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NEWS: REMEMBERING ANASTASIA GOLOVASHKINA

JANUARY 26, 2023 FOURTH WEEK VOL. 135, ISSUE 6

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UCPD Arrests Suspects Involved in Six Armed Robberies Thursday

By CASEY KIM | Senior News Reporter Content warning: This article mentions physical violence.

At least six armed robberies took place on and near campus Thursday, January 12, according to two emails sent

by Associate Vice President for Safety & Security Eric Heath.

Following the second round of robberies on Thursday morning, the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) located a fleeing vehicle, a white 2018 Nissan Altima with Illinois license plate DC36029, believed to have been involved in all of the incidents.

After a pursuit, UCPD detained and arrested the suspects and turned them over to the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Per the email, CPD will determine applicable charges and present the cases to the State’s Attorney.

“Images and videos from the University’s fixed and license plate reader

camera network were instrumental in identifying the vehicle and providing information to responding UCPD and CPD officers,” Heath wrote in his second email early Thursday afternoon.

Heath’s first email, sent early Thursday morning, detailed three incidents that happened overnight. The first occurred at approximately 12:55 a.m.

Thursday, when four suspects in a white sedan robbed a University faculty member exiting their parked vehicle near near the intersection of 54th Street and South Greenwood Avenue. The suspects demanded the faculty member’s property and struck the individual before fleeing southward in the sedan.

Then, at approximately 12:56 a.m., two suspects armed with handguns approached four University students walking on the sidewalk at 5426 South Greenwood Avenue and demanded prop-

Paul Alivisatos Reflects on First Year as President, Talks Safety Alerts and GSU

By GAGE GRAMLICK | Editor-in-Chief and YIWEN LU | Managing Editor

erty from them. The suspects fled southward in the white sedan after robbing the victims.

Later, at approximately 1:05 a.m., three suspects armed with handguns exited a white sedan and approached several University students walking near the Burton-Judson Courts dormitory at 1005 East 60th Street. They robbed two students before reentering the vehicle and driving westward toward South Cottage Grove Avenue.

The victims of all three incidents reported no physical injuries and declined

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Paul Alivisatos (A.B. ’81) was named the 14th president of the University of Chicago in February 2021, following former president Robert Zimmer’s decision to step down for health reasons. This fall marked the first year of Alivisatos’s presidency.

EDITORIAL: University’s Unionization Stance Violates the Kalven Report PAGE 14

medical attention, per Heath’s first email. All of the overnight incidents are under investigation by CPD. Heath’s second email said that around 10:22 a.m. Thursday morning, the suspect vehicle “had returned to the area and was involved in several additional robberies.” The email did not reveal specific details about the robberies.

After the suspects were arrested, UCPD recovered the vehicle, several weapons, and suspected proceeds from the robberies. The vehicle had been reported stolen to CPD.

In an exclusive interview, Maroon Editor-in-Chief Gage Gramlick and Managing Editor Yiwen Lu spoke to Alivisatos about his tenure to date, College admissions, safety and security, and the University’s

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 26, 2023

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“I just want to remind all students that we really want to do everything that we can to support you in not having any problems in terms of safety and security. ” CONTINUED FROM PG. 1

support for graduate students.

Chicago Maroon: You have over a year now as president. What are you most proud of, and what hopes do you have for the future?

Paul Alivisatos: This is a place that really loves shaping and defining new fields of knowledge, so we need to think about how to go about doing that in some really important and interesting directions. Everything here is built off of this culture of the love of ideas, freedom of expression being so central to it. The idea of rigor and quantitation [are] key parts of just the characteristics of the place.

One thing I see here that wasn’t like this when I was a student is this sense of partnership with students and their families about how to build on the educational experiences here to help students on their journeys as they go on to the next stage.

And I want to say I’m struck as well by how much student wellness and the student experience are on people’s minds. There’s a willingness to listen and adapt.

Let me give you one example: We have the Lyft Ride program that was suggested by a student. We heard that idea and thought, “Yes, that will make a lot of difference for students.” We jumped in, and we did it. I love that example because I think it shows that when we think about the student experience, we can be collaborative and adaptive.

I will say a few of the programmatic things that I’ve heard over the last year.

When we try to think about, for example, new areas for discovery, some areas that have come up are areas like climate and energy. That’s an area where students and faculty from every part of the University are really interested in.

CM: In your reading and conversations with them, how do faculty feel about the 4+1 Master’s Program? Are they excited about it? Is it too early to say?

PA: I think that there’s, too, huge interest in those kinds of ideas partly because they’re also trying to be partners with students around these aspects. And this provides a way for doing that. I found I’ve heard a lot of enthusiasm for it. This will

probably start smaller, and then we’ll see how it goes out.

CM: This year, the College has the lowest acceptance rate and highest yield rate in 10 years. I’m curious to hear a little bit about your thoughts on this? Is that a trend that’s going to continue?

PA: The reason we’re such a place that people really want to come to is because we have a distinctive way of doing things. We are a place that really puts enormous value on the love of ideas and a place where freedom of expression is a core piece. We have now added on to this sense of trying to work with students on their journeys. We have the Career Advancement center and other activities like that.

For us, the most important thing is that we bring to the University students who [think] that’s what they’re looking for. As we go into each academic cycle like this, we just need to ask ourselves over and over again: Are we honoring those core principles and thinking of how to renew them all the time? The numbers are going to do what the numbers do, but our success will come from sticking to those principles.

CM: What do you think the biggest danger to that core essence of the Chicago mindset is right now?

PA: Well, let me say something along those lines that maybe take it in the direction I think you’re suggesting. I have often spoken of what I’ve called the engaged University of Chicago. For us to continue to be successful in the years ahead, we also have to bring a mindset of engagement. When society has very hard challenges, we should be partnering with society and having those challenges in mind and trying to design new programs that help the society to advance.

If you’re asking me what the dangers are, in this moment, if we don’t do that, then if we are instead always entirely inward looking, then we will not be the partner to society that we need to, and the gulf between the University and society will become large.

CM: The University alerted the community about the seven reports of suspected drug things, yet not all issues of security are shared with the public. We’re thinking, for example, the IOP bomb threat. What information, in your opinion, should be

shared with the public and what information should not be shared, and why?

PA: Well, I think that the information should be shared when we think that there’s a substantial and credible situation that the students or others need to be aware of in order to have to take the actions they need to be safe and to protect themselves. So that seems to me like it’s the clear criteria: to give information when we believe that there’s actually a credible threat that will allow people to protect themselves.

CM: Looking at the converse of that, when shouldn’t it be shared?

PA: For example, somebody suggests the possibility that there’s a threat but actually, even the most casual examination suggests that that’s not actually really likely. [It would] be a situation where you’d say, well, you’re sharing information that’s just not really useful to write and then causes lots of challenges for people who are getting information. And they’re thinking, “Oh, well, if the University’s sharing this, it must mean that there’s a very, very live real threat,” when in fact, there really isn’t one.

That wouldn’t make a lot of sense. That’s how I would think about it.

There’s just a couple of things that are really, I wanted to say, out there. I just want to remind all students that we really want to do everything that we can to support you in not having any problems in terms of safety and security. And we have a new safety and security website. I would just urge students—even if they’ve been here for a while—to just go back onto that website and just take a look at the things that it says about education and tips and services and approaches that are available.

On this other matter of criminal kind of incidents, like the drink spiking, it really makes an enormous difference to the whole community when people are willing to consider reporting incidents. UMatter @ UChicago is a place where a student can go to find the Dean-on-Call and also a place to go to just find out how to get help and to report things. That would make an enormous difference.

CM: Some of these cases were happening at frat parties, and Greek life is not recognized by the University. Do you have any

thoughts about recognition of Greek life at the University?

PA: I will say that I do think that we can do more to make sure that we are educating students about what can go wrong in a party at a fraternity and what can happen. We will certainly want to talk with students about that. I don’t have any new thoughts to share about fraternities.

CM: Graduate students are calling for increases of stipends, which is now a national trend. I am curious about your thoughts on compensation that graduate students should be getting since the inflation is getting worse now.

PA: Let me just say at the outset how important graduate students are to this university. For example, with regard to doctoral students, while they are here as students, they are really engaging in learning how to create new knowledge. We want to be partners in every way with graduate students as they are on that journey. And we are listening all the time to the graduate students in the last few years. UChicago Grad has added a number of new services and programs.

We are listening very much to the students about these issues that you’re mentioning around stipend levels. We are committed to being good partners, so we’re looking at the stipend issues very actively.

We are not going to make an announcement now, but we’re working on those aspects as well. And I just want graduate students to know that we are listening hard and also bringing our creativity and trying to think about the things that we can do to make the graduate student experience really good. So that’s very much on our minds.

CM: Do you think recognition of a graduate student union would ever be part of that calculus?

PA: I think that actually, we have a very good approach. Right now, we’re working with the graduate students [in a way] that I think will work better than a collective bargaining arrangement. But of course, the graduate students will have their own opportunities as they see fit. But I think in the current arrangement, we’ve been really doing a lot. And we’re ready to work to do more.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 26, 2023

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“In the Ranks of Incredible Political Figures”: Remembering Anastasia Golovashkina

By ERIC FANG | Deputy News Editor and KELLY HUI | News Contributor Eight years ago, an undergraduate stood first in line to ask a question to former Senator Rick Santorum at an Institute of Politics (IOP) event. She had auburn-dyed hair in what would later become her signature asymmetrical bob. “Thank you for coming,” she said evenhandedly. That day, she ditched the headphones that were constantly around her head for a microphone. She then asked the former senator to specify what exactly he thought a heterosexual couple could provide a child that a samesex couple or a single parent could not.

Her name was Anastasia Golovashkina. She died at age 28 of glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer, on July 18, 2022. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 2015 with degrees in economics and public policy, she went on to serve as the social media director for Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign and as a senior director at Trilogy Interactive, a digital consulting firm.

In conversations with The Maroon, several of her former classmates at UChicago and colleagues spoke to Golovashkina’s fierceness, thoughtfulness, and her lasting impact in the political world.

They knew her to always stand up for what she believed in, whether arguing for what she thought were the top five music albums of 2012 or, of course, challenging political figures on contentious policy issues.

“I just remember standing there just kind of already laughing, smiling to myself, as I was waiting for her to get to the microphone, just knowing that this guy had no fucking idea what was about to come this way out her mouth. And it was perfect,” her former classmate and friend, Alex DiLalla (A.B. ’16), said as he recalled Golovashkina’s confrontation with the former senator.

Santorum has previously likened same-sex marriage to bestiality and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “She did her best to not only rightfully embarrass him, but to really ask the questions that he

deserved to get asked, that were hard to ask, about why he didn’t believe in rights for LGBT people,” DiLalla said.

Former IOP Director David Axelrod recalled Golovashkina’s desire to change the world for the better both during and after her time in the College. He also remembered Golovashkina’s interaction with former Senator Santorum, calling it a “really bracing question.”

“There was a picture of her up at the microphone at the [Santorum] IOP event,” Axelrod said. “She was making a very firm point…and she was the personification of what the IOP is all about.”

During her time at UChicago, Golovashkina was also involved with other political organizations on campus. She was active in the University of Chicago Democrats and co-founded the College’s Organizing for Action chapter. She was also a columnist for Viewpoints, the opinions section of The Maroon, and contributed news and arts reporting.

Between 2011 and 2015, she published 53 articles, ranging from arguments for more expansive gun control to an interview with a Celtic punk band. Her most impactful piece of opinion writing, however, came six years after graduation. In a moving op-ed published by Elle Magazine in 2021, Golovashkina shared her journey with glioblastoma and implored President Joe Biden to lead on the movement to cure cancer.

Ankit Jain (A.B. ’15) first met Golovashkina when they both campaigned for former President Barack Obama, among other Democratic candidates, in 2012. Together, they founded a UChicago chapter of Organizing for Action, a community organizing project and nonprofit organization advocating Obama’s policy agenda.

“I think she was exactly the kind of person that the IOP hoped to create when it was formed,” Jain said. “She was kind of like the IOP thesis proven in human form.”

Jain also served as a news editor on The Maroon at the same time as Golo-

Anastasia Golovashkina. vashkina was an opinions columnist.

Although their work rarely overlapped, Jain described Golovashkina as a fantastic writer with an even better work ethic.

“She was so on top of everything that she had a tough time understanding when people weren’t,” Jain said. Aside from work, Jain enjoyed gossiping about staff drama with Golovashkina during their shared time in the office.

DiLalla first met Golovashkina through UChicago Democrats during his first year in the College. He said Golovashkina was like a “big sister” to him and emphasized her ability to continue fighting with an undying spirit until the very end.

“She didn’t die until she died,” DiLalla said. “Anastasia was a bright, capable, funny, thoughtful person until she left. She got weaker and some things changed, but I think the biggest mistake people could always make about her was counting out this small, maybe easily under[estimated] Russian girl from the suburbs of Chicago who would quickly prove you wrong. I imagine many people probably underestimated just how much capacity she continued to have throughout her battle with cancer.”

Even throughout her incredibly difficult struggle with glioblastoma, Golovashkina never lost touch of who she was. Friends described her as irrever-

ent, funny, and skeptical of authority.

“She was through and through an emo pop punk girl of the 2000s,” DiLalla said.

He recalled her ever-changing appearance: the deep red hair she had when they first met, then a blond, and finally an eclectic platinum and brunette mix.

“Our last conversations over the past couple of months were around what her favorite hair color had been, and discussing whether or not I should dye my hair blond, which she was in favor of.”

Megha Bhattacharya (A.B. ’19), a friend and former colleague on the Warren campaign, recalled the times they shared together on the campaign trail, from their late-night vlogs to Golovashkina’s constant prodding for Bhattacharya to teach her a TikTok dance. “She was just very genuine. If you ran into her in the bathroom, or if you were walking to the Dunkin Donuts in the middle of nowhere over in Somerville, Massachusetts, she was always down to chat.

Always down to say kind words, always would tell you to take care of yourself.”

Despite getting her diagnosis in 2019, soon after beginning her work with the Warren campaign, Golovashkina continued to work full-time while simultaneously undergoing chemotherapy.

Alicia Oken first met Golovashkina in high school. While Oken attended CONTINUED ON PG. 4

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 26, 2023

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“We will find a way to honor her memory for the future of the IOP and so many more people who will come through those doors who will smile as brightly as she did, and make as much impact and changes as she did.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 3

Georgetown University, she and Golovashkina were able to maintain their friendship primarily over text. It was in 2020, during the Democratic presidential primaries, that the two became close friends. Although Oken worked for a different campaign—Kamala Harris’s ­—they often traded jokes, memes, and advice.

“She was very good at social media and did so much for the Warren campaign in terms of working on selfies and boosting interaction,” Oken said. “I know the Democratic Party was a little spread thin at that point with staffers on every single campaign, but she always had so many creative ideas. People like myself who work in social [media] are going to take these ideas and use them in the next generation, the next campaign, and the next reelection.”

Oken praised Golovashkina for ef-

fectively leveraging videos and social media to spread awareness of Senator Warren’s selfie line. Sofia Rose Gross (A.B. ’15), a close friend of Golovashkina, agreed. Gross worked with Golovashkina on social media campaigns for Senator Warren’s 2020 presidential bid and for former First Lady Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote nonprofit organization. She characterized Golovashkina as a “fierce leader” who tirelessly worked to further the groups she cared for, whether that be a social media campaign or the IOP alumni committee, which they were both a part of.

“It’s really been quite powerful and also inspiring to see how much the IOP alumni community has leaned on each other in this moment in support of remembering her,” Gross said. “I know that would have made her really proud.

We will find a way to honor her memory for the future of the IOP and so many

more people who will come through those doors who will smile as brightly as she did, and make as much impact and changes as she did.”

In 2015, before working for the Warren campaign, Golovashkina moved to Berkeley, California to work for Trilogy Interactive, a digital political strategy firm. She returned to Trilogy in 2020 after the Warren campaign ended. Her colleague Jake Levy-Pollans remembers her as an accomplished strategist during work and a close friend afterward.

“Even as she was winding down her work to focus on her care and treatment for cancer, she was still so dedicated to her work,” Levy-Pollans said. “Our last interactions were thinking about her clients and what she wanted to make sure they received from Trilogy. We also spoke about how to continue building the social media practice she was in charge of in her absence.”

“If anyone was gonna beat this type of cancer,” Oken said, “it was going to be her. She was truly one of the strongest people I knew.”

Ted Kennedy, John McCain, and President Biden’s son, Beau Biden, also passed away due to the same type of cancer. Glioblastoma patients are expected to survive eight months. Golovashkina lived for nearly three years after her diagnosis.

“She is one hundred percent, in my eyes, in the ranks of all those incredible political figures. She’s right up there with them in terms of what she has done for democratic politics in the country,” DiLalla said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that she would have gone on to be as big of a household name. She just had that incredible ability and spirit; it was all to do the big, important things that needed to be done. Because she believed in them.”

Comer Children’s Manages Heightened Respiratory Virus Infection Cases

By TOLU AKINLADE | News Reporter The Situation at Comer Since September, Comer Children’s Hospital has been battling an unusual peak in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a type of respiratory virus. The peak presents a challenge as the hospital navigates a staff shortage and limited bedspaces for pediatric patients.

While the occurrence of respiratory virus and influenza infections are commonplace and seasonal, hospital senior administrators say that the cases started appearing earlier and at a higher rate than in previous years.

Physician-in-Chief at Comer and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at UChicago Medicine Dr. John Cunningham painted a picture of the condition: “On several days in the last few weeks, we have run out [of beds]. We’ve been very close to not

having any pediatric intensive care beds in the state of Illinois. And indeed, on some days in [November], we’ve had to refer patients to Wisconsin or to other surrounding states.”

Although Comer caters primarily to the South Side, it has had to accept a large number of transfers from other hospitals as a tertiary referral hospital. This designation means that Comer provides specialized care that many surrounding hospitals cannot.

With an increase in patients, Comer has made adaptations to strategically manage and even expand the capacity of its intensive care unit. A leadership team, which meets multiple times a day, has implemented some measures to make operations smoother. One of such measures is moving patients with less pressing medical

needs out of the emergency room into the clinic building in order to free up bed space in the E.R. The urgent care section of the E.R. has also been moved to the ambulatory clinics to create more space.

Despite the challenges of the RSV peak, the hospital endeavors to support its staff.

Associate Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Control Dr. Allison Bartlett said, “It’s a really tough time, and we are aware that people are getting exhausted. But we are also really proud of all the work that everyone is doing.”

Comer has instituted an incentive bonus program in which staff who pick up extra shifts are paid bonuses. More shifts have been added for residents and attending physicians to pick up so as to relieve their co-workers.

Jeff Murphy, vice president of Women’s and Children’s Emergency services and associate chief nursing officer, said that lead-

ership is “really just taking time during the day to listen to staff, getting together with them, hearing what they need, ensuring that they have the tools necessary to do their job.”

However, the hospital struggles to hire contract nurses. In anticipation of the rise in respiratory illnesses, Comer routinely hires contract nurses in the winter to bolster its staffing. But the Windy City might not appeal to many contract nurses. “You can imagine every children’s hospital in the country is going through what we’re going through. And if I’m a travel nurse, it’s much more appealing to go to Palm Springs in November than it is to come to Chicago in November. So we have not been able to get any contract labor. What we have is what we have,” Murphy said.

Role of the Pandemic Experts at Comer attribute the surge CONTINUED ON PG. 5

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“On several days in the last few weeks, we have run out [of beds]. We’ve been very close to not having any pediatric intensive care beds in the state of Illinois.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 4

of RSV and similar respiratory viruses to various pandemic-related factors. First, the pandemic caused a blow to children’s influenza vaccination rates—RSV does not have a vaccine. Therefore, kids, particularly those who are immunocompromised and asthmatic, are more prone to being admitted for respiratory infections. Second, Cunningham mentioned that the hospital is seeing more older kids, referring to those ages three to four, because lockdown and social distancing measures prevented many kids from being exposed to and building up immunity against the viruses.

“We’re seeing a lot of children from previous years…who need exposure. So we’re not just seeing zero to two-year-olds.

We’re seeing three, four, and five-year-olds with RSV, which is pretty unusual. Because many of our children were cocooned or protected from all kinds of respiratory infection[s] because they were wearing masks and washing their hands, we didn’t see the same level of illness from respira-

tory illness in the last two years, in 2020 and 2021,” Cunningham said.

Third, hand-washing and masking practices that were emphasized because of COVID curbed the rates of infections in 2020 and 2021; these practices have since been relaxed.

“We have kids who did not get their first RSV infection in those first two years…we started seeing this increase in infections around the time kids went back to school or childcare. So a lot more mixing of kids with respiratory viral illnesses. And we have gotten rid of all of our masking and social distancing and all the other measures that are helpful to prevent respiratory viral infections,” Bartlett said.

According to Bartlett, the public could take certain initiatives, such as resuming masking, to reduce rates of infections, but balancing public health and politics is tricky.

“Clearly, our neighbors and our friends in our community are very tired of the masking and hand washing, et cetera that

was so important in reducing the risk of COVID-19 infections in the last three years. But as we come out of the all-pervasive pandemic and we reduce those safety measures, we’re going to see more and more respiratory illness,” Cunningham said. “We need to think about as a society, should we make sure that we mask up during the winter to prevent transmission of these viral issues, viral agents which really affect individuals who are at risk?”

Murphy added that such conversations are complicated by the erosion of trust in the public healthcare system. “I think we as a healthcare system need to figure out a way to rebuild that trust. And how do we engage, you know, political leaders and our community?….I think that’s where the challenge lies,” he said.

Looking Forward As of November, rates of infections were dropping after a few tumultuous weeks, but Comer’s staff is not wholly optimistic.

“It’s stressful to be in this position not

knowing how the winter is going to play out, but I’m not particularly optimistic.

And my colleagues have been working so hard and are so dedicated, but everybody’s getting appropriately really tired,” Bartlett said. “I don’t know how we can stay in this space.”

With the flu season in effect, they are expecting an influx of patients. Staff shortages are not likely to dramatically improve. In fact, it might even be worse as staff also get sick during the winter.

According to Murphy, “we’re entering the time of year now where we start to see our own staff getting sick with influenza colds.

It’s just that time of year. And that always strains the system.”

Still, Murphy expresses his gratitude towards the effort Comer has made in tackling this challenge. “I am profoundly proud of the people who have really, over the last two months, done everything possible to get every last child into that building that needs our care…They have made a difference in a lot of people’s lives,” he said.

Provost Lee Reiterates University’s Anti-GSU Position in Email

By NEIVE RODRIGUEZ | Senior News Reporter On Tuesday morning, Provost Ka Yee C. Lee sent her second email addressing the upcoming unionization vote for graduate students on UChicago’s campus. Lee previously emailed the student body regarding the election on November 29, 2022.

Titled “Information on the Upcoming Graduate Student Election,” the email notes that the University and Graduate Students United (GSU-UE) reached a “stipulated election agreement” in December 2022.

Supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the election will take place on Tuesday, January 31 and Wednesday, February 1 at multiple campus locations. The elections will determine whether graduate students will be represented by GSU-UE in contract

and employment negotiations with the University.

This will be the union’s second election. The as-yet unrecognized union won its last election in 2017 but had to withdraw its case for recognition out of fear that a hostile NLRB would use it as an opportunity to rule that graduate students did not have a right to unionize. Circumstances today are far different, with graduate students across the country unionizing and a far more labor-friendly NLRB. According to the Office of the Provost, graduate students are eligible to be represented by a union if they are involved in “instructional or research services.”

According to the GSU-UE website, the group’s current demands include “a

living wage, always; guaranteed dental, vision, and comprehensive benefits; equitable policies for labs, classrooms and community; fairness and support for international students; transparent budget and power in decision-making.”

The provost’s email also reaffirmed the University’s stance on unionization. “The University’s position is that unionization is not in the best interest of graduate students,” Lee wrote. The provost previously detailed a similar stance in her November 29 email, citing the time-consuming nature of the collective bargaining process and the costs of union dues.

On January 3, the University announced that it would raise the minimum stipend for graduate students to $37,000, from $33,000, beginning in Autumn 2023. While the University touted the raise as a sign of its commitment to

graduate students, organizers and graduate students involved with GSU-UE viewed it as a vindication of their efforts to push for higher compensation.

Lee concluded by encouraging eligible graduate students to learn more about the unionization process and to vote.

“The decision of whether to unionize ultimately will be made only by the eligible graduate students who vote in the election. I very much value and encourage open, respectful discourse on this issue, especially because reasonable people hold a variety of views on the advantages and disadvantages of unionization. I strongly encourage all eligible graduate students to vote.”

GSU-UE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 26, 2023

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Downtown Shuttle Runs With Partial Service From January 9 to January 17

By GUSTAVO DELGADO | News Reporter Since January 9, the University of Chicago’s downtown shuttle, which connects the University’s Hyde Park campus to the Gleacher Center and the UChicago Medicine clinics in downtown Chicago, has run with partial service to its multiple spots.

The shuttle runs from 6:30 a.m. to

10 p.m., with approximately 20 minutes between shuttle arrivals. According to the University, the shuttle may experience “possible extended wait times” in between stops during this partial service period. The route will become fully operational on January 17.

The shuttle has three stops in Hyde

Park to access central campus, the University of Chicago Medical Center, and off-campus living. There are five stops downtown. The map of the shuttle route and shuttle wait times can be found on the TransLoc app.

As on other UGo shuttles in Hyde Park, all University of Chicago community members can access the shuttle for free by tapping their UChicago ID card

upon boarding.

Since fall 2022, the University has also provided students with 10 free Metra passes, which are added to existing student Ventra accounts upon request through the my.UChicago portal. These 10 passes cover the entirety of the Metra line and can be requested again one year after the activation date.

Isolation Housing at Stony Island Discontinued

By AUSTIN ZEGLIS | Senior News Reporter COVID-19 isolation housing at Stony Island Hall has been discontinued for winter quarter, and students will now be directed to isolate in place if they test positive, according to an email from Assistant Vice President for Campus Life and Associate Dean of the College Richard Mason sent on November 30 of last year.

Previously, students who tested positive for COVID-19 were moved to isolation housing at Stony Island Hall, a for-

mer dormitory building located at 5700 South Stony Island Avenue. The building closed as a dorm after the 2019–20 academic year in conjunction with the opening of Woodlawn Residential Commons in September 2020, but it remains under University ownership.

The email provided multiple reasons for the change, including guidance from both UChicago Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control.

“The experience at UChicago and

many of our peers indicates that isolation-in-place helps limit the spread of COVID-19 while causing a minimum of disruption for students,” Mason’s email read. Residential students who test positive for COVID-19 are directed to isolate in place in their assigned room for the period of their infection.

“Arrangements have been made with nearby hotels for roommates to be relocated if they wish and as space allows, at no extra expense, during the period of their roommate’s isolation,” the email said.

Detailed instruction on how to request such housing will be made available when the initial positive test is reported. This option is not available to residents who share an apartment or suite but not a bedroom with the infected student.

Students who test positive should email both isolationhousing@uchicago. edu to receive instruction for their isolation and C19healthreport@uchicago. edu to inform the University’s contact tracing team of their name and student ID number.

Two Third-Years Awarded up to $50,000 Through Obama-Sponsored Voyager Scholarship for Public Service

By NAINA PURUSHOTHAMAN | Senior News Reporter Two third-year students in the College, Promise Ngirwe and Dannerys Peralta, have won the Voyager Scholarship, created by the Obamas and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky to help shape leaders of public service in an increasingly globalized world. Among other benefits, recipients are provided up to $25,000 in financial aid for each of their last two undergraduate years, a $10,000 stipend towards a summer “voyage,” and a 10year travel stipend totaling $20,000.

The Maroon spoke with both students about their respective passions within public service and their “voyage” plans

for next summer.

Promise Ngirwe Ngirwe, who is majoring in human rights and is on the pre-med track, has always been passionate about pursuing a health-related career in public service.

More specifically, she would like to increase the affordability and accessibility of medical services to disadvantaged populations.

She applied for the Voyager Scholarship to work toward those goals. Ngirwe said that since the scholarship provides funding during undergraduate and post-graduate studies to alleviate

the burden of college debt and travel, she would be able to actualize her public service interests into a career. “My parents are Congolese refugees, and I was born in a refugee camp in Kenya,” Ngirwe said. “As a pre-med student and a former refugee, I hope to intern for an organization in Kenya that works to increase the accessibility of medical services to refugees.”

Beyond her plans for the summer, the Voyager Scholarship will also help Ngirwe pursue her long-term career goals. After attending medical school and becoming a physician, she hopes to work with organizations like Doctors Without Borders that aid refugee pop-

ulations. She also said the experience on her “voyage” next summer would prepare her for a future in health-related public service. “Being able to travel around the world for the next 10 years through this scholarship will certainly introduce me to different perspectives to help shape my understanding of the refugee communities I hope to serve,” she said.

Dannerys Peralta Peralta is majoring in global studies and human rights with a minor in Arabic. A “born voyager,” as she calls herself, Peralta has always been passionate about studying abroad. She even chose CONTINUED ON PG. 7

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“Being able to travel around the world for the next 10 years through this scholarship will certainly introduce me to different perspectives to help shape my understanding of the refugee communities I hope to serve.”

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to attend UChicago primarily due to its extensive study abroad programs. “What most stood out to me from this [Voyager] scholarship was the idea, ‘In order to bridge the problems of the world we need to know what is on the other side,’ and throughout the application process this was always in my mind,” she said.

In addition to the extensive travel

opportunities the Voyager Scholarship will provide, Peralta is eager about the chance to further her passion for public service, specifically in immigration, by building an experience that can be suited to her specific interests. She believes the Voyager Scholarship is unique in its ability to offer this.

“Public service is not a specific description or specific job—it’s a plethora of

other things combined, and that’s what the Voyager Scholarship is and the reason why I applied to it,” she said.

Peralta plans on using her summer voyage to aid immigration causes across Europe. As an immigrant herself, this cause is close to her heart—Peralta hopes her work will give a voice to those who are seeking comfort and reprieve in a new country. “I’m focusing on people

coming from the Middle East who have gotten to Europe through the Mediterranean Sea or [by] land,” she said. “I want to take the journey that many of them took in 2015 either by land or by water, [and] highlight their stories…to the media and government officials with the goal of changing immigration laws and policies to a more humanitarian and empathetic process.”

Students Weigh In on the Current State and Future of Asian and Asian-American Studies

By JUSTIN WALGREN | Senior News Reporter The University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) recently launched a new Global Asian Studies (GLAS) major, which combines UIC’s former Asian-American Studies (ASAM) and Asian Studies (ASST) programs. The announcement of the GLAS major at UIC has prompted questions about similar steps the University of Chicago should be taking to improve or expand its offerings for Asian and Asian-American studies, as well as other areas of race and ethnic studies.

The Maroon interviewed four members of the University community for their opinions on both the current state and future of Asian and Asian-American studies at UChicago.

Third-year Suah Oh is the vice president external of the Korean Students Association. Oh is a psychology and political science double major, and her political science bachelor’s thesis will focus on East Asian national relations. Oh voiced her dissatisfaction with the University’s current offerings for Asian and Asian-American studies: “I’m always on the lookout for any [courses] in Asian American history or Asian studies…with that interest in mind, I feel like my passion for the topic hasn’t been matched.”

Oh felt that Asian and Asian-American studies was not adequately served by existing departments such as the East and

South Asian Languages and Civilizations departments, which primarily focus on linguistics rather than ethnic studies. She also expressed disappointment with her Civilizations Core sequence, Introduction to the Civilizations of East Asia. She explained, “Typically, how it would function is that in the fall, you focus on China, in the winter, you focus on Japan, and in the spring, you focus on Korea…But by the time I got to spring, they had scrapped the Korean curriculum.” With few other course offerings relating to the study of Korea, Oh had sought to use the Core to explore that passion but was ultimately unable to.

Second-year Reese Villazor echoed similar sentiments about the Core. Villazor is the vice president of Kababayan, a Filipino and Filipino-American student interest group, and a member of Dear Asian Youth, an Asian and Asian American youth advocacy group. Speaking on her experience in the Core, she said, “Last year, I was in Poetry and the Human as my Hum. I believe we only read one Asian poet…and that was in the optional third class in the sequence.”

Villazor is a Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) major, with a specialization in Asian-American studies. As part of the class of 2025, her cohort was the last to have the option to elect a CRES major before the program transitions to a new

Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity (RDI) major.

Villazor chose CRES because she appreciated the option to select a specialization. However, she later discovered that, at the time, there were very few classes that could count towards her specialization.

She told a program administrator, “You guys only have two courses focusing on Asian American studies currently, but the [Asian American studies] specialization, which is still offered, requires four.” The administrator explained that the limited course offerings were due to the fact that the University currently has no faculty that specialize in Asian American studies.

Therefore, the availability of Asian American studies courses was contingent upon the availability of teaching fellows.

One such teaching fellow is Alice Yeh, a recent Ph.D. graduate in anthropology who will be the instructor for Introduction to Asian American Studies during winter 2023. Yeh’s research incorporates transpacific and Chinese diasporic studies, but she acknowledged the limitations of her research background. “My work touches on Asian American studies, but I was not trained in ethnic studies. Not to mention the obvious, which is that Asian American studies exceeds Chinese diasporic and Chinese American history,” she said.

Commenting on the attitudes among the University’s academic community and her own wishes, Yeh said that new faculty

specializing in Asian American studies are needed. “I’d wager that the modest consensus is that new hiring needs to happen. The University ought to hire multiple people with more targeted Ph.D.s,” she said.

Similarly, both Oh and Villazor, expressed a desire for new hiring at the University. Calls for such hiring have also come from University faculty.

Adam Green, a professor in the Department of History who now also chairs the curriculum committee of the RDI department, commented on the University’s previous dismissal of race and ethnic studies: “Programs like Asian American studies, African American studies, Latino studies… these were programs that were not seen to fit the ways in which the University defined ‘valid and compelling’ knowledge.”

Professors like Green fought hard against this belief, and, in the wake of the nationwide protests against police brutality and racial violence of 2020, they successfully convinced the University administration to establish a department dedicated to race and ethnic studies, something that had never existed at UChicago before. The RDI department is the result of that effort.

Green acknowledged RDI’s current lack of faculty with research and teaching interests in Asian American studies. However, he pointed out that RDI is only in its formative stages and that hiring scholars CONTINUED ON PG. 8

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“He also emphasized that RDI should not be seen as the end goal for racial and ethnic studies at UChicago.”

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dedicated to Asian American studies is a priority for the department. He also emphasized that RDI should not be seen as the end goal for racial and ethnic studies at UChicago. “It is really, really crucial to underscore that the existence of RDI does

not relieve other academic units and the University itself of the general responsibility of trying to advance these aims. If anything, it should provide encouragement and help…offer a model,” he said.

He noted that in addition to RDI, there have been calls to establish departments

and programs solely dedicated to fields such as Asian American and African American studies, in line with peer institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and UC Berkeley.

Green also said that he and other members of the RDI department encourage stu-

dent feedback: “We are always open and eager to speak with students about their concerns and how to continue with our plans being mindful of their priorities.

We’re here, in part, to serve needs that for too long have been overlooked.”

Undergraduate Student Government Stresses Stress

By CASEY KIM | Senior News Reporter “I’m Jefferson Lind. I’m a third-year. I am the executive vice president of Undergraduate Student Government, and I am often stressed out.”

While stress culture at the University is not an uncommon subject, a select few— or rather, an elected few—bear the brunt of it for the sake of the rest of the student body. Lyft passes, RSO funding, Maroon Dollars, shuttle service, scholarship funding—none of these benefits would be possible without the work of the Undergraduate Student Government (USG). The organization consists of approximately 110 people, with members working in the cabinet, College Council (CC), the Student Advocate’s Office, committees, subcommittees, and other staff positions.

Like many of his peers at the University, Lind is an ambitious student with interdisciplinary interests. In addition to serving USG, he is majoring in economics and psychology and minoring in cinema and media studies. He also performs with University Theater and is a former cast member and production team member for Survivor: Chicago.

While Lind acknowledges that much of his stress comes from juggling his various responsibilities, he believes that students may be more prone to burnout in the current post–COVID-19 academic environment.

“We are still figuring out how work rhythms work,” Lind said. “Especially for [current] second- and third-year students, we don’t have a vision of what UChicago was like before COVID-19 at all. I think, anecdotally speaking, there are some growing pains. How does going back to normal look when we don’t know how normal looked in the first place?”

In an effort to alleviate the stress of the student body, USG is pushing for better academic advising services, especially for growing majors such as economics and computer science.

“I think a lot of people might not be able to zero in on pursuing their passions right now because of their lack or difficulty of accessing good advice and guidance on what resources the University has to offer,” Lind said.

USG has also been making efforts to

mitigate the stress of its own members. According to Lind, the organization has seen several resignations in the past due to the high level of commitment it requires and a history of “conflict.” College Council ViceChair Jordyn Flaherty, a second-year, said that the structure of any student government makes it an inherently challenging environment, so it is important to check in with members periodically.

“You have a lot of people who are very passionate about the student body and about making change,” Flaherty said.

“They ran for office, so right off the bat you have so many people who have big personalities coming together to talk about issues on campus.”

One of the biggest ways in which the organization has undergone change to address this issue is adopting a new constitution. After a referendum to split CC and Graduate Council (GC) was passed in 2021, a constitutional turnover was also introduced. USG is currently in its third year of the transition process.

“We rewrote a new constitution for USG because of conflicts that existed in the past and inefficiencies in the system and ways that we saw people consistent-

ly find themselves disillusioned with the work of USG,” Lind said.

In addition, members have been advocating other tangible ways to combat stress as much as possible. For example, Trustee and Faculty Governance Liaison Tyler Okeke, a fourth-year, worked with a group of USG members to design an moderation and management system for internal conflict. Flaherty and College Council Chair Connor Lee, a third-year, also spearheaded a newly reinstated program in which they met with every member of CC to discuss their goals and interests.

“We figured that if we get to know people, they’ll feel comfortable kind of talking to us about their opinions on student government,” Flaherty said. “We wanted to connect people to each other who are working on similar agendas and build camaraderie.”

Lind recognizes that stress is a general, and somewhat inevitable, issue. However, some members are making it their priority to focus on building a healthier and happier space for current and future members.

“These are very broad issues, but we’re attacking it in the little ways we can,” he said.

University Planning Center for Freedom of Expression

By KATI LANGILLE | News Reporter A job posting for an executive director of the unannounced Center for Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago has been on myworkdayjobs.com for at least one month now.

The posting, which seeks an executive director who would be an “entrepreneur-

ial, collaborative, and strategic leader,” sheds light on the University’s plans for an as-yet-to-be-announced center.

The principal aims for a potential Center for Freedom of Expression, as stated in the posting, are: 1.

“To enrich the experience of our

students by modeling free expression and open inquiry, and by developing skills for meaningful and effective engagement 2. To deepen our understanding of free expression, through a multi-disciplinary research program 3. To engage and further develop a network of leaders who champion the principles of free expression and foster op-

portunities in their own organizations to understand and advance free expression 4. To improve the quality of the higher education environment by creating a broad framework, including curricula and materials rooted in the Chicago Principles, that promotes free expression 5. To serve as a resource for other inCONTINUED ON PG. 9

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“The University also wants the center to host guest speakers, to be sponsored by donors, and to run summer sessions for students between the sevenths and 12th grades.”

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stitutions that are confronting challenges to free expression and open discourse.”

The post goes on to state that the Center for Freedom of Expression will use case studies to look at the practical application of freedom of expression. The University also wants the center to host guest speakers, to be sponsored by donors, and to run summer sessions for students between the seventh and 12th grades. In addition, there are plans to have free expression bootcamps and training programs for educators, nonprofit organizations, and artists.

The University also plans for the cen-

ter to have a global reach, noting on the job listing that “the center will disseminate its ideas, work, and events through multiple channels: essays and opinion pieces; digital media, including speaker and event videos and a regular podcast series; and potentially a journal dedicated to moderating conflicting ideas and promoting open discourse.”

The Chicago Statement, also referred to as the Chicago Principles, is cited on the listing as a core principle of the proposed center, though no further information about its philosophy is included.

The basic premise of the Principles,

which were created in 2015, guarantees “all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn,” making allowances for instances of violent threats and harassment to be reported and their perpetrators punished.

In a statement sent to The Maroon, the University wrote that plans for the Center for Freedom of Expression were still under development.

“Faculty members at the University have been in discussions to develop ambitious ways to support and advance the longstanding institutional priority of free

expression. This work is ongoing, and many details have not been determined, including the final name for such an effort and its specific priorities. The position that has been posted is intended to provide additional leadership support for this work as it develops. We look forward to sharing additional details in the following months.”

The University did not respond to The Maroon’s question on whether donors would be able to influence the selection of speakers or staff at the center.

We Call It The Study UChicago’s first on-campus hotel option, The Study, plays into a desire for an all-inclusive package of intellectuality and high culture. Yet even as it bolsters the local economy, the hotel sends a conflicting message when part of its appeal is its separation from the local community.

By ELENA EISENSTADT | Grey City Contributor Caught With a Hand in the Cookie Jar It’s Halloween night, and I’m walking down South Woodlawn Avenue to meet my uncle and grab a drink at The Study, a boutique hotel located along the Midway Plaisance on the southern part of campus. Since its opening in 2021, The Study at University of Chicago has provided an on-campus lodging option to UChicago visitors, like parents and visiting scholars. The hotel is part of a larger organization of Study Hotels, with two other locations at Yale University and between the University of Pennsylvania

and Drexel University in Philadelphia, plus one opening in May 2023 at Johns Hopkins University. When I arrive at the circular driveway, the doorman ushers me inside. It’s 9 p.m., and the lobby is empty except for the large armchairs and the bookshelves lining the walls.

The lighting emits a sepia-toned glow, and music—the upbeat kind you’d hear at a wedding—plays quietly in the background.

Before I can sit down, the doorman asks if I’ve had any Halloween treats tonight and brings me over to the front desk where I meet the receptionist, who

presents me with a jar of perfectly organized gingersnap cookies (the question was rhetorical). The three of us get to talking. I learn that they’ve worked at the hotel for a few months and live in different neighborhoods on the South Side. By the time my uncle arrives and I walk into Truth Be Told, The Study’s gastropub-inspired restaurant and bar, I’ve still got the taste of gingersnap lingering in my mouth.

What I didn’t know at the time was that gingersnaps are a staple at all Study locations. Paul McGowan, president and founder of Hospitality 3 real estate development company and Study Hotels, discovered a kind that he liked when

opening the inaugural hotel at Yale and decided to keep it for all future sites. Before founding Study Hotels, McGowan was the senior vice president of design and construction at Starwood Hotels and Resorts for four years. After stepping down from this position, McGowan was still involved in projects with Starwood as an owner representative and developer for a W Hotel in Vieques, Puerto Rico; a W Hotel in Mexico City; and a St. Regis in Kauai, Hawaii. McGowan attended college at Northeastern University in Boston.

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“If we believe that UChicago creates a bubble for itself within the larger South Side community, The Study is a symptom of that very same bubble.”

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“Kardashian cookie stack,” which comes from celebrity and influencer Khloé Kardashian’s method for perfectly aligning cookies in a two-gallon glass jar. A jar of satisfyingly stacked cookies inspired by reality TV connotes 21st-century chic—a vibe that is meticulously planned and executed.

The Study Hotels, recently nominated for the Travel + Leisure’s 2023 World’s Best Awards, fills a niche in the university tourism sector. Most guests I talked with said they had wonderful stays. Some even have their next visits booked for this winter. The hotel understands the kinds of bedsheets, brands, and aesthetics that will draw in its audience. I know this because I’ve stayed at hotels like The Study, where the experience is insepara-

ble from my class, race, and education.

Following a historical tradition of grand hotel development around UChicago, The Study is the University’s first on-campus hotel option that is open to the general public, so it makes sense that its branding and design focus heavily on the University itself. However, The Study also exists in another community: Woodlawn, a neighborhood that has been affected by and has fought strongly against gentrification from UChicago since the early 20th century. Over the past year, the hotel has worked on creating positive economic benefits for its surrounding communities. Yet even as The Study bolsters the local economy, it sends a conflicting message when part of its appeal is in its separation from the local community. If we believe that UChi-

cago creates a bubble for itself within the larger South Side community, The Study is a symptom of that very same bubble.

Even though the hotel is a part of our campus bubble, it’s not trying to be a new Hallowed Grounds Cafe—i.e., a place for young people to hang out. The Study’s whole concept plays into a desire for an all-inclusive package of intellectuality and high culture, often sought by parents and more senior university affiliates. It monetizes an aesthetic of old-world academia, precisely at a time when elite schools like UChicago are attempting to distance themselves from those impressions. In doing so, The Study sends a message about the kinds of values it holds and the clients it seeks to serve.

Checking in: The Study’s Arrival

A rendering of the Study Hotel, shortly before construction. courtesy of the study at the university of chicago

at UChicago McGowan first had the idea for Study Hotels while browsing potential colleges with his daughter.

After learning about an underperforming hotel on Yale’s campus, McGowan said, “I just couldn’t stop thinking how a prominent university like Yale, with all the depth of character and alumni, could not have a quality hotel on campus that encouraged people to come back more frequently.”

Despite opening the Yale location in 2008, in the middle of a financial crisis, McGowan was committed to creating a relaxed environment for guests—one where they weren’t charged for bottled water or Wi-Fi. “I wanted it to be comfortable,” he said. This sentiment is the origin of Study Hotels’ motto, “read, rest, reflect.”

Following the Yale location’s success, the hotel expanded to a second location situated just between UPenn and Drexel’s campuses in Philadelphia. UChicago put out a call for hotel proposals south of the Midway. In 2015, the University selected Hospitality 3, McGowan’s real estate development company, which was tasked with creating a new Study. Construction for The Study began in January 2020 on the site of a former University-owned administrative office building.

After a soft opening in September 2021, the hotel officially opened in January 2022. UChicago now leases this land to Hospitality 3 long term.

Each Study Hotel adopts its host university’s name in its title (as in, The Study at University of Chicago).

Angie Marks, associate vice president of commercial real estate operations at UChicago, wrote in an email to The Maroon that “the University does not endorse individual commercial enterprises” but works with various local businesses that benefit the university’s affiliates and visitors. “One of the factors in the selection of Hospitality 3 was the strong track record Study Hotels has built in collaborating with academic institutions…and local communities to create a distinctive hospitality experience,” CONTINUED ON PG. 11

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“Although it is true that before the 2010s there was a dry period for Hyde Park hotels, the late 19th and early 20th centuries reveal a golden age of grand hotels in the neighborhood.”

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Marks wrote. UChicago felt that between Study Hotels’ reputation, UChicago Medicine, and new conferences hosted by the recently established David Rubenstein Forum, there was enough need for an additional hotel in the community.

A Renaissance of Grand Hotels In recent years, UChicago has helped bring two other hotels to the neighborhood. These include Hyatt Place Chicago-South/University Medical Center in 2013 and The Sophy in 2018, both of which are significantly closer to Hyde Park’s hub on 57th Street than The Study.

Although it is true that before the 2010s there was a dry period for Hyde Park hotels, the late 19th and early 20th centuries reveal a golden age of grand hotels in the neighborhood. In July 2021, Hyde Park historian Patricia Morse gave a Hyde Park Historical Society talk on grand hotels—defined by their signature service amenities, public gathering spaces, and luxury—to mark the opening of The Study.

UChicago was founded in 1890, three years before the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance that celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. Campus building construction coincided with the neighboring construction of grand hotels to prepare for the impending tourist boom on the South Side. In the early 20th century, the same hotels continued to draw in business from wealthy Chicagoans wanting an urban escape with proximity to downtown and the lakefront. One particular hotel, Del Prado, sat at the current location of International House on the north side of the Midway.

The Del Prado was a member of the Jackson Park Hotels Association and in 1921 one of ten Hyde Park accommodations advertised as Chicago’s Residential Hotel Center. During the school year, the hotel hosted visiting professors, prospective students, academic conventions, and the

original Big Ten football teams (UChicago was a founding member of NCAA Big Ten Football Conference). Del Prado was also the predecessor to the Quadrangle Club, a membership-based club and hotel for University affiliates.

In the summer months, the Del Prado attracted wealthy white southerners looking for a cooler climate. “They were known by the locals—because there was a bit of a culture clash—as the ‘yellow fever colony,’” Morse said. Yellow fever, a mosquito-spread illness, is most often found in the tropics and subtropics. “It was using a stereotype of the South as backward and disease ridden,” Morse wrote in an email to The Maroon. “[Although] they were not entirely appreciated, they brought their money,” she said.

Indeed, Hyde Park’s economy thrived from the employment and lucrative opportunities in the summer resort business. However, urban renewal initiatives beginning in the 1950s sent tourism away from Hyde Park, greatly affecting its hotel businesses. During this period, some hotels were torn down, and thousands of hotel jobs were lost. UChicago bought some of the remaining hotels in the 1970s for use as student and staff housing, while others were rehabbed as elegant rental apartments in the early 2000s.

A Focus on Campus For the Study Hotels, the universities are the destination, more so than the surrounding communities. The hotel’s university-centric model assumes that when people come to New Haven, it’s usually to see Yale. And when people go to University City in Philadelphia or Hyde Park in Chicago, the big draw is the schools themselves, whether or not they’re affiliated with the institutions.

As McGowan puts it, prominent universities like UChicago provide a stable setting because “you want to be in markets that aren’t so rate sensitive, at prominent or established institutions that have been around a long time that

have active alumni, people [coming] back frequently.”

Bryn Larsen, A.B. ’92 in public policy from UChicago and parent of a second-year, was stunned by the views from her room. “I could literally see the sun rise on Rockefeller,” she said. “I could see all the way up to downtown.”

Schools that are too small, too remote, or in already expensive real-estate markets are easily eliminated. In each of their locations, Study Hotels are a part of the main act: the campus.

“It’s a priority for us to be on campus.” McGowan said. “Our whole concept is about immersing [ourselves] in the university community.”

This concept benefits the hotel because it makes it the premier location for visiting the school while also providing its guests with the convenience and fun of experiencing (or reminiscing about) the good old college days. Multiple parents described the proximity to their children’s dorms as the main reason for staying at The Study as opposed to the hotels closer to East 53rd Street or downtown Chicago. Four of the seven dorms on campus—International House, Renee Granville-Grossman, Burton-Judson, and Woodlawn—are all on the southern edge of campus.

Supporting Local Community One promising part of The Study’s location is the possibility it has of benefiting the surrounding communities of Woodlawn and Hyde Park. Before attending UChicago, Arden Frantzen, a UChicago second-year who stayed at The Study this fall with her family, had heard from a friend who went to the school that his family always stayed downtown because it seemed safer and there was more to do. However, she suspects The Study might convince some of those families to stay in the neighborhood instead.

Marks agrees with this assessment, writing that “the hotel will draw more people to the Woodlawn neighborhood and keep University visitors and the

dollars they spend on lodging, dining, and shopping in the community. Those visitors have typically funneled to downtown businesses and lodging for lack of more local options.”

A full year into business, The Study is having an impact on the South Side by creating job opportunities and increasing community engagement. Out of 90 total employees, more than half live in surrounding neighborhoods, and a fully-staffed hotel would create 150 permanent jobs. Additionally, the hotel’s creation of 300 local construction jobs met the University’s minority- and women-owned business enterprise construction diversity goals.

“The Study has made a commitment to pay a living wage, hire locally, and ensure its employees reflect the hotel’s diverse surrounding communities,” Marks said.

Jason Smith, guest services manager at The Study at UChicago, highlighted the community engagement work The Study has done, including a partnership in March with My Very Own Library in honor of Read Across America month and supporting Hyde Park Fest.

Additionally, Smith said, “[The Study is] exploring a program with the Art Expo festival as part of a South Chicago art showcase in April 2023.”

In general, McGowan is committed to conducting serious research on each community where he opens a hotel. For him, this part of the job never stops, and he believes there aren’t many other hotels that make the same level of investment in their communities.

Politics of Placement: Gentrifying Woodlawn The Study at the University of Chicago’s location also has more complicated effects: In each community where the hotel chain has situated itself, the “town and gown” relationships are historically fraught.

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“Amid concerns of increased gentrification in Woodlawn, The Study’s location within the campus offers a compromise.”

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it this way: “[These are] top-tier universities where people think twice about staying off campus, or wealthier families think twice.”

With the Barack Obama Presidential Center set to open soon in Jackson Park, there will surely be demand for a hotel south of the Midway. Amid concerns of increased gentrification in Woodlawn, The Study’s location within the campus offers a compromise. The Study exists between two campus buildings, on the site of a demolished campus building; it exists in a bubble created not by itself but by the University as a whole.

The fact that The Study exists within the bubble of the institution also means that its guests can have a “comfortable” experience in multiple senses of the word. The hotel implores its guests to “read, rest, and reflect” while also giving them a false distance from the community in which they are located.

The same unnamed student noted that many of the first-years they talked to at the hotel already seemed skeptical of the neighborhoods and city where they were soon-to-be citizens.

This student mentioned they were excited to get a U-Pass, the free CTA card given to all UChicago students. “The vast majority of kids were like: ‘You want to take the CTA? It’s unsafe, it’s not managed by UChicago, it goes off campus and into Hyde Park,’” they said.

Yazan Baghdady, another first-year student who stayed at The Study before moving in this fall, noticed that guests were “almost all white,” while many of the restaurant and hotel staff were primarily Black. Many other former guests I spoke with mentioned that they ate at least breakfast, if not all meals, at Truth Be Told. This pattern is a testament to the hotel’s quality service and convenience, but it also takes away potential business from other Woodlawn dining institutions, including Robust Coffee Lounge, Little Jamaica Jerk Cuisine, and Daley’s Restaurant.

The Study also adds more commercial real estate to UChicago south of the Midway amid continuing gentrification

of the Woodlawn neighborhood. In 2018, DePaul University published a study from its Institute for Housing Studies, “Analyzing Neighborhoods with Intensifying and Emerging Housing Affordability Pressure.” Woodlawn was one of the Chicago neighborhoods in this study that experienced a value shift in real estate from a low-cost area in 2016 to a moderate-cost one in 2017. The study states that “recent price appreciation and their strategic locations near stronger markets, transit, and proposed development, may indicate future lost affordability and possible speculative investment activity.” Along with the University’s presence, Woodlawn has access to the CTA Green Line and Metra into downtown, and it will eventually become home to the Barack Obama Presidential Center in 2025.

Moreover, Woodlawn has a strong history of community activism that has previously clashed with UChicago’s plans of expanding further south of the Midway. “In the 1920s and ‘30s, local landlords working with the University of Chicago exploited restrictive covenants, keeping Woodlawn predominantly white and insular until after World War II,” UChicago’s Chicago Studies department wrote. These covenants were opposed by activists and found to be illegal after the war. When urban renewal, an effort to fight poverty, crime, and white flight from urban centers came to Woodlawn in the 1960s, it was also met with much pushback from local activists. During this time, community organizations protested UChicago’s southward expansion. “[They] eventually struck a compromise, allowing the campus to expand south one block, from 60th to 61st, between Stony Island and Cottage Grove,” the Chicago Tribune wrote. “In return, the school agreed to create housing for hundreds of displaced families.”

Today, Woodlawn continues to be a stronghold for community activism, with organizations such as Woodlawn East Community And Neighbors, the Obama Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, and Southside Together Organizing for Power leading the way. One recent

victory included passing the Woodlawn Housing Preservation Ordinance, which helps to rehabilitate affordable housing and prevent current residents from being displaced, in 2020.

McGowan explains that the choice of hotel location relied mainly on availability of on-campus land as well as proximity to the Rubenstein Forum. “[Recent] Campus South development projects have involved the redevelopment of preexisting University buildings and undeveloped University-owned land,” Marks said. The Study at UChicago doesn’t physically further University expansion, since no campus buildings currently exist past 61st Street. Nevertheless, its existence and the increased construction on the south of campus in the last few decades add commercial property that helps to tilt the scales of campus more to that end.

Moving Toward Corporatization The increasing corporatization of college campuses generates a need for a high-end hotel like The Study at an elite school like UChicago. Writer Nicolaus Mills defines the corporatization of university life in a Dissent Magazine article: “In the eyes of college administrators, students, especially those who are not on scholarship, have become customers who need to feel satisfied with the campus experience bought for them at prices that now top $50,000 per year at many elite schools,” he wrote.

At UChicago, a school with a sticker price recently ranked the ninth most expensive in the country by CBS, University affiliates’ expectations for new amenities and perks are higher than ever.

While the University retains its focus on the “life of the mind” by encouraging and funding intellectual inquiry, it has also increasingly promised students pre-professional and quality-of-life perks. These offerings include international career treks, more than 4,000 paid Metcalf internships, a Lyft Ride Smart program, and a Saturday night meal swipe program.

“You’re paying to go to a school that is a brand,” Frantzen said, “I think that’s

just American universities right now.”

Universities are also faced with a demand for more amenities for their affiliates: parents, alumni, dignitaries, and visiting professors. These people want to feel that they are also benefiting from the elite experience that a school like UChicago offers. Instead of attending classes and spending nights at the Reg, they are encouraged by The Study to view their stay on campus as a destination vacation.

“I like to think that I’m our customer,” McGowan said, meaning the type of customer who “still wants to read, wants to learn, take tours and see things in a place that feels good to me.” Being a full-service model, the hotel includes amenities like a gym, restaurant, event space, and a book study.

While the hotel is still in its initial growth phase—McGowan explains that hotels generally take two to three years to stabilize—McGowan plans to add exclusive tours to various UChicago institutions as a perk of the Study Hotels experience.

One first-year parent, Tricia Bruce, recalls the extra mile The Study went this past family weekend. “They had a full spread out for the parents in the afternoon—charcuterie boards, fruit, alcohol.” This was, of course, in addition to the gingersnaps in the lobby.

What The Study Stands For The Study benefits from the clout of the University by adopting a specific aesthetic of intellectuality and of affluence: It checks the boxes of the brand UChicago wants to cultivate for itself while also adopting a reputation the school often attempts to abandon.

McGowan didn’t design The Study to be any regular hotel. He and his team put in a serious level of research about the universities they’re affiliated with to bring more character to the hospitality experience. Among Study Hotels, there exists differentiation in styles, yet they all promote a similar image in which their universities are bastions of high culture. The Yale location has hosted book signings and an NPR podcast in CONTINUED ON PG. 13

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its lobby and houses the Aisling Gallery.

The UPenn/Drexel location displays museum cases from university-affiliated institutions: the Penn Museum, the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

McGowan also reports that Hospitality 3 has considered a concept called Study Lofts for future development, an idea first considered for the Yale location.

This idea would take apartments for rent near prominent universities and advertise them for an older, retired population (like professors or alumni) who want to immerse themselves in the intellectual and youthful energy of universities.

The hotel represents the University’s brand in a minimalist, subdued manner.

It looks to be inspired by something you might find on a dark academia Pinterest board. Instead of approaching hotel design as a kitschy UChicago theme, McGowan wanted it to connect to its location in subtle cues. The hotel pays homage to the greens of the sprawling Midway and blues of the lakefront with multiple glass walls and large windows.

Instead of, say, displaying UChicago banners in the lobby, The Study provides helpful service to UChicago affiliates by ensuring its staff are knowledgeable about the institution as a whole.

McGowan didn’t set out to create a brand, and even though Study Hotels is expanding, he doesn’t intend it to have more than 10 to 15 locations. “That’s just because it’s a little more grown up,” he said. “Without being luxurious, it’s very comfortable.”

Since the Study Hotels brand débuted, other hotel chains have broken their way into the university hospitality market, like Graduate Hotels, founded by Ben Weprin of AJ Capital Partners in 2014.

This hotel chain is now located in more than 30 college towns including Ann Arbor, Michigan; Bloomington, Indiana; and Evanston, Illinois.

While Study Hotels don’t scream

American-collegiate, Graduate Hotels appear to relish in some more unabashed school spirit. Graduate Hotels are not necessarily located on college campuses, instead centering themselves around college towns as a whole. Instead of adopting the names of their neighboring universities, Graduate Hotels go by the names of their towns, as in “Graduate Evanston,” not “The Graduate at Northwestern University.”

Additionally, 10 out of 14 Big Ten football universities have a Graduate located near campus. Suzanne Carter, a first-year parent, stayed at The Study this past family weekend. For her job as a college counselor, she has done fly-outs to multiple schools where she’s stayed at Graduate Hotels. Recently, Carter forwarded The Maroon an automated text from The Graduate in Athens, Georgia, inviting her to a tailgate for the University of Georgia that read, “Rival Replay: Party like it’s 2003 at Graduate Athens.”

Carter thinks that The Study is “allowed” to be more minimalist because UChicago doesn’t have to sell itself so obviously, an opinion supported by the fact that the college’s yield rate was 80 percent in 2022, one of the highest in the country. By nature of the other Study locations at Yale and UPenn, UChicago gets a seat at the adults’ table. It’s an unofficial Ivy. As McGowan describes it, it’s earned its place as a “prominent” university.

Who The Study Serves Prominent universities represent intellectual engagement and serious academic inquiry, and they also often maintain a high level of institutional wealth.

As of June 2022, UChicago has a $10.3 billion endowment and one of the most expensive sticker prices of any university in the country. As Frantzen puts it, The Study represents UChicago in a “dark academia, glamorized intellectual philosophers eating gingersnaps and drinking tea” way. But it goes further than this.

The hotel chain is representative of our

school, and the other elite universities where it is located, in the air of wealth it creates for its patrons.

When I asked UChicago parents and students to talk about The Study, everyone wanted to talk about the books in the Living Room (the lobby of the Study), which the hotel buys in bulk from the Strand Bookstore in New York’s East Village. The majority of books don’t look ancient—they weren’t hand-sewn or bound together. Instead, the collection consists of many art history and travel reads, with titles like Leonardo Da Vinci and the Splendor of Poland by Dorota Folga-Januszewska and Laurie Winters.

The books are propped up and never obscured by the tasteful agate bookends and modernist sculptural spheres. Oftentimes at hotels, a wall of books is simply decorative, something to communicate good hospitality, while the amenity is never presented. At The Study, you get the sense that the books are legitimately for your reading enjoyment.

This fixture of The Study, the thing that gives it its name, is also possibly the biggest indicator of a socio-economic prefix at the hotel.

“We call it The Study because I wanted to play with that term a little bit, make it reminiscent of a study at your grandparents’ home, a place where there’s no television and you can read, rest, and reflect,” McGowan said.

The name implies, among other things, that you have grandparents who live in a house with a study—a room dedicated to its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, its displayed collectables, its trinkets of all shapes and sizes.

While the hotel is certainly not exclusionary, it is marketed toward a certain portion of University affiliates.

McGowan said the hotel is for “the wider community, visiting professors, dignitaries, parents, alumni, prospective students and families, anyone with an affiliation to the university.” Realistically, people will stay at The Study if they can pay for a rack rate between $200 and

$400 for a single night’s stay, which also often doubles on high-demand weekends.

In a past Maroon article on The Study Hotel’s opening at UChicago, McGowan is quoted explaining the Yale Study location as a hotel “tailored to the personality and history of a ‘well-educated, successful’ clientele.”

Steven Holmes, the parent of a firstyear, found this description particularly striking. Holmes himself was a first-generation, low-income student from Canada. He believes McGowan and his team have done an important job opening a hotel with such easy access to campus.

But, he said, “the way in which the hotel expresses what it’s about does open up questions about what it means to be ‘educated’ and ‘successful,’” he said.

While sitting in the Living Room during his stay, Holmes tried to imagine what this experience would feel like for a first-gen student. “Having been that first-gen student, I’m pretty sure it would feel intimidating,” he said. “I remember sitting there thinking the atmosphere exuded wealth.” As a college student, Holmes felt “excited to be at a competitive university but crushed under the weight of being a poor, working-class kid surrounded by people who understood ‘elite’ to mean wealthy and privileged,” he said.

The Study Hotels’ logo showcases a pair of reading glasses that are half folded, as if someone had just set them down after a leisurely read. Like those glasses, Holmes sees The Study through different lenses; as a former FGLI student who himself is Ivy League educated, he feels the hotel’s and the University’s exclusivity while also experiencing them as a proud parent who is thrilled to see his daughter obtain a UChicago education.

When The Study at University of Chicago invites guests to draw a cookie from the cookie jar, they also invite them to relish in the prestige of higher education, a prestige that is often exclusionary in effect.

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VIEWPOINTS

Dear Paul, Practice What You Preach: GSU-UE, The Kalven Report, and Unionization The University’s opposition to unionization violates the principles of the school’s most prized document: The Kalven Report.

By MAROON EDITORIAL BOARD For years, graduate students at UChicago have tried to unionize, to secure a seat at the bargaining table, and for years, the University has torpedoed their attempts. On January 31 and February 1 of this year, however, eligible graduate students will vote on whether to unionize. We, The Maroon Editorial Board, fully support G ​​ raduate Students United – United Electrical Workers (GSU-UE) and condemn the University’s shameless attempts to curtail collective bargaining.

Graduate students across the nation are fighting for their right to unionize. And they’re winning.

UChicago graduate students are an important part of this tidal wave of unions.

As the University administration has repeatedly stated in campus correspondence and interviews, UChicago is powered by graduate work. Many undergraduate classes are taught by graduate students—not professors.

Outside of lecturing, graduate workers are our graders, teaching assistants (TAs), and tutors. Without graduate workers, UChicago, and higher education in general, would crumble. Yet, UChicago doesn’t pay their workers a living wage, provide dental or vision insurance, or listen seriously to concerns about equity. Instead, they broadcast platitudes about valuing graduate workers and budge only when the pressure becomes

untenable (such was the case with the recent raising of the floor for graduate workers’ stipend).

As it currently stands, the University has the power to do as it pleases with little consequence.

They pad their endowment by exploiting graduate workers because there is no one who can check them. The power asymmetries between the University and graduate workers are stark and unacceptable. Unionization is a step towards closing that gap. Once officially a union, GSU-UE will be empowered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to negotiate with the University. The University, much to its chagrin, will have to recognize GSU-UE. Instead of listening to the calls for union recognition by their own students, the University has been disseminating anti-union rhetoric, shamelessly employing tactics used by notoriously exploitative employers such as Amazon and Starbucks. The history of anti-labor tactics, though, clarifies that the University’s focus on union dues, “direct engagement,” and the permanence of unions are straight out of the anti-union handbook. We find it self-evident that this behavior is unacceptable; however, we also argue that this behavior runs counter to the University’s own values.

The University, Unionization, and the Kalven Report The core of the University of Chicago’s identity is its commitment to free inquiry—a core

so sacred that the University launched a new center for Freedom of Speech just this week. This purported commitment, though, goes back decades.

In 1967—under the order of then-president George W. Beadle—a special committee released the Kalven Report, now “one of the most important policy documents” directing the role of the University in social and political action. The committee found that universities “cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted.” In simpler terms, the Kalven Report bars the University from speaking about policy issues, unless “society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry” or the issue has to do with “ownership of property, its receipt of funds, its awarding of honors, [or] its membership in other organizations.”

The University’s public opposition to unionization qualifies as a blatant attempt to steer “social policy” and is a clear violation of the Kalven Report’s neutrality imperative. The weight the University is putting behind deterring unionization is precisely what the Kalven Report was written to prevent. It’s unclear to us how unionization satisfies the high threshold of threatening “the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.” How,

then, does the University justify its speech? How are its attempts to dissuade unionization not in direct violation of one of the most beloved values of the school? After all, President Paul Alivisatos just reaffirmed his commitment to freedom of inquiry in these very pages. Apparently talk is cheaper than paying workers a fair wage.

Why Alumni Should Care and How They Can Help With the University’s laser-sharp targets on graduate students themselves, alumni, many of whom were once graduate students, get overlooked in conversations about graduate student unionization. Yet, alumni— through their donations to their alma mater—have the ability to turn the tide. The University will do almost anything to maintain the flow of money from the golden faucet that is alumni donations.

Donors have a lot of power at universities—we call on them to use it for good.

Graduate student unionization may be the right move right now, but it also promises to elevate the UChicago name in the long run. Alumni benefitted from graduate student work during their years here, just as we do.

Alumni know that without the work of graduate students, their UChicago experience would have been impossible. The people who made and continue to make UChicago what it is deserve better conditions, and alumni can help them get there. Moreover, UChicago’s

firm opposition to unionization reflects poorly on everyone associated with the school.

Graduate student unions are at an inflection point. For years, unionization was an extraordinary measure, one that rarely ever succeeded. Now, all across the country, unions are becoming the norm. Alumni can ensure that UChicago is on the right side of history by using their weight to discourage the University from continuing their anti-union behavior. UChicago has the opportunity to model what a university-graduate student union relationship should look like. It doesn’t have to be oppressive and adversarial. It can be collaborative and productive. Alumni should want the latter.

Even after the likely unionization in February, donors should put their weight behind the many initiatives that GSU-UE will have on the docket. Hold the administration accountable and help steer the University in the right direction—and while you’re at it, send some money to GSU-UE. After Unionization Despite the University’s best efforts, unionization seems likely.

Roughly two in every three graduate students have signed union cards, indicating their support for unionization. Thus—barring any massive upsets in the vote—GSUUE will officially represent graduate students as a bargaining unit after the vote count on March 16.

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“Despite the University’s best efforts, unionization seems likely. ” CONTINUED FROM PG. 14

This expected win will mark the end of a seemingly endless battle for unionization, but the fight will not be over.

We anticipate that following unionization, the University will do everything in its power to weaken the union, stagnate change, and avoid serious engagement. The University argues that a union would make life harder for graduate students; we expect

that the University will work tirelessly to bring that prediction to fruition.

The power asymmetry between workers and the University, however, will be less stark than it has been. With the power of the NLRB behind it, GSU-UE will be able to hold its own. We have full faith that GSU-UE can organize graduate workers and negotiate skillfully. They’ve been doing it for years. They deserve help, though.

This formidable wave of prounion mobilization must continue into the bargaining room. It will take the support of undergraduates, parents, professors, and alumni to realize GSU-UE’s goals. We cannot let the University steamroll its way through the initiatives GSU-UE will put on the docket. Each faction of the University community has the power, collectively, to hold the University to account. GSU-UE

can get itself to the bargaining table. But our voices, money, and talent, taken together, can permanently improve the dynamic between the University and those who sustain it.

Noah Glasgow and Nikhil Jaiswal have recused themselves from this editorial because of reporting conflicts.

The Editorial Board publish-

es editorials that represent The Maroon’s institutional voice. The editor-in-chief runs the Editorial Board, and the managing editor is required to be a member. Each member of the Board has equal voting power. No more than three members of the Editorial Board may dissent from a published editorial. More infomation about the Board and its members can be found at www.chicagomaroon.com.

Israeli Military Off Our Campus!

Sponsored by the Israel Institute and taught by a longtime Israeli general, Meir Elran’s “counter-terrorism” course represents an incursion of the Israeli military into our campus and classrooms. It must be opposed.

By UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE Content Warning: This article includes violent imagery and discusses genocide, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian rhetoric.

This winter, the University of Chicago is hosting Meir Elran, a veteran general in the Israeli army, to teach a College course.

Euphemistically entitled “Security, Counter-Terrorism, and Resilience: The Israeli Case” and already taught multiple times in the past few years, General Elran’s course promises students a detailed overview of “how Western liberal democracies respond to the threat of terrorism and sub-conventional ‘hybrid’ warfare, with a specific focus on the case of Israel.”

To this end, the course surveys Israeli “security strategy and practice” from the period before 1948 to the present, with a particular focus on how this practice might now be embraced or adopted by other “liberal democracies,” the United States among them.

A review of Elran’s lecture materials—published earlier this month on Canvas—paints a clearer, more concrete picture of what his course sets out to achieve: namely, indoctrinating U.S. students with the mindset and worldview of the Israeli military. On Elran’s telling of Israeli history, Israel appears not as an expansionist apartheid state predicated on the ethnic cleansing and theft of Palestinian land, but as an embattled liberal democracy surrounded by “large hostile Muslim populations,” mired in a “Muslim-Jewish conflict” not of its own making. Having established this Orientalist and propagandistic framing, Elran’s course encourages students to put themselves in the shoes of Israeli military strategists, reflecting throughout the quarter on the various past and present means by which Israel has worked to “secure” its colonial enterprise and crush indigenous Palestinian resistance to it.

Elran’s lecture materials pay

virtually no attention to the horrific violence that Israel’s so-called security regime inflicts daily and systematically on the millions of Palestinians Israel occupies. Elran’s lectures display no serious concern, for example, regarding Israel’s programmatic theft of Palestinian land, its demolition of Palestinian homes, its collective punishment of Palestinian communities, its biological warfare against Palestinian civilians, its mass destruction of Palestinian olive groves, or its torture of Palestinian children—to say nothing of its “strategy” of periodically massacring the Palestinians it holds captive in the Gaza Strip. All this and more apparently passes, in Elran’s worldview, for so many forms of “counter-terrorism,” while the various means by which Palestinians fight to resist these genocidal practices are broadly dismissed throughout his lectures as emotional, hostile, or “terrorist[ic]” in nature.

The problems with Elran’s course, however, go beyond its content alone. As noted above, Elran

served for decades in senior positions of the Israeli military, where he personally helped develop tactics for crushing Palestinian resistance and subjugating Palestinian communities who protest the theft and colonization of their land. Particularly damning in this regard is the role Elran played in repressing the first intifada (1987–93), a popular Palestinian uprising against apartheid and occupation that the Israeli army countered with a notorious policy of “force, might, and beatings.” Elran served as deputy director of Israeli military intelligence for the intifada’s first two years, a period in which the Israeli military systematically broke the bones of unarmed protestors and murdered more than 300 Palestinians (49 of them children).

Nor did Elran’s participation in anti-Palestinian violence end with his formal retirement from the military. He continues today to serve as a “top expert” for the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a think tank that aims to develop and globally export the brutal repression tac-

tics of the Israeli military. The so-called “Dahiya Doctrine,” for instance, serves as a case in point.

First formulated in two INSS policy papers published in 2008—and named after a Beiruti neighborhood flattened by Israel in its 2006 invasion of Lebanon—the Dahiya Doctrine calls on Israel to respond to armed Palestinian or Lebanese resistance “with force that is disproportionate,” particularly by “damaging” and “punish[ing]” civilian areas “to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.” This INSS–sponsored doctrine saw its first real-world application in Israel’s 2008 assault on Gaza, a 22-day massacre in which Israeli “counter-terrorism” took the form of leveling more than 6,000 Palestinian homes and slaughtering some 1,200 Palestinian civilians, 350 of them children. (The alleged Palestinian “terrorists,” for their part, destroyed one Israeli home and killed three Israeli civilians in the course of defending themselves, yielding a final PalesCONTINUED ON PG. 16

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tinian/Israeli civilian death ratio of roughly 400:1.)

From his past service in the Israeli army to his present work for the INSS, Elran’s career has been defined by and dedicated to securing Israel’s colonial project and crushing Palestinian resistance to it. Personally—and, more troublingly, institutionally—Elran embodies the history of anti-Palestinian violence in which he has long been a career participant. And it is in light of this fact, ultimately, that the University’s decision to offer Elran’s latest “counter-terror-

ism” course must be understood and vigorously opposed. Taught by an Israeli general turned INSS specialist and funded by the Israel Institute—an organization that uses millions of tax-exempt dollars to push a pro-Israel agenda in U.S. academic spaces—Elran’s course represents nothing less than the incursion of Israel’s military complex onto the University’s campus.

No principle of “academic freedom” or “intellectual inquiry” justifies hosting classes taught by complicit Israeli military personnel—particularly not classes that misrepresent Palestinian history,

treat Palestinian deaths as fodder for “strategic” military reflection, and inundate students with the Orientalist worldview of Israeli colonists.

For these reasons and others, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) are announcing a sustained, student-led campaign against Elran’s course for the duration of this quarter. We urge those interested in expressing support for our campaign and opposition to Elran’s course to sign our online petition, as well as to follow our Instagram for periodic updates about upcoming events and actions. Above

all, we look forward to a future in which the University’s Palestinian students will no longer be forced to watch leading participants in their ongoing Nakba be hired by their administration, welcomed on their campus, and handed positions of power in their classrooms.

Until Liberation, Students for Justice in Palestine #IsraeliMilitaryOffOurCampus #CounterColonialism Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Chicago is UChicago’s chapter of a nationwide

network of students dedicated to supporting Palestinians in their struggle for liberation, especially by raising awareness about and organizing against the Zionist occupation and colonization of Palestinian land and people.

Note: Course materials for Professor Elran’s Security, Counter-Terrorism, and Resilience: The Israeli Case course were anonymously shared with SJP and have been internally confirmed by Maroon editors. Due to privacy concerns, The Maroon will not share the documents directly.

Advancing UChicago’s Distinct Culture of Free Expression At a time of political polarization, President Paul Alivisatos outlines priorities for the “tough work” of upholding UChicago’s free expression principles.

By PRESIDENT PAUL ALIVISATOS As we mark the start of a new year and the beginning of winter quarter, I write to share my reflections on the central culture and practice of free expression at the University of Chicago. Together, in the coming years, our community will need to continue devoting considerable effort to the broad and deep cultivation of this culture.

I am prompted by the fact that we live in an era of heightened political polarization, and free expression is in clear distress. This poses challenges to the practice of free inquiry throughout academia.

During my time back at UChicago, I have seen firsthand the genuine depth of commitment to free expression within our community; yet it is essential to our mission that we constantly undertake the difficult work of interrogating the integrity of its practice on our campuses and renew our commit-

ment to it time and time again.

This unending exercise suffuses the spirit of how we drive rigorous inquiry on our campuses, and it touches every aspect of who we are.

Designed from the outset to foster the creation of new fields of knowledge and to offer transformational educational experiences, the University of Chicago was founded to advance the principles of academic freedom and free expression. Over generations, our community and our leadership have repeatedly worked to defend free expression and create the necessary structures to uphold it.

This is an important legacy, and I urge you to examine this timeline of critical events and the key documents that underpin our culture and practice.

Looking ahead, there are four elements of our culture of free expression that are vital to uphold and cultivate: understanding, practicing, protecting, and advancing free expression.

We do much to promote the understanding of free expression—both by providing education to those who are just joining our community and by serving as a sponsor for wide-ranging inquiry, research, and discourse on topics related to free expression.

As part of that education, incoming College students last fall were invited to grapple with the big questions related to free expression and its practice through Professor Agnes Callard’s Aims of Education address and the subsequent open discussions led by Dean John Boyer and other faculty. At the Law School orientation, students engaged with a hypothetical challenge to free expression.

The premise of the case study involved a student group that issued an invitation to a Russian state-sponsored advocate of the invasion of Ukraine, precipitating a series of cascading responses from people from within and without the University. While the specifics were hypothetical, these

annual traditions held during orientation help to create a common language for facing real challenges when they arise. These are but two examples of many. They are models for ways in which, in the coming years, we can do more to set the stage for students throughout the University to be ready to participate in and get the most from the robust give and take of ideas during their time here.

In November, at the inaugural event of the new campus-wide Zell Event Series on free expression, the University hosted a live interrogation of how to practice free expression in today’s social and political environment. The featured speaker was Anthony Julius, a barrister, celebrated author, and professor of law at University College London, and he engaged UChicago Law School professor Genevieve Lakier in a spirited conversation. In discussion, they examined the vast implications of what is enabled by the unprecedented scale and

velocity of communication across social media. Free expression in social media both informs—and sometimes disrupts—the quality of open discourse within universities, and it is a central challenge for both our and all institutions of higher education today. I invite all of you to participate directly in future events in this series. In the coming years, our culture of free expression will be enhanced by research, colloquia, seminars, and events that help elevate our understanding of the full range of topics related to free expression.

We practice free expression each and every day, in every discipline, research program, and classroom. I encourage you to seize opportunities to engage with our university’s culture of free expression across all of these venues.

By nature of this process, it is inevitable that any one of us will encounter ideas that seem absurd or offensive. In past remarks, I have shared that, in my experience, evCONTINUED ON PG. 17

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“A healthy culture of free expression arises from the acts of many. Yet the actions of a few, when left unchecked, could disrupt that culture and thus significantly harm our community. ” CONTINUED FROM PG. 16

ery class, lecture, extracurricular activity, and informal discussion also has within it the possibility of being that special moment when we unlock the ability to see some aspect of the world in a new way.

We are only able to access that possibility if we have the willingness to engage with others across differences. This requires truly listening to the perspectives of others, and, in turn, being open to sharing our own perspectives.

This kind of practice is the strongest possible defense of free expression.

A healthy culture of free ex-

pression arises from the acts of many. Yet the actions of a few, when left unchecked, could disrupt that culture and thus significantly harm our community.

For this reason, the protection of free expression is critical for it to thrive. I am committed to protecting free expression whenever there are efforts to quash it. This includes our clear commitment to hosting invited speakers, however controversial they may be. We saw this tested on one occasion just last fall, when we persisted in featuring an Institute of Politics-hosted event online despite an outpouring of social media-fu-

eled calls for cancellation. Within the University, we have a clear set of policies on disruptive conduct that will guide our decision making regarding penalties and sanctions. Beyond the University, our civil polity has the tools to prosecute those who issue threats of violence, which all too often arise from the fray of heated discourse.

Such actions cannot be minimized or ignored, and the University will work with law enforcement when applicable.

I have called for an engaged University of Chicago, one where our creation of new fields of knowledge and our transformative edu-

cational experiences for students are also tied directly to our efforts to help societies address their greatest challenges. For an institution widely celebrated for developing the Chicago Principles, we should recognize that we occupy a distinct place in the higher education landscape; with it comes an obligation to model the tough work of practicing free expression.

Democracies depend critically on free expression. For this reason, today, we must do more to engage externally to educate about and model the healthy practice of free expression, specifically to advocate for its advancement

across academia and throughout the world. At current count, more than 90 universities have adopted or endorsed the Chicago Principles, and in the coming months, I will be reporting more on how we can expand our efforts to advance freedom of expression beyond the University.

I invite you to consider the opportunity that this inflection point poses to our community. Whatever your role may be, before each of us are avenues to enrich our knowledge and understanding through the work, research, and learning that arises from our collective culture of free expression.

ARTS

University Folk Festival Returns for 63rd Year This year’s Folk Festival will feature Chicago’s “preeminent Mexican fiddler” and the Eastern European tunes of the gadulka.

By NOAH GLASGOW | Deputy Arts Editor On February 10 and 11, the University of Chicago Folk Festival will strum back onto the stage at Mandel Hall, continuing a decades-long tradition which brings some of the most wellknown (and obscure) traditional folk acts from across the country to Hyde Park every year.

Among the can’t-miss acts, according to third-year and festival co-president Nick Rommel, are the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, a bluegrass group that’s coming up from Tennessee in a refurbished 1965 General Electric tour bus, and Juan Rivera, whom Rommel described as the “preeminent Mexican fiddler” in the Chicago area.

The Folklore Society, which or-

ganizes the annual festival, is one of the oldest registered student organizations on campus. They hosted the first Folk Festival in 1961 at the height of the national folk revival. In search of authenticity, Rommel explained, the Festival’s organizers turned down newfangled singer-songwriters in favor of old-time folk musicians who stuck to traditional tunes, such as performers like Muddy Waters and famed mandolinist Bill Munroe. Bob Dylan asked to perform but was deemed inauthentic and turned down, Rommel said.

Today the Folk Fest still swears by its authenticity. It avoids singer-songwriters and features only traditional music—its lineup lists each performer

along with their style, such as “Classic Bluegrass” or “Louisiana Cajun.”

However, where it once held strictly to American music, the Festival has opened itself up to more global traditions in recent years. Among the performers this year are Donka and Nikolay Kolev, a Bulgarian immigrant couple that performs in a traditional Eastern European style. Nikolay plays the gadulka, an instrument Rommel described in some detail: “You play it like a cello, but it’s the size of a violin and you hold it to your chest,” he said. “It doesn’t look anything like a cello. I think it has three strings.”

This year, Rommel hopes that the international lineup will “appeal to a more general sense of authenticity and craft that people are looking for these

days.”

In addition to concerts on Friday and Saturday night, touring musicians, lecturers, and local performers not featured in the official evening lineup will host a suite of public workshops and jam sessions in Ida Noyes on Saturday, from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. These will include dance lessons and discussions and even a workshop hosted by Hyde Park’s quilting society.

The festival concerts begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, February 10, and at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 11. Tickets are $5 for students, $20 for seniors, and $30 for the general public. The lineup can be found at www.uofcfolk.org or on the University of Chicago Folk Festival Facebook page.

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And the Critic Said, “Let There Be Light” Arts Contributor Angelina Torre reviews the architecture of Fourth Presbyterian Church, a building on Michigan Avenue praised for its neo-Gothic style but overshadowed by surrounding high-rises.

By ANGELINA TORRE | Arts Reporter The ivy on Fourth Presbyterian Church is still green on the first weekend in October. While leaves on surrounding trees have grown desiccated and begun to drop, the green tendrils on the church’s facade remain lush. The foliage wraps around crevices like the arms of a wool sweater, softening the hard lines of the church’s stone and accentuating the height of its spire. But why, I wondered during my visit to the church in early fall, was the ivy still green? I found my answer across the street: the vines hadn’t yet dried out because they receive very little sunlight.

Fourth Presbyterian Church, or Fourth Church, is the second-oldest building on Michigan Avenue, north of the Chicago River. Finished in 1914, it is a striking neo-Gothic structure on a strip now frequented for modern commodities. The sanctuary neighbors a Bloomingdale’s, a Verizon, and an H&M. A high-rise condominium and Starbucks sit behind the church. The all-black skyscraper, formerly known as the John Hancock Center and now as 875 North Michigan Avenue, looms tall opposite the church’s east-facing facade, as if taunting it.

Fourth Church refers to itself as “A Light in the City” on its website. Ironically, it stands today almost exclusively in shade.

This Michigan Avenue location is the third building to house the Fourth Church congregation. Their first church building was destroyed during the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. Their second was a humble stone structure that served the ministry for just over 40 years before the congregation outgrew it. So, in 1912, architect Ralph Adams Cram was commissioned to design the impressive sanctuary that stands today. Cram was then a well-known and prolific architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, most notably in the Gothic Revival style. Cram’s father was a Unitarian preach-

er, instilling in the architect an understanding of biblical principles that would feature prominently in the buildings he designed.

When designing Fourth Church, Cram championed art and modernity. According to the Church’s archives, Cram said: “When we build here in America, we are building for now. We are manifesting the living church. It is art, not archaeology, that drives us. From the past, not in the past, the Church should be pure and scholarly Gothic, both modern in feeling and medieval; an

modernity in its most contemporary form that has caused the Church to be overshadowed—literally.

Still, the building remains striking.

Bedford limestone, the same material used to build the Pentagon and Rockefeller Center, peeks out from behind the crawling ivy.

An arched tympanum above the church’s wooden doors displays a relief of Moses’s brother Aaron and other biblical figures.

Above it, a passage from the Bible known as the Aaronic Blessing is engraved in Gothic lettering: “The Lord bless you and keep thee; the Lord make his face shine upon thee and

ciform Gothic churches where a second hall would intersect the nave to form the image of a cross in the architectural plan. Instead, Fourth Church’s single nave is broken only by large pillars that carve two narrow aisles on either side of the sanctuary. A high, vaulted ceiling carries insulated sound to all corners of the building, while thick stone walls keep out interruptions from Michigan Avenue. All of the church’s pews are situated in this one shared space, creating a sense of intimacy in lieu of great volume. When the priest asks the church to recite a prayer in unison, the diverse voices of parishioners

The Fourth Presbyterian Church on a spring day. courtesty of fourth presbyterian church. enduring style adopted to modern conditions.” In an effort to achieve the modernity he speaks of, Cram incorporated elements of Arts and Crafts architecture—a movement that championed detail and craftsmanship in response to the Industrial Revolution.

While his structure remains timeless, it is

be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give you peace.”

In this way, Fourth Church announces itself as a religious institution and a haven for the public who passes it.

The church opens to a grand central hall, or nave. It deviates from typical cru-

meld into a single chord that booms low and heavy.

The interior details of Fourth Church employ the Arts and Crafts movement most clearly. The floor is laid with earth-toned tiles from Pewabic Pottery, a CONTINUED ON PG. 19

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Though it may be dim inside Fourth Presbyterian Church, it is not dull.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 18

historic Detroit studio known for its iridescent glazes. The building’s vaulted ceiling is supported by wooden beams, each decorated with turquoise-blue and burnt-orange patterns meant to compliment the floor below.

The arrangement of the ceiling’s wooden spine is meant to recall the anatomy of a ship and, though not explicit, likely a reference to Noah and his ark. Intimately familiar with Christian scripture himself, Cram included many such biblical allusions in his de-

sign. Decorative angels top every pillar, and between them are stained-glass clerestory windows which, when sufficiently illuminated, display Bible stories.

Fourth Church’s Great East Window, known as the Nettie Fowler McCormick Memorial Window, is prominently visible from both the exterior and the interior of the sanctuary. Inside, brilliant blues and reds create stark contrast with the silhouetted stone from the church’s external facade. Charles J. Connick was the designer

and manufacturer of the Great East Window and, like Cram, worked most often in the Gothic Revival style. Despite its many apertures, the sanctuary appears more efficiently lit during the evening hours when several fixtures offer manufactured warm light than during daylight hours when indirect sunlight reflects dimly off the cooltoned stonework.

Though it may be dim inside Fourth Presbyterian Church, it is not dull.

More than 1,000 people file into the 10 a.m.

service each Sunday morning. Pedestrians break stride while toting shopping bags or briefcases to gaze at the church’s grandiosity.

Tourists take photos. Children look up and point. Ushers stand in business dress outside the church doors to welcome visitors. Fourth Presbyterian Church may not be “A Light in the City” in a literal sense, but it still beckons attention. As is engraved above the Church’s doors: “The Master is here, and calleth to thee.”

Andrew Bird Brings Much-Needed Warmth to the Midwest at Gezelligheid Arts Contributor Angelina Torre experiences the return of Andrew Bird’s seasonal Gezelligheid concerts at Fourth Presbyterian Church

By ANGELINA TORRE | Arts Reporter At Fourth Presbyterian Church on December 9, the pews were filled but the pastor was missing. Instead, standing in the chancel was indie folk-pop artist Andrew Bird. Bird’s seasonal Gezelligheid concerts at Fourth Church have been a beloved tradition since 2009, excepting a brief hiatus during the pandemic. This December’s Gezelligheid was the first of its kind in Chicago since 2019—a much-anticipated resurrection. All seven nights of performances were sold out.

The word “gezelligheid” doesn’t have an exact English translation. Bird first encountered the word at a crowded bar in Amsterdam, when it was uttered by a woman who squeezed herself in next to him on a frigid night. The closest translation he found was “coziness.” Or, more accurately, “the pursuit of those things which get us through the darkness.”

A Chicago native himself, Bird

is familiar with the bleakness of the Midwestern winter and hopes his concerts offer a bit of warmth amid the cold.

Though I sat in an audience of several hundred, Bird’s performance conjured the intimate feeling of a post–Christmas dinner performance in one’s living room. Only instead of cousin Tabitha’s vocal arias, it was Andrew Bird’s plunky pizzicato and sonorous whistling that graced our ears before dessert.

Bird’s set began with “Hole in the Ocean Floor,” a largely instrumental tune that Bird played on his violin.

Though alone, Bird’s sound did not feel singular. He used a looping mechanism to build one layer of music on top of the other, creating an effect that felt textured. First came short plucks of pizzicato, then long, smooth bows, a bit of strumming, and finally Bird’s vibrato-richened whistling and baritone vocals.

The enveloping effect of the

music was accentuated by the oversized, gramophone-like speakers on stage, two of which sat on either side of the stage facing the audience and two others that rotated, sending distorted sound around the space.

Next, Bird performed “Make a Picture” from his latest album Inside Problems—an assemblage of music Pitchfork called “a warm, collaborative record that feels like a balm for fear and loneliness.” Here, he was joined by bassist and guitarist Alan Hampton, who also provided rich vocal harmonies and a light sense of humor to match Bird’s own.

The two remained on stage together for the rest of the concert. They played “Glad,” an instrumental tune Hampton composed, and “Night’s Falling,” from Bird’s holiday album, Hark!, before ending with “Inside Problems,” the album’s titular track. Bird forgot a lyric or two while performing the latter but was quick to recover with confidence.

There were a few such mishaps during the concert, including a number of false starts and a broken speaker that emitted blasts of noise like a self-imploding drum set. But each time they came up, the blunders were addressed with lighthearted ease. (After the speaker appeared to blow out, Bird turned to the audience and lifted a finger to his lips.) The opening night kinks made the night more special—as if we all were in on a joke with Bird himself.

Each night of Gezelligheid featured a new track Bird was trialing for an upcoming jazz album. The audience on the opening night heard “Django,” a swinging tune that felt like an eclectic indie-jazz fusion in true Andrew Bird fashion.

Bird welcomed Shara Nova on stage to sing around an old-fashioned mic for the next two songs, “Andalucia” and “Alabaster.” Nova, the lead singer of alternative indie band My Brightest Diamond, shined on stage in a silver-seCONTINUED ON PG. 20

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“Colored lights showered the chancel with warm hues” CONTINUED FROM PG. 19

quined outfit. Bird and Hampton stood on either side of her, dressed in dapper suit jackets and ties.

Throughout the concert, colored lights showered the chancel with warm hues, illuminating the towering stained glass behind the stage and casting long shadows on the walls. The brighter the lights, the stronger the

silhouettes of the audience in front of me. When Bird performed “Sisyphus,” I watched as the audience nodded their heads along to the punchy beat.

Bird saved “Pulaski at Night” for his penultimate number, invoking his youth in the Windy City. “Come back to Chicago/ City of, city of light…” To end the night, Bird performed his rendition of the traditional farewell-tune-for-the-

old-year, “Auld Lang Syne.”

“At one point I knew all the verses, but it’s kind of a thing not to know all the verses,” he quipped.

Though “coziness” may not feel immediately achievable in a space that seats more than a thousand, Bird’s harmonious melodies along with Fourth Church’s bounding acoustics crafted an experience that felt intimate.

As a child, Bird used to come to cavernous spaces like Fourth Church and play a single note on his violin for hours simply to hear how the sound bounced off the walls and danced around his ears. At Gezelligheid, Chicago natives come from all corners of the city to watch Bird send his music swirling into the cold midwinter.

SPORTS

Gym Etiquette 101 Advice for novice lifters and a refresher for gym veterans: you may be strong, but you don’t have to be a brute.

By ADVAITA SOOD | Sports Reporter 2023: the new year. As with every new year, we usher this one in brimming with resolutions but rarely with the will to see them through. However, this article is for those of you who plan on sticking to one of them—particularly, the resolution to go to the gym more often. If you are already a frequenter of the gyms at Ratner and Henry Crown, keep reading anyway; the following remarks will remind you of the nuances of that oft-forgotten, all-important practice: gym etiquette.

Underlying every rule of gym etiquette is the understanding that, at the gym, you must exercise empathy just as much as you do your muscles. You may have seen it in Kant, Plato, or Gandhi, but I find it most simply distilled in the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Also, regardless of how hopped up you are on whatever anabolic cocktail you consumed to prepare for your workout, try to exercise common sense to the best of your abilities.

Rule No. 1: Rerack your weights.

This is the most fundamental rule of gym etiquette. Leaving the plates on a barbell after you finish your sets forces the person after you to waste time and energy and is just plain annoying. Additionally, leaving dumbbells

strewn across the floor after you finish using them causes clutter, makes it difficult for others to find them, and is a safety hazard.

Reracking your weights is like putting down the toilet seat: It only takes a few seconds, but it goes a long way.

Rule No. 2: Do not hoard weights or machines. In other words, do not be inconsiderate. If you happen to be supersetting exercises with different machines (performing two different exercises back-to-back for a certain number of sets) or doing drop sets (doing the same exercise with successively lower weights and no rest in between), allow others to use one of the machines or set of dumbbells while you use the others or rest.

Rule No. 3: Wipe down benches and machines after you use them. We cannot control how much we sweat. Still, that is no reason for you to turn a gym bench into a Slip ’N Slide. Few, if any, would like to simmer in a pool of someone else’s bodily fluids. Therefore, clean up after yourself, especially if you are one of those unfortunate beings who cannot help but slobber from every pore of your body at every chance you get.

Better yet, place a towel beneath your most hazardous outlets.

Rule No. 4: Wear deodorant.

Many find in the gym a sanctuary, a place where one can clear one’s mind through physical exertion away from the superficialities of the modern world. While this is all well and good, one must remember that the gym is still a public place: You will come into contact with other people, people who would rather not be subject to the various fumes that are the inevitable byproducts of your exertion. Therefore, in the spirit of mindfulness and general decency, before you leave your room, take a moment to spray yourself with something that will mask the odors you may produce. While you may be a beast in the gym, it is best not to smell like one.

Rule No. 5: Respect personal space. This is where some of that common sense comes in. If you’re waiting for someone to finish using a piece of equipment, do not hover and stare. Definitely do not try to talk to someone while they’re performing an exercise lest they lose focus and hurt themselves (or, out of rage, you). And finally, refrain from wooing, courting, or “hitting on” people. Although it is a public setting, one’s intent in going to the gym is generally to exercise, not socialize. If you happen to be particularly entranced by someone and feel compelled beyond reason to talk to them, choose your timing wisely—perhaps after they finish their workout or during a water

break (though some may argue that even this is unacceptable). In fact, choosing your timing is the key to interacting with others at the gym—with the exception, of course, of staring at people (though even this, arguably, is acceptable under a few, extremely limited set of circumstances, such as when one finds another gym-goer lifting absurd amounts of weight).

Rule No. 6: Withhold unsolicited advice. Try not to offer unsolicited advice; most do not take kindly to that sort of thing.

Of course, this particular matter is fairly circumstantial. For instance, should a fellow lifter’s form be so egregious that advising them becomes a matter of public safety, it might be appropriate to have a word with them about it. Besides this, advice may also be warranted if you are a veteran gym-goer and you see a novice struggling with an exercise. Still, perceptions can be tricky, so think twice before saying anything. If you do decide to advise someone, broach the topic cautiously, like approaching a doe in the woods—gym-goers, despite their brawny exterior, are often quite sensitive about their gym-related knowledge.

Finally: Do not bring your dog.