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BOOTH STUDENTS COMMENT ON SWITCH TO REMOTE LEARNING

NOVEMBER 11, 2020 SEVENTH WEEK VOL. 133, ISSUE 8

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The Reviews Are in, What Is Woodlawn Commons Really Like?

By JIWON LEE & EMELINE WRIGHT News Contributors Wood law n Resident ia l Commons, the University ’s latest undergraduate housing development, opened in socially distanced conditions in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. First-years living in Woodlawn cite the dorm’s size, dining hall, and new facilities as positives—and its remote location, poor construction choices, and lack of house culture as negatives.

Sam Reynolds, a first-year living in Gallo House, mentions that the construction of the rooms themselves has led to some issues—especially given the large amount of time which is currently spent indoors. “The walls are thin.

I can oftentimes hear my neighbors on their Zoom calls, so sometimes it’s a little bit weird,” Reynolds said.

Beyond construction, the bare aesthetic of the rooms is a common complaint. Individual dorm rooms feature unfinished concrete ceilings and stark white drywall. “The

First-Years Find Their Place Amid the Pandemic

By MICHAEL MCCLURE News Reporter When Anna Katz received her letter of acceptance to the University of Chicago in December 2019, the term COVID-19 did not exist.

“I definitely was thinking ‘Oh, I’ll be on campus, things will be normal’ when I first got in,” she said.

But those expectations of life as a first year have since been shattered as the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the University operates. While students of all class years have been allowed to return to campus, the majority of traditional

CAT WIMMER

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A New Space for Discourse, Chicago Thinker Brings Conservative Voices to Campus

By ADYANT KANAKAMEDALA

Deputy News Editor

HAN JIANG

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VIEWPOINTS: Columnist Matt Pinna Argues #CareNotCops Approach to Abolition is Juvenile PAGE 7

This past summer, third-years Audrey Unverferth and Evita Duffy founded the Chicago Thinker, a student newspaper publishing news and opinions from conservative and libertarian points of view. The paper’s purpose is “to defend conservative and libertarian perspectives in a community that is increasingly

ARTS: Jeff Orlowski’s 2020 Netflix Documentary The Social Dilemma Discusses the Psychology of Social Media

intolerant of such voices,” according to The Thinker’s mission statement.

Unverferth, who serves as both editor-in-chief and publisher, and Duffy, the paper’s managing editor, hope that the Thinker provides a platform for conservative and libertarian students to express their ideas to the University of Chicago community. “I think it’s necessary to have a platform for conservatives CONTINUED ON PG. 6

SPORTS: Interim Athletic Director Rosalie Rescsh Enters 50th Year at UChicago

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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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Chicagoans Rally Downtown to “Defend the Election”

By AVI WALDMAN AND LAURA GERSONY News Reporters Hundreds of Chicagoans gathered downtown Wednesday evening in a “Rally to Defend the Election,” as President Donald Trump’s campaign laid the groundwork to contest election outcomes in several key swing states.

UChicago students, including second-year Alexis Florence and fourth-year Beth Awano, joined a coalition of more than 40 activist groups in organizing the event.

Awano, who helped to organize the rally as a member of the Sunrise Movement’s Chicago chapter, said that the groups started planning the rally in response to the President’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. Their urgency only increased after the President’s election night remarks, which Awano described as “terrifying.”

“Today was about showing solidarity in opposition to the destruction of our democracy. We feel pretty confident that Biden is going to win, but it’s so important to hold strong, and count every vote,” she said.

March attendee and recent UChicago graduate Antonia Stefanescu told The maroon that she wouldn’t be satisfied with a Biden win, since “it suggests just the tiniest first steps” toward the progressive agenda she supports. Still, she attended the rally out of concern for American democracy in the short term.

“Democracy just feels really on edge,” Stefanescu said. “I feel like the only tangible thing I can do right now is be out here with other people…to try to protect the vote.”

The demonstration comes the day after Trump claimed to have “already won

the election,” despite trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in both the electoral college count and the popular vote as of Wednesday evening. The Trump campaign also announced on Wednesday that it filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the vote count in the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, with similar efforts underway in Nevada and Georgia.

Mask-clad attendees marched from Daley Plaza to Trump Tower, carrying signs that bore slogans like “STOP TRUMP’S RACIST VOTER SUPPRESSION” and “COUNT EVERY VOTE.” During the march, protestors sang expletive-laden chants expressing disapproval of both major party presidential candidates, also chanting “defund the CPD [Chicago Police Department],” and “CPAC/fight back”—a nod to the proposed Chicago Police Accountability Council, from which Mayor Lori Lightfoot has withdrawn her support.

Police presence in the area was heightened for the duration of the protest, though organizers said there were no violent interactions between police officers and marchers.

After the official march dispersed, a group of youth organizers spontaneously held a separate second march, focusing their attention on the lines of CPD officers surrounding the marchers and chanting, “Who do you serve, who do you protect?”

During the second march, tensions between police and protesters came to a head in a series of standoffs at Daley Plaza and several nearby intersections as protestors asked several unmasked officers to put on masks and police prevented marchers from crossing the bridge near Trump Tower. Despite a heavy police presence and warnings from officers that “whoever shoved a cop would go to

A protestor holds a sign denouncing both Biden and Trump. laura gersony jail,” the protest concluded without arrests.

Awano said that regardless of the election’s outcome, Sunrise and other activist groups’ work is not done, noting Biden’s opposition to the Green New Deal.

“Whatever happens, we’re going to be on the street, continuing to fight for what Sunrise believes in,” she said. “The fight is not over once the election is over.”

Booth Community Members Comment on Remote Switch

By ANUSHKA HARVE News Contributor On October 24, members of the Booth School of Business community awoke to an email from Dean Madhav Rajan informing them that their school would be moving to a fully remote format for two weeks. The cause, Rajan wrote, was because of a large off-campus gathering among M.B.A students that resulted in

multiple positive tests for COVID-19.

Among these recipients was M.B.A candidate Nick Jaroszewicz. The email found him as he was preparing for his 8:30 a.m. class. “I think I went back to bed for 10 minutes, like ‘Okay, well, I don’t have to walk over Gleacher,’” Nick said.

Prior to the school’s temporary shift to virtual instruction, Booth was offering a limited number of its classes in-person

using a “dual modality” format, meaning professors and 20-25 students go physically to a lecture hall each time, but the rest of the class’s 65-70 students join via Zoom. Professors utilize audiovisual (AV) equipment to film themselves teaching synchronously for the Zoom students. Students are placed on a threeweek rotation for their ‘slot’ to join class in-person, but they can opt out of that or enter a waitlist to take spots that free up.

Professors Laura Born and Lindsey Lyman are instructors at Booth who have both hosted in-person classes this quarter. Recounting hours of COVID-19 training sessions and weeks of detailed reopening planning, both professors were disappointed by the fact that student irresponsibility interrupted the meticulously planned hybrid instruction model.

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“I didn’t need to spend 12 hours learning how to do hybrid if I knew this was going to happen.”

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“A lot of people, not sleeping at all this summer, [tried] to get all of this worked out for the students.... The amount of work that has gone into being able to open our physical doors to students is dizzying. And it’s disappointing that poor choices of students that could have been avoided are making that all work for nothing. That’s kind of the way it feels,” Lyman said.

Born spent an extra 10-12 hours, aside from the University-provided two-hour training session, to learn how to use the AV equipment this summer. “God knows I didn’t need to spend 12 hours learning how to do hybrid if I knew this was going to happen. It really de-motivates me to want to continue teaching in a hybrid format in the winter when you see something like this, given all that we tried to do and the lack of respect around that,” Born said.

Lyman also highlighted the difficulty of implementing the dual modality instruction model. “Dual modality is the hardest way to teach. It requires the most preparation and the most mental gymnastics while you’re teaching...despite that, I chose [it], because I thought it was the right thing to do.”

Born said that it was student demand for in-person instruction that prompted Booth and its faculty members to consider dual modality in the first place. “I feel that the business school has put in an incredible amount of effort, money, time, resources, and capital...And we did it because students wanted this hybrid mode.

They are the ones who said, ‘I would prefer to see my professors in person.’”

Jaroszewicz was one such student.

“Given there was an opportunity to, if nothing else, be in the room with the teacher and a few classmates, I felt that that was going to be better for me in order

to actually learn the material. I felt I did not learn very well in the online mode... going in person would give me less distractions,” he said.

Jaroszewicz was initially disappointed about the situation but didn’t think it was “the end of the world” as he was already used to online work over the spring and summer. As for the off-campus gathering that prompted the switch to virtual instruction, Jaroszewicz was understanding.

“Business school is social. And I don’t begrudge my classmates for being social.

I think it’s part of life, as this whole year has been just a part of life. We’re all social in our own ways. And just because somebody doesn’t choose to do it in the exact same way as me, I don’t think I have a problem with it. There’s a decent chance that there was a 0 percent interaction between those that go to class, and those that were partying,” Jaroszewicz said.

“It’s hard to get mad at people for coping in their own way. Again, I appreciate the school doing what they’re doing and I think that we have to take every situation as it comes, and not begrudge people because I met so many amazing people year one, and I don’t think that I should think less of them for not fully conforming to exactly what I’m doing, in an unprecedented time,” Jaroszewicz continued.

Lyman also commented on people’s motivations behind attending gatherings in general, beyond the Booth situation: “I know everybody is tired of the restrictions.... People feel like the clock has run out on their patience for sacrifice. And I totally understand that.... But we’re not out of the woods yet, and if we can all just continue to make the sacrifices collectively as a society that we need to make, it’s going to be in everybody’s best interest.”

Class of 2024 Reflects on COVID-Adjusted First Year CONTINUED FROM COVER

offerings, including classes, Recognized Student Organization (RSO) meetings, and O-Week programming, have gone virtual. “Most of it, like 99 percent, has been online,” said Evan Cholerton, a member of Rickert House in Max Palevsky Residential Commons.

The shift to remote programming is perhaps most pronounced in student coursework. Autumn quarter classes are offered in three formats: fully virtual, fully in-person, and a mix of both.

Students whose classes have in-person components have had to adapt to the new protocols of mask-wearing, sanitation, and social distancing.

Lucas Mantovani’s calculus class, which meets three times a week, is one of those fully in-person courses. “It’s interesting to be six feet apart from people in a classroom,” he said.

The additional safety measures, however, have not deterred students from taking in-person classes, according to Joseph Chasnoff, whose hy-

brid-format Russian course meets once a week in Rosenwald Hall. “We’re doing a really good job of making sure everyone feels safe and comfortable having an in-person class there,” he said.

Even in online classes, professors have found ways to engage those living in Hyde Park. During one class period, Katz’s Civ section took a field trip to the Fountain of Time monument, located at the western end of the Midway. “That was a pretty cool experience because in that class we’re studying heritage and how that was shaped,” she said. “It was like the only time I’ve met my professor in person or seen the class in full scale.”

But remote courses have not been trouble-free, with some students observing that the natural flow of conversation in discussion-based classes has been hindered. “Just having to press the unmute button to speak, it’s very prohibitive,” Chasnoff said. “It really stifles discussion and learning from your peers.”

Also missing are the opportunities to chat with classmates before and af-

ter class. “It’s definitely trickier to make friends through Core classes this year, especially the online ones. You can’t talk to people right after class as you’re walking back to your dorm or to the library,” Cholerton said.

As such, students have to find their community in alternative ways. Cholerton heard about classmates who befriended each other on the elevator rides to their dorm rooms. Katz mentioned that many friendships formed before students arrived on campus, through shared past experiences and social media group chats created over the past few months.

The restrictions have also made it difficult for new students to engage with house culture. Chasnoff, a resident of Boyer House, lamented the “one-dimensional” nature of a dorm experience without house lounges and other spaces.

“That was something I was really excited for, the house tables and getting to interact with the people in the house, [...] and that hasn’t really existed this year,” he said.

In the newly built Woodlawn Residential Commons, residents face the additional challenge of building house culture from the ground up. “We don’t have any traditions, we have never had any leadership, so everything is kind of being formed by this first group,” remarked Maxwell Jones, who lives in Gallo House.

With inside gatherings curtailed, students find themselves going outside to meet classmates. Mantovani, who lives in Max Palevsky, observed that friendships are often determined by residence hall location. “Most of your friends will probably be from Max P or North because when you’re grabbing something to eat, those are the people you’ll see all the time,” he said. “And when you go to South and Woodlawn and [Burton-Judson] it looks like you’re meeting totally different people.”

As a result, students have formed small “bubbles” for eating together and socializing. “It’s like your ‘family’ in a sense. People you eat with, obviously, CONTINUED ON PG. 4

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“It’s definitely trickier to make friends through Core classes this year.”

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kind of becom[e] your smaller circle,” Jones said. “And I think that’s a healthy pattern. I think it should be encouraged more.”

Students have also had to adjust their studying routines, since the libraries only accommodate a limited number of people. Although he mostly studies in his dorm room, Jones managed to secure spots at both the Mansueto Library and the Harper Memorial Library. “It was great, but you can only get slots for an hour or two,” he said.

“Once you actually get in the zone, it’s time to leave.”

Despite having limited access to buildings, many students still enjoy roaming around campus. Katz, a resident of International House, has walked “to every corner of campus many, many times.” But since her residence hall is located several blocks from the quad and most other University buildings, she admits she explores campus more than most. “If you live in a dorm where the dining hall is right below your room, it’s very easy to stay in that area,” she said.

Students are also exploring locations in the city of Chicago. “A lot of people go to the museums or Chinatown or

Wicker Park. Those seem to be pretty popular places,” Katz said. So is Promontory Point, although Jones noted that fewer students have been going there as the weather cools.

Not everyone has ventured off campus, however; since the quarter started, Mantovani has not left the Hyde Park area. “It also depends on what your major is and what you want for your future,” he said. “Because if you’re more oriented to research or STEM, you’re probably going to do activities that basically leave you alone for longer.”

Given the circumstances, students appreciate the opportunity to live and

study on campus. “I’m super grateful to be here,” Cholerton said. “A lot of people don’t have a stable life at home, they don’t have the resources, and being on campus is a good way to provide that.”

The UChicago experience—and indeed the first-year college experience— may look drastically different for the Class of 2024. Yet for Katz, who could hardly have imagined a global pandemic when she opened her acceptance letter 10 months ago, coming to campus remains the right decision. “I’m very glad I didn’t take a gap year. I’m very glad I didn’t go remote this quarter. I don’t regret this.”

So, What Do First-Years Think of Woodlawn?

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ceilings look kinda daunting. They look pretty concrete,” Yovovich House resident Hannah Ni said. “It’s like they hired the painters but forgot about painting the ceilings.” José Gomez from Chenn House was harsher: “The aesthetics feel like a prison.”

Despite complaints about the building ’s finish, most first-years are in agreement that the rooms in Woodlawn are fairly nice. Given that the construction of the dorm was only finished over the summer, those living in Woodlawn have the privilege of living in brand-new rooms, with brandnew amenities. “I definitely think our rooms are better. I might be biased, because I have a double to myself. But also, because it was just built this year, all the rooms and facilities and bath-

rooms are super clean,” Gallo House resident Uma Mani said.

The new Woodlawn Dining Commons also received favorable reviews.

“I think the dining hall is pretty good,” Mani said. “I’ve been to all four [dining halls], and Woodlawn is either best or second-best.” Gomez agreed.

One frequently mentioned drawback of Woodlawn is its remote location. Built south of the Midway, the dorm is a 15-minute walk from the main quads. Fortunately, for those without in-person classes, there is not necessarily a need to leave Woodlawn— the dining commons are located right downstairs. Nevertheless, this distance can feel isolating for Woodlawn residents. “It feels a little removed from the rest of campus, which I don’t really like. I guess that would be one of my complaints,” Mani said.

With a total of 11 houses, Woodlawn is one of the larger dorms at the University. However, some residents feel as if the new dorm has yet to develop a sense of identity. “I feel like because we’re so new, [the dorm] still doesn’t have house culture,” Gomez said.

Other residents have reacted more favorably. “I think that it’s kind of cool that we have 11 houses, because a lot of the dorms only have eight or less,” Reynolds said. “It’s kind of cool because I can actually meet people from all around Woodlawn. I meet a lot more people than I would if I were in a different dorm.”

Woodlawn has dealt with its fair share of opening snafus. One persistent issue is an overly sensitive fire alarm. Between September 28 and October 1, there have been three recorded cases of fire alarms in Woodlawn going

off which, according to an email sent

by Housing and Residential Life, were caused by “the fire smoke detector in a mechanical room being activated.”

Many residents said they were irritated by the inconvenience.

“Because I live on the seventh floor, it was sometimes tedious having to walk down the stairs and go to our meeting place. I was especially stressed when [the fire alarm] happened during important [Zoom] meetings,” Ni said.

“It was pretty cold outside,” Gomez said. “I just hope they don’t have them in the winter.”

However, some residents saw this as an opportunity to meet new people.

“It didn’t really bother me much,” Mani said. “I actually made a few friends during the fire alarms because it let me bump into people in my hall who I hadn’t seen before.”

House Culture Goes Remote

By ANNIE MEISHAN CHEN & ROSHINI BALAN News Contributors This fall quarter, houses are continuing to adapt to the traditional support and infrastructure they’ve offered to the virtual circumstances of this school year.

House leadership and upperclassmen

expressed worries about preserving and building house culture, but students are still finding community, friends, and a home in their house.

“I definitely feel house culture is in danger compared to last year,” Alexis Valencia, president of Behar House, told The Maroon. “I feel bad that the first-years don’t have a common space to create new friends,

which really did help foster house culture.”

Although houses have been operating remotely since spring quarter, current second-year students still experienced two quarters of normal house activities, unlike current first years.

“I think the biggest things first years are missing out on is the opportunity to do a lot of face-to-face activities with each other; I

kind of took that for granted last year before COVID hit.”

Despite the difficulties, some first-years have had positive experiences with house culture. Will Cravitz, a first year from Alper House, said, “My expectations were set pretty low, and this exceeded my expectations of what I thought would happen.”

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“House culture is definitely more subdued.... ” CONTINUED FROM PG. 4

Valencia also liked the virtual events more than she anticipated. “Despite all the hardships of maintaining house culture I really have enjoyed our house virtual events , and it seems like the first years are making the best out of the situation,” she said. I’ve even seen upperclassmen join our house meetings to alleviate that awkward Zoom silence. With everything going on in the world right now, I’d like to believe houses are trying their best to create a fun atmosphere for their residents.”

Valencia acknowledged that the firstyear experience was not the same though.

“One thing I would say first-years are missing out are the house tables, where upper and underclassmen would have wild and weird conversations,” he said.

Second-year and president of Alper house, Kaitlyn Dodgen, shared how Alper has dealt with the challenges this quarter.

“We’ve been trying to focus more on virtual events like game nights, things that people would still be interested in, but obviously we have to keep it online,” she said.

“We’re trying to just use the courtyard, but we have to keep to small groups which is hard. So, we’re trying to do general things that we would have done in-person but on-

line.”

Among Us has been prevalent among us.

Royal said, “We’ve done a couple of outdoor meals. A lot of Among Us games.” According to Cravitz, game nights in Alper also often feature stress, deceit, and murder. In other words, Among Us. The R.D.s, R.H.s, and R.A.s are, however, putting forth a concerted effort to keep house culture alive.

Many of them are using food as a way to reach their houses or bring houses to the students. First-year Angie Zhu of Rogers House in North said “My R.H. is always bring[ing] us food for study breaks on Wednesdays.

They got us Insomnia Cookies once which was super nice.” According to Cravitz, “Every Sunday when we have our meetings, RHs come by and drop off goodies. We got Ghirardelli brownies one time. Those were super good, and yesterday we had donuts and cider.”

The R.H.s in Woodlawn are in a unique position: Their job includes creating house culture in a mega-dorm composed largely of first-years. In Woodlawn’s Eka house, for example, Resident Heads Richard Tran and Denison Adad regularly keep their door open and offer snacks to anyone who stops by their apartment.

Despite the limits, second-year Belane Ayelework thinks that house culture has been thriving in Woodlawn. “House culture is definitely more subdued since there are a lot of things that can’t be done this year.

But it’s still definitely there,” Ayelework said. “I’m not sure about other houses but Yovovich is doing a really great job of encouraging house culture and only being able to really interact with each other for the most part helps with that, I think. I do like participating in virtual events my house does!”

Yovovich president Jim Royal said, “We’re trying to do a lot of different things right now. Something great the RAs did when people were first moving in here was dividing everyone up into different teams and did a kind of an intra-house competition or cup with some different events. Just kinda get people to interact even if you don’t have those casual things you normally have when there’s no pandemic. We just try to keep things going how we can through virtual events, going outside to take advantage of the weather when it’s still nice.”

There’s no doubt that house culture and students have taken a hit from losing most in-person activities, however.

First-year Yoyo Ma in Yovovich House said, “I think virtual is a detriment most-

ly because I haven’t really had a chance to interact with them in person yet. Meeting people in breakout rooms is so difficult compared to in real life.”

Second-year Noel Garcia said: “I have not participated in many virtual events, and the main reason why is just because I am always on my computer. Classes, homework, even entertainment like Netflix are all on my computer. It gets tiring after a while.”

Garcia commended the resident life staff on their work. “I think that under circumstances, R.H.s and R.A.s are doing their best to try to achieve the level [of] camaraderie of last year,” he said. I personally don’t think we will reach that level because there are a lot of rules and policies we have to follow, but I think we can definitely try.”

Nonetheless, there have been plenty of creative solutions for engaging members in house activities. “I colored some fish to put up as decorations on our floor for a house cup. On our floor once you step out of the elevator, there’s like a curtain of empty water bottles that greets you,” Ma said.

Despite virtual events not quite fully inhabiting the space that traditional house activities have filled in the past, houses still play an important part in helping students find a community on campus. Cravitz notes,

Social Values are Big Business, CEOs of Chipotle and Pernod Ricard USA Assert at Booth Talk

By LUKIAN KLING News Reporter More than half a year of lockdown has produced a peculiar side effect among consumers: enlightenment, according to Brian Niccol (M.B.A. ’02), CEO of Chipotle, and Ann Mukherjee (M.B.A. ’94), chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard USA. This enlightenment is leading to an increase in digital spending, a heightened awareness of brand values, and a more general reevaluation of the necessity of certain in-person activities.

Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG), a brand that needs no introduction to UChicago students, operates more than 2,500 fast-casual Mexican restuarants worldwide.

Pernod Ricard USA holds a portfolio of spirits, wines, and liquors no less familiar to the

more sociable on campus, including Jameson Whiskey, Absolut Vodka, and Malibu Rum. The panelists, both Chicago Booth alumni, sat down virtually on Tuesday to discuss the impact of COVID-19 and the cultural climate on consumer behaviors in the second installment of a recurring Booth event entitled “Road to Economic Recovery.” The event was moderated by Jean-Pierre Dubé, a professor at Booth.

The event began with a discussion about changes in the frequency and method of consumer shopping. Dubé reported that due to the pandemic, consumers are making shopping trips less frequently but spending more per trip. “The way that we’re shopping is fundamentally changed,” he said, adding that people have largely made the switch from cash transactions to ATMs and debit cards.

Niccol noted that Chipotle has fared well during the pandemic but observed that the pandemic has caused drastic changes in consumer behavior. “One of the biggest changes we saw was obviously the quick shift to digital ordering in all age cohorts. Whether you’re a 20-something, a 30-something, 40-something, 50-something, on and on, the shift to digital was swift,” he said.

“Prior to COVID, 80 percent of our business was done in the restaurant,” Niccol said.

“Twenty percent of the business ordered off-premise through digital mediums, with about less than 10 percent doing delivery.

Fast forward to about April and all of a sudden it became 90 percent digital and about 10 percent in the dining room, and 50 percent of that digital business was delivery.”

According to Mukherjee of Pernod Ri-

card, the pandemic has also caused drastic changes in the way people consume alcohol. “What’s interesting from a consumer behavior perspective is that before, when people would buy alcohol and bring it home, they didn’t consume it all, because they were going out. They were going to bars, they were going to restaurants, so it kind of sat around.

The phenomenon we’re seeing now is after people stocked up, they drank it all.”

This, among other factors, explains the strong sales in alcohol off-premise and online. “This was an industry that was probably behind CPG when it came to e-commerce and digital,” Mukherjee said, using an acronym for Consumer Packaged Goods, or everyday items used by average consumers. “It is now leapfrogging in terms of that space, CONTINUED ON PG. 6

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“People are being more critical about their brands.... ” CONTINUED FROM PG. 5

and we’re seeing triple-digit increases every single month.”

In addition to the large-scale switch to e-commerce, both CEOs also touched on the evolving definition of brand loyalty. Today’s consumers are more socially conscious and care more about a company’s values when determining where to shop.

“Because people don’t have a lot of time when they’re shopping—they’re scared to be out, they’re wearing masks—they’re going back to the brands they trust. That’s what we’re seeing in the numbers. And so, if you have a big brand with high loyalty, now more than ever you have to double down on rein-

forcing that loyalty with increased media spending, increased advertising. And it’s not just the quantity, but the quality,” Mukherjee said.

She gave examples of quality, value-driven campaigns run by Absolut Vodka, a Pernod Ricard holding, which has recently advocated for “Vote First, Drink Second” and encouraged their consumers to engage in sexual activities responsibly and with consent.

“People are not just looking to buy brands, they’re looking to buy into brands,” Mukherjee said. “This notion of what your brand stands for [and] what it stands against.

People are being more critical about their

brands and they are re-evaluating.”

Niccol concurred, stating that, at Chipotle, certain precautionary measures like air filtration systems and daily employee wellness checks are being highlighted now to a far greater degree than before because they know they have an audience of mindful consumers.

He also mentioned a new development that illustrates to shoppers how ordering Chipotle benefits the environment. “We just launched this program called Foodprint, where when you order in our app, while you’re ordering, it shows you by choosing Chipotle’s food and the supply chain that we support all the way back to the farmer.” The

program is designed so that consumers feel good about their “implications on water, soil, regenerative farming, [and] carbon relative to conventional approaches to the supply chain. And the response has been really, really powerful,” he said.

These changes represent a new era of “enlightened consumerism” wherein people are asking more questions about the necessity of previously esteemed in-person activities, according to Mukherjee and Niccol.

“A lot of things that have been considered necessary we’ve discovered are not necessary. The thing that I value in this is hopefully that allows us more time to spend on things that actually are necessary,” Niccol said.

Newly Launched Chicago Thinker Aims to Promote Conservative and Libertarian Views on Campus CONTINUED FROM COVER

and libertarians to thoughtfully speak, and then to hopefully engage with others,” Unverferth said.

“Part of our mission is to expose the student body to a different school of thought, to expose them to conservative and libertarian ideas that aren’t usually seen in the campus community,” Duffy said.

Duffy and Unverferth said the Thinker’s founding was prompted by their perception that the campus community is unwilling to engage with conservative and libertarian ideas.

Last March, a post by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP) featured Duffy holding a sign that read “I vote because the coronavirus won’t destroy America, but socialism will.” The photo sparked widespread controversy, inspiring hundreds of posts on social media, some substantive and some aimed at Duffy’s personal character.

The incident drew a response from IOP Director David Axelrod.

In May 2019, hundreds of students gathered to protest a bill that Brett Barbin, then a fourth-year College Council representative and head of the University of Chicago College Republicans, proposed to College Council that would have banned student life fees from being used to fund abortions.

“The problem that we’re currently facing

on campus right now is that conservatives and libertarians are too afraid to speak because of the extraordinary social consequences that individuals like Evita and Brett Barbin have experienced,” Unverferth said.

Nonetheless, Unverferth said the editors of the Thinker are open to publishing work that reflects other points of view. “We happily consider work by those from across the political spectrum,” she said. “We love to communicate across the political aisle, and we disagree, behind closed doors, and also in our pages frequently, so we’re not an echo chamber.”

Most of the articles published so far by the Thinker address expressly political topics like qualified immunity and the 2020 elections, but Unverferth wants to publish other content in the future. “I think it would be boring for our readers if we only focused on politics,” she said. “And so I would really like to expand to cover various arts events and sports games, et cetera.”

“Writers are going to focus on stories that they think are important to inform the student body [about] at UChicago,” she said.

“They’ll cover subjects on everything from what’s happening on campus to what’s happening abroad.”

The Chicago Thinker is currently a digital-only publication, but Unverferth hopes to publish a physical edition in the future. Her plans, however, have been complicated given

the ongoing pandemic. “My goal is to go into print as soon as feasible,” she said. “I think life needs to resume a little bit more to normal, but I would really love to have a print edition by the end of the school year.”

Unverferth confirmed that the Thinker received grant funding from Collegiate Network, a program that supports conservative and libertarian publications on college campuses. The organization is operated by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a nonprofit that supports conservative college students by hosting debates and lectures, providing networking opportunities, and funding conservative student organizations, publications, and fellowships.

“They provided us with a grant to launch our newspaper,” said Unverferth. “They provide mentorship. And in the case of the Chicago Thinker, they provided the funding to build our website.”

Publications supported by Collegiate Network include The Princeton Tory, The Dartmouth Review, and the recently launched Danforth Dispatch at Washington University in St. Louis. ISI’s website lists Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who started The Federalist as an undergraduate at Columbia University, and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who started The Stanford Review as an undergraduate, among the organization’s alumni.

Unverferth said that backing by the ISI will not influence editorial decisions at the

Thinker. “We choose how to spend our grant money, we choose what to publish, we chose our name,” she said. “They do not possess any editorial control whatsoever upon what we publish, but they have provided our primary source of funding.”

Looking forward, Unverferth and Duffy hope to raise money to start printing physical copies of the paper. “We’re planning to create some form of fundraisers so that we can raise money in order to go into print, and more in conversations with various organizations and alumni and others to obtain funding,” Unverferth said.Unverferth, who serves as both editor-in-chief and publisher, and Duffy, the paper’s managing editor, hope that the Thinker provides a platform for conservative and libertarian students to express their ideas to the University of Chicago community. “I think it’s necessary to have a platform for conservatives and libertarians to thoughtfully speak, and then to hopefully engage with others,” Unverferth said.

“Part of our mission is to expose the student body to a different school of thought, to expose them to conservative and libertarian ideas that aren’t usually seen in the campus community,” Duffy said.

Duffy and Unverferth said the Thinker’s founding was prompted by their perception that the campus community is unwilling to engage with conservative and libertarian ideas.

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VIEWPOINTS #CareNotCops Has Pursued a Failing Strategy— Will They Turn it Around?

Student activists need to learn from their own history and center on long-term community members.

By MATTHEW PINNA The student activist is a parttime observer of someone’s fulltime problems. This isn’t an insult, but a recognition of reality.

With a packed course load and, in some cases, a job or multiple jobs, student activists cannot dedicate as much time to a cause as they may otherwise like to give. Being time-constrained, however, isn’t

an excuse for not being able to work toward the full-time solutions that full-time problems demand. More often than not, it takes the sobering and mature realization that, even though you attend one of the best universities in the country, you are not the hero of someone else’s story. Instead, it becomes your job to make sure your cause continues after you leave the community, placed safe-

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ly in the hands of those who have a stake in the matter. #CareNotCops’s Halloween protest, which was reported on in The Maroon last week, exemplifies the self-absorbed alternative to this maturity. While members of their fellow abolitionist organization, Good Kids Mad City, were a few blocks north showing “how community organizing could help locals de-escalate conflicts without involving police,” #CareNotCops took their stand against racism by throwing toilet paper into bushes on the quad and plastering cutesy drawings around campus.

Unintentionally or otherwise, #CareNotCops’ strategy since its summer UCPD sit-in has been flawed—an ineffective combination of failing to approach a serious problem with the seriousness it deserves and failing to learn from the historical trial and error of similar student abolitionist organizations.

Before I get called out for it, I have to clarify that this isn’t some sort of classically liberal appeal to the Chicago Principles of Free Speech and “intellectual discourse.” I’m not crying out that, if only #CareNotCops were “nice and civil to Mr. University Man,” that they’d eventually get what they want. In fact, I completely agree that if any progress is to be made on abolition, it cannot be made through traditional channels; the major power imbalance between the sway of the Board of Trustees and the students makes that obvious.

But can their current tactics be considered thinking outside of the box, or, even using its most generous definition, “disruptive protest?” Not even close. The only thing “disruptive” about TP-ing a bush—aside from disrupting the janitorial staff’s schedule—is how it makes a mockery of their own cause of police abolition.

As a reminder, this is an organization that was founded on the premise that the mere existence of the UCPD serves to “terrorize both students and community members.” It’s not a fight against a “few bad apples,” they say, but a desperate struggle to abolish an institution that is fundamentally racist and violent.

With stakes this high, does it seem appropriate to treat a rally, to be frank, as if it were kids playing Halloween pranks? Of course not, and it’s precisely because their actions were so outlandish that The Maroon spent the bulk of its article covering them and their response. It took precedence over the Good Kids Mad City protest— the one actually run by community members—which got relegated to a few sentences at the bottom of the piece. #CareNotCops may very well claim that they do, in fact, uplift community voices, but look at the coverage: Any “uplifting” that may or may not have been done was crowded out by the actions and words of students.

This wouldn’t be the first time that #CareNotCops has hampered the community’s cause. In its “occupation” outside of Provost

Ka-Yee Lee’s home, much of the discussion on campus pages centered around spray-painted messages on the provost’s driveway, generating “accusations of anti-Asian racism from commenters on social media.” For many observers, this was likely the only look they got at #CareNotCops’s work, pushing the conversation away from private policing to how #CareNotCops was conducting its protest. Once more, students were in the spotlight, not community members.

I understand exactly why these students are acting the way they are. Clearly, they’re frustrated that the University refuses to meet with them in a public forum, as per their demands. Unknowingly, however, they’re falling into a historical trap, brought about by a lack of information permanence.

Simply put, the student activist is transient. On a surface level, this means that a student lives in their campus community for but a fraction of four years, as they’re whisked back home on breaks or to a different city for summer internships. But on an informational level, this means that when a student leaves the University for good, they take with them their experiences, including, crucially, their knowledge of what worked and what didn’t. There’s no central repository for strategy, as those planning conversations all took place in private group chats or in closed meetings. All that’s CONTINUED ON PG. 8

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“The is only one path forward for student activists who are inherently transient: Empower those who aren’t.”

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left are dead social media pages and Maroon articles that haven’t been read in years.

This resulting lack of information permanence was perfectly captured in a 2018 piece from The South Side Weekly, “The Fight Over Chicago’s Largest Private Police Force.” The article takes a look at the #CareNotCops before #CareNotCops—the Coalition for Equitable Policing, or CEP. The CEP went defunct about three years before #CareNotCops burst onto the scene.

Among current activists, it seems to be forgotten, the inevitable result of its leaders graduating years before they arrived on campus. Had the lessons from its successes—and, more importantly, its failures— been remembered, there wouldn’t have been a need for this column to be written.

Just as #CareNotCops spent nearly two years trying to meet with administrators, so too did the CEP. As the author writes, its “organizing efforts were largely centered around attempts to meet with administrators,” from its founding in 2013 to 2015,

when they changed tactics. After realizing that administrators could easily wait their time at the university out, the CEP decided to “exert more pressure.” This pressure manifested itself in the form of legislation: the Private College Campus Police Act. The bill passed the Illinois House of Representatives, and though it was killed in the Senate when an overly ambitious state senator tacked on an untenable amendment, the CEP still made significant progress for a student group. Instead of continuing to plead their case with an obstinate university, they built coalitions outside of it, focusing on political change and not quirky rallies. If they had realized the futility of attempting to meet with the administration earlier, who knows how far they could have gotten.

The difference between the CEP and #CareNotCops, however, is that, after two years, #CareNotCops is still very much fixated on getting that meeting with the administration. In their own words, they firmly believe that “nothing will change unless there is a public meeting.” They have to

learn from the past and come to terms with the truth: No matter how many cute graphics or Twitter posts they make, the University will never meet with them in the way they want. A student’s presence in Hyde Park and Woodlawn is temporary—the University’s is not, and they know they can wait any individual undergraduate out. Crucially, it also means realizing that the goal of their movement shouldn’t even be securing a meeting between themselves and the president or provost; if there should be any meeting, it must be between community stakeholders and the school—not students who, after four years, will cease to call the area home.

To understand all this, yet to continue to advocate for a meeting led by students is nothing but pure selfishness. Either student activists with #CareNotCops are aware of that truth and don’t care, or they have not looked meaningfully into the history of the causes they organize around.

There is only one path forward, then, for student activists who are inherently transient: Empower those who aren’t.

Going outside of the limitations that exist

from working solely within the university is thinking outside of the box. Importantly, it’s disruptive, in the sense that it can mobilize the local community in ways that the university wouldn’t expect.

The community is ripe for your type of change: Abolition has gained a foothold in the public discourse and, in Chicago—and in the 20th Ward with Jeannette Taylor, in particular—the political climate has certainly shifted to the left. There’s a budding consciousness there, especially among young people, but it’s one that currently knows nothing about what you do, except from what they read in local papers. Direct action and talking to community members will solve that, not holding talent shows on sidewalks and not TP-ing your campus.

Certainly, it’s not the path that will get your name in the headlines, nor will it give you a fun, brave picture to post on your social media. But if you care about your cause as you say you do, that was never the goal. Was it?

Matthew Pinna is a fourth-year in the College.

Students Should Feel Comfortable Reporting Health Pact Violations The University’s response to UCAIR reports is non-punitive, and right now, the UCAIR system is the best way to keep our community safe.

By ALLEN ABBOTT Little information is publicly available about the University of Chicago Accident Incident Reporting (UCAIR) system—the University’s primary vehicle for tracking Health Pact violations—raising several important questions. How does the University investigate UCAIR reports? Does the administration follow up on every case reported to them through UCAIR? How are students punished for violating the Health Pact? As a new College Council Representative for the Class of 2022, I organized a meeting between myself, representatives Kevin Yan (’21) and Julia Brestovitskiy (’24), and Stephen Scott, director of the Office of College Community Standards (OCCS). Scott provided insight

into the backend of the UCAIR COVID-19 reporting system. Based on that meeting, I can soundly conclude that students should feel comfortable filing reports on suspected and confirmed Health Pact violations. This platform encourages safe and necessary social engagement among students. The action taken by administrators in response to UCAIR reports is non-punitive, and reporting these cases is the best mechanism to responsibly enforce the Health Pact and maintain a hybrid learning environment.

As Scott told us, during a normal year, the OCCS handles cases of social and academic misconduct, leave of absence requests, and withdrawals from the University. This year, OCCS is also in charge of investigating and adjudicating Health Pact

violations. Since the start of O-Week, 184 College students have been reported via the UCAIR system. The majority of those students live in campus housing; their investigations are conducted in part by Housing & Residence Life (HRL). Of the students living off campus, 24 were issued warnings while 13 were investigated but ultimately not given warnings. OCCS took no action against 28 students, either because investigators could not identify the violator from the report, or because the incident clearly did not breach the Health Pact. Most reports were of first-year students violating gathering, distancing, and personal protective equipment (PPE) guidelines. The University has only removed four students from on-campus housing due to reports through the UCAIR

system; those students’ residency requirements have been waived or deferred. No students have lost their access to campus due to Health Pact violations.

One theme was consistent in our meeting with Scott: OCCS does not wish to punish students. As Scott explained, “we owe students an opportunity to correct their behavior. We want them to give us confidence that they understand the importance of following the Health Pact. [The administration] knows that college students are designed to be social, and we are the ones that invited students back to campus, where social interaction is inevitable.”

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daily. “If someone reports a party on Friday night or Saturday, it reaches our office by end of day Tuesday at the latest,” Scott said.

OCCS handles all College student reports outside of the dorms; reports from inside the dorms are sent on to HRL. OCCS utilizes a “preponderance of the evidence” standard in adjudicating UCAIR reports. If, based on the information provided in a UCAIR report, it does not appear likely that a Health Pact violation occurred, OCCS will send an informal email to the alleged violator notifying them that a report was filed with UCAIR. In these cases, Scott said, “We’re not taking any disciplinary action; we just want to remind you of the Health Pact.” If it is more likely than not that a Health Pact violation occurred, OCCS will arrange a meeting with the alleged violator.

According to Scott, OCCS will not take any disciplinary action against a student without first discussing the allegation in a meeting. If, after a meeting, OCCS finds a Health Pact violation likely occurred, that

student will be issued a “final warning.” Scott clarified: “We use a two-strike system. If, after one ‘likely’ finding, a student is reported again, and we find a second ‘likely’ violation, we will ban that student’s access to campus.

Our absolute last scenario is anything affecting educational access, like probation, suspension, or expulsion. That will only be used in cases of repeated, severe cases that violate common-sense protections or demonstrate a sheer disregard for the Health Pact.”

The University will consider extenuating circumstances or mitigating factors in adjudicating a report. “We’ve had cases where someone submitted a report with pictures of a large group of guys drinking outside with each other. We identified them, talked to them, and determined they all lived with each other, so no action was taken.” While OCCS cannot mandate testing, investigators will consider whether students receive regular testing. “What we’re really looking for is some due diligence or respect for the Health Pact. Five friends having dinner in an apartment isn’t going to trigger an investigation.

If you have people over and you’re trying to distance or have PPE, we’re not going to take action.”

Students may wonder what information is important to include when reporting a Health Pact violation, and if infrastructure exists to filter out false reports. Scott stressed that OCCS looks into and acts on every report, even if it is anonymous (as the vast majority are). “If there’s an off-campus report, a name is the best information someone can provide. We can also search University residential data to cross-match names to addresses. Still, we need a unit number to make sure we have the right individuals.” When asked if there are any safeguards against false reporting, Scott said that meeting with students weeds out these instances. “We had an instance where someone’s ex, who isn’t a UChicago student, filed six UCAIR reports against a student.

We talked to the student, and clearly, no action was taken.”

What does all this mean for students through the rest of the school year? The Uni-

versity’s non-punitive approach to Health Pact violations should not be seen as a free pass to disobey guidelines; repeat violators will lose their access to campus. Meanwhile, coronavirus cases are on the rise nationally and in Chicago, a trend that will likely continue through the winter. While Provost Ka Yee Lee announced on October 29 that UChicago will continue its hybrid model, the continuation of in-person instruction is contingent on students following University guidelines. One sizable gathering can pass the virus on to a multitude of individuals.

If you observe such a group, you should feel comfortable filing a UCAIR report. It won’t result in punitive action against the students involved—instead, it will merely augment the University’s ability to contact trace, ensure that everyone at the gathering is negative for COVID-19, and encourage safe social habits.

Allen Abbott is a third-year in the College and a College Council representative for the Class of 2022.

ARTS Jenny Holzer’s You Be My Ally Walks a Core Less Common

By SUZANNA MURAWSKI Arts Contributor In her distinct style, famed conceptual artist and UChicago alum Jenny Holzer’s (EX ’74) commissioned work for the University of Chicago projects all-caps, unpunctuated fragments of text onto building facades. Her new public art installation, You Be My Ally, selects 29 quotations from UChicago’s College Core texts and places them into dialogue with the University’s iconic architecture. But there’s a catch: The experience is minimized into a phone screen by its medium—augmented reality.

In the physical realm, the exhibit is marked only by square-foot QR codes pasted to the sidewalk, which, as I learned, are pretty easy to miss. It took total circumnavigation of Mansueto to find the code, even after repeated refer-

ence to the virtual map provided on the commission’s website. As the augmented reality (A.R.) application finally snapped into place, and quotes by Rumi, de Beauvoir, and Fouad Laroui began to glide from the base of the building to its apex, two thoughts ran through my head: One, this looks like the opening crawl in Star Wars. And two, I thought this would be grander.

Looking at my tiny phone screen, I was struck with the sense that this was about as good a facsimile for Jenny Holzer’s usually enormous, crowd-drawing installations as Zoom classes are for the real thing. When I tried to align the AR camera to the building, it didn’t help that I felt like a tourist, or perhaps a benign baby boomer fumbling with their camera for the first time.

Once I looked away from my phone and refocused on the real Mansueto,

this feeling was entirely erased. The actual building seemed even grander than it had before, purely by comparison to the miniature version. At each location, the art took complete effect only after I put away the augmented reality and took in the actual scale of the building. In this way, the augmented reality exhibit asks more of the viewer than Holzer’s usual modus operandi. The viewers of You Be My Ally must piece together the building’s size and the conceptual impact of the language.

Holzer originally intended to use large-scale projections, but decided against it to avoid drawing large crowds following the COVID-19 outbreak. To compensate, LED trucks lit up with similar fragments of text to drive around Hyde Park and downtown Chicago, which confront unsuspecting passersby in a way the A.R. exhibit does not.

Though the university commissioned the work, Holzer created the idea after being awarded the Rosenberger Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Creative and Performing Arts in 2019. Medalists traditionally give speeches after their award, but Holzer, who has always refused to give public addresses, responded with this idea instead. One might think that Holzer’s interest in the Core curriculum stems from prior engagement with the heavyweight texts in the Hum and Sosc syllabi as a UChicago undergraduate a half-century ago. Project intern Zahra Nasser states about a departmental dean’s alleged comment: “It looks like she did everything in her power to avoid taking Core classes.” Nasser adds that Holzer “transferred [after one year] because “she didn’t think she was smart enough for the Core…” She clearly CONTINUED ON PG. 10

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“This looks like the opening crawl in Star Wars ... I thought this would be grander” CONTINUED FROM PG. 9

felt like she didn’t fit in…but clearly she’s interested in [the Core], whether or not she likes it.”

The Core, of course, is the conceptual meat of the commission. Some collections of quotes share more obvious commonalities than others: The School of Social Service Administration (SSA)’s fragments, selected from Mary Wollstonecraft, Sappho, and Claudia Rankine, gel around themes of concretion, tangibility, and cohesion; while those that slide across the Logan Center for the Arts, by Audre Lorde, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and again Rankine, convey uncertainty and impermanence. Even in these few names, it’s clear that Holzer’s

choices of quotes were deliberate not only in content but in authors as well. Nasser said, “Throughout her practice, [Jenny Holzer] has been interested in issues of gender, in issues of power, and she’s a very political artist inherently…. This is just a reflection of her practice: amplifying female voices, amplifying underrepresented voices in whatever she’s doing.”

Holzer’s choices suggest a subtle subversion of the Core. The artist and her team narrowed down the list of 29 text fragments from student and faculty suggestions. The student and faculty suggestions, Nasser said, “lend a contemporary perspective on the Core” as opposed to drawing exclusively from Holzer’s Core experience in the early 1970s.

Do Holzer’s choices, then, merely reflect the common Core experience of a College student today? Or was Holzer more critical in her selection, crafting a more equitable cast of characters than what the stodgy, outdated Core currently maintains? Whatever Holzer’s intent, the outcome is an array of authors that, on the whole, are much more contemporary than, say, my readings in Greece and Rome. Her choices of buildings reflect this sentiment: Though the university is iconic for its palatial neo-Gothic style, only two of the buildings chosen for the project fit this bill. Instead, Holzer guides us to the glass and steel of Mies van der Rohe’s SSA building, and Eero Saarinen’s modern Law School building.

What Holzer ultimately presents to us is an artist, or perhaps a student, in conflict with the College’s Core curriculum.

From the recalibration of the College canon’s demographics, to her personal history with the Core, even to the diminutive effect of the A.R. on the language and the architecture, Holzer creates a version of the Core that doesn’t quite align with UChicago’s. Her Core is one that’s impermanent, mutable, as is the augmented reality through which it’s presented. Holzer’s A.R. Core, though its presentation is clearly connected to the university by its attachment to the physical buildings, is also optional, easy to bypass, and seemingly interrogates the necessity of a standardized Core at all.

Yamini Nambimadom’s “Pillow Fight” Never a Snooze

By ANGELINA TORRE Arts Contributor Yamini Nambimadom didn’t always think she was funny.

Even after years of theater in high school, countless improv classes, and plenty of stage experience as a member of Off-Off Campus’s 31st Generation, she thought she was just getting lucky. It took until Nambimadom’s fourth year at UChicago, when she got on stage to do a solo stand-up set, for her to realize that maybe she could do the whole comedy thing.

And aren’t we all better off for that.

Having graduated last spring, Nambimadom is now the host of comedy and culture podcast Pillow Fight. Purposely recorded to feel like your everyday slumber party, Pillow Fight is the perfect listen for when you’re hanging out with a group of friends or just looking to brief yourself on the latest pop culture news. Each episode features three segments: a round of “fuck marry kill” (FMK), would you rather, and truth or dare.

The segments focus around pop-culture news, all while putting a fun twist on these classic slumber party games. For example, you won’t see “Kim Kardashian” as an option for FMK on Pillow Fight, but you will see “Kim Kardashian tweets that the upcoming season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians will be the show’s last” as one.

Likewise, you won’t see “Pope Francis” as an option, but you will see “Pope Francis claims that gossiping, not COVID, is the biggest plague facing us today” featured as a choice in the first episode. Tough choices.

It is precisely this pop culture perspective on seemingly senseless games like FMK that inspired Nambimadom to create Pillow Fight. “In general, the idea came from this rejection of all media as ‘high or low,’” Nambimadom stated. Whereas “some people consume news and others consume pop culture,” Nambimadom seeks to combine the two with her podcast.

Regarding the need to mix “high and low” culture in comedy, Nambimadom explained, “[I think we need it] especially now because news is really hard to consume without getting stressed out. I think making it fun makes it more lighthearted and easier to consume.”

In addition to her podcast, Nambimadom has had the opportunity to explore other online outlets for comedy during quarantine. When the global pandemic disrupted her career plans post-graduation, Nambimadom took to the screen to perform at open mics on Zoom, film and act in sketches in her own house, and grow her burgeoning online comedic presence on various social media apps.

When asked which of these online platforms has been her favorite, Nambimadom answered Twitter without hesitation. On

Yamini Nambimadom (A.B. ’20) on her new podcast. Comedy Network Live Twitter, she has had the chance to grow her network of followers and friends across ages and time zones. Most notably, Nambimadom is particularly proud of gaining famous comedian Seth Rogen as a Twitter follower.

Many of her other Twitter friends have since appeared on Pillow Fight as featured guests, including fellow comedian Abby Govindan (@abbygov). Nevertheless, Nambimadom doesn’t want to limit herself to only comedians in her coming episodes of Pillow Fight. In fact, the very first episode of Pillow Fight with Zoe Berger, a friend of

Nambimadom’s from high school who is decidedly not a comedian, was among one of her favorites to record.

Nambimadom is always looking for suggestions for guests to feature or topics to discuss for new episodes for Pillow Fight, so do make sure to reach out to @pillowfightpod with your requests. Check out new episodes of Pillow Fight out every Wednesday for your daily dose of pop culture and laughs.

After all, if Seth Rogen follows her on Twitter, then you know she’s fun.

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The Social Dilemma—Or the First Step Toward a Brighter Future?

By LUKIAN KLING Arts Contributor While technological innovation has altered society and human psychology for centuries, never before has a revolution impacted so many people in so little time. Never before have a handful of Silicon Valley programmers had the power to alter the very fabric of society with a few lines of code. Though these programmers began their innovations innocently with an eye toward a future of technological prosperity, in reality corporations have corrupted their initial dream by implementing business practices with detrimental impacts on the human psyche. Jeff Orlowski’s 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma therefore makes the case for why we must find a solution to the problem of manipulative, addictive, and user data–driven technology before the world is engulfed in flames of polarization, truth-denial, dramatically increased self-harm and suicide rates, mass loneliness, and surveillance capitalism.

Is the world truly on a fast track toward an apocalypse, or are we simply working out the kinks (albeit massive ones) of an infantile, largely unregulated field? Given that introducing any radically new product has inevitably invited a period of unrestricted mayhem and chaotic usage before regulation by authorities, can’t we recognize that social media has been publicly available for hardly more than a decade and is, as such, only in its first stage of development? For example, following the introduction of the automobile in the late 1880s and ’90s, the road was a dangerous and bloody place. Accidents abounded, many died, and traffic laws were essentially nonexistent. Fast forward to today, and the current blend of a coherent network of laws, traffic lights, and new vehicle safety features all mean that present-day streets are a far cry from what they used to be. Why should social media be any different?

Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google turned cofounder of the

Center for Humane Technology, and Jaron Lanier, founding father of virtual reality—the whistleblowers behind The Social Dilemma—have strongly campaigned for such regulation of social media. They have always sought to expose the evils of unchecked industries in Big Tech and adjudicate them in the court of public conscience. With humanity’s best interests at heart, they strive to fight to ensure that the technology we invent is on our side. These whistleblowers echo Upton Sinclair’s exposé of the practices of the meatpacking industry in the early 20th century, or the more recent Edward Snowden leak about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance program.

However, we must be careful to avoid too much optimism; technology is being integrated into society at an unprecedented rate, often with detrimental consequences. The film’s arguments have floated about in the ether for a few years (due in large part to the efforts of Harris and others like Chamath Palihapitiya, Aza Raskin, and Shoshana Zuboff ), but never before have the pitfalls of the current system of social media been so succinctly, dramatically, and urgently broadcasted to such a large audience.

In one of the most sobering moments of the film, Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and popular author, shared that the rates of suicide and self-harm in preteen and teenage girls have skyrocketed since 2009, the year that social media was first made available on mobile. For teenage girls, the rate of non-fatal self-harm rose 62 percent; for preteen girls, 189 percent.

Since the last decade, the suicide rates of these groups have risen 70 percent and 151 percent respectively. These are startling numbers and it is difficult to contest the claim that social media is the primary cause of these spikes.

The film does not limit itself to statistics or abstract opinions. It also depicts a family’s struggle to reconcile technology use with real world relationships. This subplot grounds the

troubles facing society in a concrete microcosm that illustrates a relatable example of technology addiction, even if it comes off as a little melodramatic and cheesy. In one telling but unintentionally comedic scene from this story, a preteen girl (Sophia Hammons), her father (Chris Grundy), and her brother (Skyler Gisondo) are asked by her mother (Barbara Gehring) to lock their phones away in a container during dinner. A few minutes into the meal, the girl stands up, disappears out of frame, and, a few seconds later, dons a hammer and goggles in the background. (We see that her attention span is ironically at least large enough to listen to her science teacher’s lectures on lab safety, which is one of the few bright notes in the movie). She ends up smashing the container and retrieving her phone, but in the process she breaks her brother’s screen.

The broken screen jumpstarts the rest of the story’s arc. The mother tells her son that if he can go a week without his phone, she will buy him a replacement screen. Three days into the week, however, he finds out via phone that his ex-girlfriend is in a new relationship. Scorning his mother’s promise, he gets sucked into an all-too-familiar YouTube rabbit hole focused on a fictitious political movement called the “Extreme Center,” a satirical take on the levels of absurdity and confirmation bias that permeate extremist politics today.

As he delves deeper into the political movement, he begins to forget about his relationships, and eventually winds up attending an Extreme Center rally, where he and his Luddite older sister (Kara Hayward) are arrested.

The blend of a dramatic narrative, stylized animation, and a barrage of concurrent opinions from concerned experts of their fields serve to make the film engaging, informative, and terrifying all at once. The soundtrack, reminiscent of the elongated and ominous tones of 2010’s similarly named The Social Network also serves to create a sense of opaque uneasiness, and

is thus the perfect choice for this kind of documentary.

The rhetorical choices go wrong, however, when the filmmakers exaggerate the scope of some problems and attribute too much responsibility to Big Tech. For example, the teenage boy is often depicted as a lifeless doll whose attention is averted from one site to the next at the beck and call of a trio of corporate puppet masters.

While understandable that the filmmakers would hyperbolize his plight, their overdramatization is a symptom of one of the few ideological problems with the movie: It places too much blame on Big Tech, and not enough on parents and kids themselves.

The film also sometimes forces a singular viewpoint issue on the audience, which can backfire. At one point, Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, says, “If you want to control the population of your country, there has never been a tool as effective as Facebook.” This claim seems fundamentally untrue. Yes, Facebook can be an incredibly damaging tool, one that has been used to disrupt democracies and fuel conspiracy theories, but it can also liberate people and expose them to vast swaths of previously unknown information.

So should we all lose our minds over our collective exploitation by faceless corporations and quit social media as soon as we can? No, we should (and certainly will) not. What we should do, however, is become more mindful consumers and continue to voice criticisms about the ways that businesses are manipulating their customers. The Social Dilemma is a great example of this criticism, as it paints a harrowing picture of the current track we are on due to a lack of large scale reform. It does not, however, depict the long term future of humanity, because with prolonged efforts for change, this dilemma can be turned on its head. A few lines of code by a humanistic programmer may someday spark a new revolution, one that leads us out of this mess and toward a technological utopia.

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SPORTS Leading with Dedication, Resch Marks 50th Year at UChicago

By GUISEPPE DICERA Sports Reporter

The 2020–21 academic year will be one to remember for Rosalie Resch, who marks her 50th year of association with the University this year. Currently serving as the interim director of Athletics and Recreation, Resch manages the University’s varsity athletics, intramural sports, and athletic facilities. Ultimately, Resch’s journey to her present position has a familiar beginning: it all started when she arrived at UChicago as a student.

As a first-generation college student, Resch said that coming to UChicago was “about as accidental and life-changing as I possibly could have imagined.” Nevertheless, Resch’s accomplishments as a varsity student-athlete were no accident.

She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Russian language and literature in 1973 and played softball, volleyball, and badminton for the University. Excelling both on the field and in the classroom, Resch even set a school record with her .481 career softball batting average. Looking back on her time as a student-athlete, Resch maintains that “the athletic experience was absolutely critical to me as a first-generation college student. The athletic community provided me with support that made the hard times a whole lot easier.”

Following her athletic career, Resch

coached the University’s volleyball team from 1977–97 and again set a school record with 263 career victories. She left coaching when the planning process for the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center began.

Resch was very involved with architects and builders to construct the intricate Athletics Center, which opened to the public in the fall of 2003.

Resch noted that one of the keys to her long tenure at UChicago is that she has never “had two years in a row that were the same.” Indeed, over the years, Resch has played crucial roles both inside and outside of the University community. She has served as the director of intramural and club sports, an elected member of the College Council and the University Senate, and a member of the Undergraduate Discipline Committee. Aside from these roles, Resch has also been a part of various NCAA committees. She was named to the NCAA Division III Management Council, the DIII Championship Committee, and the Strategic Planning Subcommittee.

Over time, Resch has played an instrumental role in developing the University’s athletic program. At the heart of her motivation to continue on throughout the years, Resch said, “The main reason I’ve stayed is because of the students.” This commitment is especially seen through the charismatic relationships that she builds with student-athletes. Pursuant to her vision, Resch seeks to create a stu-

dent-athlete experience that allows students to flourish both on the field and in the classroom. She adds, “I really believe that what we do here is the right way to do intercollegiate athletics. The way our coaches think about the athletic experience is the right way [to think about] the balance between academics and athletics.”

Resch has taken over the position of Interim Athletic Director in what is likely the most challenging time in collegiate sports history. Forced into a quick response to a pandemic that is constantly evolving, Resch worked diligently over the summer to plan for the return of fall athletes and the reopening of the Ratner Athletics Center. She notes that staying “responsive to the changing environment has been challenging because we want to make sure that all of our decisions are driven by our students’ health and safety.”

Accordingly, in navigating the pandemic’s nuances, the athletic department has modified key elements of its environment, such as by spreading out workout equipment and creating an elaborate reservation system at Ratner.

As she sees the 2020–21 year through the lens of a former student-athlete, Resch has a message for current athletes who have been forced to deal with an unpredictable and modified sporting environment. She hopes that student-athletes “know that they have had advocates at ev-

ery level of the university. All of us have done whatever we can do to provide the best possible experience this year.”

Throughout the last few months, Resch has led the athletic community with incredible composure and dedication. Her ability to make decisions in the best interest of students’ health and safety while also creating a meaningful athletic experience like that which she enjoyed as a student-athlete has been both thoughtful and thorough. Reflecting on her vast experience from entering the college as a student to now leading the Department of Athletics and Recreation, Resch said, “50 years of my life have been here. It was a pretty good accident.”

Rosalie Rescsh. uchicago athletics

The World of UChicago Swimming and Diving

By LISA DONG Sports Reporter

From the recruiting process to practices and even student-athlete expectations, collegiate sports have changed quite a lot.

Since the usual expectations of a regular 20-hour week practice schedule and competitions are now not viable, the athletes and coaching staff on the UChicago swimming and diving team have had to adjust what this season means to them individually and as a team.

While recruitment for all divisions and all sports has changed since COVID–19 hit, there are some unexpected positive takeaways to holding Zoom recruitment processes, at least for this year.

“The largest difference I see for recruits now is the inability to be and stay on campus for two days. It was a huge help for me to be on campus when I came [to UChicago] because I knew it was the right place for me in my bones. I’m not sure how someone can get the same feeling virtually, and I hope we’re able to have prospective stu-

dents (athletes and non-) back on campus soon,” co-captain of the women’s swimming and diving team Elizabeth Cron said.

Still, one unexpected benefit of the current process “is the ability to speak with recruits a lot more one-on-one via Zoom and answer personal questions or address concerns that they may have been more hesitant to bring up in a group setting. The process is a bit more equal for potential new international students too.

Our incoming class right now looks like it will be especially more international and

diverse,” co-captain of the women’s swimming and diving team Hadley Ackerman said. Another benefit is that everyone on the team gets to chip in now, whether for a quick chat or exchanges through emails, unlike in past years when it was mostly first- and second-years driving the recruitment process.

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visiting in person. We’ve set up numerous Zoom meetings with recruits and coaches, athletes, and admissions, which seemed to help a lot. Admissions have done a fantastic job of creating virtual tours and information sessions and offering some virtual classes they can be a part of. We’ve also connected some recruits with individual athletes to answer any questions they have and get a better feel for the team,” swimming head coach Jason Weber said.

Just like everything else that’s changed, practices are also different than before.

The season’s expected start date is typically on the first day of classes, but this year it is now officially November 2. Even with this setback, the team and coaching staff are very grateful to train at all. “I think starting in November is a couple of weeks later than I’d prefer, but that’s one positive that’s come of this. Another is that with the small groups, we’ll give more individual attention to the athletes, which is a challenge when you have 70 plus athletes,” Weber said.

The goals of the season aren’t the same as those before. This season’s expectations and outlooks are different for everyone.

Since official competitions are not a part of the season anymore, coach Weber’s main objective is to “do everything [he] can to provide our athletes with the best possible experience.”

Regarding goal-setting this season, co-captain of the women’s swimming and diving team Nadia Redza said, “In a way, it's a blessing in issues for the freshman. They can adopt a more mature way of thinking and not objective time measures like making a cut time for NCAA. This allows them to grow in a lot of different ways.”

Fellow co-captain Ackerman has “been hesitant to set particular expectations of the season because we still really don’t know what it will look like, and we have minimal control over that. Overall, [she] thinks it’ll just be great to have the team back and practicing together and boost morale that way, and we can take it from there.”

Cron remarked, “Our roles as captains have changed a lot since the majority of our responsibilities are upholding our team’s traditions (helping the freshmen acclimate to the team, being an example in the pool, and organizing team events outside of Ratner), which have all been historically

done together in large groups. We’ve had to be creative in how we communicate and stay connected with the team. Still, I think we’ve done a great job of that right now, especially when it comes to welcoming our freshmen.”

Keda Song, co-captain of the men’s swimming and diving team, added that “the role, especially during the first quarter of the year, is to make sure that the freshman knows we’re here to help them with anything, to get them acclimated to their classes, college life, and practices.”

For the seniors, the knowledge that this is their last season is incredibly. But while some could be discouraged about not having a regular season, they are all looking forward to making the most of the season. Redza spoke on behalf of the senior class when she said, “I think as a senior, it is an unfortunate thing that it’s happening during our senior year, but I want to contribute to the team in the best way I can: as a captain, teammate, friend, whatever the team and coaches need from me. I hope that the seniors can gain peace and closure with their swimming career. It takes a lot of mental strength on accepting that, but hopefully if we’re happy with how it goes

and not how it could have gone; if we’re satisfied with the type of work and motivation put in and with the right attitude, we will have a very successful season.”

New information continues to be released. Rosalie Resch, interim director of athletics and recreation, recently notified athletes that the University Athletic Association (UAA) announced that all formal UAA winter sports competitions have been canceled for the 2020–21 season. She said that UChicago remains a dedicated member of UAA and supports their decision to ensure the safety of UChicago athletes and coaches.

While there isn’t a competition schedule for this season, the entire team and coaching staff are very grateful for the ability to train at all. Regarding their plans about the program for this season, which starts November 3, the coaching staff are planning on intra-squad competitions and multiple practice sessions throughout the day to comply with COVID–19 guidelines set by the University.

F1 Switches Gears

By MICHAEL MCCLURE Sports Reporter The resumption of professional sports has been a miracle in the era of COVID-19. Many sports do not lend themselves well to mask-wearing, and social distancing is all but impossible in contact sports like football and basketball. The lack of fans at most events has dealt teams and leagues substantial financial blows: yet another troubling development given the global economic downturn.

The Formula One (F1) World Championship is an open-wheel car racing series, with its roots in Europe. Its premise is quite simple: At each race weekend, 20 drivers from 10 teams compete for victory at racetracks around the world, with the driver and team who accumulate the most points over a season winning the champi-

onship. But due to its cosmopolitan nature, it faces unique challenges in adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Indeed, the Australian Grand Prix, originally scheduled for March 13–15, 2020, revealed the dangers of holding a major international sporting event during a developing pandemic; a team member at the circuit tested positive, multiple other outfits withdrew, and the event ultimately had to be cancelled at the last minute as chaos grew and cases rose. The season has since resumed, and with 13 of 17 Grands Prix completed, it’s fair to say the return to racing has been quite successful.

So how has F1 managed to pull it off?

Under normal circumstances, F1 races in more than 20 countries across five continents annually. The disruption in travel caused by the pandemic, however, has meant that only races in

Europe and the Middle East could be held this year. To offset this change—13 of 22 originally scheduled events for the 2020 season were cancelled—the championship added a number of replacement rounds in Europe and began a condensed season in early July instead of March. And for the first time in history, F1 has raced at the same venue more than once in a season (doing so on three occasions), further reducing the amount of travel between Grands Prix. It’s a similar concept to the hub cities used by the NHL and NBA, both of which were successful in limiting the spread of coronavirus.

It’s also worth noting that all of the F1 teams are based in Europe, a continent which has, until recently, had a far better handle on the COVID-19 pandemic than the United States. The risk of sending drivers and teams from a Europe-based championship across

the pond for the United States Grand Prix, held annually in Austin, Texas in late October, was simply too great.

F1’s on-track product lends itself well to the world of the pandemic: Each car is two meters (about 6.6 feet) wide, so no two drivers will physically get within six feet of each other during a race. The drivers’ heads are covered by helmets, negating any need for a mask while in the cockpit.

Additionally, the same group of drivers and teams travel to each race weekend. Since everyone converges at the same location, the risk of someone contracting COVID-19 at one event and spreading it to another team at another is incredibly limited. In sports leagues where only two teams face off against each other at a single game, this has proven more challenging. While the CONTINUED ON PG. 14

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NBA’s bubble effectively eliminated any sources of outbreaks, the MLB and NFL had to make multiple changes to their schedules, including delaying and cancelling games, in order to prevent positive cases from spreading throughout the respective leagues.

F1 has also placed teams in bubbles and ordered them not to interact with one another, and everyone in the paddock must wear a mask at all times.

Although the bubbles reduce contact between opposing teams, only the team members essential to the racing itself, such as engineers, mechanics, and managers, are brought to the circuit.

Media personnel, technicians, and executives also attend races in limited numbers, while all other individuals involved with the sport work remotely—mostly in England, where seven of the ten teams are based.

Across 1. Dank 6. Prefix for locos 11. Photo verb 14. Discoverer of the first computer bug (a moth) 16. Casa diminutive 17. Aqueduct throughput?

18. Old Stan 19. Takes another shot 20. Time in which light travels approx. one foot 21. Clique 24. Go into heat?

26. Tartar’s neighbor 27. Siegfried’s partner 29. With “the,” them 30. Second-stringers 32. Sea ___ 33. Squeak 34. Save on the bill?

39. Charger alternatives 40. Musicality 41. Some phone calls 42. Humorous 44. Son of Prince Valiant 45. Bald eagle, based on its genus 46. Superconducting?

48. French editor whose name is nearly an anagram of editor

Everyone receives a test upon entry to the paddock; individuals who test positive are removed and sent into quarantine. But with cases increasing in Europe and the discovery of a testing loophole at the Eifel Grand Prix in October, F1 has tightened its regulations. Whereas previously, tests had to be completed every five days, a new rule instituted at the subsequent Portuguese Grand Prix requires a second test to be administered 24 hours after an individual first enters the paddock.

Both tests must come back negative for further participation in the race weekend.

Members of the F1 circus, as it is affectionately known, are encouraged to avoid the largely untested general public. Drivers and team personnel are ordered to remain in either the paddock or their hotels for the duration of a race weekend. And in lieu of

52. U.K. hono(u)rs 53. Preceding 55. Under the weather in Spain 56. Creatures of light?

60. Illinois celeb 61. Palate cleanser at a Chinese restaurant 62. Land Down Under place?

63. Miyazaki film about a fish child 64. Manages Down 1. Sup. 2. It comes from a mina 3. Will end 4. Mostly-healed injuries 5. 2020 Christopher Nolan film 6. Later 7. ___ Gangnam style 8. Flew 9. Like social distancing interactions 10. Furor 11. Part of some gifts 12. Canterbury saint 13. Dead End Kid Leo 15. Looking up 20. “Patience”

21. Group ___ 22. Athleisure brand 23. Not constrained (by) 25. Heckle 28. Steve Ballmer, for the Clippers (N.B. No relation to Clippy) 31. They go on leaves 32. a/c, in triangles 33. In Spanish?

35. Small river fish 36. Where to buy a watch?

37. Purplish root 38. Michelangelo’ss crew 42. Quotes taken out of place?

43. “Wowie!”

44. Lyricist of Beauty and the Beast 47. Large-scale?

49. “___ lying...”

50. Perform, for Rosencrantz 51. One way to get a return 54. One, in rhyme 56. Slice (off ) 57. Writer Anaïs who had an affair with James Agee 58. 7 for 21 and 14, e.g.

59. Its French

public transportation, charter flights and private jets, once reserved for the wealthiest in F1, have now become part of the standard protocol.

Most major sports leagues in the United States have operated with no fans. Formula One has adopted the same approach, with the first eight races of the calendar closed to the public.

But since the ninth round of the season in mid-September, spectators have been admitted to the circuits in limited but growing numbers, with up to 27,500 fans allowed at the Portuguese Grand Prix two weeks ago. It may seem like a staggering figure, but with the viewing areas spread out across several square miles and capacity at several tracks over 100,000, there is ample opportunity for social distancing. Masks, of course, are required of attendees.

As can be expected, F1’s efforts have not entirely eradicated COVID-19 from

the paddock. Two drivers have contracted the virus this year, and several members of the recently-crowned champions’ team, Mercedes, had to be quarantined after two people returned positive tests. But, all things considered, the safety measures have worked extraordinarily well. No event has become a superspreader, even with upwards of a thousand personnel at each one, and the stringency of testing and quarantine procedures have mitigated the potential for community transmission. The all-time win record for drivers may have just been toppled

by Lewis Hamilton, but F1’s success in the face of the pandemic is an equally meritorious achievement.

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