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MORE SCHOOLS ADOPT CHICAGO PRINCIPLES OF FREE EXPRESSION

MAY 29, 2019 NINTH WEEK VOL. 131, ISSUE 41

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#CareNotCops Holds Town Hall for UCPD Transparency

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UCLA Law Professor Weighs in on Green New Deal

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University Names Second School After Pritzker Family

BY EMMA DYER

In Sit-Down with The

With donations totaling $100 million, the University will expand the Institute of

Maroon, Alderman

Molecular Engineering to found a new graduate school, which will join the Medical

Jeanette Taylor Talks

School as the second professional school named after the Pritzkers.

UCPD Transparency,

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Mental Health OP-ED: Make Metra Work for the South Side

ARTS: Florence + The Machine and Its Not-So-Useless Magic

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GREY CITY: No Spotless Record: Censorship at UChicago II PAGE 6

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

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — MAY 29, 2019

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UChicago Founds School of Molecular Engineering

By EMMA DYER Deputy News Editor The University of Chicago will transform the Institute of Molecular Engineering (IME) into a graduate school of molecular engineering, the University announced Tuesday morning. The school, which will open immediately at the existing site of the IME in Eckhardt Research Center, will be the first school in the country dedicated to the field of molecular engineering.

The school, newly named the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering is established with a new donation of $75 million from the Pritzker Foundation, in addition to $25 million the Pritzkers had granted the IME earlier. While Pritzker Molecular Engineering (PME) will at present not operate much differently from the IME, the grant from the Pritzkers will allow the University to rapidly expand the school’s faculty and resources in the coming years.

The IME is currently led by 28 faculty and serves 91 undergraduate students, 134 graduate students, and 75 postdoctoral fellows. PME will continue to offer a Ph.D. program in molecular engineering and will expand current undergraduate molecular engineering course offerings. The Univer-

sity is “in early planning stages for another science facility” and estimates that the number of molecular engineering faculty will double in the next 10 years, according to spokesperson Jeremy Manier.

It will be the University’s eighth professional school, and the latest one to open since the University founded the Harris School of Public Policy in 1988. PME will be the second school at the University named after the Pritzker family: The University renamed its medical school in 1968 also following a donation from the Pritzkers.

The PME will also establish a new partnership with City Colleges of Chicago.

This will include programming like college counseling and research opportunities, designed to extend PME’s resources to STEM–interested students enrolled in City Colleges.

Newly-inaugurated Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a press release that the partnership with City Colleges “will also inspire students from across the city to take the next step in building the skills they need for rewarding careers.” UChicago and City Colleges of Chicago hope that this program will better prepare City College students and inspire them to transfer into a four-year STEM degree program.

Founding Director of the IME and Deputy Laboratory Director for Science at Argonne National Laboratory Matthew Tirrell will serve as the director and dean of PME. Tirrell believes the expansion will continue to foster the University’s unique intersecting areas of study within molecular engineering.

Tirrell, who has been at the IME since its founding in 2011, runs a lab whose research embodies the diversity of applications molecular engineering can have across disciplines. The Tirrell lab studies molecular interactions and works on creating self-assembled nanomaterials that may be used for creating better experimental procedures for scientists working at a bench, increasing the accuracy and detection sensitivity of medical diagnostics, and aiding the development of personalized medicine techniques, including targeted cancer therapeutics.

The school will foster interdisciplinary research that will provide resources for research to be taken to the market. In the past eight years, the IME has spent $23.1 million on research per year, leading to 69 invention disclosures and the creation of six companies. Projects have focused on sustainable energy, immunotherapy-based approaches

to cancer, and secure communication networks, according to the University’s announcement. The school will expand upon the IME’s five research themes: arts, sciences, and technology; immuno-engineering; water and energy; quantum engineering; and autonomous materials.

Classes offered by PME will continue to have a specific focus to molecular engineering, following themes aligning with the three tracks offered to undergraduates: chemical and soft materials, biology, and quantum. PME will not expand to include traditional engineering fields, but will serve “to more effectively address issues that require integrated, convergent approaches,” the University said in their announcement.

PME is the latest in a series of expansions the University has made in the field of molecular engineering. In 2017, the University launched the Chicago Quantum Exchange, a collaboration among researchers across Chicago and neighboring regions.

Other universities have recently joined the collaboration, including the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University.

Jeanette Taylor Talks Policing and Transparency

By ALEX DALTON Senior News Reporter In an interview with the maroon, newly inaugurated 20th Ward alderman Jeanette Taylor discussed her thoughts on the new mayor, her transition process, and her long-term goals for the ward.

Taylor voiced some concerns about Mayor Lori Lightfoot, specifically the way Lightfoot has elected to deal with aldermen so far.

As her first act in office, Lightfoot signed an executive order aiming to substantially reign in aldermanic prerogative, the largely informal authority granted to aldermen to approve or block City Council actions that affect their wards. The order requires that City departments submit a report detailing the ways in which they have deferred to aldermanic prerogative in the past and bars them from honoring it in the future,

except when required by the municipal code of Chicago.

Taylor does not have a problem with the substance of the order and acknowledged the need for “checks and balances” in city government. During her campaign, Taylor supported reforming the system of aldermanic prerogative, citing how that practice has been used by previous aldermen to block affordable housing developments in their wards.

However, Taylor took issue with the manner in which the Lightfoot administration briefed the City Council on the order, which she says was done by a Lightfoot staffer, not the mayor herself, and took place right before the media were briefed.

“This is not transparent to me,” she said. “This is not how you start off a work relationship.”

Taylor said she plans to schedule a oneon-one meeting with Lightfoot to address

her concerns and tell the mayor about issues affecting the 20th Ward.

Throughout her campaign, Taylor advocated for increased civilian oversight for the Chicago Police Department (CPD).

Last week, a SWAT team entered the home of 22-year-old Woodlawn resident Myles Frazier, who suffered from bipolar disorder, shooting and killing him. Frazier was CONTINUED ON PG. 3

Jeanette Taylor speaks at the UChicago Labor Council’s May Day rally.

adrian mandeville

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MAY 29, 2019

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“People do not talk about the mental health of police officers” CONTINUED FROM PG. 2

armed and had fired shots, some of which had gone outside. Activist groups, including the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter and UChicago Student Action, condemned the killing, emphasizing the need for better access to mental health services for disadvantaged communities.

In Taylor’s view, preventing situations like Frazier’s death will require better mental healthcare “on both ends,” addressing both civilians’ mental health as well as that of police officers.

“People do not talk about the mental health of these police officers,” she said.

“You have people who jump out [of] the car and shoot, when they should be walking the

beat and talking to the neighbors.”

Taylor thinks the City spends too much money on policing, but given the large role that the police currently play in the 20th Ward communities, she believes that “we do have to work with what we have.” She plans to collaborate with Alderman Stephanie Coleman of the adjacent 16th Ward to meet with police leadership in order to explore mental health options for officers and build a better relationship between the CPD and the South Side communities they serve.

Taylor, whose interview with The Maroon took place on her third full day in office, is still getting her operation together.

She has found an office space that will be ready in June and is in the process of setting

up a mobile app that will facilitate easier communication with constituents.

Throughout her campaign, Taylor emphasized the importance of maintaining community engagement after the election.

“It’s not enough that you vote for me,” she frequently said. “I have to take you to City Hall with me.”

With the first City Council meeting coming up on Wednesday, Taylor is hoping to put the adage into practice. 20th Ward residents will be notified ahead of time via text message and kept updated through Taylor’s ward calendar. “I will make sure that my constituents are there.”

Taylor gives ward residents her cell phone number and has plans for commu-

nity meetings at least twice a month, when possible. She also has plans to get out into the ward in person.

“Two days a week,” she said, “me and my staff will walk the block and meet our community members and ask them what they want to see.”

Taylor anticipates that it will take around six months to fully implement her vision for community engagement in the 20th Ward.

She said that by the end of her first term, “People won’t be able to say that I wasn’t open. People won’t be able to say that they weren’t welcome at the alderman’s office.

They won’t say that they didn’t have a voice.”

Chicago Principles of Free Expression Adopted at Other Universities

By VICTOR YANG News Reporter Since 2014, the University of Chicago has followed the University of Chicago Statement of Principles of Free Expression. At the request of President Robert Zimmer and then-Provost Eric Isaacs, the Principles, which follow the guideline that “debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed,” were drafted by a committee led by law professor and former Dean of the Law School Geoffrey Stone.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a national foundation aiming “to defend and sustain the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities,” endorsed the principles upon their release in 2014.

The following year, FIRE launched a national campaign asking colleges and universities across the country to adopt the Chicago Principles. As of May 2019, 63 institutions or faculty bodies have adopted or endorsed the Chicago Principles or a substantially similar statement, according to FIRE. The number of American institutions of higher education adopting the

Chicago Principles continues to grow.

In April, the Florida State University system and the Iowa Board of Regents became the latest to adopt the Chicago Principles or a similar language, with Pomona College publishing proposed changes that are currently under consideration.

The State University System of Florida released a free expression statement on April 15 after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis urged public universities to focus on developing protections for free speech. All 12 subsidiary postsecondary institutions signed a resolution similar to the Chicago Principles. DeSantis stated in a news conference at Florida State University that, “by embracing the Chicago Statement [of Principles of Free Expression] and by getting all these universities and college presidents on board, I think we’re showing that Florida welcomes debate.”

In a comment to The Maroon, Mary Zoeller, program officer at FIRE, said the foundation “was thrilled to hear that Florida Gov. DeSantis chose to prioritize student and faculty free expression by urging public institutions in his state to adopt the Chicago Principles.”

One of the latest bodies to adopt a freedom of expression principle is the Iowa Board of Regents, a nine-member board that represents state schools including the University of Iowa, Iowa

State University, and the University of Northern Iowa. The board approved the principles to comply with a new state law, signed by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds on March 27, that requires the Board of Regents and its associated universities to adopt a series of principles that ensure students and faculty “the freedom to discuss any problem that presents itself, assemble, and engage in spontaneous expressive activity on campus, within the bounds of established principles of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions that are consistent with established First Amendment principles.”

Detractors argue that slight modifications of the Principles being applied to different colleges without adequately considering context fails to address each university’s unique circumstances regarding freedom of expression or claim that such endorsements have no real effect on free expression on college campuses.

In a 2018 Slate article, Osita Nwanevu (A.B. ’15, M.P.P. ’16) argued that the Chicago Principles are nothing more than a “marketing ploy” for the University. He said that Zimmer’s recent commitment to free speech coincides with the University of Chicago’s attempt to gain national prominence

and claimed that the University was “dissing safe spaces and rolling out the red carpet for controversial speakers to boost its own brand.” Nwanevu further argued that this “image has also managed to overshadow changes afoot in both campus and academic life at the university,” citing the commitment to free expression as a distraction from issues like graduate student unionization and poor financial management by the University administration.

In an e-mail to The Maroon, Stone stated, “When we wrote The Chicago Principles, we were thinking specifically about the University of Chicago and its traditions. That’s why the first several paragraphs of the Statement refer specifically to our own history. Frankly, it never occurred to us that other colleges and universities might adopt our Statement as their own.”

Stone stated that he was pleased that other universities have decided to adopt the Principles. However, while he believes the Principles to be an appropriate approach to preserving free expression on college campuses, he also noted that they were far from a universal solution.

“The Chicago Principles are just that—a statement of principles,” Stone stated. “As such, they leave room for interpretation as institutions face conCONTINUED ON PG. 4

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crete issues over time. But I remain convinced that the principles are sound ones and that colleges and universities that embrace them will be all the better for doing so.”

The Chicago Principles have influenced policy on free expression both in the U.S. and internationally.

In Canada, Alberta’s postsecondary institutions will be required to adopt

the Chicago Principles. Earlier last year, the Alberta government ordered public colleges and universities to develop free speech policies adhering to the Chicago Principles and to implement such regulations by the start of 2019 or suffer budget cuts.

In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that prohibits colleges and universities that restrict free expression from receiving federal

funding. The White House has not provided details regarding how the executive order will be implemented, and to what extent funding would be affected.

However, administrators at many universities, including UChicago, have criticized the order on the grounds that institutions need the autonomy to craft their own philosophies around free expression.

In an e-mail to the University com-

munity in March, Zimmer wrote, “I believe that any action by the Executive Branch that interferes with the ability of higher education institutions to address this problem themselves is misguided and in fact sets a very problematic precedent.” He argued that federal engagement creates “the specter of less rather than more free expression,” deeming it “a grave error for the short and the long run.”

UCLA Law Professor Ann Carlson Talks Green New Deal, Clean Air Act of 1970

By PEYTON JEFFERSON Senior News Reporter UCLA Law School professor Ann Carlson discussed what proponents of the Green New Deal could learn from the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970 at the Law School on May 16.

The talk was organized by the UChicago Program on the Global Environment and the UChicago Student Advisory and Research Council.

In early February of 2019, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (DMA) introduced a resolution to support the creation of a Green New Deal.

A concrete plan for a Green New Deal has been around since 2006, the version supported by Ocasio-Cortez and Markey is an adaption of this original deal. Created by the Green New Deal Task Force, the deal was a product of the Green Party. It is meant to outline a set of sweeping measures to tackle climate change and be a framework for multiple bills that can be individually passed to address aspects of the plan.

The measures mentioned in the congressional Green New Deal resolution range from environmental policies that directly address climate change, such as clean energy development, to social policies meant to address the social changes caused by climate change

and actions that seek to curb its effects, such as a federal jobs guarantee.

These measures are meant to further a set of core goals aiming for a net-zero carbon emission by 10 years after the resolution passes. These goals include upgrading existing buildings with sustainable utilities, overhauling transportation systems for greater efficiency, and investing in infrastructure with climate goals in mind.

Carlson’s talk focused on the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, drawing parallels between criticism of the ambitious nature of both the Green New Deal’s and the Clean Air Act’s goals. The Clean Air Act was passed in response to severely deteriorating air quality and was unique in that it promoted public health above economic or technological limitations. Most legislation for environmental policy is oftentimes centered around economic motivations, but the Clean Air Act prioritized public health over possible economic repercussions from the amount of spending that it required from auto manufacturers.

The Clean Air Act gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to establish a set of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for harmful pollutants, as well as a deadline to achieve these standards by 1975. Opponents of the Clean Air Act,

including auto manufacturers and even some environmentalists, criticized the five-year timeline for the standards and the breadth of regulation, bringing lawsuits against the government. Similar to the criticisms of the Green New Deal, opponents also called the Act too extreme and said it asked for too much in too little time.

Despite those criticisms, however, the Clean Air Act managed to reach the standards that it set by 1981, even amid legal challenges. Additionally, it led to the development of unleaded fuel and a drastic reduction of lead levels in the atmosphere. Carlson, a self-described “huge fan” of the Clean Air Act, characterized the law as “the most successful environmental statute on the books.”

Carlson drew similarities between the criticisms of the Green New Deal and those of the Clean Air Act. She emphasized that even though groups and individuals dismiss the Green New Deal as unfeasible, it is important in the sense of “galvanizing” groups to push for innovative climate change policy. “Maybe ambition actually pushes us closer at least even if we don’t get there fully,” said Carlson.

After discussing similarities between the two environmental policies, Carlson also noted that the fight against air pollution in the ’70s and the current fight against climate change

differ in the time it takes to see significant environmental changes from the policies put in place.

“The time lag between when we put emissions up in the atmosphere and when the harms occur and when we try to solve the problem and how long it takes to actually have an effect is different,” Carlson said. She said that taking action against air pollution led to immediate public health results which action against climate change cannot deliver. However, she argued that the delay may be beneficial in some ways as “[it] also buys us some time with the climate change problem,” but that “there [is] a sense of urgency that in some respects [is] really warranted.”

When the audience asked her to speak to those who are skeptical of climate change and the need for enacting policies, Carlson suggested that climate action be viewed as a form of insurance.

“We protect against risk all the time. We buy insurance. We buy insurance because if something bad happens, we want to be covered…. So what if the deniers are wrong? [...] Don’t you want a little insurance against the fact that we might face catastrophe?”

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MAY 29, 2019

#Care Not Cops Holds Town Hall for UCPD Transparency

By DARCY KUANG and BRAD SUBRAMANIAN Staff Writers #CareNotCops, a joint campaign between UChicago United and Students Working Against Prisons (SWAP), organized a UCPD transparency town hall this Saturday. The town hall invited local activists and students to discuss their experience with the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) and thoughts on UCPD transparency. #CareNotCops began last spring as a response to the UCPD shooting of student Charles Thomas, who now goes by Soji, during a mental health episode. This year, UChicago United and SWAP have campaigned for UCPD transparency, asking the University to release UCPD’s budget and information about funds being allocated for Safety and Security.

The town hall’s speakers included Thomas, Damayanti Wallace, a representative from student-led advocacy group Good Kids Mad City (GKMC), and Page May from Washington Park–based organization Assata’s Daughters. The speakers also discussed Myles Frazier, an armed young man with bipolar disorder who was shot and killed by Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) officers on the 1300 block of East 61st Street last Wednesday.

Wallace began the event with a moment of silence for Frazier.

Wallace said that UCPD negatively affects local high students. “[GKMC] has a few members who go to Kenwood, and UCPD often harasses the students there. They will come out and start harassing young black men…asking them different questions when they are just getting out of school and going home,” Wallace said.

Wallace also addressed the need to reimagine safety methods in community spaces other than policing. “We need to move towards us being able to say, ‘Hey, we are here and we know how to hold ourselves accountable’ without this massive police force that does nothing but kill people,” Wallace said.

The town hall invited Thomas to speak via Skype. Thomas has been waiting for trial under house arrest since last April.

According to Thomas, Frazier’s death

and his own experience showed that police forces need more mental health training. “I heard that UCPD only received eight hours of mental health training,” Thomas said, “and crisis intervention teams [from CPD] were there with Myles Frazier, and we saw that it didn’t work.”

Thomas also echoed the sentiment that the University needs to redefine what safety means. “[A safe campus] means disarming UCPD…and putting that money towards underfunded mental health organizations,” Thomas said.

May spoke about the UCPD along with the University’s land grabs in Washington Park. “It is really hard to talk about the police department alone…. Police were developed for the purpose of protecting property, and that’s what UCPD does.”

“The University has bought all these land in Washington Park…and then the University adds UCPD foot patrol in the areas west of Cottage Grove, and the police are now there to protect the property they have.”

May said that UCPD works as what she called a visual representation of safety. “A lot of people think if we have more police and harsher sentences, then everything would be OK. But that’s not really what the UCPD is doing.”

The town hall then invited the audience to share what they think safety means in this community. Kelly Lo, a first-year undergraduate student, called on the University to stop reinforcing the stereotype of the dangerous South Side.

Lo said, “I think that so many people here feel unsafe because the University creates all these illusions about the community being very dangerous…because of the color of the people that live in it. I think that safety, to me, looks like if the University would stop creating these illusions.”

Apoorva Krishnan, a third-year student in the College and a member of #CareNotCops, noted that the University had refused to communicate with the organization thus far. “The only communication that we’ve actually heard from the administration was when they contacted us to decline our invitation to this town hall,” Krishnan said.

President Robert Zimmer declined #CareNotCops’s invitation to the event.

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House Minority Leader McCarthy Talks 2020 At IOP

By SOFIE LIE News Reporter House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who was elected in November last year to succeed Paul Ryan as the leader of the House Republicans, assessed the Republicans’ 2018 midterm losses and offered insight into 2020 at an Institute of Politics event last Friday.

McCarthy spoke with David Wasserman, house editor for The Cook Political Report, at the Logan Center for the Arts.

McCarthy attributed Republicans’ 40seat House loss in the 2018 midterms to retirements on the Republican side (41 members), the improved quality of Democratic candidates, and redistricting, particularly in Pennsylvania.

He also emphasized the oscillating nature of elections, saying that “the party in power would, on average, lose 30 seats.”

McCarthy asserted that although Republicans were successful in immigration and economic policy in the midterms, they saw major losses in healthcare in blocking protections for preexisting conditions, a topic that Democrats overwhelmingly focused on.

“Had we not lost [on healthcare], the outcome would have been different,” McCarthy said. “The way I look at it, there’s room for improvement.”

Despite the loss in 2018, McCarthy stressed the economic improvements he claims have been ushered in by President Donald Trump, who he has long supported, even as Trump has divided the Republican base.

“I look [at it] from a perspective that we didn’t do everything we wanted to do.

You’re [students] graduating in the best economy in 50 years,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy also addressed a student question regarding recent House Oversight Committee subpoenas of financial records, echoing Trump’s sentiment that the call for subpoenas made little legislative sense.

“What you should see is that this is not unusual; what’s unusual is the timing,” McCarthy said. “I think the question is whether they trying to relitigate something that’s already been done.”

McCarthy also discussed his position on abortion. In the wake of recently introduced state laws almost completely restricting abortion—which have prompted debate nationwide and on campus regarding the use of funds for abortion services—McCarthy reaffirmed his stance that abortion should be illegal with the exceptions of rape, incest, and preserving the life of the mother. In response to a question from a firstyear student that referenced last week’s controversial Student Government vote on abortion, McCarthy maintained that although his position diverges from the Alabama law in that it includes exceptions, taxpayer funds should not be allocated to abortion services.

“This is an issue that has divided a great deal of us, and people have strong opinions on both sides,” McCarthy said.

“If people have such strong opinions on both sides and you’re going to utilize taxpayer money for it, because you’re taking that from individuals, I think that’s a place that we should not spend.”

Wasserman also pressed McCarthy on his 2020 election predictions in an increasingly crowded Democratic field; McCarthy responded by focusing on the context of the election.

“You look at the time and place of where we are: That matters a lot,” he said.

McCarthy mentioned the loss of the first round of superdelegates and changing election rules as significant factors in informing election results. Referring to a September 2018 DNC vote that left superdelegates with substantially less voting power—which could in turn allow for greater support for non-establishment candidates like Bernie Sanders—McCarthy predicted the success of Sanders over current front-runner Joe Biden.

“It’s still early, and any advice someone gives you now—they’re totally wrong, because at any given moment someone could become the nominee,” McCarthy said. He noted that Trump had yet to announce his candidacy at this point in the race in 2015.

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No Spotless Record ART, FAITH, AND POLITICS CLASHED OVER MIDCENTURY STUDENT LIT REVIEW

By AVI WALDMAN Grey City Reporter

Seven years after the editor-in-chief of The Maroon was forced to resign over his communist sympathies, a controversy that Grey City examined in the first part of this series, another University of Chicago student publication emerged in the national spotlight over censorship. This time, the publication in question was Chicago Review, a literary journal with a smaller presence on campus. Unlike The Maroon, Review has relied on University funding to operate after the poor decisions of Chip Karmatz, editor-in-chief between 1953 and 1955, drove it into debt. Review has since been overseen by a board of faculty advisors that audits its finances.

In spite of its low profile at the University, people outside Hyde Park were paying attention to Review. The 1950s were coming to a close, and while much of America was overtaken by concern for the perverting influence of what it deemed smut, intellectual culture was beginning to celebrate art that pushed the boundaries of good taste. Under the leadership of its editor-in-chief, graduate student Irving Rosenthal, Review had just established a reputation in national literary circles as a platform for the avant-garde literature being produced by the cohort of writers popularly known as the Beats: people like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs.

Review was one of the few magazines that would publish their work. Besides the idiosyncratic syntax and convoluted structure, most Beat poetry and prose was littered with obscenity: lines like “Akron Lehman the Hart Crane Hero of Drunken Records came full in her cunt

spoffing & overflowing white enlightened seminal savior juice out of his canal-hole into her hungry river bed that made the old nannies gab and kiss that,” from Jack Kerouac’s Old Angel Midnight.

Rosenthal believed in the brilliance of Beat writing and the literary merit of its unflinching approach to controversial themes. In response to a Review editor who expressed reservations about publishing the Beats, he wrote, “Maybe we can get together and discuss the SF writing because I gather you see only vice there, and I think there’s a lot of virtue, aesthetic and moral.”

He was particularly enthralled by Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, excerpts of which were first published in Review.

Burroughs’s prose was sprinkled liberally with profanity, rendered graphic portraits of sex, and included an unapologetic depiction of homosexuality and violence. Naked Lunch likely violated the U.S. Postal Service’s obscenity laws, but, for the most part, Review’s audience of literary enthusiasts weren’t offended enough to complain.

Then Jack Mabley of the Chicago Daily News wrote a column condemning Review’s autumn issue as “printed filth.”

Mabley’s column was popular with Daily News readers, enough that he was printed on the front page. Suddenly, the entire readership of the Daily News was concerned with the moral degradation being perpetrated by Review and the Beat writers it championed. Mabley wrote, “[I] f anyone used these words orally in public, in a park, on a public street he would be arrested. If the obscenity in the magazine were read in a public performance as a literary presentation, the performers would be arrested and charged with indecency, in my opinion. Yet, in print,

Staff members of the Chicago Review, 1974. photo courtesy of the university of chicago photographic archives.

stamped ‘This is literary,’ they get away with it….”

The public response to Mabley’s editorial worried Chancellor Lawrence Kimpton. Kimpton was the successor to Robert Maynard Hutchins, who was still regarded as something of a legend by the student body. Kimpton could only be a disappointment in comparison to Hutchins, and was thus mistrusted by many students. Kimpton had also inherited the University’s shaky finances; the University had only begun operating without a deficit in 1954.

For Kimpton, the most concerning element of the controversy was the response from University donors and trustees, especially Catholic trustees who were sensitive to complaints from the Church. The reaction of the Catho-

lic Church was important to Kimpton for another reason too: City Council’s approval of the University’s new urban renewal plan, which would transform the Hyde Park–Kenwood area, depended on the swing votes of several Catholic aldermen.

Kimpton told the faculty advisers of Review that the winter issue had to be completely inoffensive and could contain none of the same writers. In fact, according to Rosenthal’s recollection, Dean of the Humanities Division Napier Wilt told him it could contain “nothing which would offend a 16-year-old girl.”

He argued that publishing too much Beat material excluded other schools of literature to Review’s detriment, an argument that Review editors did not find convincCONTINUED ON PG. 7

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ing. Kimpton told a student government committee that he had taken action to suppress the planned winter issue because it was “impossible and intolerable to run an indefinite number of issues devoted to one thing.”

Manuscripts intended for the winter issue (more Burroughs and Kerouac) began mysteriously vanishing from the printers and reappearing after having been looked over by the comptroller’s office. Rosenthal appealed to the faculty board and the dean of humanities without success. If the winter issue went ahead as planned, Review would be shut down.

Kimpton had one more demand as his plans to restrain the contents of the winter issue moved ahead: Rosenthal needed to be replaced. The faculty board, charged with carrying out his instructions, asked potential candidates about their opinion of Beat writers, searching for an editor-in-chief with less controversial taste. Finally, they found a staff member, the relatively inexperienced editor Hyung Woong Pak, willing to comply with their demand that the Beats be barred from Review. Meanwhile, each day Wilt relayed to Rosenthal more and more demands from the administration, culminating in the instruction that each manuscript be approved by Wilt before being sent to press, a practice that would continue for Review’s future issues.

Rosenthal and his circle of devoted editors stepped down, taking the winter issue manuscripts with them.

The former Review editors ended up starting their own magazine, Big Table, and published the blacklisted works. The exposure from the censorship scandal attracted more readers to Big Table, and ended up landing Burroughs his publishing contract for Naked Lunch. Their struggles to publish what was commonly seen as obscene material reflect the continuing concern in American society over the encroaching moral turpitude of profane literature—a concern that frequently resulted in censorship.

According to professor Ada Palmer, who studies censorship and the history of information control, obscenity is by far the most common motivation for censorship in everyday life—incidents

such as books being pulled from library shelves or banned from schools due to profanity, sexual depictions, or LGBTQ– friendly content. Most academic institutions tend not to be concerned about obscenity, since it’s generally accepted that people in a university space are mature enough to be consuming obscene material, and it’s assumed that material is being presented for its artistic value. However, because of their frequency, challenges to free expression on the charge of obscenity end up determining much of the case law on free speech.

“Even for somebody who isn’t interested in obscene material at all either recreationally or academically, it’s important to know what’s happening in obscenity case law,” Palmer says. “That’s setting the precedent that will then apply to political speech, that will apply to depictions of same-sex couples, trans material—all of these things are now being governed by obscenity-derived precedent.”

As an example of this precedent, Palmer noted one of the pieces from the exhibit on censorship she curated for the Neubauer Collegium. Palmer ordered a copy of Demon Beast Invasion: The Fallen, Volume II from First Aid Comics. Demon Beast contains graphic depictions of sex and violence; it was the subject of an early 2000s Texas obscenity trial after the clerk selling it was arrested, a case that illustrates one of the most common forms of information control in contemporary America. Palmer says that when buying the book she was struck both by how unworried the University of Chicago librarians were about displaying it, trusting in the academic merit of the exhibit to justify its presence, and how aware the First Aid Comics staff who sold the book to her were of their vulnerability to lawsuits.

“They had it behind the desk sealed in plastic with a piece of paper taped over the cover so you couldn’t even see the cover, very carefully making it absolutely clear so that no one could possibly walk into the store and make the claim that this was in some way accessible to children,” Palmer says. “For many people in America, censorship is a very abstract and distant battle. There are very few occupations in which you’re instead con-

scious that you’re in the battleground, and comic book[s] are one of them, pornography and pornographic film is one of them.”

Palmer says that in our current political moment, college campuses are the focus of another kind of free speech debate.

“Right now, university campuses are another [battleground] because there’s so much attention and anxiety, and [because] there are op-eds about this every week—about the efforts the universities are making to try to balance inclusivity and speech policies that protect inclusivity with freedom of study and policies that are going to protect free expression and free inquiry.”

Palmer identified two essentially different sources of the current panic over how to regulate speech on college campuses. One is the role of social media in changing the way we communicate, opening new and unmediated paths for information flow. According to Palmer, the concern over social media is the natural result of social norms scrambling to catch up to a technological transformation that displaces previous modes of communication.

“Every time one of these displacements happens, everyone is anxious, because now people’s political ideas are reshaped in a new way and the systems that were in place to make that move in some kind of predictable, monitorable manner aren’t there,” Palmer says. The radical availability of information can give rise to a similar kind of panic over moral corruption that led to censorship of Review in 1958.

Palmer identified the second source of tension in the free debate manifests in public discourse on subjects such as cultural appropriation and student protests of speakers with radical political views.

Palmer contends that these conflicts are a response to the increasing presence of students from marginalized groups on campus. Universities are being pushed to adjust their attitudes and behaviors in order to meet the needs of these students, whose unique vulnerabilities compel universities to reevaluate positions they had never previously needed to question.

“It’s another one of these cases where the fruits of victory [of the civil

rights movement] have created a new challenge,” Palmer says. “How to create a campus where groups who have been marginalized…can have a safe environment and be distracted as little as possible from studying is one of the new challenges that the concerns over politically correct speech and the calls for speech codes and safe spaces are really focusing on: how you make this community be a space that those people can feel safe.”

The University’s response to these challenges have been statements like the Chicago Principles, which articulate the University’s commitment to free expression. The Chicago Principles, which were produced by a 2014 commission chaired by law professor Geoffrey Stone, function as a declaration of values. They establish the ideal of open discourse, specifically rooted in the University’s history, that is meant to guide the administrators who will end up needing to resolve conflicts centered on free speech issues.

According to Palmer, documents like the Chicago Principles fall short because they are totally abstract. Without examples, any general statement can’t fully capture the nuances of the discussion surrounding free speech issues. While such manifestos may be useful theoretical frameworks, they don’t provide much guidance to policy-makers trying to address free speech controversies on campus. Open and respectful dialogue on sensitive subjects, in addition to increasing the supportive infrastructure available to marginalized communities, can help dissolve the tensions between free expression and inclusivity without establishing policies that could be used for purposes their makers didn’t intend.

“No policy that can restrict speech has ever not been exploited. And anything we make will be repurposed at a different point in time by people with different motives from our own,” Palmer said. “It might create far more toxic problems later when the power that that policy creates is in the hands of somebody that you can’t predict who it’s going to be, and you can’t predict how that policy’s going to be used…. Any tool we make that can censor speech will someday be in hands that aren’t ours.”

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MAY 29, 2019

8

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FOUND SIZE THRESHOLD FOR BLACK HOLES

By CALEB SUSSMAN Grey City Reporter

The University of Chicago is no stranger to breakthroughs in astronomy and astrophysics. Carl Sagan and Edwin Hubble are both alumni, and three out of NASA’s four Great Observatory telescopes are named after UChicago scholars: Edwin Hubble, Arthur Compton, and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar, for whom the Chandra X-ray Observatory is named, was one of the most important—yet relatively obscure—astrophysicists of the 20th century.

Born in eastern Punjab (in what is now Pakistan) in 1910, Chandrasekhar began university at the age of 14 before being ac-

cepted to Cambridge as part of a scholarship grant awarded by Her Royal Highness’s Government of India. After graduating, Chandrasekhar was offered a professorship at the Yerkes Observatory, which he initially declined. However, Chandrasekhar ultimately accepted the offer after being convinced by former University president Robert Maynard Hutchins.

Among his many discoveries, Chandrasekhar contributed immensely to the study of black holes and gravitational waves—even though the existence of both phenomena had only been theorized at the time. He also posited the Chandrasekhar limit, which is a calculation of the maximum mass attainable by a white dwarf star before it implodes on itself to

form a black hole or neutron star.

Chandrasekhar would serve as a member of the University of Chicago faculty for 58 years, and guided 45 astrophysics students through their doctoral studies.

Chandrasekhar was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics (along with William Fowler of the California Institute of Technology) for his work on stellar structure and evolution; however, since the award only recognized his earliest research, he saw it as a denigration of a lifetime’s achievement.

Upon his death, his wife Lalitha Chandrasekhar donated the winnings from his Nobel Prize in Physics to a fellowship annually awarded to an outstanding applicant to the astronomy graduate program at UChicago.

Pioneering astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. photo courtesy of the university of chicago archive

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MAY 29, 2019

9

VIEWPOINTS

Make Metra Work for the South Side

By AIDAN KAPLAN When I was first looking into the University of Chicago, I was immediately drawn to the city itself. Chicago is a city with so much to see, do, and explore, from visiting world-class exhibitions at the Art Institute downtown to walking through towering palms at the Garfield Park Conservatory, to eating at the city’s best vegan soul food at Majani in South Shore. But now that I’m here and actually trying to explore, I find myself frustrated every time I make plans. It’ll take how long to get there by public transit? Rideshare costs how much? As I check Uber or Lyft prices and CTA fares, there’s one option I rarely consider: Metra.

I’m not alone in my reluctance to ride the Metra. Although the Metra Electric line has numerous train stations covering a large portion of the South Side not served

by CTA rail, including three stations in Hyde Park, it has been losing riders and is considering closing some of its underused stations. It’s no mystery why—transit activists have identified key factors that hurt Metra Electric ridership: 1. Cost. A Metra Electric trip

from Hyde Park or South Shore to downtown costs $4.25, and from Pullman or Rosemoor to downtown costs $5.50, significantly more than a CTA fare. The price difference is even greater for UChicago undergraduates who receive Ventra U-Pass cards but not Metra passes.

2. Lack of CTA integration.

To transfer between Metra and CTA, you have to pay another full fare, making the public-transit trip much more expensive and often not much of a savings compared to a rideshare. You also can’t pay for Metra with your Ventra card, making it a hassle to buy a Metra ticket, particularly for UChicago students who only get access to a Ventra card. Riders with unlimited CTA passes must still pay full Metra fares.

3. Frequency and schedule.

Currently, the Metra’s schedule is designed for commuters who work nine-to-five. Frequency decreases during off-peak hours, making it much less convenient if you want to run errands during the day or do something fun in the evening or on the weekend.

Improving the Metra Electric has long been part of the conversation around transit on the South Side. The relatively incon-

venient public transit in this part of the city is both a contributing factor and a symptom of Chicago’s history of disinvestment in African-American communities.

Poor access to public transit perpetuates poverty. Now, the effort to bring better transit to the South Side—and with it improved access to jobs, amenities, and cultural centers—has made it to the floor of the Illinois House. HB 3834, introduced last month by Representative Marcus C. Evans, Jr., would make Metra Electric fares within Chicago equal to CTA fares and would allow riders to pay with their Ventra cards. It doesn’t fix all of the problems I’ve discussed, but passing this legislation would represent a significant step towards accessibility, efficiency, and equitable transport.

The Coalition for a Modern Metra Electric, which brings together several Chicago community organizations, is currently collecting signatures to show support for reforms that would make the Metra Electric an affordable and convenient option. As members of the UChicago community, we should support this effort by signing the petition, linked below, because it would make it easier to escape the campus bubble and ex-

suha chang

plore new parts of Chicago. As residents of the South Side, we should embrace this chance to promote

equitable public transit in a part of the city that desperately needs it.

The Responsibility of Power

By AFREEN AHMED Leaders of Color (LoC) is a civic engagement initiative housed at the Institute of Politics (IOP). Since its conception in 2014, we have been a student-led, student-serving organization that provides yearlong workshops to a cohort of over 30 students of color on campus. While our initial goal was to increase the access that students of

color have to leadership positions and public service initiatives, we’ve found ourselves exhausting more of our time countering the structures of power within the IOP than opening its doors to the students it claims to serve. This system of power has resulted in a series of actions and attitudes from IOP staff that create an environment that upholds white supremacy. It’s an environment that actively erases

marginalized voices, effectively shutting students of color out of the conversations and opportunities accessible through the IOP. The IOP’s interactions with LoC have demonstrated this exertion of power. Despite profiting significantly from the work of Leaders of Color, the IOP consistently under invests in its work.

The IOP advertises LoC’s leadership development programming to

its audiences and donors; it draws students of color from our cohort program to become IOP interns, Fellows Ambassadors, and advisory board members; and it applauds our diversity as an integral feature of the institution’s work. But this “tokenization” occurs with little actual investment in students of color. Despite being an IOP program, we received less than half our funding this year from the IOP

to meet our needs. We’ve found enthusiastic financial and social support from other organizations, such as the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, while we continue to encounter resistance from the very institution we are housed under.

For the four years that I’ve spent inside the IOP, I’ve seen CONTINUED ON PG. 10

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MAY 29, 2019

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“Despite profiting significantly from the work of Leaders of Color, the IOP consistently under invests in its work. ” CONTINUED FROM PG. 9

LoC uplift the voices of students of color in every way that has been asked of us. When we were told to make a list of influential people of color that the IOP could possibly invite, we hand-delivered a list of 200 names. When we were told time and again that controversial speakers would continue to be invited despite threatening the safety of students of color, we held a workshop to prepare our cohort to respond to structural power while protecting their own well-being.

But in asking us to do this work, the IOP has ignored its responsibility to reduce harm and instead asked us to teach marginalized students how to respond to that harm. The relationship I’ve spent years building at the IOP has not changed the approach of the institution nor the decisions being made at our expense. Power does not negotiate.

So now, we bring it to our community. Creating space for margin-

alized voices in our political institutions and civic spheres is a public concern; we are collectively better off when we invest in equity and justice and openness in discourse.

The openness in discourse we seek is one that is inclusive, that is informative, and that helps us grow; not one that protects and serves the interests of power. Offering private meetings and leadership positions to a few students of color is not a replacement for structural change. This letter is a call for accountability and for actual investment in students of color.

During my first year in the LoC cohort, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez spoke at an IOP event. Students and community members, many of whom were directly impacted by the violence Alvarez overlooked in her term as state’s attorney, attended the event and stood up to speak during the talk. They began by saying, “This kind of dialogue is not about

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growth. It is not about healing. It is about covering up conflict and avoiding accountability.” Without hearing what the protestors had to say, Alvarez walked out of the event and David Axelrod penned a letter condemning *how* the protestors spoke with no mention of *what* they spoke about. The way that the protestors exercised their speech, however, was a result of a power imbalance that doesn’t allow students of color to be heard in any other way. Despite the IOP’s insistence that the correct way to exercise free speech is for students to go to events that challenge their viewpoints and ask questions, the entire environment is set up to disadvantage students of color. Speakers are often political figures with state power behind their words and actions; thus, it is facetious to pretend that a Black or Brown student asking them a question would be an effective challenge of power. Even within the room, the speaker has the platform, the microphone, the right to ignore or refuse questions—and the student is often left with the effects of having had to listen to a person who advocates for institutional violence against them without being able to effectively challenge that rhetoric. If they ask a question, it requires them to assert the validity of their own existence in a way that is not demanded of white students; and whether their questions are ignored, denied, or answered, their situations after the speaker event remain the same. The power imbalance exhibited in the structure of these events prevents meaningful learning from taking place.

There have been a few times in my years at the IOP where I have been moved and inspired by the way events were conducted. This happened during the Fellow and speaker sessions of people like Wajeh Abuzarefah, Najla Ayoubi, Eboo Patel, Ai-jen Poo, and others. The speakers mentioned have this in common: They are voices that celebrate diversity and human life but aren’t often heard because

they aren’t backed by institutional power. To be a journalist from Gaza living under military occupation, or a female human rights advocate from Afghanistan; or a brown Muslim man growing up in post–9/11 America, or a woman of color organizing domestic workers, is to exist without structural power because of one’s identity. Giving speakers like these a platform at the IOP to amplify the work they do and the experiences they’ve had is to take a step toward righting that power imbalance, and these are the events that have changed the way I think about the world.

The responsibility of any institution with wealth and power is to create the conditions for a more ideal world. Conducting the IOP responsibly doesn’t mean denying people platforms because others don’t like their ideas; it just means recognizing that extending a platform to a speaker is an offering of power and the opportunity to promote a specific narrative, and that this offering must be given to people who contribute positively to society. To abdicate this responsibility and pretend like free speech is neutral erases the fact that every racist narrative that a powerful institution chooses to elevate can contribute to violence against minorities. Politics do not exist in a vacuum. When a space like the IOP welcomes politicians in charge of deporting, surveilling, incarcerating, or fueling violence against people of color, it cannot expect that people of color engage with the institution. Who the institution extends a platform to is an indication of whose voice it deems worthy of listening to.

What we are advocating for are invitations to speakers that represent a broad range of opinions and ideologies, but with a common respect for diversity in their speech *and* their political actions. And if, to maintain the IOP’s service to power, it chooses to continue inviting speakers who uphold institutional violence, at the very least it must lessen its resistance to

hearing the other side. If it invites the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it should extend an invite to an organization like the Justice for Muslims Collective that has spent years organizing against DHS violations of minority rights.

If it invites Alvarez, it should seek out voices from the Black Youth Project to talk about their work against her political actions. Only inviting the side of power makes it clear that there is no actual investment in education, dialogue, and challenging each other’s perspectives. Creating a higher standard for who is invited should be the expectation, but allowing those without structural power to provide alternative perspectives is the bare minimum.

The institution that houses Leaders of Color and benefits from its work is, ironically, the institution that we spend much of our time working against. Serving students of color while existing under an institution that elevates voices of violence against students of color means that we frequently find ourselves at a crossroads. We cannot continue to encourage our cohort’s involvement in the IOP while decrying the institution’s conduct. There must be a substantial restructuring of the IOP to work *with* students of color and not against them. There must be investment in Leaders of Color; along with a recognition that the labor that students of color are doing to make the IOP inclusive is labor that the IOP should be undertaking itself. And lastly, there must be organized channels for direct student input into programming.

If the structures of power at the IOP continue to prioritize power at the expense of students of color, it may see its civic engagement programs shift away from the institution. Marginalized students deserve to pursue public service in an environment that embodies the ideals of open discourse, growth, and service in a way that values the identities we bring to the table.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MAY 29, 2019

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Without Mental Health Resources, There is No Life of the Mind

By LIVIA MILLER There’s no universal experience with mental health, but I know what mine is. It’s an itch you can’t scratch, the world at a slight angle that doesn’t straighten out. It’s waking up crying, and it’s a fog that persists even on the brightest spring day.

Before college, I had the privilege of access to mental healthcare that gave me skills to work through pitfalls and panic, and it is not hyperbolic to say that I am capable of attending this school because of such resources. Even as my public high school lacked counseling, my family was able to find a psychologist, and then a psychiatrist as time passed. On campus, though, the stakes for mental well-being are higher than ever; often outside the family and living away from home for the first time, students are more vulnerable, and the influx of new challenges and experiences can be jarring. And yet, the healthcare that sustained me in high school doesn’t exist at UChicago.

As a first-year, I didn’t expect my initial interaction with campus mental health resources to come in the form of older students’ complaints.

They often described a void that student counseling failed to fill, and since the beginning of my time at UChicago this fall, I have heard again and again about people’s negative experiences with SCS; from monthslong wait times to being turned away from long-term resources like therapy as soon as immediate issues were resolved.

The most insidious anecdote I heard repeated was the fear of seeking counseling and being turned away, a fear of how a bad experience could jeopardize an already fragile well-being.

I am conscious of this ab-

sence on campus because of my own experiences and appreciation for psychiatric and psychological care, but also because of how I see my peers talk about their mental health. I look on with dismay as my friends conflate their punishing habits—caffeine and sleeplessness and stress and social isolation— with a work ethic, sinking into troubling spirals. Our school’s reputation for academic rigor and intellectual intensity is inspiring, but using academics as an excuse to brush real mental health concerns under the rug shouldn’t be acceptable at an institution of this caliber.

Whenever someone I love talks to me about their desperation, or fatigue, or anxiety, I want to be able to point them in the direction of what has saved me so many times; psychiatric guidance, a good therapist, a robust offering of ways for young people to take ownership of their mental health. But I can’t help my friends in that way, because those offerings are simply unavailable on campus.

The work that I can do, though, to build a more accessible campus, comes from my work with Fair Budget UChicago, a campaign within UChicago Student Action dedicated to making sure our school works for us. In the past months, FBU has been working to hold our administration accountable in their construction and staffing of a new Student Wellness Center.

The Student Counseling Service is understaffed, and counselors are overworked and in such demand that it’s clear more funding is necessary. While I have been able to access psychological assessment and communicate with professionals about the kind of care that would be helpful, students seeking resources on campus have no choice but to

endure long wait times with no say over who they receive counseling from. Part of the tradeoff that comes with the University Student Health Insurance Plan (USHIP) is that getting a referral from a University-affiliated professional is needed in order to pay for outside services using the insurance, effectively trapping students who rely on student health insurance in a defunct system while more privileged peers, with outside insurance or who can pay outof-pocket, are able to access alternative options.

At a school with an $8 billion endowment, the idea that there “isn’t enough money for something”—like a large enough staff that every student who seeks treatment is guaranteed speedy treatment—is obscene, particularly when measured up against the things that the University *does* have money for. The new Woodlawn dorm, for example, replacing Stony Island and continuing in the megadorm trajectory of Campus North, is being constructed with funds that could otherwise go towards meeting student needs.

Mental health isn’t always an exciting issue. It’s personal, individualized, and multifaceted in a way that physical health sometimes isn’t. And yet, at a school where students’ brains are a prized attribute, it is particularly galling that there are so few resources available to us when our brains need some tender love and care. The life of the mind is a life that relies on prioritized mental and emotional wellness. The joy of delving into an ancient text, or immersing oneself in a complicated problem set, is degraded by poor mental health. The quality of our experience at this institution is mediated by our ability to throw ourselves into the pleasure of learning—but that

pleasure doesn’t exist when the brain, the most powerful muscle in the body, is in survival mode alone.

In fact, it is the same things that make our school such an exciting place to learn and grow that can make it a dangerous place to ignore mental well-being. All students are vulnerable to mental illness, even and especially the hardest working and highest achieving students.

A high-stakes environment like our school is also a breeding ground for anxiety and the toxic coupling of self-worth and measurable performance.

Furthermore, it is vital to note the well documented connection between mental illness and certain identities, specifically marginalized identities.

According to the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH), reported rates of mental illness are higher for female-identifying people both as adolescents (13–18) and as adults (18 and above). The same statistics also cite multiracial individuals as being at a higher risk of developing mental illness. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, LGBTQ+ people are almost three times as likely as other individuals to report symptoms of mental illness. Which is to say: The impact of mental health falls along the lines of oppression—racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia—that we see manifested at every other level of society.

People who are already the most at risk with regard to violence and financial insecurity are also the most at risk for mental illness.

All of this does, of course, circle back to campus. Even within the halls of our ivy-clad buildings, the social hierarchies of the world creep in.

Not only do all students suffer when there is a lack of care for well-being, but the students

who suffer the most are the ones who are already at risk in our community. Students from marginalized backgrounds are less likely to have had access to mental health support in high school and earlier, as well as being less able to afford the outof-pocket cost to seek mental health care from off-campus practitioners.

Understanding the intersections of oppression with regard to accessing mental health care is necessary to understanding what is truly at stake in our administration’s disregard for student needs.

The students whose families aren’t donating large sums of money to the school, or related to trustees, are the ones who stand to lose the most in a university where student mental health needs don’t matter.

The dream of the liberal arts university is that it can be a laboratory for a better world, an experimental bubble in which the chaotic and often cruel realities of our systems of power do not need to reign supreme. Our administration could choose to make this campus into a model for a better society—and it still can.

Fair Budget UChicago is calling on our administrators to publicly commit to broadening the staff of the counseling center, including specialists trained in trauma-informed practice, and with specific areas of expertise, along with establishing points of communication between administrators and the student body. In addition, FBU demands improvements to emergency protocols, and that wait times are lowered to a maximum of two weeks for all care.

UChicago has the resources to meet student needs and the rhetoric to back up decisions.

Now all that’s missing is public commitment and action.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MAY 29, 2019

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ARTS Florence + The Machine and Its Not-So-Useless Magic

By JAD DASHAN Arts Reporter

Last Thursday, Chicago was graced by art-rock band Florence + the Machine for the second time in less than a year as part of the group’s High as Hope Tour. The concert was opened by Blood Orange and held outdoors at Huntington Bank Pavilion, as opposed to inside the United Center like the previous show. While differing from the first show in venue and featuring a few different songs, the performance did not veer from the band’s essential values of catharsis, collectivity, thankfulness, and the empowerment of women.

Arriving early onsite, I overheard several people admitting to their obliviousness to the opener, Blood Orange, expressing at best curiosity and at worst remiss. However, almost immediately after seizing the stage, lead singer, composer, and songwriter Devonté Hynes and his entourage proved themselves worth showing up early for.

Coalescing electronics, R & B, and gospel into a set teeming with energy and poetry, the ensemble performed hits like “Jewelry” and “Hope,” with Hynes shifting from piano to guitar as often and as quickly as Jason Arce alternated between bass clarinet, saxophone, and flute. Ian Isiah and Eva Tolkin may initially have played the roles of backup vocalists, but they acted nothing like it, jiving downstage with Hynes and serving chilling lead vocals as well. Inspired by Detroit-based gospel group the Clark Sisters, Isiah performed a penetrating rendition of “Holy Will.” Suffice it to say that, if there had been a lack of interest from the crowd initially, heads were now turned to the stage, phones up and recording the spectacle.

Later, during the headliner’s act, priestess of baroque pop Florence Welch explained that she and Hynes were longtime friends and collaborators—before either had achieved international fame, they had been in a band called Team Perfect which covered the whole of Green Day’s 1997 album, Nimrod. “Welcome to the Team Perfect reunion tour,” she joked.

Having Blood Orange open for the band set a noticeably different tone than having Perfume Genius open, as in October. The

two musicians share the same origins, but took two different paths which gave them disparate and yet complementary sounds.

There were two recently released additions to Florence and the Machine’s setlist. The first of these, “Moderation,” is an invigorating and defiant anthem that was put out as a B-side to 2018’s High as Hope.

With a similarly gospel-inspired sound to “Lover to Lover” off 2011’s Ceremonials, the song recalls a childhood experience of being told off in church for being too forward. The song takes the self-destructiveness of “Ship to Wreck”—the second single off of 2015’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (HBHBHB)—and strips it of the guilt. Performed back to back, the narrative transitioned from the questioning in “Did I build this ship to wreck?” to a relenting but incendiary “I’ve never made it with moderation.”

The second song added to the setlist was “Jenny of Oldstones,” which was commissioned for the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones. “This is dedicated to Arya Stark,” Welch prefaced before crooning the seemingly centuries-old ballad. Funnily enough, Welch has purportedly never watched the hit series.

Welch dominated the stage with aplomb appropriate for someone who had been performing live for more than a decade. Gone were her days of drunkenly crawling under the stage, climbing the set’s scaffolding in high heels, and pouncing straight into an ankle injury. Though barefoot, the vocalist glided with the grace of a gust of spring air and flings her limbs about as if in ritual dance. In fact, there is always something ritualistic about a Florence and the Machine concert: Spirits are invoked, demons are exorcised, and something powerful and visceral emerges in their place. In this venue in particular, only a few streetlights between you and the stars, with dragonflies soaring and the lip of the horizon one kiss away from taking you forever, something magical manifested. When performed live, everything in Welch’s book of purportedly Useless Magic published in July 2018—all the lyrics and poetry, the prophecies and spells, the paintings and prayers—come to life.

That said, it was easy to lose oneself in the fantasy of it all, be it in the swell-

Florence + the Machine advocate for hope, togetherness, and women’s rights at the artrock band’s second Chicago concert in the High as Hope Tour. jad dahshan ing string section on “Queen of Peace” or in the contagious choler of “What Kind of Man.” Especially at the October show, comfortably confined by the walls of the United Center, fans were quick to be captured by the Dionysian reverie of Welch’s mystic lyricism and the Machine’s ethereal instrumentation. Yet, the poet herself was quick to ground the experience in reality. At the previous concert, which was held right around the midterm elections, she urged attendees to vote, insisting that “hope is an action”—a speech she gave in various cities on the North American leg of the tour.

Last Thursday, she alluded to the wave of abortion bans threatening women’s rights in America, pleading viewers who were thinking of buying merchandise after the show to instead donate their money to the American Civil Liberties Union, a nationwide organization that works to change policy and legislation that infringe upon people’s constitutional rights.

“And I have to say,” Welch added while introducing the song “Patricia,” “and I feel this so deeply and in the core of my being that, American women, you deserve better!” The track, from High as Hope, takes its title from punk poet laureate Patti Smith, to whom it was dedicated. “Are you a real man?” sang Welch, casting a malediction against toxic masculinity, “Well, how’s that

working out for you, honey? Do you feel loved?” Despite the mood change caused by the following few songs, including the jovial 10-year-old “Dog Days Are Over,” the trope was revisited in the brassy “100 Years,” in which the “women raged as old men fumbled and cried.” Indeed, after having drawn from certain masculine ideals musically and aesthetically during the HBHBHB era, Welch turned more sincerely inward in High as Hope, finding more power in her femininity. She shared that power with her fans—and they shared it back.

Welch also underscored togetherness as crucial to the experience. “Are we all connected?” she yelled at one point, after asking audience members to join hands. “We’re trying to have a collective experience,” she chirped after demanding that people put away their phones. As per tradition, she also asked everyone to “embrace each other! Tell each other that you love each other!”

Wrapping the show up with “Shake It Out,” another Ceremonials hit, the show was cathartic to say the least. “I transcended,” one concertgoer confided. The group proves time and time again that, despite all the evil and anxiety and adversity in the world, love permeates and conquers “on some cosmic level,” and it’s refreshing to feel, even if only for a few hours, that we are all, as Welch said, one.

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Activists Discuss Mass Incarceration Crisis at Center for Race, Politics, and Culture

By ADRIAN RUCKER Arts Reporter

Content Warning: Sexual and reproductive violence, physical abuse, incarceration What is the role of artists and writers in contemporary social justice? The question was central to “Literature for Justice,” a conversation hosted by the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, in collaboration with the Human Rights Lab at the Pozen Center, the School of Social Service Administration, and the National Book Foundation. With such a dizzying array of sponsors, it would have been easy for the talk to be unfocused, delivering platitudes and buzzwords like “criminal justice reform,” while ultimately saying little of substance. Instead, author-activists James Kilgore and Robin Levi, expertly moderated by Sergio De La Pava, engaged in meaningful and productive discourse regarding the nature of our mass incarceration crisis, its underlying intentionality, and how it can be disrupted.

Kilgore’s book, Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time, emphasizes the historical circumstances and ideological justifications for increasing the prison population seven times over since the 1970s, even in the face of significant decreases in violent crime during the same period. In a passionate speech, Kilgore defined mass incarceration not solely by the number of

people in prison, but also by an ideology that solves social problems through punishment. He points to the rise of extreme individualist mindsets and the precipitation of global capitalism’s influence in detaching us from the problems we create. The University of Chicago did not escape his sights either, as his criticism of the University’s relationship with its surrounding community was met with raucous applause from the audience. His current activism revolves around instituting parole in Illinois, a system which currently does not exist, and the issue of electronic monitoring of inmates after sentences have been served, which makes reacclimating back into mainstream society all the more difficult.

Levi (and fellow activist Ayelet Waldman)’s anthology project, Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons, takes a different approach. Compiling the tales of 13 individuals in women’s prisons, Levi’s work acts not only to make injustice visible, but to tell the full stories of those who are incarcerated, along with those of their families. Throughout the book, one finds instances of childhood sexual assault, unconscious and non-consensual medical operations carried out on women’s bodies by sinister prison doctors, and physical abuse. But, the collection is underpinned by the sense of strength and support those in prison have for one another. These stories do not serve merely as disaster porn, designed to make the upper class feel like

they have a finger on the pulse of America’s injustices. Rather, the book has the remarkable ability to grant an authentic voice to our society’s most disenfranchised, to exhibit the intense interpersonal bonds they create with each other, and to connect their issues to a broader struggle for justice.

Both speakers pointed to the need to “contextualize, humanize, and render legible” the complex network of forces that serves to maintain oppression. The lived experiences of those who have gone through the carceral system exist, whether or not they are placed in the public eye, and making those experiences widely known is essential. But sharing stories is only the first part of the speakers’ project: The second part is making available the analytical tools needed to unpack the systems that perpetuate injustice. In order to resist those who benefit from incarceration, they say we need a broad abolitionist social movement.

Both speakers spoke favorably of prison abolition, the idea that punitive incarceration is morally wrong and fails to serve the needs of both incarcerated individuals’ relational spheres and of society at large. The goal of their conception of the movement is not to unleash all prisoners into society with no regard for the consequences. Rather, their immediate goal is to assert the fundamental humanity of “low-hanging fruit”: victims of the war on drugs and criminalized poverty, the mentally ill, and those who commit crimes of survival. And, once we af-

firm their freedom, we can evaluate how we treat more serious offenses. They argue that this cannot happen without transforming how we think about justice and creating a functioning system of social support that decreases the desperation and alienation that leads to criminal activity.

Towards the end of the conversation, one audience member asked about how alternatives to incarceration would deal with those conceivably beyond criminal maliciousness, citing the senseless violence carried out by Dylann Roof, Charles Manson, and John Wayne Gacy. In an answer that concisely encapsulated the goals of many involved in abolitionist movements, Levi replied, “I’d throw a party the size of a wedding if we were at the point where I had to worry about what to do with John Wayne Gacy.”

Circling back to the intersection between literature and justice, seemingly disparate discussions about the creation of a more equitable society coalesced into a poignant central theme: literature is crucial because it allows us to rethink false narratives about the past and gives us a means by which we can imagine the future. This future is one in which we craft our social institutions out of empathy and solidarity, where oppressive systems are dismantled, and where freedom is more than just an abstract ideal.

Kissin’s Ferocity and Uchida’s Velocity Charm the CSO

By ALINA KIM Arts Reporter

Last Thursday, pianist Mitsuko Uchida casually entered the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) stage, dressed in a flowy semi-transparent top and holding conductor Riccardo Muti’s hand. With a small smile, she bowed deeply before adjusting her piano bench and sitting down.

She then ran her fingers through her hair, leaned back, and watched the orchestra perform Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro.

Just three days later, pianist Evgeny Kissin graced the same stage, buttoning his suit and shyly giving a small bow to his audience before settling down on the piano, scooching forward, and positioning his fingers on the keyboard.

Just from their entrances alone, the pianists reflect different modes of performance style: Uchida’s experience from decades upon decades of performance reveal her casualness and relaxed demeanor, and she greets and performs as if the piano were an old friend. In Uchida’s interpretation of Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 20

in D minor, K. 466,” the dark orchestral feel sang conversationally with her crystalline melodies. Exuding strength even in the lightest stroke of the keys, Uchida managed to fuse her teasing yet warm timbre with the demanding velocity of the allegretto tempo as set up by Muti. And yet, her legato phrasing and poetic airiness captivated the audience the most. Her ability to bring simplicity into the extravagance of Mozart’s concertos proves that she is still one of the leading Mozarteans to this day, despite her age. In her relentless, yet nuanced conclusion to the cadenza, her

poised, emphatic technique was matched with the jaunty harmony from the accompanying orchestra. Although her playing slightly stiffened at one point and sounded a tiny bit forced in the driving energy of the piece, Uchida never failed to conjure that brilliance and love for spirited creativity that defines her leaps, chromatics, and (sometimes improvised!) drawn-out rallentandos; her love for the piano is truly demonstrated by her breezy yet focused intensity. She only played one piece for the night, but it was a bravo performance CONTINUED ON PG. 14

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Kissin’s playing was “united by an energy teeming with grandiosity.”

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nonetheless that blended perfectly with the CSO’s fiery performance of Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite” after intermission.

That being said, Uchida always ensures that every note is in its place, fleshed out to truly enrich the graceful amusement in Mozart pieces—a characteristic that I find extremely formidable between her and Kissin, despite their opposing styles.

Kissin, a former child prodigy, has mellowed out a bit from his earlier performances with a more matured sound, yet still retains his mastery over dynamics and speed, as shown by his performances of Chopin’s Nocturnes, Schumann’s “Sonata No. 3 in F minor,” a Debussy collection, and Scriabin’s “Sonata No. 4 in F# Major.” Known for his vivacity and exuberant gesticulations, Kissin strikes his keys with such intensity that his dynamics are jarringly contrasting, his piano a whisper compared to the moments of interpretation marked with piu forte. An audience favorite was his Debussy selection. His “Hills of Ana Capri” was particularly outstanding, his leggiero fluidity wonderfully cut by a sforzando cadence. His fingers glided over the keys with such glittering

timbre that it mimicked the flow of sparkling streams. Even across his pieces, he demonstrated his versatility with tonal difference: the peaceful, andante motion of “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair” possessed a resting serenity with delicate and even vulnerable evocations, while “Fireworks” was punchy and upbeat, with a gradual crescendo concluding with a flourishing glissando, only to return to the pianissimo staccatos that smoothly transitioned from one to the next. Ornamentation is Kissin’s specialty, and, while he peppered in quite a few, he never overdid it, in an astoundingly playful, yet serious performance.

Even as Kissin switched back and forth between sharp articulations to lulled piano to forte con fugo, his pieces were all united by an energy teeming with grandiosity. His dizzying speed, sweeping bass chords, and stormy jumps, blended with silken trills, meditative progressions, and poetic lyricism, carried even beyond the program into not his one, not two, but four encores. Schumann’s “Traumeri,” a part of Debussy’s “Children’s Corner” suite, and an excerpt from Chopin’s “Grande Valse Brillante” left the audience with an eruptive explosion of applause. However, the

lasting impression of his encores was his own composition, which he called “Dodecaphonic Tango,” a boisterous, almost giocoso piece reminiscent of his interpretation of the prestissimo volando movement of the Scriabin piece. Even in his works, his love of and tendency to simply bang on the piano shines, a booming set of all musical

glory that the likes of Tchaikovsky would have appreciated.

Uchida and Kissin are both legends in the world of classical music, having demonstrated their flawless articulation and clarity. To say they have awed the Symphony Center is an understatement— they simply bedazzled.

Mitsuko Uchida graced the CSO with her renditions of Mozart, with conductor Riccardo Muti and the orchestra accompanying. courtesy of todd rosenberg

To Redefine, to Relive, to Remember

By VERONICA KARLIN Arts Reporter

Each student brought their own story to “RE:”—an idea dynamic enough to complement the individuality and creativity of each member. courtesy of the arts collective

This spring, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality opened its doors to host the first ever Arts Collective show.

At the beginning of the year, filmmaker and postdoctoral scholar Chase Joynt and doctoral candidate Katie Hendricks decided to pool their resources and expertise to start an experimental art space for undergraduate and graduate students across Chicago. However, Joynt and Hendricks acted as supportive mentors rather than as leaders, since Arts Collective was envisioned as a collaborative, non-hierarchical opportunity to help fund and encourage the creation of art projects.

On opening day, guests had the opportunity to both look at the work and meet the talented artists behind the thought-provoking mixed-media pieces.

The students each brought their own sto-

ry to the prompt “RE:”­—an idea that was fluid and dynamic enough to complement the individuality and creativity of each member.

Siri Lee, a fourth-year undergraduate at the College, used the idea to create “ZAO: A History of Chinese Discourse Through Famine and Revolution.” Her display, which consists of five prints and four books, represents modern Chinese history through the lens of “food-culture language.” Her vivid prints cross both media and content, as she seamlessly weaves together archival graphics and recipes to demonstrate the fundamental yet often-overlooked role food plays in society.

Natalie Lobach, a first-year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, took the opportunity to fund a project they had been eager to actualize since last fall, entitled “The Wax House.” Their familiarly eerie single-family home made CONTINUED ON PG. 15

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“The students each brought their own story to the prompt ‘RE:’”­ CONTINUED FROM PG. 14

entirely of wax explores “the regulatory ideal of the nuclear family and gender roles.” The house appears on a pedestal along with an accompanying documentary that presents various interviews Lobach held with queer people about their experience of living in this “regulatory structure.” The edifice not only puts the “ephemerality” of the nuclear family on display, but offers alternative structures

more conducive to a less gender-binary and heteronormative society.

Evelyn Burd, a second-year at the College, presents an oversized comic strip, depicting a humorous yet nostalgic look into her relationship with her father. “Re: Member” sensitively tells an intimate and personal story of love and growing up, inviting the viewers into this moment while encouraging them to bring in their own experiences. Burd joined the Arts Col-

lective in order to “find a community to create and motivate [herself] to create,” as she found that it was difficult to get involved in creative communities on campus as a non–visual arts major.

Kate Howell, a fellow second-year at the College, created an arrangement of posters that features both portraits and introspective yet inspiring words that come together to create a feeling of both strength and community. Viewers can be

welcomed into this space with her pieces that highlight strong women, especially ones from the Chicago community.

The Arts Collective gallery celebrates the immense talent of each individual artist while organically bringing the works together to create a cohesive and exciting space. The art will be on view at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality until the end of the spring term.

The Wind Blew Me Away But Aminé and Co. Reeled Me Back In

By ALINA KIM Arts Reporter

You know, the day started off nice. It was 79 degrees, sun was out, wind was but a gentle breeze. We pied my RA in the face, were flung off the bull after seven seconds, and got a piece of frozen custard or two at the carnival. But (thanks Weather Gods) we had to flee in our flip flops back across Midway for sanctuary against that rainstorm. Really appreciated that—truly.

It’s upsetting that the rain pushed everything back, but I guess I still felt the hype when Hutch started to tremble from the bass booming pre-concert in the Courtyard. (Huge shout-out to MAB for powering through that weather nonsense and still managing to put on a show outside.) An odd start to Summer Breeze this year, and therefore, I present an odd article to accompany it. (Summer Breeze tradition, I guess.)

Before the smell of weed could fully permeate the air—heck, before I even reached the Courtyard—Allie X was already performing. I’m not going to lie: her musical versatility was impressive, especially for a soprano. She transitioned smoothly from chest to head voice, her warm lower octaves making way for her resonant high-register belts. And despite the small audience that was still trickling in, she rocked the stage, whipping her hair hard enough to knock her sunglasses off her face, jamming out on her keyboard to her synth-pop music, or just waving to UChicago students close to the stage.

Performing her hits “Bitch” and “Sunflower,” she looked like she was having a blast, even if it meant singing to a crowd

of no more than perhaps 100 people.

“You guys are the most enthusiastic audience I’ve ever had who don’t know my songs!” the singer-songwriter joked in a humorously deadpan voice, to the cheers and drunken hoots from students who had just staggered in from darties.

Due to time constraints, Allie X was unceremoniously forced to leave the stage halfway through her run, after some technical difficulties with her synth and a meager total of one track from her latest album, Super Sunset (2018). Nonetheless, she crooned out her airy, romantic “Science” with unwavering, sultry confidence and precise vocal control while striking her keyboard, reflecting her talent in lyricism, before remarking, “Sorry, they’re kicking me off stage now. Bye, guys.”

No, Allie. We’re sorry for the disastrous weather, and we’re really sorry that we didn’t get the timing right down to a science in the way we would have loved.

But thank you for your wonderful sound that offered something different from generic pop—your talent is undeniable, and you deserve a bigger audience and less shitty rainstorms.

Becky G performed next in her first campus performance ever. Her energy and shattering stage presence immediately captivated the exponentially growing audience, with smash hits like “Mayores” triggering a call-and-response between her and the audience (even if the majority of us couldn’t reach the highest register of her vocal range), and “Cuando Te Besé” getting the crowd swaying, dancing, and clapping along. With her relentless brilliance, bubbly personality, and mischievous smile, she twerked

during her hit “Booty” and playfully twirled with her backup dancers for “Sin Pijama.” Her delicate, nasally, yet firm voice matched marvelously with her reggaeton/Latin music, and her dancing amplified the vivacity and spirit of her set. Midway through, she briefly left the stage, shining the spotlight on her four dancers. Freestyling to songs like “Thotiana” and “Mo Bamba,” the dancers riled up the crowd to wild levels as they spun and strutted across the stage, just in time for Becky to return with “Pienso en Ti.” In strictly my opinion, she was the star of the night, riveting her audience with her sweet vocal timbre, upbeat melodies, and catchy rhythm—although many of us do not speak Spanish, Becky G nailed her performance with a fiery momentum from which her charisma, exultation, and charm radiated, and we felt that with matching vigor. So, props to you, Becky G, for being the musical powerhouse that you are. Keep doing what you do.

Headliner Aminé burst out onto the stage just as the sun set on Hutch Courtyard, spitting line after line of rhymes, and some fans screamed in adoration as he greeted them with a sheepish smile.

Blasting bass-heavy renditions of hits “REEL IT IN,” “BLACKJACK,” “WHY?,” and “REDMERCEDES,” Aminé poured out indefatigable enthusiasm…which is fantastic and adrenalizing on its own, but slightly flustering when his audience couldn’t match that wavelength. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t know all his lyrics, or the acoustics weren’t exactly the greatest, or people were just flat-out exhausted and running on zero fuel at this point—but some songs simply just fell flat

because we couldn’t reciprocate Aminé’s exhilaration. (That seems to be a motif at this Summer Breeze. Sorry, Aminé.) He even called out a student in the crowd for knowing only “some of the lyrics and just standing there, lookin’ real bored,” later joking, “You guys are college kids, right?

So y’all are intelligent unlike Shawty over there.”

Nevertheless, Aminé gained the loudest cheers of the night with his soft mumbling in “Caroline,” only rivaled by the crowd roars for “Spice Girl.” For comical effect, he even threw in a small sample of “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls in the latter song, which earned peals of laughter, spontaneous dancing, and rallying clamor. Overall, you fucking nailed it, Aminé. For an audience that didn’t widely recognize your name, you captivated, you conquered, and you gained at least one new fan (but probably more).

Summer Breeze came with its ups and downs, as all concerts do. But past that dumpster fire garbage of an unpredicted thunderstorm, the shy and semi-responsive audience, and increasing fatigue, the three artists brought with them a fun and electrifying show. Sure, there’s a lot that could have been improved, but to hell with that thought. MAB pulled off a successful night, and I’m grateful to have seen the diverse musical culture that radiated from the stage.

P.S. To the girl who stood right in front of me, screaming every single damn lyric from every single damn Aminé track before yelling “OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH”—major respect to you.

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SPORTS From Speedy Brit to All-American Athlete: Mary Martin

By THOMAS GORDON Sports Reporter

Hard worker, competitor, leader. These are just some of the words that are brought up in conversation from teammates about Mary Martin, a third-year sprinter on UChicago’s women’s track and field team. In her time at UChicago, Martin has strived to perform her best on and off the track. She has broken multiple school records as a member of relay teams and earned a UAA All-Academic Team place. Martin’s success derives from the methodical and positive attitude she takes when approaching life.

Martin explained, “Hard work is also smart work. You need to work on the thing that will give you the most improvement.”

Born and raised in England, Martin came across the pond to pursue her academic and athletic career at UChicago. She attended Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls and competed there. Since her high school days, Martin has excelled as both an individual and team scorer for the women’s track and field team. Her team and coaches laud her positive attitude and willingness to put the team before herself.

Martin was born with track in her blood. She explained, “Track is a Martin family thing. My dad was a hurdler, my mum was a jumper and javelin thrower, my sister was a pole vaulter, my uncle was a sprinter, my grandfather was a high jumper, and apparently an ancestor of mine went to the 1912 Olympics for some jumping event.” It does not seem likely there was ever a choice in what Mary would excel at when she did her first 400-meter “at about 13 months with a toddle truck and my mum had to nudge me around the bends because I hadn’t worked

out how to turn yet.” She has since figured out how to work the bends of a track and is pretty good at it.

Track has defined Martin’s life in many ways and has taught her valuable lessons throughout her time as a tracklete. One of the biggest lessons she learned was the value of hard work and how to be efficient with it. This aided her with school, where once it got tougher, she already knew that she just had to work harder at it. This efficiency of her work was vital for Martin to get to where she is today: “I knew from track that working hard is not about how many hours you put in, it’s how the hours you put in are used. There is no point working on the part of the long jump that you’ve mastered or doing the maths questions you already know how to do. You aren’t going to jump further or do better on the test by working on what you can already do.”

Her style of work has inspired teammates as well to continually improve as they all push one another to be the best they can be.

Ted Falkenhayn, a second-year jumper, stated, “Mary is a great competitor and teammate who always pushes people to be better,” while close friend and teammate third-year Laura Darcey raved about her enthusiasm on and off the track. She has figured out how to get the best out of herself as a competitor while motivating her teammates to do the exact same.

Track has taught Martin how to win and how to lose. For any athlete, learning how to move on from defeat is vital to their career and mental well-being. Martin’s attitude to losing helps to explain how she got to where she is today: “Losing is part of life, and, in my opinion, is nothing more than a learning tool.” The ability to learn from failure is pivotal in life—Martin states about past ex-

periences, “I have lost many races and bombed a few tests here and there. I feel sad for a hot sec, perhaps a mini-cry, analyze what went wrong and then learn from my mistakes. Losing is not an excuse to beat yourself up or dwell on your failings as a person.” With a sport as trying as track on top of UChicago academics, this mindset is extremely useful for Martin, and she feels that people cannot be afraid of failing. “There is a real culture at UChicago of being afraid to lose and fail, but I have learned more from getting questions wrong or from poor executions of jumps or races than I have from breezing through competitions or acing a test.”

Martin’s fantastic season ended with her helping to set a new school record in the 4x400 relay at the NCAA Division III Outdoor Track National Championships. Her relay finished in third place. This amazing result earned the speedy Brit the title of All-American athlete. Martin discussed the importance of acting graciously after a positive result instead of gloating: “Your parents and grandparents would probably love to hear about when things go well—tell them instead.”

Martin has competed in races since her youth. martin

courtesy of mary