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APRIL 6, 2022 SECOND WEEK VOL. 134, ISSUE 19

Most Classroom Settings Go Mask-Optional Starting April 4

By ANUSHREE VASHIST | Senior News Reporter In a UChicago Forward update sent on Friday, March 18, the University announced that masking will be optional in most classroom settings starting April 4. According to the UChicago Forward email, the University made the decision in consultation with experts from UChicago Medicine.

The decision came nearly a month after the CDC relaxed its indoor masking guidelines and Governor J. B. Pritzker lifted the Illinois indoor mask mandate at the end of February.

Masks are still required in classrooms during the first week of spring quarter to “allow for a transition period as students and others return from travel over spring break,” the email said. Because its spring quarter began March 21, the Law School lifted its classroom mask requirement on Monday, March 28.

As in other campus spaces that have been mask-optional since March 4—which include libraries, residential commons, and dining halls—communi-

ty members are allowed to wear masks and can ask, but not require, others to wear masks. Instructors are not allowed to implement masking policies in their classroom, but instructors and students can request accommodations related to masking requirements.

Per the email, UChicago Medicine will maintain separate masking policies, to be followed by active clinicians in the Biological Sciences Division (BSD) and in BSD clinical settings related to health care. Student Wellness, COVID-19 testing sites, buses and shuttles operated by the University, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, and the UChicago Charter School will also maintain their own mask requirements.

The University reported 31 new cases and 29 close contacts between March 11 and March 17. Surveillance testing indicated three positive cases between March 10 and March 16, resulting in a 0.44 percent campus positivity rate, a decrease from the previous week’s 0.65 percent.

Students masking in classrooms prior to the policy change. emma-victoria “e-v” banos The City of Chicago’s positivity rate for the week of March 11 was 0.7 percent, the same rate as the previous week.

While the Gleacher Center testing site

has closed, voluntary surveillance testing will remain available at the Walker Museum.

University to Offer Scholarships for Students Affected by War in Ukraine

By EMMA JANSSEN | News Reporter Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the University of Chicago announced a number of initiatives aimed at supporting students and scholars impacted by the conflict. The initiatives range from providing full-tuition scholarships for affected undergraduates to providing college-

readiness programs to help Ukrainian students apply to university.

“The invasion of Ukraine and the devastating humanitarian crisis that is unfolding has many dimensions, including the disruption of the lives and careers of scholars and students who have the potential to con-

VIEWPOINTS: An Apology From the Viewpoints Head Editors Regarding Recent Op-Ed

ARTS: The Maroon Sits Down with Sammy Rae to Discuss Queerness, Lyrics, and Her Life

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tribute to new knowledge that will benefit humanity,” President Paul Alivisatos said.

“UChicago is ready to expand admission efforts and support for displaced students and scholars who are impacted by the war in Ukraine and events across the region.”

The efforts will be based primarily out of UChicago’s Center in Paris. In June, the Center will begin offering both in-person

SPORTS: Local Girls’ Teams Showcased Baseball Talents at Girls ID Tour in Chicago

and virtual college-readiness support programs. Students from Ukraine who are unable to complete their final semesters because of the invasion will have access to a streamlined UChicago admissions process. Additionally, the Center will support these students in applying to more than 150 other institutions of higher education. The CONTINUED ON PG. 2

ARTS: Touring, Choreography and the ONEUS Music Universe with K-pop Group Oneus

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“Academic excellence…includes supporting the global academic community.”

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University encourages students to visit the international financial aid website for more information on these services.

The initiatives also aim to support more advanced scholars in Ukraine whose work has been derailed due to the invasion. Alongside the national Scholars at Risk group, which was founded at UChicago in 1999 to support academics facing danger in their home nations, the University aims to place Ukrainian scholars and scientists in positions at the University and to offer expanded

fellowship programs for students unable to complete their studies in Ukraine.

“UChicago was founded as a beacon of academic excellence, and that includes supporting the global academic community in times of great need,” said John Boyer, dean of the College and the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History and the College. “By providing these resources and expanding the support available through our Center in Paris, we hope to support the potential of the young people impacted by the war in Ukraine and ensure

their futures are not derailed by political conflict and violence.”

The University also emphasized its history of supporting students and scholars affected by war and other crises. A number of UChicago scholars, such as Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, were refugees during the 1930s and 1940s.

More recently, UChicago has offered support to students impacted by Puerto Rico’s 2017 hurricanes, offering undergraduates, graduate students, and professors at the University of Puerto Rico the opportunity

to apply to UChicago to continue their studies and research. Additionally, the school has provided support to students from Afghanistan and Iraq.

In response to an inquiry from The Maroon, Jeremy Manier, the University’s assistant vice president for communications, noted the importance of these past programs.

“Much of the support during previous crises was extended based on individual students’ financial needs, and the experience of those students helped inspire the current effort for students from Ukraine.”

David Rubenstein Elected Chair of University’s Board of Trustees

By ERIC FANG | Senior News Reporter On March 17, the University’s Board of Trustees elected David M. Rubenstein, J.D. ’73, as its next chair. Rubenstein currently serves on the Executive and Presidential Search Committees and will begin his threeyear term after the board’s annual meeting on May 26.

Rubenstein graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973. During his time at the Law School, he served as an editor for the The University of Chicago Law Review. After graduating, Rubenstein practiced law at New York–based firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He then served as chief counsel to the U.S. Sen-

ate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments and as a deputy domestic policy advisor to president Jimmy Carter.

In 1987, Rubenstein co-founded the global investment firm The Carlyle Group; he remains involved in the business as co-executive chairperson. The company, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, currently manages assets valued at $301 billion.

In a March 17 letter to University leaders, boards, and councils, President Paul Alivisatos described Rubenstein as “deeply committed to the University and its distinctive culture”.

In 2010, Rubenstein established the Rubenstein Scholars Program, which provides full tuition scholarships to about 10 percent of students at the Law School.

The program is competitive, merit-based, and designed to support first-generation, low-income students. Since its inception, Rubenstein has committed $61 million to the program, making it the most expansive scholarship program the Law School has ever offered.

In 2014, the University named its new facility aimed at promoting academic discourse after Rubenstein, calling it the David Rubenstein Forum. Located on East 60th Street between South Woodlawn Avenue and South Kimbark Avenue, the forum con-

tains numerous meeting and event rooms to accommodate conferences, workshops, and other special events.

Rubenstein also currently serves on the boards of the National Gallery of Art, the Council on Foreign Relations, and The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. He is also the chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Rubenstein was among the initial 40 individuals who committed to The Giving Pledge, a promise to dedicate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.

Rubenstein will succeed Joseph Neubauer, M.B.A. ’65, who has served as chair since 2015.

Law School Alum Jeffrey Peck Speaks About the Goals of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council

By ZACHARY LEITER | News Reporter University of Chicago Law School graduate Jeffrey Peck (J.D. ’82) was among President Joe Biden’s 12 appointees to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council (USHMC). Established

by Congress in 1980, the USHMC serves as the governing board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, working to commemorate the victims

of the Holocaust and raise awareness of antisemitism and genocide in the United States and worldwide.

Peck served as special counsel to the 1987 Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Biden was the chair, for the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. From 1988 to 1992, Peck continued to work for Biden as general

counsel and staff director. Peck also served as treasurer and vice chair of the Biden Foundation and as a volunteer senior advisor to the Biden Presidential Transition. Between 2007 and 2018, he was chairman of the government relations firm the Tiber Creek Group.

In an interview with The Maroon, Peck shared that his time at the Law School helped cultivate his analytic thinking, which has served him well in

his career. “The University of Chicago, with its—as a student very painful, but over your career very helpful—focus on the Socratic method [helps you] learn to question your own thinking and to question other people’s arguments.”

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“As Holocaust survivors pass, you lose memory of that direct personal experience.”

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diciary Committee, the full Senate, and the American public about the dangers of Robert Bork’s jurisprudence.”

A strict originalist, Robert Bork spoke against the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment did not extend to the prevention of sex discrimination, and that the Constitution did not grant a right to privacy.

“If you look at various court decisions—particularly the protection of gay rights and gay marriage in the Obergefell case—that all originates from substantive protections for the right to privacy of individuals in this country,” Peck said. “The preservation of those rights is a reflection of the fact that Robert Bork was not confirmed to be on the Supreme Court, and Anthony Kennedy was.”

Peck believes that his work at the Senate Judiciary Committee is highly relevant to the work he hopes to carry out with the USHMC. “I think much of our focus during the hearings on the Bork nomination were on civil liberties and civil rights, [and] due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution…which are all essential pillars for the preservation of individual rights and the protection of

minorities.”

“Obviously, there were no such protections during the Holocaust…. the mission of the Holocaust Museum is to continue to educate all generations of Americans, but particularly younger generations of Americans that don’t have any direct experience or memory of the Holocaust, and also the prevention of genocide, all of which relate to the preservation of individual rights and liberties,” Peck said.

Elaborating on the importance of educating the public, Peck said that the Museum seeks to help the public understand what happened in Nazi Germany: how ordinary people were led to do terrible things in support of the Nazis. He also explained that part of the Museum’s mission is preventing genocide globally and informing the public about issues of genocide. “The Museum put out a report on the genocide of the Uyghurs in China. It doesn’t involve members of the Jewish community like the Holocaust did, but it does involve genocide, which continues to occur in various different parts of the world.”

Peck later spoke about antisemitism and the significance of Holocaust remembrance more than 70 years after the end of World War II. Peck said, “I would make the case that [Holocaust

remembrance is] even more important today…. Antisemitism is on the rise.

We see examples like in Texas recently. Even in Washington, someone vandalized Union Station with Swastikas.

People who don’t know about the Holocaust or who have this romanticized image of the Nazis are more inclined to be led down a path of antisemitism.”

He also discussed the role of the USHMC in preventing antisemitism.

“The Museum is a critical means by which we remember the terrible, terrible genocide that occurred in Nazi Germany and throughout Europe in the 1940s. One is destined to relive history if one doesn’t learn from it, and so it’s absolutely essential to have this sort of memorial, not just in stone, [but] studying genocide around the world, taking steps to prevent it.”

The USHMC, Peck said, “has a really important mission to prevent disinformation and misinformation about antisemitism. More people [need to] understand the history of what transpired during the Holocaust: how Jews were transported to camps and murdered on a large scale. We need to make sure people understand that this happened before and it could happen again.”

Peck believes that American antisemitism has been driven in large part

by a lack of education, and he warns of the threat posed by efforts to rewrite history. “You see what’s happening today with ‘critical race theory,’ and how that’s been misinterpreted. You see how there are efforts on the far right to wipe away history regarding racism in this country and you see the banning of books.

“We saw these sorts of things when the Nazis began their rise in Germany.

The parallels should not be overlooked or ignored: There are revisionists on the right who are trying to rewrite our history…and it’s only a short step to saying we shouldn’t be teaching about the Holocaust and how antisemitism continues.”

Peck concluded by underscoring the urgency of the USHMC’s mission. “Time marches on,” he said. “As Holocaust survivors pass, you lose memory of that direct personal experience…. That’s why it’s so important to preserve that experience in video and oral history. Part of the reason young people don’t know about the Holocaust is because there’s no one [with firsthand experience] to teach them.”

With Classroom Mask Mandate Expiring Monday, UChicago Forward Reports 108 New Cases

By MICHAEL McCLURE | Deputy News Editor In an email update sent to the University community Friday, April 1, UChicago Forward announced that there were 108 new cases and 176 close contacts for the period between March 25 and March 31. These figures are more than triple those of the last Forward update on March 18, in which 31 cases and 29 close contacts were reported.

Surveillance testing conducted between March 24 and March 30 yielded 15 new cases and a 3.58 percent positivity rate, approximately eight times the 0.44 percent reported two weeks ago. There are currently 17 students isolating on campus and 47 isolating

off campus.

The University reaffirmed that it would continue with plans to lift the classroom masking mandate on April 4 and noted that instructors may not set mandates on mask-wearing. “As in other spaces on campus, anyone is free to wear masks. We ask that everyone be courteous of others and respect each other’s choices. While anyone may ask others to wear masks, starting April 4 no one is obligated to do so in classrooms, and individual instructors may not set masking policies for classes,” the email read. More information on the process to

request accommodations is available on the UChicago Forward website.

The March 18 UChicago Forward email included a recommendation that individuals who travel over spring break, which lasted from March 19 to March 27, “get tested before and immediately after traveling.” In response to the increase in cases, this week’s UChicago Forward email encouraged individuals to schedule on-demand tests with the Voluntary Surveillance Testing Program through the my.WellnessPortal.

The email also reiterated that per University protocol, mask-wearing is still required in some scenarios. Close contacts of individuals who have tested positive for

COVID-19 must wear a mask for 10 days following their exposure, and individuals who have recently been isolated following a positive test must wear a mask for five days after returning to in-person activities.

The city of Chicago’s positivity rate increased to 1.5 percent from last week’s 1.0 percent. Chicago Department of Public Health commissioner Allison Arwady said that the city remain​​ed “in good control” and urged concerned individuals to ensure that they had been fully vaccinated and boosted.

“It is not surprising to see a slight increase in cases as behavior changes, but we continue to monitor this closely,” she said in a statement.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — APRIL 6, 2022

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VIEWPOINTS

An Apology From the Viewpoints Head Editors Regarding Recent Op-Ed

By ELIZABETH WINKLER and KELLY HUI Note from Gage Gramlick (editor-in-chief) and Yiwen Lu (managing editor): Viewpoints maintains partial editorial independence from The Maroon. This means that the following apology does not constitute an institutional perspective and represents only the views of the current Viewpoints Head Editors. The Maroon is committed to serving our community in its entirety: We condemn hate of all kinds, and we are committed as individuals and as an institution to engaging meaningfully and completely with the subjects of our coverage and all community voices. We hope that this apology generates further conversation,

and we strongly encourage readers to respond. Additionally, as per Viewpoints policy, the writers of this apology will be barred from editing any submissions pertaining to the removal of the op-ed, the apology itself, or Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago.

As Viewpoints editors and members of the UChicago community, we stand against hate and strive to create a productive platform for opinions. On February 17, 2022, we failed in this mission. We made the choice to publish an oped that contained factual inaccuracies. These factual inaccuracies, contrary to Viewpoints’s goals, flattened dialogue and perpetuated hate toward UChicago’s chapter

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of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP UChicago), Palestinian students, and those on campus who support the Palestinian liberation struggle. We failed as Viewpoints editors and as members of the UChicago community when we published this article, which was not fact-checked as thoroughly as it should have been. We deeply regret this oversight and the harm that our decision inflicted. We apologize to every member in SJP UChicago and all others who were affected by this decision, and we vow to take concrete steps, which we enumerate in this letter, to prevent this from happening again.

After further reflection on what we believe the role of opinion journalism should be, we have taken this op-ed down. We do not take this action to hide our mistakes but rather to take responsibility for the damage the op-ed has done and to prevent further harm.

Below this apology, we include corrections to the factual inaccuracies in the op-ed and the text of the op-ed itself as context for those corrections and as documentation of our errors and our commitment to redress them.

Viewpoints is a space that is intended to facilitate free speech on campus and in the surrounding communities, and a large part of that facilitation is diligent fact-checking. It is our editorial responsibility to ensure that our writers’ words are grounded in facts, and by choosing to publish this op-ed, we did not fulfill this responsibility. As a result of this failure, the factual inaccuracies in this op-ed were used to delegitimize and undermine SJP UChicago’s campaign and the larger movement on campus and beyond for Palestinian liberation

and self-determination.

Additionally, we recognize that The Maroon as an institution has a history of publishing and contributing to anti-Palestinian sentiments on campus and beyond, and SJP UChicago has compiled and protested articles they see as fitting this pattern.

Within this history, Viewpoints has particularly failed in seeking out and representing the voices of Palestinian students. Although we cannot undo these harms, especially the role of Viewpoints in contributing to said dangerous rhetoric, we are committed to doing better through a larger and ongoing reevaluation of our editing processes for opinion pieces.

This includes a higher threshold for accepting submissions; upholding our commitment to free speech by being more scrupulous in our fact-checking; involving our entire Viewpoints editing team throughout the editing process, especially in acceptance and publication decisions; and ensuring that if a submission critiques a person or group, additional attention is paid to the article by including our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee and copy chiefs in the editing and publication process.

As Viewpoints editors, we seek to break the pattern of anti-Palestinian rhetoric in The Maroon.

As student journalists, we are learning from our mistakes and committed to growing into more thoughtful and ethical writers and editors. In working toward this goal, we acknowledge the same damaging pattern within many journalistic institutions, particularly in mainstream news outlets, and we seek to combat this within our own newspaper. We must include conversations about power

and safety in our decisions about how we should platform the voices in our community, and we must reexamine the idea of journalistic objectivity. As Viewpoints editors, we believe that our commitments to journalistic integrity and The Maroon’s mission require us to take political and cultural contexts into account in our coverage.

We are committed to free speech and to considering opinions submitted from all sides of a story, as free speech cannot be opposed to critical thought and nuance. We must acknowledge the potential for our coverage to perpetuate imbalances of power and to threaten the safety of members of our community. We want Viewpoints to be a space in which students and community members can express their opinions freely, without creating an environment in which other students are no longer safe to share their opinions and realities.

In working to achieve this goal of inclusion and productive discourse in Viewpoints, we must acknowledge that our decision to remove the op-ed may affect Jewish students on campus. The factual inaccuracies in the op-ed were used to support Zionist and racist sentiments that relied on oversimplified narratives, setting Jewish people and Palestinian people at odds and presenting both communities as generalized monoliths without any acknowledgement of the multifaceted identities we know to exist in these communities. Given this narrative, we understand that removing the op-ed from the website could be seen as stifling Jewish voices, but that would go against our values of inclusion and free speech and contribute to the antisemitism that is CONTINUED ON PG. 5

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“We have removed the op-ed in accordance with the values we described above and because of the factual inaccuracies we detail below.”

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already all too present in the lives of our Jewish peers. We want to emphasize that we are committed to providing a welcoming platform for dialogue that is founded on facts. We have removed the op-ed in accordance with the values we described above and because of the factual inaccuracies we detail below.

Corrections to the factual inaccuracies: What was written: “Jewish-taught and -related classes.”

Fact-checking: SJP UChicago’s boycott addressed “classes on Israel or those taught by Israeli fellows.” Israeli and Jewish are not synonymous.

What was written: “SJP sought to intimidate UChicago students and coerce them into dropping all classes related to Israel or taught by an Israeli professor.”

Fact-checking: SJP UChicago’s boycott reads, “Classes taught

by Israeli fellows and funded by the Israel Institute are clearly products of a complicit institution; this, and not simply their instructors’ nationality, is why we called on students to boycott them.” An Israeli professor is not the same as the boycotted “Israeli fellows,” which in this context denotes affiliation with the Israel Institute.

What was written: “The Jewish people use a lunar calendar, where each day begins on the sunset the day before, which meant that the posting of the slides overlapped with Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. We believe that this was done to isolate and alienate the Jewish population at UChicago and to interfere with a day of mourning.”

Clarification: Some Jewish people use the Hebrew calendar, which is lunisolar. The Gregorian calendar is solar. International

Holocaust Remembrance Day, as designated by the United Nations General Assembly, falls on January 27 from 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. on the Gregorian calendar. On the Hebrew calendar, the day of remembrance is observed starting at sundown on April 27. The post was not published on a Jewish holiday.

In a statement, SJP UChicago said that the organization “has never made and will never make a post with the calculated intention of demonizing an ethnic or religious population.”

What was written: “SJP members later approached students in the quad about banning the classes in the post, reiterating the misinformation and attempting to demonize students in those classes.”

Important additional information: SJP UChicago’s statement on this incident includes the following: “This likely refers to an event in which, while watching over the February 15 installation, two SJP members were approached by a student who inquired about the Instagram post.

The two members reiterated the points made in the post respectfully, and were in fact unaware of the political affiliations, intentions, or classes of enrollment of the inquiring student.”

The original boycott campaign can be found on SJP UChicago’s Instagram page.

The original text of the published op-ed: “Heading: We Must Condemn the SJP’s Online Anti-Semitism Subheading: The SJP’s recent calls to boycott Jewish-taught and -related classes, posted to Instagram on Holocaust Remembrance Day, are anti-Semitic and must be condemned.

Social headline: ​​OP-ED: “SJP has a continued pattern of an-

ti-Semitism that must be condemned by students and the University alike.”

In order to protect the authors’ identities, their names have been omitted. The authors consented to this omission.

“After sunset on January 26, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) UChicago released a post on Instagram telling students to “Stop Taking Sh*tty Zionist Classes.” SJP has a continued pattern of anti-Semitism that must be condemned by students and the University alike.

The Jewish people use a lunar calendar, where each day begins on the sunset the day before, which meant that the posting of the slides overlapped with Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. We believe that this was done to isolate and alienate the Jewish population at UChicago and to interfere with a day of mourning.

The following day, SJP posted a story in response to receiving backlash about posting on Holocaust Remembrance Day, showing that they in fact posted the day before, not the day of. But posting after sunset was itself an affront— it distracted from Holocaust Remembrance Day, especially as the post circulated and was promoted on the day of mourning itself.

In the post, SJP sought to intimidate UChicago students and coerce them into dropping all classes related to Israel or taught by an Israeli professor, deeming them Zionist classes. The post states: “Support the Palestinian movement for liberation by boycotting classes on Israel or those taught by Israeli fellows.

By attending these classes, you are participating in a propaganda campaign that creates complicity in the continuation of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.” The targeting of classes taught specifically

by Israeli fellows is xenophobic as

Israelis cannot change their nationality, and this post demonizes that nationality by declaring all courses taught by someone affiliated with the nation as propaganda. Further, all courses listed are explicitly within the University’s Jewish Studies center. This furthers the trope that Jewish courses and professors work to contribute to propaganda for Israel, which is a blatantly false narrative.

UChicago prides itself on its free speech policy, encouraging students to broaden their education and ask tough questions in classes. Instead, this SJP post actively encourages students to drop such classes, hence discouraging educational freedom. This also violates the University’s discrimination and harassment policies, as the Israeli faculty are directly discriminated against. As such, the Jewish student community is indirectly discriminated against.

Further, the harassment policy states that any organization that utilizes social media and other tactics—such as handing out flyers to intimidate students—in order to interfere with the education of students is harassment.

SJP members later approached students in the quad about banning the classes in the post, reiterating the misinformation and attempting to demonize students in those classes.

After several days, SJP edited their post’s caption. In this, they defined “Jewish national identity” for the Jewish community. In their explanation of the use of Jewish national identity, they wrote, “A more unambiguous term may have been ‘Zionist National Identity’—‘[I]sraeli nationalist identity’ would have been incomplete.”

This statement confirms that the post was indeed targeting Jewish students. There was no apology or any other statements regarding the comments or complaints

about the post, meaning that SJP saw nothing else wrong with what they posted.

Although this incident has caught the attention of international organizations such as Jewish on Campus (JOC), neither the University nor the student government has responded.”

In order to protect the authors’ identities, their names have been omitted. The authors consented to this omission.

We stand against hate in all forms. We condemn the pitting of Jewish and Palestinian students against one another, and we deeply regret the extent to which the oped’s factual inaccuracies—which we should not have published— perpetuated such a harmful dynamic. We support both Palestinian and Jewish communities and condemn anti-Palestinian and antisemitic rhetoric on campus and beyond.

This apology is part of larger, important conversations about journalism and racism. We encourage submissions from members of the UChicago community on these matters and recuse ourselves from editing columns and op-eds pertaining to the removal of the op-ed or the apology itself as well as any further submissions about or from SJP UChicago.

Viewpoints Head Editor Elizabeth Winkler is a fourth-year in the College. Viewpoints Head Editor Kelly Hui is a second-year in the College.

Viewpoints, the opinion section of The Maroon, maintains partial editorial independence from the publication. The views expressed here do not constitute an institutional perspective and reflect only those of the current Viewpoints Head Editors.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — APRIL 6, 2022

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ARTS You Can Be And And And And And And And

By EVAN WILLIAMS | Arts Reporter I’ve been listening to Sammy Rae and the Friends for over a year now, and very few things give me a surge of serotonin quite like the opening notes of a song like “Let’s Throw a Party” or “Creo Lo Sientes.” A burgeoning group that might be best described as a big band throwing a dance party, Sammy Rae and the Friends are wonderful.

I was lucky enough to sit down with Rae to discuss queerness, her lyrics, and her life’s ambition to become the next Mr. Rogers.

Evan Williams: I started listening to your music about a year ago, but I got really into it this past winter, and it felt like this really warm and cozy and happy bubble to live inside during the misery of a Chicago winter, and so I’m curious how joy plays into your work and your daily life.

Sammy Rae: Sure. Well, first of all, thank you, that’s so kind, what a beautiful thing you just said. I’ve never really thought about that before: How does joy play into my work and what we do? It’s really the motivating factor behind everything. As artists, we all make different sorts of music—whatever works best for us—and I have a fine enough time holding and unpackaging and processing my sadness. The things I want to commemorate with songs are joy and self-expression and that sort of thing, and that’s what I want to give our audience. I hope we’re giving them a realistic interpretation of how I move through the world and how other people move through the world, but what I appreciate about our project is that a lot of our output is tunes about joy where we’re very much in a child-like mindset. We’re big on play, you know, so we’re very physical when we’re on stage, we’re very physical as people, we’re very big, imaginative thinkers. I would like to say that most of us try to live kind of simply and focus on the big stuff, so the product of that is tunes that are infused with joy and music that I hope reaches as many people as possible.

I do think about trying to work against the average listener—we do have a demographic, it’s predominantly young, queer college

folks—but my hope is that their parents can really enjoy the show and if they have kids, the kids can come and really enjoy the show, so I think when it comes to trying to make things accessible to as many people as possible, we have to focus on the big stuff, and the big stuff we want to focus on is joy, you know?

EW: As a young, queer college student who is also a fan, how are you thinking about queerness in your music and how the big band vibe ties into ideas of “chosen family”?

SR: Right, well you just said it, “chosen family” is a cornerstone of the queer experience. My thinking is that to be queer is to be unlimited. That’s always the way I’ve thought about it, it’s to never have to be or, you can be and and and and and and and, which is so exciting. I want to make sure that I am making art that serves the people who are consuming it. We’ve had so much time touring now to get to know the people listening to the music, and because we are this chosen family of folks and a number of us are queer, I think we’ve attracted—in the music we make, the stories we tell—we’ve attracted those people as well, which is a thrill. And the more we get to know them, the more I want to make music that serves them because I love them and quite literally want to be friends with everybody. We [as a band] have this really unique thing— and I think I speak for all of us—where we look out in the audience and at everybody in the first couple rows and we can just pick up their vibe right away. It’s like, “You’re cool, I want to be here, I want to be with you, I want to be friends with you.” We’re also constantly told by venue workers that everyone is carrying each other’s drinks and they’re so thoughtful, that everybody tips really well, so we’re very proud of the sort of community that we’re surrounded by and the kind of community that we attract, and I want to continue to make music that serves them. We’re so grateful and we want to continuously express our gratitude for them coming out and supporting us so we can live this magical dream and do the thing that we love with our chosen

family, and I want to say thank you for that. So, it’s this beautiful, cyclical thing where I’m continuing to make music that serves that community which happens to be queer, and it inspires [us to do] what we want to keep doing. I want to make things that they like, but they’re so much like me that that’s easy. But yeah, in trying to be accessible to everybody, I’m not trying to generate an exclusively queer environment. I think that’s a struggle with a lot of queer folks—speaking with the queer folks I know—the struggle is “I want to not just be othered, I want to just be, just be part of something.” So, my hope is we can create a space where [these folks] feel safe to do that and also safe around other people who are on the same vibe and want to come to the show.

EW: How has touring been?

SR: It’s crazy. Me and the band, we keep finding each other and being like [mock grumpy voice]. People keep asking me “How’s touring?” and I don’t know what to say, because it’s, like, what aspect? Traveling? That’s a lot. It’s a lot to process, but we’re getting the hang of it. Audience encounters. Crowds are getting bigger. That’s also a lot to process but we’re handling it.

Interpersonal relationships like band and morale. That’s a lot and we’re all processing it. Touring is a lot. It’s great, it’s beautiful. But especially after the three weeks of this West Coast run we just came off of, it’s really starting to sit on us that this is a lifestyle and it doesn’t necessarily end. We’re gonna do this month and then we’re gonna have a month off and then we’re gonna jump into the festival touring for the summer, so it has been a few months of really processing that all of us are really making a lifestyle change. We’re very grateful and very lucky to be doing it, especially in light of current circumstances, and it’s great.

We’re all in this weird blooming phase as both a group and individuals and it’s nice, it’s nice to be a part of. We feel up for the challenge and we’re learning about what we need to do as a group, as individuals physically, mentally, emotionally, to put on the best shows we can every night no matter what city we’re in.

EW: Logistical question for a band of

your size: How are you moving around?

SR: So up to this point we’ve been in a sprinter van which sits 12 people and you can kind of stand up in it, it’s got this huge cargo hold in the back so that’s where most of the gear’s been living, but this leg of the “Follow Me Like the Moon Tour,” which we depart for in like six days, will be our first tour on a tour bus, so we’re very excited. We’ll all be sleeping on the bus, all the gear will be attached to a trailer in the back, and that makes a lot of things much easier. It’s easier being able to tour for such an extended period of time—it’s four months out, you know, it’s not a fiver and then we come home, which is what we were really used to before this year. It’s great because we have a couple more days off than usual in between each show, but it’ll be four weeks, we’ll be in the bus, and it’ll be a sleepover every night and we’ll see what happens—we don’t know what to expect.

EW: I want to talk about lyrics. I love your lyrics; I think they’re amazing. I was checking out your website and I noticed that there’s a whole section devoted to what’s called “Read,” and I love that because all the lyrics are just right there, and you can read them as little poems or stories or however you want to conceive of them, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band do that.

SR: Wow, thank you for that. Yeah, there’s a lot of words in all the songs and they move really quick, and I don’t want you to miss anything, so if you want to check it out, it’s online.

EW: They do seem very narrative— how do you think about narrative and soundplay and all that good stuff?

SR: You know… When I was young, I realized this craft of songwriting—like lyrics and music together—that’s song, and you can kind of tell a story in metaphors and secret code that might mean one thing to you and one thing to the audience. That’s fascinated me since I was young. A lot of people who fascinated me early on were Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and what’s interesting about their music is that they’re so hyper-detailed, they’re so narrative, they CONTINUED ON PG. 7

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“[The sound] is whatever you feel, it’s whatever you want.”

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insert you into what they’re trying to paint for you, the story they’re trying to tell. But they very consciously leave enough room, enough vagueness, that the audience can insert themselves into the thing. You listen to a Bruce Springsteen song and the first verse is, you know, “I saw her standing here in this part of the room, she was wearing this, this was this, the weather was this, the weather was that,” so you’re really there listening to the story, you’re very invested, but he gives you enough space to insert your own perspective into it. I’ve always thought that to be a good songwriter is to find that balance. It means so much to me that I’m really getting my point across, but I’m leaving enough room for you, because once the song leaves me, it’s not about me, right?

We have this song, “The Box,” which I was writing as a very clinical observation of the gender binary, I guess—What is gender? What’s going on?—and it’s also a bit of a love song. I wrote that song with that in mind and the way that it has been perceived in so many different ways by so many different people. That’s the tune where I think—whatever that magic line is, where I’m getting my point across and you get it, but it’s also your point—I think we nailed it in that song, so I’m proud of it for that.

EW: What are you listening to or reading or watching right now that you just can’t get enough of?

SR: This is the year of Paul McCartney for me. I’m really deep into Wings, the project that came after the Beatles… really deep into that. The Paul McCartney records and the elements of those songs that make them so uniquely Wings records is huge, big orchestration, lots of different things going, lots of games. The song “Let’s Throw a Party” was very much influenced by that listening because it’s almost like four songs that are stuck in one song that make no sense together but somehow, they do. It’s more of an epic than a song. So, I’ve been listening to a lot of that and a lot of music similar to that recently, trying to think about how to take arrangements to a bigger place.

EW: There’s a lot of heavily layered sound and so many different things going on in a lot of your songs, especially ones like “Creo Lo Sientes.” You said earlier

that things are simple—how do those two things fit together for you?

SR: Whatever we feel is drowned in all this hand percussion and toy instrument stuff, it’s a cornerstone of that whole arrangement: There’s a million different things going on but when you boil it down, it just makes the groove. For this one, the groove happened to be that instead of using C-BASS on the drum kit where he’s got two toms, a snare, all these cymbals, the crash, the kick, it was like: Here you’ve got a wood block, here you have a conga, you have two bongos, you’ve got this triangle, you have these things. There’s a lot of different arrangement things going on in there so that the sound is huge, but what we’re saying is that [the sound] is whatever you feel, it’s whatever you want, and that’s really all that there is.… It’s whatever you feel.… In the effort to keep it simple, the subject matter is very simple.

EW: I came across an interview where you said ultimately you wanted to get into children’s music. Is that still something you think about doing, even now?

SR: Yes! I met a couple of the band members in the kids’ music scene—this always comes up in interviews, people are like, “What is your thing with kids’ music?”—I met a couple people in the kids’ music scene, I met C-BASS and kind of Will [Leet] in this network of musicians in New York that play birthday parties and kids’ classes and they’re all like super killing because they wake up every day, and they play their instrument all day for kids in this really low-stakes environment, and all of them are so nice! My first real creative odd job was essentially being a music teacher for kids, and when I stopped waiting tables and nannying and all that, I started making kids’ music. Some of my production experience comes from when I was working with a kids’ music production house for a while and I was in-studio and I was conducting the kids and helping with engineering those sessions, so it’s a big part of where I come from creatively.

Again, to the themes of joy and the child mind and play. I’m really fascinated by the perpetual child archetype—Mr. Rogers and Pee-wee Herman and Raffey, if you know Raffey, SpongeBob SquarePants.

I’m really into this perpetual child, always in tap with that mindset there—especially like Mr. Rogers—and it’s always been a bar

to me: Let’s make all this music as accessible as possible. If a kid could understand it, then anybody could understand it, so if I’m talking way too much about this thing or the words are too complicated, I scale it back. So I’m always thinking about kids and making music, and I have this dream for the second half of my career…. I want to be, like, an iconic kids’ show host, I want to be Mr. Rogers very badly. I don’t think I can actually get into that until I’m a mom myself, or a parent, it’s definitely a later in life thing, but I have such a history with kids’ music. I’m so fascinated by pedagogy and the way that kids perceive music and perceive art and I think that they are chronically underestimated.

I would call “Saw It Coming” a kids’ song. In that song, I very distinctly wrote with the intention of it being accessible to kids, you know—“what you did was not good, what you did was good, and careful because you never saw it coming, good stuff or the bad stuff”—I intentionally followed that line of thinking and there’s no reason “Saw It Coming” is not the theme song of my kids’ show. I have this dream of a future show, where we’re making really killing music that doesn’t underestimate kids, for kids.

EW: Is there anything that you have right now in your personal life, your ar-

tistic life, that you really, really hope your future self hangs on to?

SR: Damn. It’s an interesting question.

This thing didn’t really show up until a couple of years ago in my life, this line of thinking that’s like, “I can get through this, I promise,” from totally unrelated stuff like, “Oh my god I’m so tired and I don’t know if I can get through this show,” or, “I have five shows left on this run I don’t know if I can do it”—but then I would do it and then I would remember that I could do it. Or, “I don’t want to go to the doctor’s office, it stresses me out,” and then I would be at the doctor’s office all stressed and I would go, “Oh but remember when you didn’t think you could pull off those five days of tour and then you did? If you could do that, you can pull this off.” So this line of thinking has only showed up maybe in the last two years of my life where I’m just really, actually, truly, honestly, authentically not doubting myself, and believing that I will find a way to turn it out when it needs to be turned out, and I’m really enjoying being in that place of really, really, truly, honestly trusting and believing in myself.

I hope that I stay there for a long time. It took me long enough to get here.

EW: Cheers to that.

Sammy Rae and the Friends perform on stage. courtesy of sammy rae

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Oneus: Blood Moon in the Windy City Oneus’s Blood Moon tour is a textbook example of how K-pop’s performativity lends itself to bombastic concerts.

Oneus are arguably in their most visible era thus far. courtesy of rbw

By VERONICA CHANG | Arts Contributor K-pop often feels like more than a genre, encompassing far more than the music released in every debut or comeback. Likewise, watching a K-pop concert feels like more than a live rendition

of music. It’s theatrical, it’s parasocial, and it’s entirely performative, from the first “Hi Chicago!” (take a shot every time the moniker “Windy City” is mentioned) to the final bow. Yet there’s something

about the performativity of K-pop—the acrobatic and synchronized choreography, the elaborate costumes and set designs, the carefully crafted relationship between idols and their fans—that makes it all the more engaging to watch live.

K-pop group Oneus is no exception

to this. Having fallen out of K-pop’s orbit for the past few years, I went into this concert with fairly low expectations and a crash-course yeah-I’m-a-journalist-Ido-my-research knowledge of the group.

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“There’s no denying that K-pop has taken the world by storm—from chart placements to music awards to global tours, the industry is only growing.”

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from cheering, with a newly established “bias” (favorite member).

Oneus started the concert strong, with tracks like “COME BACK HOME” and “BLACK MIRROR” instantly throwing the audience into a frenzy. The bass thrummed through Concord Music Hall, and the choreography matched the intensity, often featuring a member’s being raised into the air or standing on another’s back before jumping off. Their setlist was saturated with these strong performances, and even as the group opted for the occasional slower song or prerecorded skit, their energy never waved or flagged.

What is being an idol1 but the career of image construction? Oneus musically wowed their audience, pushing their voices and limbs through rapid-fire rap, challenging vocal runs (from both the vocalists and the rappers of the group), and powerful choreography, but they also kept up the performance when the music paused. They never seemed anything less than sincere and excited as they reassured their fans that they had really missed them since their last time visiting Chicago in 2019, promised to continue “working to show a better side of [themselves],”2 and asked for their fans’ continued support while they did so. In between songs, they cracked silly jokes

about Shakespeare and stretching—almost seamlessly blending memorized English and improvised Korean, which was relayed instantly by their off-stage translator.

“Did you know that the Cloud Gate looks like a bean?” (Yes, like the sculpture ‘Cloud Gate’, which is nicknamed “The Bean.”) “What pizza topping would each member of Oneus be?” (Yes, this was a five-minute conversation that ended with the crowd’s cheering for Sprite vs.

Coke.) Oneus’s rehearsed variety segments could best be described as shitposts, well-timed and interspersed between their loud, bombastic setlist.

There’s no denying that K-pop has taken the world by storm—from chart placements to music awards to global tours, the industry is only growing. Two U.S. tours by a group that only recently achieved their first weekly music show win (a general, if flawed, marker of success) would have been unimaginable five years ago. Indeed, despite a greater degree of popularity, Oneus’s older labelmate Mamamoo have never had their own U.S. tour (Rainbow Bridge World, Oneus’s label: If you’re reading this, please make this happen). Yet a key element to K-pop’s growth has been Western assimilation, with music that’s frequently indistinguishable from factory-produced Top 40 pop, appealing to au-

diences who would otherwise treat K-pop as a fascinating fetish.

It’s refreshing, then, to see Oneus embrace and promote traditional Korean culture as their musical strength.

Their latest title track “Luna” was originally written with the Korean traditional flute pili, while their new version of “Lit” better highlights oriental musical instruments. Their costumes also reflected this traditional concept, as Oneus donned hanbok and incorporated Korean folding fans into the choreography of the two songs. The smaller venue worked to their advantage here, allowing the audience to see the intricacies of their presentation.

After their first-ever music show win last year and a relatively successful appearance in Korean reality TV program Road to Kingdom the year prior, Oneus are arguably in their most visible era thus far; they’ve returned to the US eager to reconnect with their American fans and excited to reach more of them this time around. Their bond with their fans, who are nicknamed To Moon, is what drives them—following the platitude-laden path of superstars before them. Oneus’s Blood Moon tour is a celebration of how far the group has come and hopefully a sign of what’s to follow.3 Parts of this article were contributed

by UChicago K-pop dance RSO neXus, who

would like to add that if they could bring even a fraction of Oneus’s satisfaction and energy to their own dancing, they’d consider it a success.

Strictly speaking, “Korean idol” refers to someone who works in the K-pop music industry. Yet the phrase in Western media tends to imply, disingenuously, that K-pop as an industry churns out management-controlled robots—true to an extent, but a view that feeds into negative stereotypes of Asians’ having no personality. And so we have employed the general moniker “idol,” which can refer to any celebrity whose career leads to intense adulation as a result of careful image curation.

2 Echoing countless other idol groups in expressing that everything is done for the fans, that by improving and working hard for said fans, idols can therefore be held up on an impossible pedestal where all facets of themselves must be perfect at all times (and any indication otherwise is vehemently pounced upon by their now extraordinarily loyal fans.) You know, the sort of sentiment that causes adulation, leading to mass donation campaigns, coordinated harassment, stalking, and more.

3 Before their members have to do military service, the group likely gets phased out in an already oversaturated market.

1

A Book by Its Cover: Decorative Book Bindings From the Medieval Codex to Contemporary Artists’ Books

By KINA TAKAHASHI | Arts Contributor “I judge a book by its cover; I judge a book by its shape.”

- Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading Oftentimes, we are preoccupied with the contents of a book rather than the book itself. The phrase, “Don’t judge a

book by its cover” is preached as a metaphorical reminder not to be quick to judge someone by outward appearances alone. Most of us have placed an emphasis on getting to know someone beyond the superficial surface, and rightfully so.

However, the exhibition currently on display at the Regenstein Library (the Reg), A Book by Its Cover: Decorative Book Bindings from the Medieval Codex to Contemporary Artists’ Books, invites us to judge every book by its cover! By focusing on the intricately beautiful form of each book, the viewer starts to realize the depth of history that lies underneath

each aesthetic choice. A book’s cover, spine, and even weight hold a story.

The exhibition opens with Claudia Cohen’s dos-à-dos Bookbinding Ephemera/paper, its accordion-like structure showcasing each page with different works of art. Every page retains its own color palette and texture. Depending on CONTINUED ON PG. 10

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“By focusing on the intricately beautiful form of each book, the viewer starts to realize the depth of history that lies underneath each aesthetic choice.”

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the angle from which you view the page, some patterns and papers morph into an optical illusion. The combination of all the vibrant colors illustrates how the aesthetic choice of paper changes our perception of each book. As spring dawns on us with flowers blooming and snow starting to melt, this Bookbinding Ephemera was paired beautifully with the warm weather on the last Monday of February.

After making my way past the medieval book bindings, I found myself by a large glass frame tucked alone in the far-right corner. In this secluded corner is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein bound by the artist Karen Hanmer in 2018. Hanmer’s version emanates the very essence of Frankenstein.

The stitching of contrasting dyed-calf

vellum with visible vellum laces reflects Dr. Frankenstein’s process of forming one creature from different parts. The visibility of the stitching exposes the vulnerability that lies in imperfection.

Shelley’s beautiful metaphor “By slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity ruin” encapsulates the art of bookbinding and restoration of text well. Each page is a ligament bound by string and leather to produce the object of knowledge, pleasure, distaste, war, and joy that is a book.

I was overjoyed to see that the names of bookbinding artists were largely female. After reading one of the exhibition texts, I then discovered that bookbinding is largely an anonymous art form, as it is the product of physical handiwork. As is true of printing and other art mediums, women have made

lasting contributions, and beginning in the nineteenth century, they chose not to remain hidden in the margins. The Guild of Women Binders was informed by the Arts and Crafts movement to revive the art and appreciation of handwork and individuality, particularly as a counterpoint to the uniformity of machine-made books and bindings. Focusing on the golden flower vines rimmed on the book cover of Lectures by William Morris, I was amazed by the level of detail and precision of each flower, leaf, and vine. To think that Paget made each detail herself by hand is not only impressive, but magical. No machine can emulate the same sense of history. The binding of that book is part of a pivotal artistic movement. Unlike most exhibitions—although the change is happening (…slowly)—this exhibition gives voice

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to female bookbinders and artists that were not given the credit they deserved in their time.

If you are a Mansueto regular or find yourself with writer’s block for your final paper at the Reg, why not take a walk down to the Special Collections gallery space, on the way to Mansueto, and view the A Book by Its Cover exhibition? You might uncover great inspiration from the intricate bindings of books made in the 18th century or drift into the imaginative realm of the Arts and Crafts movement—each golden gilt standing in contrast to the uniformity of machine print press.

The exhibition is in The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center and will remain open until April 29, 2022.

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SPORTS MLB GRIT: Girls ID Tour Concludes in Chicago The Girls ID Tour, which is held in various cities annually, offers a chance for young women to show their baseball talents in front of scouts and meet others who share a passion for the game.

By FINN HARTNETT | Sports Editor On Sunday, March 27, the MLB GRIT: Girls ID Tour hosted its final event of the year at the Pullman Community Center in Chicago. The Tour is a chance for local girls aged 12–18 to show off their baseball talents in front of developmental scouts, with a few earning invitations to play in competitive summer events like the Elite Development Invitational in Vero Beach, Florida. More than that, though, the tour is simply a chance for young women to play baseball with one another, which remains a rare opportunity even today.

Chicago was bright but typically frosty on the day of the showcase. Fortunately, the players were spared from the cold, as the event was held indoors at a facility in Pullman, a small neighborhood that lies about 50 city blocks south of Hyde Park. The community center is an important spot for the South Side—locals can play soccer, basketball, and baseball inside for a small fee. The Girls ID Tour, having been funded by Major League Baseball (MLB), was free to attend.

The event mainly featured high school students—those who play either for their school squads or, if they are forbidden to play with the boys, local travel teams. Each player had a numbered sign taped to their shirt to make them more easily distinguishable among the evaluators.

A group of around nine players stood out—all were sporting the same hot pink high socks. They were attending the event together as members of the same local program, Chaneyville Baseball. Chaneyville’s girls’ team was no joke; although it was only founded in 2020, it won the Baseball For All nationals in the summer of 2021 and recently received a sponsorship from the Chicago White Sox. Coach and founder of Chaneyville Baseball Fred Chaney told The Maroon that the girls’ team was founded shortly after the program began with two different boys’ teams. A few girls signed up

for the under-12 boys’ team, were accepted, and had a good enough time that they told their classmates and friends about the program. Soon, there were enough young women to form a girls’ team, which promptly won a national title. “The parents asked, ‘Can you consider keeping all the girls together?’”

Chaney said. “So I did. And I’m very happy that I did.”

The first skill on which the players were judged was their speed. Each player was timed with stopwatches as they ran sprints from home plate to first base, then from home to second base. A wide range of ages was on display at the event, but the younger players did not seem fazed. As the group moved on to fielding grounders and throwing to a base, it was the youngest players who seemed to throw the hardest and cleanest.

Parents looked on from the bleachers as the grounders turned into line drives and fly balls. It looked like fun: the ping sound of the ball being sent into the outfield by metal bats; the smack of ball in glove as the players snagged their flies. The girls laughed with one another even as some balls got lost in the fluorescent lights and bounced away from them.

After the fielding drills, the players took batting practice. Each got five or six swings as the MLB evaluators peered on from behind home plate to see how each player was barreling the ball. This was perhaps the most impressive-looking drill of the day— the coach who was pitching was throwing hard, and yet there was rarely a hitter who wasn’t banging line drives off the walls of the indoor field.

“This kind of stuff did not exist at all when I was playing,” Sarah Padove, MLB’s manager of baseball and softball development, told The Maroon. Padove is from the Chicago area, or near it anyway. She grew up in Hammond, Indiana, and attended Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights.

She played baseball and softball in various Little Leagues growing up but quickly transitioned to exclusively softball after finding female baseball programs extremely hard to come by. Padove’s story is a common one. Members of the U.S.A. Baseball Women’s National Team—the gold standard for national women’s baseball—have shared stories about how finding places to play as a young woman was all but impossible.

Even today, it continues to be hard to find girls’ baseball teams, let alone full leagues.

UChicago, for example, does not possess a varsity women’s baseball team (although it should be said that softball is an important part of the athletics department). There isn’t a registered student organization either. “A lot of them are regularly playing with boys’ teams,” Padove said of the players at the Girls ID Tour. “To get them all together is important.”

Parents attending the event knew the story as well. The same few fortunate phenomena usually had to fall into place for their daughters to even get the chance to try baseball: a son on a team; an unafraid, interested daughter; a kindly coach. “I’d signed up her brother to play T-ball,” Giovanna Silva said of her 13-year-old daughter Rosie Gonzalez. “When I took her, she didn’t get a cap, and she started tearing up. She was three years old. She wanted to know why she couldn’t play. We asked the athletic director.

He asked her, ‘Do you want to play baseball?’

And she said yes, and he gave her a cap, and she’s been playing ever since.”

Gonzalez has baseball in her blood—her grandfather played professionally in Puerto Rico for years. She herself is currently plying her craft as a catcher for Top Tier Baseball in McCook, Illinois. She is usually the only girl on the team; Silva stated that Gonzalez has sometimes faced abuse from the bleachers while playing. Parents will shout to the umpires, asking them to check if she is allowed to play, for example. Playing alongside other girls obviously makes things a bit easier. “It

feels more like a family to me,” Gonzalez told me. “They get me.” (She was quick to add, though, that co-ed “travel ball is also really fun.”) Gonzalez plans to try out for Riverside Brookfield High School’s baseball team when she graduates from middle school. No girl has ever attempted to join the baseball team at Riverside Brookfield, much less succeed. Still, the catcher seems calm about the situation. “If I don’t make it, I’ll probably try out for the softball team,” she said.

Of the players I spoke to, it was rare to find one who didn’t have an end goal to their career in mind. Many wanted to become the first woman to play in the MLB. A few said that playing for the U.S.A. Baseball Women’s National Team was their dream, including 17-year-old Nicole Coletta, who has attended many events similar to the Girls ID Tour in the past. Lily Pascarelli, an 18-year-old Chicago native, also said that playing for the national team was her goal. Pascarelli started out as a softball player but fell in love with baseball after being invited by a friend to play recreationally. She currently plays for the Schaumburg Flyers as a pitcher and first baseman. Like Gonzalez, she is the only girl on the team. She spoke of the bond that girls in baseball possess—of how they “share a similar passion as people who normally… stick out more.”

The Girls ID Tour looks to play a part in rectifying the wrongs that female ballplayers face. Chaney waxed lyrical about the importance of the event for his players. “They can see how they stack up against other girls, how they stack up against other talent.… It’s great for them to come out here and see all the other girls that are actually playing, and have a desire to play, so that they know they’re not alone.” He believes that if a professional women’s baseball league is founded in the future, similar to the WNBA, it will be because of the foundational steps currently being taken. “You may not see all of the benefits in your lifetime,” Chaney said. “But then, CONTINUED ON PG. 12

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“They can see how they stack up against other girls…it’s great for them.”

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we’re enjoying benefits right now based off of things that people did before us.” Padove added that MLB GRIT events provide opportunities for girls to join the baseball pipeline in more ways than just as a player. General manager, head coach, and scout are all baseball jobs women are slowly beginning to occupy. Gonzalez told her mother at a young age that if she couldn’t make it as an MLB player, she’d want to be a scout. “I’ve always kind of dreamed of making my own team,” Gonzalez told me.

After some pitching and catching work, the Girls ID Tour concluded. Padove spoke to the parents by the bleachers as the other organizers and coaches led the players to the center of the turf for a farewell. Each of the girls received a Chicago Cubs T-shirt as they walked off the field. It had been a long event. Everyone—parents, photographers, coaches, players—looked tired. Still, there seemed to be a shared energy radiating in the air among the players as they left the turf. No surprise there. “I grew up playing with guys,” Coletta told The Maroon.

“It’s an awesome bond to have, but when you come here and play with other girls, everyone knows exactly what you’ve been through.”

The MLB GRIT: Girls ID Tour hosted its final event of the year at the Pullman Community Center in Chicago. finn hartnett

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