sacrificing the character that made the University special...”
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depicting the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
For many, the “Scav kid” remains the archetypal UChicago student.
The Myth of Change: The Evolution of the Core
There is a persistent image, among both students and alumni, that the Core has been “diluted” over the years—a casualty of the University’s attempts to broaden its appeal and expand its applicant base; in 1999, under Boyer’s leadership, the Core’s size was reduced from 21 courses to 18, much to the outrage of the community. At the time, more than 1,300 students gathered on the quad for a satirical “Fun-In,” protesting both the reduction of the Core and the planned expansion of the undergraduate student body, which at the time numbered less than 4,000; today, that number has climbed to well over 7,000.
As Boyer explained, the myth surrounding that period goes like this: “People thought we were reducing the Core to dumb the school down to attract more students, because back then we had very low success rates [at] getting a class.… We were not a popular college back then—that was a hard thing to say to the community, but it was the truth.”
UChicago’s acceptance rate went down from 61 percent in 1998 to 48 percent in 1999 after the changes to the Core were unveiled. Notably, that was the first time the College’s acceptance rate had ever been below 50 percent.
“It was not an irrational assumption on the part of the people who were seeing all this to say, ‘Oh yeah, they’re going to dumb it down—dilute it in order to get more [students] and then you’ll end up with… the kind of student who doesn’t belong here, who is not a real Chicago intellectual,’” he continued. “It was a question of, ‘Are we going to make these changes and drive our car over the cliff, or… is the plan actually going to be able to fly and go higher?’ The latter happened, but… it could have gone the other way.”
For Boyer, “dumb[ing]” down the University and expanding its applicant and
student base are not inherently linked; it’s possible, he argues, to increase enrollment without sacrificing the character that made the University special, a balancing act in which he believes UChicago succeeded.
In fact, Boyer noted that today’s version of the Core—the same one that was established in 1999—is actually closer in spirit to the original 1930s structure, then known as “the New Plan,” than many of the versions that came later. “The original core in 193[1] was one-third [of the curriculum],” he explained.
In 1942, under then former President Robert Maynard Hutchins, the University’s Core expanded dramatically, encompassing the entirety of a student’s time in the College. According to Hutchins, the previous Core placed too much emphasis on what he described as memorizing facts over engaging with ideas.
Composed of 14 year-long classes, this new general education sequence eliminated the existence of majors altogether. Over time, it slowly shrank in size, growing closer to its original form, but, by the 1990s, it was still “over half the courses you need to graduate,” with students required to fill 21 of their 42 total course credits with Core classes—half their time at UChicago.
“People were adding too much of a good thing,” Boyer said. “And what this was doing was cutting into the [space for] free electives… which for me were very important because… shouldn’t we allow our students some freedom and flexibility to take other courses on the 200, 300 level, or even on the minor level, that they’re just interested in?”
The intention in 1999, Boyer said, was to rebalance the College experience: roughly one-third Core, one-third major, and one-third electives.
At the time, the reform drew major criticism. Student protesters feared that any reductions to the Core meant the University was compromising its academic integrity. “We are not here because we think the University stinks,” Leo Dokshutsky (A.B. ’99) told the Chicago Tribune while protesting the then impending changes to the Core. “We are here because we love
the University and want to maintain it and fear it will change.”
Despite this backlash and the fact that all current students were given the opportunity to graduate under the old version, 95 percent of students chose to graduate under the new, sleeker Core.
Much of the anxiety surrounding this shift may have stemmed from a forgetting of the original purpose of the Core. Boyer explained that when it was first developed in the 1930s—then called “the New Plan”— it was meant to be an equalizing force. At the time, he noted, high school education in the U.S. was extremely inconsistent due to a lack of funding during the Great Depression, and UChicago wanted to ensure all its students could stand on equal footing.
“It had a kind of democratic—with a small ‘d’—effect,” Boyer said. “By the end of the first year, they’d all be up to a certain level of accomplishment and experience in critical learning.… There was also a sense that [students are] coming in as 18- or 19-year-olds, do you really want to tell the student[s]… ‘Okay, day one. Decide what your life is going to be about, and we’re going to lock you into it’? So the Core was meant to give students self-knowledge.”
Even today, the Core does seem to fulfill that purpose for some students: “I like to say the Core saved my life because I had no idea what I wanted to do when it came to college,” Gonzalez said. “I loved school, and so I took all Core classes my first year, and my favorite professors here were sociologists, anthropologists. [I] didn’t even know sociology was a thing until I came to college, and I fell in love with it, so I owe a lot to the Core.”
Unlike traditional general education sequences at other universities, many students, like third-year Claire Barbosa, attend UChicago specifically because of the Core. More rigorous than its counterparts at other institutions, the Core is designed not merely to educate students but to prepare them “for a lifetime of intellectual inquiry.” For many students, it’s not just a set of classes to get through, but rather something that’s ingrained in student culture, with many students discussing overlapping course material years later,
treating it almost as a shared language. After all, at how many schools will “collective effervescence” casually come up in conversation? (Admittedly, whether that’s something to brag about is up for debate.)
Still, that ideal doesn’t resonate with everyone. In Barbosa’s experience, the Core is increasingly seen by current students as just another box to check rather than a period of true exploratory study.
“The Core is the reason that I came to UChicago, and I personally love the Core,” Barbosa said. “However, I do think that it has become kind of a checkbox requirement for a lot of people.… And I don’t know if that’s a reflection of the students who are coming or if that’s a reflection of how the Core is being taught, but I think that it could be a little bit of both.… And I think that the way that the Core is advertised and emphasized is starting to lean [toward] a gen-ed… and not [as] an essential to a UChicago education.”
While students are required to take courses from the arts and humanities to the biological and social sciences, they can choose which specific sequences within each category best align with their interests. Chaves has found that this flexibility allows for both depth and shallowness of engagement, depending on the student’s chosen path.
“You do still have your classic UChicago courses—Power, Self, Phil Per… and the students who take those do so because they want to have that sort of traditional ‘UChicago experience’ and [have] interesting conversations,” he said. “But… there are options for people who don’t want to engage in that—your sort of ‘easy’ track— [courses] like Media Aesthetics, Mind, regular bio.… They’re cool, and they might have intellectually stimulating conversations when they have the right people in them, but they’re kind of a cop-out.”
Still, despite nearly a century of changes, the Core’s status as a symbol of the University seems to have remained intact, at least according to Boyer.
“One of the things that the College presents to prospective students is the Core curriculum—it’s kind of this iconic symbol—almost like the Statue of Liber-
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“Uniqueness is a wonderful thing, but like many wonderful things, you could have far too much of it at some point.”
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ty or the Washington Monument,” Boyer said. “It’s a curriculum, but it’s also a kind of symbolic statement of values and norms.”
Often, that symbolism only fully registers after students leave.
“As you go through the Core, you will have varied experiences,” he continued. “Some of your Core courses you might like, some of them you might not like… but then as alumni, [these same students would say], and this is almost a consistent thing, ‘It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I may not have liked it, but it was great, so you should make the young students do it, don’t change anything.’”
Death of the Uncommon Application
In 2007, UChicago announced its decision to switch to the Common Application. The change, spearheaded by then former University President Robert Zimmer, came after a “long-standing, unique rejection of the Common Application,” according to the Brown Daily Herald.
“There was a view of the University and the College back in the 1990s that we were so unique and so special that we could only ask people to fill out an ‘Uncommon Application,’” Boyer explained.
But beginning with the graduating Class of 2012, the infamous Uncommon Application would be no more.
This flip from Uncommon to Common sparked controversy. Over 1,200 students signed a petition against it, and some even staged protests, concerned that removing that self-selecting aspect would make UChicago indistinguishable from its other elite school counterparts.
Korbonits, who was a student in the College when the change was announced, recalled the reactions of his peers to the news. “I think the undergraduates were upset, incensed, like: ‘Oh, we’re supposed to be different. This is the college caving to conventional demands. Now everyone’s just going to check an extra box on their Common App, and we’re going to be flooded with all the normies who wanted to go to Harvard but got rejected.…’ That was one of the arguments being made at the
time—people were upset [because] this is part of our culture, that’s our identity.”
Nevertheless, the administration proceeded with the change.
“Uniqueness is a wonderful thing, but like many wonderful things, you could have far too much of it at some point,” Boyer said.
In reality, Boyer explained, applying through UChicago via the Common Application still maintained the main spirit of its “Uncommon” predecessor, i.e., the Uncommon Essay supplement. It just also made it so that students didn’t have to keep retyping their addresses and test scores and GPAs—the “common” information across all applications. “[It lets us] spend time talking to you about things which are really unique, like the nature of the Core, [so] it seemed to me that [switching] was a no-brainer,” he said.
Korbonits echoed this sentiment, explaining “We eventually got over it, because the University wasn’t going to change their mind on it and I think, probably, switching to the Common App was a good idea because they added the [Uncommon] supplement, so it really retained a lot of the original flavor.”
“We always think that each subsequent class entering is more normal than the last one—I remember that being the mood on campus at the time, too,” he continued. “But that was just part of the culture.”
The Age of Shotgunning
The “shotgun method” refers to students who apply to a large number of colleges—often highly selective ones—in the hopes that at least one will result in an acceptance, that at least one of their “shots” will land. Often, these students don’t have any connection or strong personal desire to attend these particular schools, only a strong desire for the prestige that accompanies an acceptance. As college admissions have grown increasingly selective—UChicago’s acceptance rate, for example, has dropped from 8.81 percent for the Class of 2017 to 4.48 percent for the Class of 2028—this method has risen to prominence. The rise of the Common Application has only made it easier: on a sin-
gle platform, students can apply to dozens of schools with minimal additional effort.
UChicago, frequently lauded for its self-selecting applicant pool, has not been immune. Between the Class of 2023 to the Class of 2028, UChicago’s applicant pool grew by nearly 9,000 students—climbing from 34,900 to 43,612.
“I know plenty of people who just apply to top 15 colleges because they’re the best,” Gonzalez said. “But honestly, I think the only thing that’s stopping UChicago from really just looking like every other university is our application process. I think all the nerdy kids in high school—that probably have a UChicago soul or whatever—they look at that [essay], and they bounce at it. I think that’s a
perfect way to find UChicago kids.”
“I’ve met a lot of those shotgunners here, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, this is my second or third choice,’ and they don’t seem too thrilled to be here,” Gonzalez said. “And that’s sad, because I actually do really love this school. Those people like to complain… then you get a student body that is just kind of miserable being here, [thinking about] what could have happened.”
That tension isn’t new. Korbonits noted that, during his time at UChicago from 2006 to 2010, the students already feared becoming home to the “Harvard rejects.”
“But I think, historically, we’re the institution that accepts all the rejects, or
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“Even if consulting pipelines are common among a lot of universities, they’re still UChicago kids going through the Core.”
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people that places the other Ivies or top [institutions] don’t want,” Gonzalez continued.
Referencing professor John Martin’s 2015 Aims of Education Address, Gonzalez added that UChicago has historically been a haven for the “unrefined.”
“[Back when] we were founded in 1890, we needed people, so we took anybody we could get,” Gonzalez said. “It worked pretty well, and I still think that works here.… [People say UChicago] is like a generic version of Harvard or an Ivy school, but it has its own distinct character. And I think of myself as an unrefined smart kid. I’m not perfect—I think a lot of people aren’t here—so I’m perfectly willing to accept all these shotgunners and I hope they fall in love with this school when they come here.”
The Pre-Professional Era
Since the 2000s, tuition costs for higher education have been steadily rising across the country. In 2024, U.S. News reported that the average cost of tuition and fees for private universities had jumped about 126 percent since 2004. At UChicago, too, tuition has increased: for the 2004–05 school year, tuition was just $30,123—staggeringly low compared to the tuition for the 2024–25 school year costing more than $67,000. That rise has brought with it a growing pressure for students and institutions alike to justify the price tag—namely, with jobs.
“There’s been a slight emphasis on the pre-professional side of things.… When I joined [UChicago] in the mid aughts, that had been pretty frowned upon—to move beyond purely academic [pursuits],” Korbontis said about his experience in the mid 2000s. “Things like even having a major was controversial in the ’90s, I believe, because the Core was so important.”
According to Korbonits, more and more students are entering the College with practical career-minded goals, and the University has adapted itself to support those goals. “It’s attracted more students to the College who are less purely academically focused and more career-focused, which isn’t a bad thing, because a
lot of people I graduated with really struggled to find a foothold in the workplace.… They’d only known school and didn’t know how to translate their anthropology degree or even their math degree into a career.”
In spite of this shift toward preprofessional-ism, UChicago does maintain an unusually high rate of graduate school attendance. Within five years of graduation, 85 percent of UChicago graduates will attend some form of graduate school.
For Korbonits, this new wave of pragmatism isn’t unique to UChicago; he noted that rising costs have pushed universities toward emphasizing job placement above graduate school and academia as “tuition has outpaced inflation.”
“They want to make sure that their graduates are placed in jobs eventually because they have endowments and they need to run as a business nonprofit,” Korbonits explained. “They want to have donors, and your graduates need to be able to earn enough money to give that back, so it creates a more sustainable ecosystem if graduates are earning money to be able to donate back to the University.”
Gonzalez sees this shift reflected most clearly in the growing popularity of certain majors. As of winter 2025, the three most popular declared majors among current students were economics, computer science, and mathematics, with 1,590; 501; and 363 students, respectively, all of which are typically viewed as “practical” majors.
“The more preprofessional your major is, the less likely it is to be filled with interesting people—the quirky intellectual types,” he said. “If you look at [business economics], for example, there, you’ll find your least intellectual people, but I will say that with a little bit of a caveat, because I do think that there are a lot of people who do [business economics] as well as humanities or social science. So the [business economics] major [is] what they present to the public in terms of professional career prospects, but on their own personal time, they will be enraptured in more interesting and niche topics.”
While no data is available specifically for business economics students, as of
winter 2025, 327 students had declared economics a secondary major, indicating that many career-minded students balance other interests. Similarly, of the 35 students pursuing a Fundamentals: Issues and Texts major—often viewed as one of the more eclectic programs at UChicago, wherein students focus their studies on answering a single “fundamental” question—five are doing so as a secondary major. These numbers suggest that quirkiness and practicality needn’t always be at odds; students can straddle both worlds.
Yet, in spite of the complexity Gonzalez describes, the perception remains that the economics major with a specialization in business is the fast track to lucrative finance jobs, not a place for academic depth or a commitment to learning for learning’s sake. “It is sort of antithetical to the whole ‘life of the mind’ thing,” second-year Angharad Seul said. “It seems like [business economics is] pretty much exclusively focused on careers and what happens after college.”
Seul’s view does seem to align with outcomes. Among the Class of 2024, 29 percent of students went into “financial services,” making it the most common industry for graduates by far; its closest competitors were “consulting and corporate” at 17 percent and “science & technology” at 15 percent.
And yet, for Gonzalez, the life of the mind hasn’t disappeared; it merely evolved. “Everybody still suffers together and likes suffering together,” he said. “I feel like… the ‘life of the grind’ is kind of like replacing the life of the mind, but the life of the mind is still there as well.”
Intellectualism Reimagined
At UChicago, students have long been enamored with the life of the mind, that core ideal of a true UChicago education, of embodying what Boyer calls the “Chicago intellectual.” But what that looks like has changed over the years. For Gonzalez, that evolution is precisely what makes this school special.
“I think everybody here has passion,” he said. “They’re very driven. Like, I don’t think the kids are all dorks—some of them
are just passionate in very different ways.”
When he arrived at the University in 2021, Gonzalez encountered plenty of those “weird, dorky kids,” and counted himself among them. But over time, he says, the character of this school has broadened.
“It was a lot of just those dorky, smart kids [during] probably the ’90s, mid2000s, but I think since then, there’s a lot of range.… Jocks, spoiled kids, poor kids, anything in between.”
For Gonzalez, today’s UChicago students may not all share the same interests in academia, but they’re all driven by something else equally important: passion.
“I want the life of the mind to be a life of passion, too,” Gonzalez said. “So if that means it moves away from academics slightly, go ahead by any means, as long as it’s because of passion.… I think the standard UChicago kid… is definitely different from how it used to be, but I think the essence is still there.”
He added that UChicago isn’t any less unique than it had been previously, it’s just now inhabited by two archetypes instead of one: “the Scav kid” and “the Bizcon kid.”
“I think they’re a unique population to us,” Gonzalez explained. “Even if consulting pipelines are common among a lot of universities, they’re still UChicago kids going through the Core. You… go to Night Owls, [and] it’s not just philosophy kids, it’s econ kids with business ideas, too.”
The average UChicago student’s goals may look different than they did decades ago, but for many, the intellectual core (pardon the pun) underpinning them often remains constant.
When asked whether or not the typical UChicago student has changed, Boyer suggested that the answer is both yes and no. On the surface, students may appear different, products of an environment inundated with social media, technology, and a very different culture to the world 30 years ago. But inside, “the academic appetite and ambition for academic work, for learning, for being able to think through complex issues, for being willing to pursue complex ideas [is] maybe even a little better than it was 10 years ago.”
50 Years of Divestment Movements at UChicago
In an interactive timeline, Grey City uncovers a history of divestment activism from the M aroon ’s archives.
By KAREN YI | Grey City Reporter
On April 29, 2024, pro-Palestine students at the University of Chicago joined students at over 40 other universities across the nation in forming an encampment to protest the Israel–Hamas war. Members of the encampment demanded the University withdraw its investments from weapons manufacturers and the Israeli government in order to pressure the Israeli government to improve living conditions in Gaza.
The encampment had not sprung up out of nowhere. Indeed, online searches for the word “divestment” spiked that week in Illinois, indicating curiosity and even confusion about protesters’ demands. To better understand the context behind the recent surge in activism, the Maroon ’s data desk dove into our digital archives.
The Maroon ’s records reveal that the history of divestment activism at UChicago spans seven major causes, various approaches to activism, and a wide range of responses from the University administration. According to the archives, students first protested for divestment on January 23, 1967, when 200 protestors picketed in front of Continental Illinois Bank to oppose the University’s use of a bank that made loans to the South African apartheid government.
Later that year, a committee appointed by then University of Chicago President George Beadle released the Kalven Report, a document which recommended that academic institutions refrain from taking official stances on social issues in order to protect free inquiry.
For the next half century, members of the campus community attempted— through writing letters, holding rallies, and even filing legal complaints—to shape the moral direction of the University through its purse. In response, the University administration has cit-
ed the Kalven Report as the primary reason that it has abstained from substantially engaging with the divestment issue. The ultimate outcome of this deadlock seems to hinge on a fundamental question: What right does the campus community have to exert influence over its institution?
To uncover the origins of divestment activism at UChicago, the following timeline will begin with the present pro-Palestine movement and move further into the past with each successive predecessor.
What Causes Did Organizers Promote?
Organizing strategies used by pro-divestment activists at UChicago from 1965-2025. karen yi
2013–Present: Palestine
A series of letters to the editor for and against divestment in 2013 are the first records of Palestine-related di -
vestment activism at UChicago, marking now over a decade since this idea was broached on campus. Momentum on the issue built steadily until it peaked with last year’s encampment.
2012–present: Climate change
Beginning around 2012, the fossil fuel divestment movement triggered the most intensive divestment activism on campus in decades. Related student organizations have steadily grown, multiplied, and evolved, from the University of Chicago Climate Action Network in 2012 to Stop Funding Climate Change in 2013 to the Environmental Justice Task Force (EJTF) in 2021.
2016: Uyghur Rights
Students in the College Council passed a resolution for the University to divest from China due to the country’s treatment of Uyghurs—a Muslim minority ethnic group—and Tibetans.
2008–2016: Labor Rights
In 2012, a national movement emerged against the company HEI Hotels and Resorts, which activists accused of union suppression. The University of Chicago had $50 million invested in the company at the time.
Since divestment activism began, the Investment Committee of the University Board of Trustees has overseen University investments. To this day, this body does not have student, faculty, or staff representation.
In an effort to establish a more systemic approach to divestment-related activism, students and faculty campaigned for the creation of a Socially Responsible Investment Committee (SRIC) to review current and potential University investments. No agreement was reached with the University’s administration.
The last known mention of SRIC
occurred in 2013, indicating that the committee is likely no longer active.
2006–2008: Sudan
Students met with the administration multiple times to discuss divestment from Sudan, where wartime human rights violations are still occurring more than 20 years later. No agreement was reached with the University administration.
1967–1986: South Africa
“The protest against U.S. involvement in South Africa has a long history,” wrote Maroon reporter Curtis Black in 1978.
In 1967, years before the word “divestment” was used to describe such movements, 200 students picketed outside Continental Illinois Bank to protest the University’s holdings in the bank, which made loans to the South African apartheid government. 24 protestors were arrested within the day. The Maroon archives show few other mentions of divestment until 10 years later, when momentum gathered at campuses across the country.
How Did Organizers Achieve Their Goals?
Of the 151 instances of divestment-related activism found in the Maroon ’s archives, 47 percent can be categorized as letter-writing, including open letters, op-eds, Letters to the Editor, and petitions. The Maroon ’s own Editorial Board has issued opinions during different divestment movements, including a piece in favor of divesting from South Africa and one against divesting from HEI.
Since the turn of the century, protesters have increasingly turned to rallies and encampments. Still, such demonstrations are not a new tactic; the first recorded divestment action at UChicago was a picket line in 1967. Overall, protests have constituted 35
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“It seems at times as if history is repeating itself, as each new generation rediscovers divestment and each new administration blocks it.”
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percent of recorded divestment actions.
The remaining 18 percent of actions included several long-term projects. In 1978, a student analyzed UChicago stocks invested in South Africa and found that the school had not profited from its investments. In 1986, the Student Advisory Committee to the University President prepared a more formal report on divestment from South Africa. And in 2014, climate activists at UChicago wrote a 62-page report, commissioned by Zimmer, on the practical and moral arguments for and against divestment. In 2023, EJTF filed a legal complaint against the Board of Trustees with the Office of the Illinois Attorney General.
Major causes promoted by pro-divestment activists at UChicago from 1965-2025.
karen yi
How Did the Administration Respond?
Recorded history of divestment movements at UChicago spanned six administrations, from Beadle, the seventh president of UChicago, to Paul Alivisatos, the 14th president. Each
administration had its own approach, from choosing to directly engage with students to disregarding their efforts.
Most of the time, various administrations refused to take action in response to campus activism. However, at least once per major movement, campus administration has agreed to give interviews with student newspapers, published opinion essays explaining their stance, or presented at public forums organized by pro-divestment groups. On a few occasions, such as during the Sudan and workers’ rights movements, campus groups successfully gained an audience with the administration to negotiate for divestment directly.
Six major divestment-related protests documented in the Maroon have resulted in the arrest of student protestors by University or city police. Half of these have occurred during the Alivisatos administration. (Because this article considers only events that directly mention divestment, this number is an undercount of all arrests related to broader movements around Palestine, climate change, and other causes.)
Regardless of the protesters’ strategies, the administration’s response, or the benefiting cause, not a single dollar has been divested in the 57 years since the first group of students picketed Continental Illinois Bank.
It is difficult to determine whether campus activism directly caused successive administrations to take action or if these actions were at all effective in addressing the intended issues. Yet, many policy changes have been passed in the intervening years that support students’ championed causes in other ways.
In 1985, after 18 years of campus activism, Gray signed a partnership with South African universities to increase opportunities for South African students in the United States, as well as to conduct research into social change in South Africa. In 2007, the Zimmer administration established a support fund of $200,000 for research on Sudan, part of which later supported the nonprofit Lost Boys Rebuilding
Southern Sudan. In 2021, eight years after the formation of the first fossil fuel divestment-related student group at UChicago, Alivisatos announced a faculty group focused on sustainability. And in 2024, following a week of campus protests, Provost Katherine Baicker agreed to start a Gaza Scholars at Risk Initiative, which would support up to eight scholars affected by the Israel–Hamas war. In each of these cases, activists criticized the concessions as disingenuous or falsely promised.
Actions taken by UChicago administration in response to pro-divestment organizing from 1965–2025 karen yi
What Next?
Alivisatos sent the following text in an email to the student body on April 29, 2024: “I believe the protesters should also consider that an encampment, with all the etymological connections of the word to military origins, is a way of using force of a kind rather than reason to persuade others. For a short period of time, however, the impact of a modest encampment does not differ so much from a conventional rally or march.”
With only the above email as context, a member of campus might have assumed that last year’s demonstrations had no precedent beyond pro-Palestine activism. Yet the Maroon ’s archives reveal a longer history, in which campus activists used various forms of reason to persuade the administration to divest. It seems at times as if history is repeating itself, as each new generation rediscovers divestment and each new administration blocks it. Universities are certainly peculiar environments: excluding faculty and staff, they are some of the only institutions with almost 100 percent turnover every four years. Institutional knowledge is incredibly difficult to retain. And yet, this constant churn of ideas may be a double-edged sword: universities are also historically at the forefront of social change.
While the University of Chicago administration was the first to adopt the idea of institutional neutrality among colleges, in the 50 years since, campus activists have persisted in arguing that the administration cannot practice the neutrality it preaches. As divestment organizing continues and universities across the U.S. search for examples of how to respond, UChicago’s action—or lack thereof—could set a precedent for years to come.
Read the full article with interactive timeline at chicagomaroon.github.io/data-visualizations/2025/divestment-history or scan the following code:
VIEWPOINTS
The Ripples of Serious Leisure
A graduating senior’s missive on the college experience and a yearning for continuity.
By ANUSHKA BANSAL
On my 19th birthday, my brother gifted me a Swarovski necklace cased in a sponge-lined box with a pink lid. I carried it carelessly across dorm rooms, apartments, and airports, until, through my own fault, the necklace lay in that box hopelessly tangled. Over the last few years, friends, roommates, and I have spent painstaking hours, armed with needles and lenses and angst and laughter, performing surgery to untangle its precious knots.
The word “school” comes from the word “schole,” which is Greek for leisure. Aristotle described how serious leisure is essential for learning. I came to the University of Chicago with the promise of an education I was told would be “life-changing.” At 18, the idea of anything being “life-changing” lacked meaning for me. It was a mere abstraction for someone who hadn’t yet collected much life. As a senior now standing at this inflection point, “life-changing” feels like an understatement, a hand-wavy word too unspecific to encapsulate the profoundly transformative experiences I now walk away with.
In my first quarter here, I took Readings in World Literature for the humanities Core where we read the Mahabharata. We learned that re-death is probably as important to think about as rebirth. My professor frequently repeated: “Learning requires unlearning.” At first, I couldn’t grasp this idea, until my first essay returned with 37 question marks, no grade, and feedback in ALL CAPS. I thought about Phil the Phoenix rising from his own
ashes and knew that a special kind of undoing had begun.
People often tell me that the quarter system is like drinking from a firehose. Seeking some experiences means missing others. Untangling some knots leads to entangling new ones. Poets call these paradoxes, and in economics we call them opportunity costs. Deeply immersed in this serious (and sometimes unserious) leisure, I am reminded of how paradoxes are beautiful and costs, too, come with gains. My roommate in the fall, an exchange student from Santiago, liked the idea of our study nights resembling literary salons, so she called them “tertulia.” This was our excuse for philosophizing fashion instead of working on problem sets. Sometimes, I would bring out my commonplace book, then tell her all about the summers I spent with my cousins growing up. She would show me pictures of her Halloween costumes from middle school. We often talked about love. What my first-year self would have called an easy access point to procrastination my fourth-year self is convinced was the whole point.
Now, there’s this usual anxiety that surrounds graduation that’s easy for me to articulate. Our friends will no longer live in the same radius. We will no longer have the tolerance to down as many vodka shots or the stamina to pull as many all-nighters. Consultants will meet consultants, doctors will surround doctors, lawyers will indulge lawyers. I will miss the kinds of days that begin with physics in Kersten, move to philosophy in Swift, then macroeconomics in Saieh, and end with
a sweet treat at Plein Air. I will miss the infectious enthusiasm of my neuroscience friend who composes music, my pre-med roommate who directs the ballet, and my economics friend who writes film criticism. Call me naive, but the soft, uncommon curiosities we mold here will soon harden into prescribed careers. Like the ornaments that grow entangled, clay hardens, and identities calcify.
Perhaps my anxiety is really a fear of discontinuity, or a reflection of how unnatural change feels to me. Yet, right beneath this familiar anxiety is something deeper, less articulate. It is this knowing that life will accelerate beyond our control, leaving us little time or space for the “serious leisure” I have come to cherish so dearly. Endowed with all the rightful sentimentality of a graduating senior, I think, as ABBA sang, how this
time is “slipping through my fingers.” There’s even statistical evidence for this. At the age of five, a year is as much as a fifth of your life. At age 20, it’s only 1/20. They call it the log-time effect, and it explains why, come week four, we collectively fail to reckon with how quickly the quarters pass us by. Psychologists tell us that routine compresses our perception of time. As we step into what seems to me will be the routine demands of adult life, what if college remains a bracketed experience, separated in our memories like a chapter we only occasionally turn back to? This experience feels irreversible and even irreplicable. How do we slow down?
In a moment of an Aristotelian kind of reflective leisure, Eden Anne, a close friend of mine, once sat down with me in Grounds of Being, pulled out her laptop, and
wrote: “Time feels longer / when you stop / so desperately / trying to hold on / to its coattails.” Yes. On that Swarovski box is engraved a silver swan. Unlike many of us, this swan isn’t inflicted with the duck syndrome, flailing frantically beneath the surface while calmly gliding above. Contrarily, this swan is a symbol of poise, of serious leisure.
Very soon, we will drift away from this shore. Some day, we may even drift apart from each other. But I know we glide into the vast expanse of the world with these ripples of all that we have learned and unlearned. There is so much waiting to be untangled. So many people with whom to untangle it. And, now, at least two places we can call home.
Anushka Bansal is a fourthyear in the College.
sofia cavallone
Life of the Unsound Mind
A Maroon news editor discusses her experience with OCD at UChicago and examines what makes OCD different in college than at any other point, explaining how the education system isn’t “made for neurodivergent people.”
By KATHERINE WEAVER
If we had known what to look for, it would have been obvious that I have OCD since I was about two years old. In nursery school, we had these uniforms: smock, Mary Jane shoes, and socks with a lace trim. Those socks live in my nightmares. They had to be folded down over themselves, because I guess that’s what you do with lacy socks, and I spent many, many mornings having what I would later recognize as panic attacks because I couldn’t get them folded down just right. Even now, 20 years later, just thinking about it makes my chest constrict from some deep sensation of unsafety far beyond any rational explanation.
Since my diagnosis around age 11, I have engaged in the lifelong work of learning when to bend my OCD to the world and when to accept that I’m just going to have to do things differently than most people. I have heard hundreds of times that the education system is fundamentally not structured for people like me. I was never able to reconcile this with my conception of myself—I was an exceptional student and a very fast learner from nursery school all the way through high school, even when I was at my absolute worst in terms of mental health.
When I started to falter in college, I blamed myself entirely. I sat at my computer with dread gnawing on my hands and stomach at the thought of writing papers. I asked for extensions; later, I took withdrawals and incompletes in classes I should have done well in. I knew that
my OCD was the likely cause, but I couldn’t wrap my head around why I was failing in areas in which I’d previously succeeded.
That disconnect between the American education system and mentally ill students crossed my mind, of course, but I couldn’t accept it—I’d done so well in this system for almost two decades. Why was I failing now? It couldn’t be a problem with the school system. It had to be a problem with me: some sudden lack of drive or dedication or a fundamental laziness that had taken hold for no reason I could discern.
In autumn quarter of my third year, I enrolled in the English department’s study abroad program in London. We took three courses, each lasting three weeks, one right after the other. Alongside our professor-of-themonth, we also had a graduate student advisor to help us with living abroad and instruct us through a research project. Her name was Heather.
By week three of that first course, I was a total mess. The stress of studying abroad and all the new obsessive-compulsions that had come with it, alongside the usual stress from academic pressures, meant that I had completely dropped the ball on studying for the final. I texted Heather in a panic shortly after the final had finished, and she came right to campus to talk me through my breakdown.
At that point, I didn’t even care about the grade—I just wanted my professor to understand that it wasn’t his fault that I had done so poorly, nor did it arise from any lack of interest on my part. I told Heather as much,
rhea sadagopan
and she listened with such sympathy, giving me space to feel before moving on to solutions. As we talked through next steps, she told me, like I’d heard a hundred times before, that the standard system of education in America, with its grades and deadlines, was not made for neurodivergent people and that it lets us down far too often.
It must have been because it came from someone I respected and admired so much, because, after that, I began to accept the idea that my academic floundering wasn’t my fault. If someone like Heather, who seemed to never say anything without having a clear and logical argument to back it up, not only supported that idea but identified me as an example of it, maybe it was true. Students are given extensions and schedule flexibility to seek
care and go through treatment for physical illnesses—why not for mental ones? My need for extra time on assignments is not a lack of discipline; it’s an allowance for the extra time I have to spend fighting off my compulsions, time that my peers are able to dedicate to writing. And, as hard as I might try, there is no amount of “powering through” that will make my fundamentally different brain work like everybody else’s.
I do not want “special treatment,” nor is that what I’m asking for. The fact of the matter is that my ability to deliver, say, a literary analysis by a specified date has very little to do with my competence in learning the material or in writing. And I know for a fact that I can do it. I just need the time allowance—not to procrastinate but to fight these
very real battles, to ensure that I have enough time to go to therapy and to work through my anxieties without physically hurting myself.
In my last year of college, I have been much more honest with myself and with my professors about my requirements. I have learned that, for me, it is better to accept that I can only deliver 100 percent of myself to a handful of assignments and that tearing myself apart trying to get every paper to the same standard impresses no one. Despite internalized perfectionism, not everything you produce is going to be a home run—the real learning happens in the handful of times that you do hit it out of the park.
For the four years I’ve worked at the Maroon, I’ve been trying and failing to write a piece on
“I’ve seen that ‘my disorder’ is not just my disorder.”
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my experience at UChicago as a person diagnosed with OCD. It seemed like every time I tried to write about it, I was just feeding the anxious thoughts that made this subject both so necessary and so difficult to write about. But last year, outgoing Managing Editor Michael McClure published a senior column reflecting on his experience being diagnosed with autism in college. McClure’s piece finally gave me
a reason to write about my own neurodivergence: “At the very least, my output through this piece can be more input for the next person like me.” OCD is not something I alone struggle with— in my time at UChicago, I’ve met people like me for the first time in my life, and I’ve seen that “my disorder” is not just my disorder.
To those beginning or continuing college with OCD or a related disorder: College is completely different from anything
you’ve experienced in your life so far, and you are going to react accordingly. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been functional—this may just be the time in your life where you will need more help than you ever have before. The one mistake I’ve seen many students make—and one that I made myself—is waiting until their third or fourth year to put the “college experience” on hold and get some help. If you are struggling, don’t try to power through
“just one more year.” Take some time—days, weeks, even a whole quarter if that’s what you need— and start using the resources offered both inside and outside of UChicago Student Wellness. It’s not going to be quick or easy, but the time is going to pass anyway; invest in a better future for yourself.
And to those who do not struggle with OCD or something similar: I understand that it may be hard to believe that there are
Reams of Red Tape
people out there who find themselves experiencing profound, almost primal fear at things that are really not that big of a deal. It doesn’t make sense to us either. I hope that this piece has done something to explain how this feels from the inside and that you will grant us the grace that you’d want for yourself in the same situation.
Katherine Weaver is a fourthyear in the College.
Viewpoints’ engagement with ideas that higher-ups on the Maroon may find ideologically inconvenient—particularly criticism of the paper itself—is crucial to our integrity.
By CHERIE FERNANDES
Viewpoints & Editorial Independence
I became an editor of the Maroon ’s Viewpoints section in spring of 2024. My co-head editor and I inherited a cozy office space, a hefty Google Drive folder, and a lot of angry emails.
Some background for the uninitiated: Viewpoints (VP) is unique among the Maroon’s ranks in that its writers opine rather than report. For instance, a news headline might say, “Dining Revamps Menu with Student Feedback on Nutritional Options,” while a VP headline might say, “No Amount of Kale Can Fix Bartlett.” In my entirely unbiased view, we’re the second most interesting section of the paper—trailing, of course, Crosswords.
Given its focus on protecting writers’ voices, VP has long been entitled to what I privately call the “let-’em-cook” principle. This is formalized in article VII.3 of the Maroon’s constitution as “partial editorial independence from the rest of the Maroon”
for the express purpose of “publish[ing] content without fear of retribution from the Executive Board on the basis of ideology.”
Essentially, VP’s mission is to give you a platform to share your ideas. We help you snip, stretch, and cohere your thoughts, but your voice is ultimately your own, and we have an imperative to protect it—even if it proves unpopular with the paper’s staff. Accordingly, editorial independence stipulates that any external interference with the content of VP is limited to issues of “clarity, grammar, and ethical and legal standards,” largely implied to be a function of our invaluable copy team. From 2021–24, sensitive VP pieces also required diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) review, the scope and precedence of which was ill-defined; this body was quietly terminated in favor of an ethics board this winter. Beyond this deference regarding fact checking and style, VP has long “function[ed] independently from other sections of the paper and publish[ed] articles without the explicit approval of the edi-
tors-in-chief.”
Historically, it’s been these protections that allow the section to publish some of our most ambitious pieces. In 2019, a writer condemned a law school professor for making light of the n-word in a tempered but firm op-ed that drew grievances from the then editors-in-chief (EIC). VP stood by its decision to publish. During the tenure immediately prior, the Executive Board elected to publish a photo of a young man apprehended on campus, framed in a way that several Maroon staffers deemed ethically unjustifiable. VP gave these editors a platform to offer reasoned criticism and launch a broader discussion of the ethical guidelines to which a campus newspaper is beholden. In fact, this sustained opposition was the principal reason for the photo’s eventual removal. VP’s ability to engage with ideas that higher-ups on the Maroon may find ideologically inconvenient— particularly criticism of the paper itself—is key to our integrity and has been a perennial point of contention during my own tenure.
A Fiery Op-Ed and a Fraught Editorial Process
Last November, a VP columnist penned a criticism of Daniel Schmidt, a student and right-wing provocateur who had recently spun a Twitter tirade ascribing campus violence to the local Black population. “Is the modern American Dream just trying to live far away from Black people?” Schmidt wrote, terming the latter, “thugs whose IQs are far too low to understand how killing is wrong.” The response column condemned the obvious falsity of these claims and the racism that fueled them but also interrogated how a university community dedicated to free expression ought to respond to speech that doesn’t even attempt to seek truth. In his outlandish claims, the writer argued, Schmidt stretched the limits of the Chicago Principles in the hopes that people would demand repercussions—call for his expulsion, rail against him, and put his name on their lips—at which point he could cry censorship and play the martyr who spoke truth to power. The VP piece in question
specifically strove to puncture that narrative by casting Schmidt as a bratty kid, a nuisance; this was “the discursive equivalent of a child waving his hand in front of an adult’s face yelling, ‘I’m not touching you!’” the column explained. This framing is a core component of the argument the writer advanced, down to the header, “Chicago Principles for the Unprincipled.”
Now, I knew the second this piece landed in my inbox that it might provoke a couple censors. A week of edits and off to our DEI board it went, along with a direct message to our EICs for review on November 11. I received feedback from the former—implemented point by point—and a green light from the latter within a couple days and cheerily sent the piece up to production. I didn’t hear anything of it until the afternoon of production night, November 20, when the EICs indicated a handful of time-sensitive edits to be made before sending the piece to print later that evening. I winced, shelved my notes for a
“...
these edits pile
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looming midterm, and pulled up the document.
After some back and forth, the author and I agreed with the majority of the nits picked, all of which concerned turns of phrase that erred on too inflammatory. But we kept coming back to the term “perennial pest,” used in reference to Schmidt. The EIC I spoke to argued it was dehumanizing. I argued that the word is, definitionally, “an annoying person or thing; a nuisance,” and may just as easily be used to refer to a hyperactive younger sibling. I cited VP’s editorial independence and asked whether the edit was formally from a body like DEI or the copy section. The EIC informed me that “DEI flagged this,” to which I responded with a full transcript of the conversation in which DEI relayed its edits. The claim was amended, “Well, DEI didn’t send a note about it, but they were concerned.” Funny.
Last-Minute Feedback Reflects Fundamental Misunderstandings and Delays Publication I was stubborn, I confess. Sometimes my mom’s voice echoes in my head, reminding me it’s better to bend than to break— and said voice was just about dragging me by the ear that afternoon. But it was one interaction that made me dig in my heels: When we were considering replacements for “perennial pest,” the first thing this EIC volunteered was, “how about using ‘the most censored freshman on campus.’” The next referred to Schmidt as “among the most contrarian students on campus.” I sighed. I noted that the criticism was well taken, but they had to understand that Schmidt would wear those epithets like a badge of honor. The article aims to trivialize; Schmidt isn’t a big-shot disruptor who has admin trembling in their boots but a pest and an embarrassment.
up... and...
That’s the entire point this writer was making, and, while I could change their language, I refused to take away from their argument.
The EIC, who’d apparently reviewed this article a week previously was picking over it now, clearly hadn’t even internalized its central claim. This is no slight against this person’s intelligence or commitment—I know them to be a bright, warm, and dedicated individual who did excellent things with their role. It’s just a function of our EICs’ bandwidth when they have tons of articles to manage and often rise through the ranks of News, which teaches editors to prioritize fundamentally different things than VP does. Former VP editor Cole Martin highlighted the same criticism during his award-winning 2019 tenure, cautioning against “arbitrary, last-minute feedback from EICs unversed in the nuances of op-ed production and unfamiliar with the needs of specific writers.” The one isolated instance I cite seems trivial, but, in aggregate, these edits pile up, and they meaningfully blunt the voices VP intends to promote and protect.
Ultimately, the back-andforth surrounding the Schmidt piece ended with the EICs refusing to publish what was apparently a “personal attack” and “ethics violation.” Recognizing the importance of timely publication, I assented, providing an edit for the objectionable line and noting that they were welcome to change what they liked as long as I could run it by the writer—who was waiting on standby—before publishing under their name. Instead, I was told that the piece had been pulled from the issue entirely and edits would be provided. This was November. The edits in question weren’t returned until February and were nearly entirely composed of the line tweaks I myself had supplied. By this point, Schmidt had deleted the offend-
blunt the voices VP intends to promote...”
ing tweet. The Maroon had effectively failed to offer its readership an interesting and nuanced critique and failed a writer. The piece is instead available on the writer’s personal blog.
Massive Stalls on Maroon-Critical Work Harm Our Integrity, Intentional or Otherwise
This is not the first time a writer has come to VP with a cutting and interesting piece, only for it to get stuck in bureaucratic limbo somewhere in the paper’s assembly line. Some of these stalls are internal to the section; I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t a perfect editor, and I regret that. But the 2024–25 tenure was also operating with widespread understaffing and a massive backlog, owing to what is widely acknowledged to have been fraught management through 2023–24. One piece to come out of this backlog was a criticism of DEI initiatives, which had been pitched in summer of 2023 and submitted the following November. It was still pinballing between the former head VP edi-
tors and the Maroon’s own DEI board by the time my co-editor and I entered the scene in March. An offshoot of this piece, which specifically critiqued the role and purview of the Maroon ’s DEI board and the associated editorial process, was submitted as a letter to the editor in late April. The author and I sat down for coffee to discuss their perspective and goals, emerging with a draft we were both pleased with by early May. But between a lengthy back and forth with DEI and review from the EICs—the associated graphic, featuring a “Baby on Board” sign under a silhouette of a university graduate, seemed to cause offense—the piece didn’t see publication until July. I remember seeing the ping amid various work notifications, holed up in my shoebox of an NYC apartment, and thinking, “Well, that’s a damn shame.” I didn’t personally agree with the article in its entirety—in fact, I think our DEI board had some invaluable functions in terms of standardizing language—but I was keen to get it in front of an audience be-
cause it was well-reasoned and interesting. Yet it was July, and our readership naturally dips during summer as students scatter to the winds for internships and experiences. Intentionally or not, the Maroon’s hemming and hawing had functionally de-amplified the voice of one of its critics—a perspective that a paper committed to journalistic integrity should go out of its way to protect. Once again, we had failed a writer.
Sweeping Moratoria on Content
Are Plainly Antithetical to the Chicago Principles
So, we’ve seen VP’s interference-prone editorial process both misrepresent a columnist’s position and de-amplify another’s criticism, even when these contributors are from opposite ends of the political spectrum. But most egregious of all, I’d argue, were the moratoria on engaging with certain people and ideas. Early into my tenure, VP received a piece that made heavy reference to an article published by the Chi-
estella shkylar
“...
a good VP piece is able to change some people’s minds...”
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cago Thinker, using its rebuttal as a springboard for a broader argument about the aestheticization of politics. The topic was non-polarizing but thought-provoking: Can we consciously model our value system on that of a once-great empire (e.g. Rome)? Editing it was a treat, on the heels of reading the Aeneid in sosc.
When I saw the telltale ping from the EICs, I wasn’t surprised; the writer had thrown in a couple light barbs—maybe a three on the one–10 scale from “Jim teasing Dwight” to “Kendrick decimating Drake”—and I was prepared to scrub out needless ad hominem language. What I wasn’t expecting was the note that, as a matter of policy, the Maroon doesn’t acknowledge the Thinker and doesn’t engage with the content therein. It was all right that I didn’t know, really, but could I be a dear and get rid of any reference to it? I was baffled. What did that even mean? How could we pretend that a substantial and growing subset of the student body didn’t exist, especially given this political backdrop? It transpired
that the staffs of the two publications had several personal disputes, marked by some Thinker staffers modeling unwillingness to engage in good-faith debate. While sympathetic to this, I reiterated that our columnist was willing to wade into these waters and that a blanket “ban” on a whole publication based on interactions with a couple individuals was premature.
Moreover, the entire concept flies in the face of open discourse. Like it or not, the Maroon’s contributors skew decidedly left of the political median, leaving the Thinker the most consolidated hub of politically right-wing discourse on campus. And the Maroon chose to model its every contributor as a mindless zealot who couldn’t possibly hold an opinion in good faith or be swayed otherwise. When faced with an increasingly prominent mode of thought in our country, we’re sticking our fingers in our ears: “I can’t hear youuuu.” I, a triple-threat minority in Donald Trump’s America, am not a patriot. But I’ve always believed we got something right in the First
Amendment and the ethos that bloomed around it: when someone is loud and wrong, you don’t try and muzzle them; you cogently and carefully explain why they’re wrong. I picked a university that reflects those values. As a fresh editor, finally seeing the guts and gears of the publication I’d spent years contributing to, I was shocked to find that its premier newspaper doesn’t.
Lessons Learned & Looking Forward
The piece engaging with the Thinker was ultimately published; our EICs and I had talked past each other for upwards of an hour when I finally lawyered up and invoked editorial independence. It’s among the columns I’m most proud of from my tenure, not in the least because I’d done the illustration myself with an old tablet and a clumsy hand—we had no roster of artists in spring, and my co-editor was already churning out beautiful digital art at breakneck speed. But, more crucially, the piece was strong because it met audiences where they were; an undecided third party could
ARTS
read the Thinker piece followed by this one and find themselves swayed. In fact, I was amused to learn that our columnist was introduced to the Thinker ’s over dinner with a mutual friend, and the pair got on famously. You certainly can’t break bread with everyone, but a good VP piece is able to change some people’s minds, to nudge them into seeing the world from a different angle. If you’re just telling people who already agree with you exactly what they want to hear, you’re about as effectual as opening an umbrella indoors.
Many of the pieces that execute this “nudging” expertly are non-polarizing, from Eva McCord’s personal reflection on her bisexuality to Luke Conteras’s quippy policy argument over the computer science core. But several of our most essential pieces, from criticisms of the paper itself (journalistic ethics, our DEI board) to non-libelous but divisive arguments (racism at the law school, responses to provocateurs), are endangered by informal policies that are increasingly tolerant of clumsy ed-
its and exclusions. Writers pour their time and energy into these pieces, and we do a disservice to both them and our readership if editorial independence continues to fall by the wayside.
Martin resigned from the paper amid this very tension, writing in a 2019 op-ed, “It’s understandable for EICs to want some control over op-eds published in the paper they manage. But if EICs have the unilateral power to reject [pieces] they don’t like or edit controversial ones until they’re pointlessly banal, Viewpoints couldn’t publish many of the pieces it does.” As an exiting editor half a decade later, I echo this sentiment wholeheartedly. I’d call on the incoming EICs to build on the excellent work from the past year while remaining mindful of how editorial decisions impact the Maroon’s integrity and call on incoming VP editors to be your writers’ fiercest advocates. I wish you the best in showcasing UChicago’s voices.
Cherie Fernandes is a fourthyear in the College and a former head Viewpoints editor.
Seven Years Later,
Average Johnson Still Captures the UChicago Zeitgeist
Katherine Weaver revisits the legendary album Views from the Reg with Jacob Johnson, better known as Average Johnson.
By KATHERINE WEAVER | News Editor
I first heard Views from the Reg in my first year, at the Ethics Bowl team’s Halloween party.
In hindsight, this was the most fitting
place to hear this album: Ethics Bowl is notoriously nerdy and philosophically pedantic.
As I later learned, it was tradition for the fourth-year hosting the party to put the album on for background music. What I first thought was generic rap music quickly transformed with the lyric “Fuck Harvard!” and was followed by the most incredible diss track I’d ever heard.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Average Johnson,” they replied.
Jacob “Average” Johnson (A.B. ’19) produced the rap album Views from the Reg in UChicago’s very own Logan Cen
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“Apathy is how they get you. Caring is how we survive.”
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ter. He released the album in April 2018, the spring of his third year. Since then, it has been a staple of undergraduate culture at UChicago. This album captures the entire UChicago undergraduate experience: it’s specific enough to only apply to this place but broad enough that you can listen to it each year you spend here and have a totally different perspective.
Johnson is currently working toward a Ph.D. in animal behavior at the University of California, Davis, but when I spoke with him over Zoom this week to discuss his undergraduate rap album, he seemed to remember it like it was still 2018.
“It felt like on campus there was such a strong culture, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was exactly, but there was some sort of emotional zeitgeist at the school that I felt really strongly,” Johnson told me. “I wanted to make something that every undergrad at UChicago will be able to listen to. And I wanted it to, like, encapsulate a little bit of what it feels like to be here for four years of your life, if not more.”
The first track on Views from the Reg is called “Return of the Curve,” which Johnson referred to in our interview as the “thesis statement” of the album. It references some of the most long-standing and widely felt experiences of UChicago undergraduates: pretending to do work in the Reg, having “five majors at the same time,” and, of course, “it’s a vicious competition for how average you can be.” This throughline is continued in such hits as “Math and Sosc,” which parodies Rihanna’s “S&M”—instead of kinky sex, though, students are getting their masochism fix through problem sets.
Johnson’s lyrical presentation lands somewhere in the realm of Bo Burnham and Bill Wurtz. He’s earnest and funny, with a certain “just an average white guy” charm. This album only works because of the earnestness with which it’s performed. Johnson sees “tryhard” criticism and seems to say, “Yeah, I am trying hard. Why does that bother you so much?”
“It’s about things that are so ridiculously niche that it would be absurd to write a song about them,” Johnson said.
“The album is kind of a bit that doesn’t know when to stop.”
Views from the Reg is lauded for giving audiences “Fuck Harvard,” a completely original diss track that opens with the infinitely memorable introduction: “Fuck Harvard! You stupid easy ass school. If I wanted good grades then I would’ve gone to you!” For the UChicago zeitgeist, this song captures the widely held contempt for Harvard that we all know is neither productive nor mutual but which persists nevertheless.
This song holds some of the best examples of Johnson’s lyrical talent. It’s a nonstop stream of high-level roasts, with the occasional strategic rhythm break to make lines such as, “You first admitted women in nineteen seventy-seven?” pop. Another line rhymes “discourse” with “I am so high on this-horse,” which is simultaneously hilarious and what we can all appreciate as “some UChicago bullshit.”
Despite this, Views from the Reg is aware of the privilege inherent to complaining about UChicago. “I definitely did wrestle with this love of intellectualism, of craving that rigorous academic inquiry, but also recognizing, even when that album came out, that it is a time when this feels increasingly cloistered,” Johnson said. “The joke is that, ‘Ah, Harvard, you’re so elitist. My school isn’t elitist at all!’ But we are.”
While most of Views from the Reg still rings true in 2025, there are a handful of lines that date the album as undeniably 2018. Johnson jokes of his admission to UChicago that “I was poorly selected, like Donald Trump’s cabinet,” hearkening back to the day when incompetence was the biggest issue with the presidency. Similarly, “man in a fedora” makes an appearance in “Ain’t No Space in Mansueto,” and Alpha Delta’s “bar night” was lost to COVID just two years later. Yet, some parts of UChicago culture remain immutable—most notably, the nonstop grind to “take my rightful place in the middle of the curve.”
If “Return of the Curve” is the thesis statement of Views from the Reg, it’s fitting that the last track, “I Kinda Like it Here,” summarizes the core idea of Johnson’s album: despite how much UChicago beats us down, this is still a pretty great
place to be because of the people we’re here with. Johnson came to appreciate this during college as he saw his fellow students experience hardship and rise to the occasion.
“A lot of people will suggest to you that, [as] humans get more selfish, we turn more inward and are less likely to help others when we are in a stressful or harsh environment,” Johnson said. “But what data actually shows is that, when things are at their bleakest, people become more kind, more generous, more willing to help one another.… What I was seeing was everybody kind of going through it and the ways in which, instead of making people worse to each other, it was making my fellow students better to each other.”
For most of us, Views from the Reg is a fun musical outlet to hear the horrors of UChicago expressed alongside some fantastic saxophone. What is less frequently discussed is that the album, in capturing the essence of the UChicago experience, brings attention to how utterly average we all feel all of the time. The constant competition, the impossible number of readings and papers and assignments we get in a week, the nine-week quarter that pushes life of the mind to extremes—90 percent of the time, it feels like each of us is barely hanging on.
Johnson himself remembers this feeling seven years later. “[Gen chem]
was humbling,” he said. “I’d done pretty well in whatever high school class I was in, and then to see myself be in danger of failing a class—I was like, what? But that feeling of barely making it, just skirting by, that was what first inspired me to write ‘Return of the Curve.’”
Despite the horrors, Johnson is grateful for his time at UChicago and for all of the things he captured in his album, good and bad.
And as for what he misses most about UChicago? “I have yet to encounter a student climate that feels like it felt at UChicago,” Johnson said. “It was this moment, [as] someone who had grown up and been bullied for caring and for having those absurd levels of knowledge, and then seeing all these people who had all of these different topics they were passionate about and realizing I am just another fish in the pond. By the standards of this school, I am average.”
At the end of our interview, I asked Johnson if he had anything he wanted to say to the current UChicago student body. “Whether it’s people or places or discontinued LEGO products, caring about things is awesome. Never be ashamed of the weird little subtopic you obsess over. Nothing brings me greater joy in life than listening to my friends nerd out in absurd detail about what brings them joy,” he said. “Apathy is how they get you. Caring is how we survive.”
Jacob “Average” Johnson stands in front of the Regenstein Library holding his saxophone. courtesy of jacob johnson .
Grooving to the Beat at “Where Fun Comes to Dance”
At the annual showcase of dance RSOs, laughter, expression, and togetherness won out.
By CIARA BALANZA | Arts Reporter
At “Where Fun Comes to Dance” on May 1, UChicago’s unofficial motto was turned on its head. Held annually at the Logan Center and hosted by the UChicago Dance Council, this year’s highly anticipated performance featured 13 dance RSOs competing in front of a panel of judges. The showcase galvanized the campus dance community, bringing together diverse styles and cultural dances, including swing, tap, contemporary, South Asian, African, and Latin American dances—all on one stage.
From the beginning of the show, a vibrant cross-pollination of genres was evident. The groups embraced the liveliness of the event, juxtaposing their choreography with popular music. The Chicago Swing Dance Society did the Charleston to Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” University Ballet of Chicago (UBallet) performed en pointe to a medley of songs from Charli XCX’s Brat. Tap That shuffled to Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em.” The University of Chicago Ballroom and Latin Dance Association (BLDA) danced salsa to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” All of the groups undoubtedly embraced a spirit of playfulness.
The energy at “Where Fun Comes to Dance” certainly lived up to its name. Tickets ran out the Sunday before the free event, prompting many enthusiasts
to line up early for a spare seat. Students showed up in full force, armed with posters and loud cheers, to support their friends.
The atmosphere was electric, with emcee Soraya Wilson energizing the crowd throughout the evening. Dancers thrived in the animated environment, and, for the several first-years interviewed, the event was an invigorating introduction to UChicago’s dance scene.
UChicago Maya won first place for their otherworldly and breathtaking performance. What at first began with Jadie Gonzales making ecstatic convulsions gave way to 30 dancers elegantly emerging on stage. The mesmerizing movement was ethereal, particularly during the sequence where dancer Elin Escobar Forsberg appeared to be floating on stage, lifted up by several members of the troupe.
Madeleine Hoffman, a dancer for UChicago Maya, said that being a part of the group was “a dream come true.” For her, the showcase brought together “the social aspect, movement, and… creativity of [dance].” Her favorite part of the event was waiting backstage, where she could share “smiles and positive energy” with members of the other groups.
In second place was Ex Crew, who fixated on the theme of female rage. The hiphop group brought an exuberant energy
with their in-sync moves and emotional edge. For them, the showcase was the culmination of a long and dedicated rehearsal process. For Manya Davis, the team “constantly [encouraged] me to not only step out of my comfort zone but [to] succeed in doing so.” Laya Raj agreed with how the crew “pushed [her] to explore sharper, stronger movement styles that are newer.”
The razor-sharp moves do come at a cost, of course, but Davis credited the crowd’s enthusiasm for giving her a final push: “I could definitely feel the energy from the crowd and my teammates on stage, which made it an unforgettable experience.”
Placing third was the shuffling and flapping Tap That, whose choreography to a compilation of country songs won the hearts of the judges. Not having placed since 2019, the group seemed particularly proud of their achievement.
Other performances were just as compelling. The crowd favorite K-pop group neXus Dance Collective brought their impeccable choreography on to the stage. Their dynamic dance mirrored the fiery tensions and playful chaos of a feisty friend group. Rhythmic Bodies in Motion performed a contemporary dance from their “Here, There, and Now” showcase, which focused on breaking toxic cycles.
Apsara brought classical South Asian dance to the stage. With highly technical moves and sound created with claps and
chants, the group wowed the audience and lulled them into a trance. Raj, who is also a dancer for this group, commented that it “gives [her] a structured way to continue practicing classical Indian dance.” She added that she finds comfort in the group’s shared sense of South Asian identity.
The highlight of the event was, ironically, unchoreographed. While the dancers awaited the judges’ verdicts, Wilson called for music to break the silence, then tried to spark a conversation about highlights from each performance when none played. When the music suddenly came on, though, the performers did what they do best—dance.
Groove Theory broke the ice with a body isolation exercise. Later on, a dancer from the Chicago Swing Dance Society joined in with an intense voguing challenge. UBallet’s Sofia Grace Delgado tapped along in her ballet slippers with members of Tap That. A dancer from Ankara Magic brought an Afrobeat rhythm alongside neXus’s K-pop choreography. Several dancers displayed their classic training by pirouetting across the stage. The climatic finale epitomized the performers’ ability to balance their talent with a sense of humor.
“Where Fun Comes to Dance” was a vibrant celebration of the eclectic and diverse dance groups at UChicago. For the audience members, there was no doubting the school’s ability to bring cheers.
UChicago Bhangra cheerfully reprises their dance during the celebratory finale. courtesy of chris tien.
During the night’s finale, dancers step into an improvised hip-hop sequence. courtesy of chris tien
Invisible to Whom?: On the Quiet Brilliance of Robert Sengstacke
Regenstein Library’s exhibit highlights the photographer’s brilliant intimacy and simplicity.
By KATHERINE CHEN | Senior Arts Reporter
In a quiet corner on the first floor of the Regenstein Library, the walls are lined with black-and-white photographs. Faces are captured in mid-laugh, arms are caught in motion, and gazes ask nothing and everything at once. The photographs are part of an exhibition titled Invisible to Whom?, borrowed from Toni Morrison’s poignant challenge to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. It does not dwell on invisibility in any way but rather offers something harder, something braver: a sustained encounter with Black life on its own terms.
Curated by Rashieda Witter, the exhibition features selections from the Robert A. Sengstacke Archive. Sengstacke, a photojournalist with deep ties to the Chicago Defender (a prominent Black newspaper), spent his life documenting the city’s Black community. His work was never distant or anthropological. He photographed from within a community: from the sidewalk, from the crowd, and from the living room. His images capture scenes filled with pride and ease, and at times with challenge and joy—but never anything performed for outsiders. Everything, for Sengstacke, was grounded in self-recognition.
One photograph in the exhibition
shows two women seated in front of a weathered wooden door. The image is titled People at the Wall of Respect (1967–70), and it captures an intimate and assertive moment. The woman in front stares directly into the lens, unbothered by the camera. Her purse is held across her lap, her shoulders relaxed, and her head held high. Behind her, another woman smiles faintly, her face half-hidden but no less present. The image’s composition suggests kinship that doesn’t announce itself loudly—it sits, breathes, and watches.
An even quieter moment appears in Opportunity Please Knock (1967), where a young man and woman stand shoulder to shoulder facing the camera. The image exhibits stark lighting that isolates the faces from the backdrop. The man stands stonefaced with his arms around the woman as she gazes with softness and no tinge of performance. The image showcases proximity and shared spaces that demand no explanation. No text offers the subjects’ names or their stories. Sengstacke gives us a feeling of intimacy without intrusion, and the photo lingers in its own ambiguity. Visibility does not by any means equate with exposure. Sometimes, it means being held by someone beside you, by the camera, or by the moment.
One photograph from the Bud Billiken Parade series (1966–68) captures a boy with arms flung wide open. Behind him, many children and adults line a street, their bodies tilted and caught by the camera in layered states of movement and pause. There is no central action or imposed hierarchy in the image. The boy seems to declare something wordless with his posture: perhaps confidence or even defiance. The photograph speaks to how Sengstacke returns to his mission again and again, not through naming or decorating a spectacle but through creating a living archive. It matters that the photo-
graph was documented not for display but for memory.
From Bud Billiken Parade (1966–1968). alex akhundov
Across the walls, Sengstacke’s work resists the pressure to explain or uplift his subjects in conventional terms. The photographs show what was already there with life existing in full texture: sometimes joyful, other times still, and almost always on the edge of breaking into motion. They do not vehemently argue for inclusion or desperately attempt to humanize what was always already human. Instead, they ask, “Who was looking away to begin with?” The exhibition never answers that question. It does not need to. By anchoring us in special moments of intimacy, it shifts the question of visibility from burden to power.
From Untitled, Chicago (1965–1975). alex akhundov.
Photographs in Invisible to Whom? line the first floor of the Regenstein Library. alex akhundov
From People at the Wall of Respect (1967–70). alex akhundov.
From Opportunity Please Knock (1967). alex akhundov
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 historical podcast, a groundbreaking art exhibition, literature events on campus, and free planetarium programming. This week’s special guest is Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon, head photo editor at the Maroon.
EXHIBITION
The First Homosexuals Through July 26, Wrightwood 659. $15.
Eight years in the making and rejected by many institutions, this exhibit features hundreds of rare artworks exploring the creation of the homosexual identity.
Nolan Shaffer, head arts editor
EXHIBITION
Adler at Night Wednesdays, 4 p.m., Adler Planetarium. Free.
Get a rare look into the planetarium at night, and check out their Astronomy Conversations with Adler researchers from 6–8 p.m. as an added (free) bonus!
Miki Mukawa, head arts editor
PODCAST
Fiasco
Host Leon Neyfakh explores the Iran–Contra affair and its history, an event that didn’t ruin the Reagan presidency.
Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon, head photo editor
LITERATURE
Vincent Katz on Daffodil and Other Poems May 21, 4 p.m., Seminary Co-op. Free.
Katz discusses his newest work, Daffodil and Other Poems. The titular poem takes inspiration from William Carlos Williams’s poem “The rose is obsolete.”
Elizabeth Eck, associate arts editor
FILM
Friendship
A disturbingly funny, brilliantly off-putting directorial debut by Andrew DeYoung that captures modern male connections.
Shawn Quek, associate arts editor
LITERATURE
2025 Carpenter Lecture Series May 22, 4 p.m., Swift Lecture Hall. Free.
The English Department’s annual three-lecture series features critic and writer Hilton Als in a conversation on memory, vision, and narrative.
Emily Sun, associate arts editor
SPORTS Finding Fandom: The Curious Case of Sports Culture at UChicago
Sports culture hasn’t had a place on UChicago’s campus in decades. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
By SHRIVAS RAGHAVAN | Sports Editor
It’s Friday night in Hyde Park. Those brave enough to fight the Chicago winter shuffle their way into the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center, eagerly awaiting the 5:30 p.m. tip-off of the upcoming UChicago vs. NYU basketball game. It’s a big conference matchup: the No. 22 Maroons taking on the No. 5 Violets. Besides fighting for the title of “Best Primary Color Shade” in Division III athletics, both teams have a lot to play for with playoffs on the horizon.
But the sight inside the Ratner Competition Gymnasium isn’t quite what you would expect from a prime time home game between two fierce UAA conference rivals.
The student section is scarce. Fellow student-athletes and fraternity brothers have come out to support their friends, but the support is tame. There aren’t any bleacher stomps, pre-planned chants or painted chests. A loud cheer after a big shot is the rowdiest it gets. It’s a far cry from the raucous collection of students you would find at even your average Friday night high school game.
Across from the student section, another group of students, less willing to exert any outward enthusiasm, populate the main bleachers. After halftime—when the students have the opportunity to grab a slice of free pizza from atop the student
section bleachers—this group is all but gone.
Of the non-students filing their way into the gym, the majority can be easily placed into one of three categories: friends and family of the players, local families looking for a fun way to spend their Friday night, or UChicago alumni. Many are here for the “Coaches vs. Cancer” fundraiser. The basketball is just a bonus.
But the Maroons have proved worthy of being much more than just a bonus. The team finished the season with a strong 18–8 record, and for the first time since the 2007–08 season, they punched a ticket to the NCAA Division III Tournament. Adding on the team’s multiple All-UAA selections, there were plenty of reasons to be
excited about UChicago Men’s Basketball in 2025.
Unfortunately for the Maroons, the excitement never quite materialized. In the 2024–25 season, UChicago Men’s Basketball ranked fifth out of eight UAA teams in average home attendance. Of the four UAA teams with a winning record, UChicago ranked last. Not quite the level of appreciation deserved for a team that earned its first playoff appearance in 17 years. The lack of student support is not just a basketball issue either. UChicago football, the program that consistently yields the highest attendance at the university, ranked dead last in the Midwest Conference in average home attendance. Even
“Ask the average UChicago student their favorite aspects of the University, and ‘athletics’ would probably slot in just after ‘work-life balance.’”
Lawrence University, a tiny liberal arts school in Appleton, Wisconsin—you’re welcome for saving you a Google search— dwarfed UChicago in average home attendance despite finishing with an abysmal 1–8 conference record.
This is the same UChicago football program that has won multiple National Championships; the same program that once boasted a Heisman winner. There are few universities that belong in the same bracket of footballing excellence as UChicago, but if you glanced up at the Stagg Field bleachers during an average regular season game these days, you wouldn’t know it.
Then again, a lot can change in 100 years. And in the case of UChicago, a lot has.
The culture shift began when former University President Robert Maynard Hutchins outlawed varsity football in 1939, deeming it detrimental to the image of being a prestigious academic bastion he envisioned for the University. When the program returned in 1969—this time donning a relegated Division III status— athletic culture returned with a similar recession. In 2025, this culture has fallen even further. Ask the average UChicago student their favorite aspects of the University, and “athletics” would probably slot in just after “work-life balance.”
UChicago’s reputation as an “academics first, athletics last” institution is undeniable. It doesn’t have anything that even remotely resembles the tailgates, marching bands, or fight songs that you would find at a big Southeastern Conference school like the University of Alabama. The only thing Hyde Park has in common with Tuscaloosa is a Wingstop. Even then, Tuscaloosa has twice as many.
But for first-year Amelia Rybicka-Fijoł, a more sports-centric UChicago isn’t exactly an attractive image. “I really like UChicago the way it is. I’m a dancer here and I just kind of do that on my own,” Rybicka-Fijoł explained. “Overall, I’m more focused on the entire ‘life of the mind’ thing. I like that there’s no student-athlete cult here.”
Rybicka-Fijoł’s sentiment is not an un-
common one at UChicago. There’s a certain charm that comes with UChicago’s sports agnosticism, a charm that would struggle to persist in a big, sports town environment. The athletes exist as students first without the celebrity-like mystique that would follow them at a Division I school. There are no hushed whispers and wide-eyed stares as athletes find their seat for their 9:30 a.m. class. In fact, apart from a “UChicago Athletics” branded backpack and an electric scooter, there’s nothing that really differentiates the UChicago student from the UChicago student-athlete. Everyone is equal, a fact that is appreciated by all, athletes and non-athletes alike.
One such athlete is second-year basketball player Luke Smith. For Smith, UChicago’s general disinterest in sports isn’t a concern. “It doesn’t really affect me too much. I’m not a person who needs to be touted like a celebrity or anything,” Smith explained.
However, the modern day UChicago experience leans so far into sports apathy that even historic athletic achievements are often disregarded. Despite UChicago Athletics capping off a wildly successful winter season with numerous broken records and National Championships, these achievements have earned little attention from the University outside the UChicago Athletics website and socials.
“There’s just not really enough awareness,” fellow second-year Matthew Wren expressed. “For example, house activities don’t ever mention going to University games. Oftentimes the only way I know there’s a basketball game is if I’m walking into Ratner when I want to practice basketball and the gym is full.”
Simply put, the University does not do enough to promote its athletics to the student body. Students are often oblivious to upcoming games and even more oblivious to athletic achievements. On the rare occasion that students are made aware of athletic events, they are disregarded as (what students assume to be) low-quality athletics.
“It does bother us in the general sense that we might deserve a little more recognition,” Smith admitted. “I don’t think any of us are like ‘wow, you guys need to come
to our games,’ but it’s a really fun experience and it helps us out a lot. It makes the game a lot more fun so I think we would definitely benefit from more advertising.”
Athletic success builds excitement and intrigue. Generating this success is the hard part and UChicago has already done it. What’s missing is the University’s effort to capitalize on this success. Without promotion, athletic achievements are buried in oblivion alongside the opportunity to develop a loyal fandom.
But even then, promoting athletic achievement is only the start. People will be more willing to watch successful teams, there is no doubt about that, but the universities with a strong athletic culture draw fans regardless of results—just ask our friends over at Lawrence University.
The real beating heart of sports culture at any university, regardless of the division and regardless of the results, is the spectacle of game day. Game day culture wraps athletics in celebration, tradition, and passion. It unites the fanatics with the casual supporters and transcends wins and losses. True sports culture is molded from the spectacle of game day.
Unsurprisingly, it is game day culture where UChicago finds itself so far behind the others.
At the University of Chicago, game
days are bleak, unceremonious affairs. The turnout is poor and the energy nonexistent. “There’s not a lot of passion behind the sports. Sometimes I go to the football games because I have friends on the team, but other than that… nothing,” fourth-year Artemis Xenopoulos explained.
Even the grandest of sporting events at the University do little to draw student excitement. Take the “Coaches vs. Cancer” fundraiser for instance. The event is more tailored to the Hyde Park community and UChicago alumni than anything, leaving students with no real incentive to attend.
For the average UChicago student, free time is hard to come by as is. Convincing students to buy into UChicago athletics means convincing them to budget their coveted free time toward attending games. Regardless of how good the players are, pure athletics is hardly enough to draw a crowd of students, especially in Division III. If even the best NBA teams need to trot out elaborate halftime shows, community events, and promotions in order to attract fans, UChicago needs to do a bit better than free pizza.
When asked what the University could do to make sports games more appealing to UChicago students, Xenopolous suggested making events around the games,
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The UChicago student section watches as the Maroons take on NYU. nathaniel rodwell-simon
“UChicago has the opportunity to capitalize on this athletic success and institute a new sports culture, one driven by... social engagement.”
focusing on facilitating energy and camaraderie rather than just the athletics.
Emory University, a school not too different from UChicago, dominated the UAA in average home attendance this past basketball season doing just that—something that did not go unnoticed by the UChicago players. “We went to Emory once, and they were doing jersey giveaways, raffles, and stuff like that to get people to come,” Smith recalled. “That could be a big improvement
[for UChicago].”
Both UChicago and Emory are high-achieving academic institutions that compete at the Division III level. Despite Hutchins’s apprehensions, sports culture and athletic excellence do not need to be mutually exclusive.
In fact, game days embellished by a vibrant social atmosphere create a sports culture that appeals to all types of students, not just the die-hards. First-year Alexander LaMonica, despite not be -
ing overly enthused by the prospect of a sports-centric UChicago, sees potential for excitement in game days. “[I would go to games] if they make it a more social opportunity versus just about the sport itself,” LaMonica told the Maroon
UChicago Athletics is the best it has been in nearly a century, and if current trends persist, it will only get better in the coming years. For the first time since the days of Amos Stagg, UChicago has the opportunity to capitalize on this athletic
success and institute a new sports culture, one driven by community and social engagement.
That does not mean turning UChicago into the University of Alabama, or even Emory for that matter, but there is a middle ground to be found. It is possible for athletics and academics to culturally coexist here, perhaps with UChicago’s own “life of the mind” edge. What that may entail is yet to be determined, but it starts with game days. Or maybe another campus Wingstop.
Liam Starnes’s successful run secured a spot in the game show’s annual Tournament of Champions.
By ANUSHREE VASHIST | Sports Reporter
Who is: The latest UChicago student to become a Jeopardy! champion?
Fourth-year data science and statistics double major Liam Starnes closed out a six-day winning streak on the iconic game show last month, qualifying for the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, the show’s annual competition for its top players.
“It was definitely a dream come true,” Starnes said of his run. “I’ve been a very huge Jeopardy! fan for a long time.” On his second day on the show, he told the audience that he once had a Jeopardy!-themed birthday party.
Despite his regard for the show, Starnes was skeptical when he first heard from the show’s producers. “I thought it was a scam,” he said of the text message inviting him to call back. “It seemed really hard to believe at first, but it was real.”
For Starnes, the journey to the Jeopardy! main stage was a long one. “First you take an online test and, if you do well enough on that, you go to an audition,” Starnes explained. “At the audition, there’s another test, and if you do well on that, then you play a mock game, and the producers interview you and find out if they want you on the show.”
After auditioning, Starnes waited 18 months before learning he had been se-
lected. “I had kind of already given up,” he said.
When the invitation finally arrived, Starnes had years of preparation to draw upon. Having competed in quiz bowl since middle school, Starnes led his high school team to the National Academic Quiz Tournaments’ High School National Championship Tournament.
Starnes continued his quiz bowl career in college, joining the University of Chicago College Bowl Team in his first year. The team, according to its website, “has won more national championships than any other team in the modern era of the game.” Starnes currently serves as a vice president for club activities.
“Most of my knowledge is from years of quiz bowl and just learning other things, but I did study right before I went on,” Starnes said. In the weeks leading up to his Jeopardy! appearance, he familiarized himself with the show’s question style.
Reflecting on his six-day winning streak, which earned him about $127,000 in cumulative prize winnings, Starnes said his approach shifted over the course of the competition.
“At first, I definitely just focused on enjoying the moment and having fun,” Starnes said. “Obviously, I wanted to win,
but I was feeling really nervous and told myself, ‘No matter what, just have fun and see what happens.’ Then as I kept winning, all of a sudden, it was like, ‘I can do this. I can stay on the show for a long time.’”
Starnes also noted the demanding nature of the show’s fast-paced schedule, which involved filming five episodes per day.
“When I was winning, I obviously kept coming back and kept playing, so that was really tiring,” he said. “But it worked out.”
Remembering how he managed the stress and exhaustion of the game, Starnes said, “I would just focus on how amazing an experience I was having and how happy I was just to be there.”
Now back on campus, Starnes is adjusting to newfound fame.
“I was not expecting to get this much attention,” Starnes said. “It seems like almost every day somebody recognizes me and says, ‘Hey, were you on Jeopardy! ?’ I was not expecting to be that famous…. It’s just good to see that everyone’s really happy for me.”
When asked about online comments comparing him to The Big Bang Theory ’s Sheldon Cooper, Starnes said, “I don’t really see the resemblance.”
Starnes will return to Jeopardy! next winter for the show’s Tournament of Champions.
Fourth-year Liam Starnes closed out a sixday winning streak on Jeopardy! last month, securing a spot in the game show’s annual Tournament of Champions. courtesy of liam starnes
“I don’t know how well I’ll do against some really great players, but I’ll try to study and brush up on my weak spots over the next few months,” Starnes said. “I’m definitely looking forward to it.”
Offering advice to others interested in quizzing, Starnes said, “Just keep learning new things. If you have something that interests you, don’t be afraid to learn more about it…. You never know what you’ll discover.”
Breaking News!
An update to the story reported in the Autumn 2021 issue of the Maroon. The long-lost heir to the Russian throne, Tsar Nikola Tesla II, who disappeared in 2021 through Hull Gate during UChicago Orientation in Hyde Park, Chicago, USA, has been spotted again attempting to participate in the UChicago Class of 2025 graduation ceremony under the alias Thomas Kralik. Despite the obvious disguise, INTERPOL’s AI facial recognition has confirmed his identity. Alas, he has once again evaded INTERPOL and all attempts to recruit him into a professional career.
