040513 Chicago Maroon

FRIDAY • APRIL 5, 2013

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

CHICAGOMAROON.COM

ISSUE 34 • VOLUME 124

Record low acceptance rate: Students still drawn by “life of the mind” Admission Rates, by class year

Joy Crane Associate News Editor

UChicago MIT Columbia Princeton Yale Harvard

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The admissions acceptance rate to the College has reached a record low, with only 8.8 percent of applicants receiving acceptance letters this year. Leading the national trend of surging applications to most top-tier U.S. universities, UChicago’s acceptance rate is down nearly five percentage points from last year.

A record 30,396 students applied to the College this year, marking an increase of more than 5,000 applicants from last year. Dean of the College John Boyer believes that the increase in applications speaks to both the larger national trend and the unique traction of the College itself.

“It’s a little of both, but I like to think it’s more the latter than the former,” Boyer said. “I think we’re a very special place, and

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SOURCE: THEIVYCOACH.COM

15 10 5

2013

2014

2015

SONIA DHAWAN

that we’ve been much more effective at communicating that.”

The number of admitted applicants from the Chicago area also increased this year. While still comprising only a fraction of the total number of admitted applicants, admitted Chicago-

2016

2017

| THE CHICAGO MAROON

ans jumped from 99 students in 2012 to 117 in the most recent round of admissions.

Ingrid Yin, a senior from Barrington, a Chicago suburb, was among the local batch of accepted applicants. Yin is in the ADMIT continued on page 4

Pro-peace lobbyist talks Israel, Palestine Jon Catlin Senior News Staff Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder of J Street, a Jewish-American proIsrael, pro-peace lobby based in DC, spoke on his organization’s vision for an end to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict at the Logan Center Wednesday evening, just over two weeks after President

Obama’s first visit to Israel and the Palestinian West Bank since taking office in 2009.

Ben-Ami praised Obama’s recent speech in the West Bank, in which he implicitly compared the struggles of African Americans to the hardships of life for Palestinians, which include frequent security checkpoints and a feeling of second-class citizenship. He in-

voked Obama’s words: “We’ve got to put ourselves in the shoes of the other side.”

In her introduction of BenAmi, Susan Gzesh, executive director of the human rights program, credited J Street with “opening a space for rational discussion on this issue for American Jews.” As Ben-Ami remarked ISRAEL continued on page 2

Dunk and cover All-Americans from around the nation threw down dunks in front of a raucous Ratner crowd during the Powerade Jam Fest Monday night.

FRANK YAN | THE CHICAGO MAROON

Quiz bowl team vindicated Jennifer Standish News Editor The UChicago Quiz Bowl team is celebrating a national tournament championship title— three years late.

After an investigation by the National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT), the company which organizes the Intercollegiate Championship Tournament (ICT), uncovered that a member of the Harvard quiz bowl team, Andrew Watkins, class of 2011, accessed information on questions for the tournaments in which he would later play, NAQT revoked four of the Harvard A team’s championship tournament titles and gave them to the runner-up

teams. The UChicago team was subsequently awarded the 2010 Division I championship title.

According to a statement released by NAQT, the investigation of its Web site’s server logs revealed that Watkins “accessed ‘questions-by-writer’ and/or ‘category’ pages for the 2009, 2010, and 2011 Division I ICTs in the periods immediately prior to those tournaments,” thus allowing him to read the first 40 characters of the ICT questions.

Seth Teitler (Ph.D. ’10), a member of the UChicago 2010 A team, said that, following Harvard’s win, he was not suspicious about Watkins’ performance, despite circulating rumors that he may have cheated.

“I was actually very surprised when I heard that…. By that point I had pretty much dismissed [the rumors] and made peace with the fact that we lost.”

In 2009 the UChicago team also won the Division I championship title at ICT, making them the first-ever repeating Division I champions, according to Teitler. Before having its 2010 and 2011 Division I championship titles revoked, Harvard claimed this distinction.

The UChicago A team that competed against Harvard in 2010 included Teitler, then team president Michael Arnold, (A.B. ’10), Selene Koo (M.D./Ph.D. ’11), and current economics graduate student Marshall Steinbaum.

and Wesleyan University and is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles and Duke.

—Celia Bever

has an extensive beer list. According to the Hyde Park Herald, the new restaurant will offer Southern-style breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu items.

This newest addition to the growing number of restaurants and retail locations settling in Harper Court will be housed in a 2,500-squarefoot space. Although the construction for Harper Court is set to finish this summer, there is no hard opening date for the restaurant.

—Madhu Srikantha

NEWS IN BRIEF Denied: petition to overturn liquor ban A University petition to revoke a 23-year-old liquor ban that prevented the opening of the Japanese restaurant Yusho at 1301 East 53rd Street, former home of the Third World Café, has been denied.

According to the City Clerk’s Office, the paperwork misidentified the geographical boundaries of the precinct the ban currently covers, which includes where

Matthias Merges, chef of the Logan Square restaurant Charlie Trotter’s, plans to open his new upscale eatery.

As a result, all 60 signatures from the petition are now considered invalid, according to a DNAinfo article.

In order for the ban to be overturned, the University will have to again gather the signatures of two-thirds of the residents in the Fourth Ward’s First Precinct in order to resubmit the petition. If the City Clerk accepts the petition, there will then be another

30-day period during which opponents of the petition can challenge the ban’s reversal.

—Lauren Gurley

New dean of students hired Effective July 8, the new dean of students will be Michele Rasmussen, current dean of the undergraduate college at Bryn Mawr, according to the University’s News Office website. She will be the second-ranking adminis-

trator in the Office of Campus and Student Life and will report to Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Karen Warren Coleman, University spokesperson Steve Kloehn said.

Rasmussen will oversee a dozen programs and services, including the Office of the Reynolds Club and Student Activities, the University Community Service Center, and Resources for Sexual Violence Prevention, according to the News Office Web site. She previously worked in administrative and academic roles at Duke

Harper Court brings home the bacon West Loop barbeque and whiskey joint Porkchop will be opening a second location at Harper Court.

The restaurant offers a variety of barbeque options and

IN VIEWPOINTS

IN ARTS

IN SPORTS

SASA show a surface-level affair » Page 5

April rain, call it a wash in the theater: Spring movie roundup » Page 7

After sweep of Lake Forest, Maroons to face Vikings, Warhawks » Back Page

Full-court pressure » Page 6

In the spirit of the West, novelist Haruf offers a blessing » Page 7

High school stars showcase skills at rowdy Ratner » Page 11

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | April 5, 2013

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UCPD, University reach contract agreement Ankit Jain Associate News Editor After stalled negotiations led to the possibility of a University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) strike, UCPD officers and the University reached a deal last Friday on a new collective bargaining agreement. The new contract will run through January 2016, but has a clause reopening salary negotiations in October 2014.

In mid-March, almost two months after the previous contract expired on January 30, the UCPD officers’ union, the Police Benevolent & Protective Association of Illinois Unit 185, and the University were stuck at an impasse, and talks risked breaking down. Robert Kuzas, one of the union’s lead lawyers in the negotiations, said the union was seriously considering launching a strike.

The sticking point was wages. The negotiators had agreed upon most other issues, but the two sides disagreed on salary increase, despite having gone through mediation.

Up to that point, the UCPD’s Chief of Police Marlon Lynch had minimal involvement, according to Kuzas, who said that Lynch did n’t attend any of the negotiations prior to March 4.

Lynch became more involved

with negotiations when discussions stalled, and shortly after the University put forth a new offer to the union.

“What we agreed to do was that while our current offer did not go up, we agreed to take a look at the salaries of all of our officers compared to various other organizations, communities, or municipalities that might have officers and other universities; and compare wages, benefits, retirement, ancillary practices; and go back to the bargaining table and negotiate that in two years,” the University’s chief negotiator Gayle Saxton said.

The new negotiations over salary will start in October 2014.

This offer was not universally popular among union members.

When put to a vote of all union officers on March 15, it passed by one vote. Both sides officially signed the agreement on March 29.

The final contract gives UCPD officers a two-percent salary increase immediately and another two-percent increase in February 2014. It also adjusts seniority-based wage increases on raises to occur every three years instead of every five years, makes it easier to use vacation time, and institutes more “equitable” overtime scheduling , according to Saxton.

Goodbye, Gipper The former childhood house of Ronald Reagan, which he lived in for a year when he was four, was demolished Wednesday to make way for a new parking lot for the UCMC. JAMIE MANLEY | THE CHICAGO MAROON

J Street founder says American mediation is necessary for peace ISRAEL continued from front

in his talk, J Street aims to foster “a discussion that’s been difficult—to get beyond ‘us versus them.’”

“American politicians have heard for far too long that there is only one way to be pro-Israel: to stand by Israel right or wrong,” he said. “Well, that’s not a voice that speaks for me. J Street gives a voice to those Americans who don’t fit that one view.”

Ben-Ami also considered his views as grounded in a personal attachment to Israel, where his family was among the first

wave of Jewish immigrants in the early 1900s, and where he lived for three years in the 1990s. Through his experiences in Israel, he concluded that “there were two peoples with legitimate claims to the land, that the future of Israel depended on an end to the violence.”

A lawyer by training, Ben-Ami has worked on seven U.S. presidential campaigns. He expressed the need for American involvement as a mediator in a two-state solution between Israel and the Arab world—an option, he said, that is quickly fading.

“The chances of a two-state solution diminish with each passing day…. Currently 600,000 Jews, 10 percent of Jews in Israel, live in settlements on Palestinian land captured in the 1967 war. But if we don’t act in this first year of the presidential administration, that number might be 700,000 or 900,000 in four years, and the moderate Palestinians who have been negotiating with us for 20 years will give up,” he said.

“If we don’t act in this window of a U.S. president and Secretary of State committed to peace, that window is going to close.”

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | April 5, 2013

Pierce students notified of mugging across 55th Street Marina Fang News Editor University and Chicago police are investigating an early morning crime near Pierce Tower.

According to University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) Incident Reports, two unknown males, one armed with a handgun, approached a University student walking on the sidewalk north of 55th Street and South University Avenue, around 1:30 a.m. on Monday. They struck the student on the back of the hand and took his iPhone, wallet, and keys from his pocket. The suspects then fled north on University Avenue. The victim was not hurt and declined medical attention.

Because the incident occurred within a block of Pierce Tower, the Office of Campus and Student Life (CSL) decided to notify Pierce residents and staff through a safety memo from the Office of Undergraduate Housing e-mailed to Resident Heads on Monday. UCPD Public Information Officer Bob Mason said it was the CSL’s decision to distribute the memo, but they consulted UCPD on the matter.

“We work together all the time, anytime a student is affected,” he said.

According to Mason, only Pierce residents received notification of the incident because it occurred off-campus. The UCPD considers “the south curve of 55th Street” the northern boundary of campus.

The UCPD’s policy on sending campuswide security alerts applies to “any violent crime on campus.”

However, for specific incidents, it is common practice to notify students who live near the affected area. As stated in the UCPD’s guidelines on security alerts, “depending upon location a specific crime may merit an alert or announcement posted in the location affected by the incident.

Examples include incidents in or near residence halls, academic buildings, or University-affiliated schools.”

“If something doesn’t qualify for the policy of security alerts, and if it’s in the vicinity [of ] where students are housed, those students [within the vicinity of the crime] are notified,” he said.

The suspects are still at large, and the case is under Chicago Police (CPD) investigation, according to Mason. He said that in general, while the UCPD often assists the CPD, off-campus incidents are primarily under the jurisdiction of the CPD.

Experts on local AIDS epidemic

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NEWS IN BRIEF Dear econ professor...

dergraduates in the College.

In order to receive a joint degree in the new program, students must complete 14 undergraduate computer science courses and six additional courses at the graduate level. Students must also complete a master’s project by the end of their fourth year.

“The College has been encouraging this, because there are a lot of students who come who really only need to be here for three years,” said Rogers. “I think they should be here four years and have a four-year college experience, and this is a way to make that happen in a way that’s productive.”

The program will be the same cost as undergraduate tuition, according to Rogers.

According to the department Web site, admission into the program will be based on a number of factors, including an application and recommendation letters from two computer science faculty members. Students interested in a joint degree will apply in the winter quarter of their third year. For current third-year students, the deadline to apply is May 3.

While there is no cap on the size of the program, Rogers said it will likely be highly selective.

"We're hoping to have somewhere between three and five people who do this in the fall," she said.

The department has considered offering the joint degree program for a few years. Enrollment in the computer science undergraduate program has grown substantially in the past few years, so the department feels it has a pool of students who will benefit from the new program.

“We are looking for people who have clearly demonstrated that they are capable [and] creative,” she said. “Students who are dedicated.”

—Alex Hays

Booth Associate Professor Emily Oster is a newly minted advice columnist for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Oster’s column, entitled “Ask Emily,” will be published on the WSJ Ideas Market blog, where she will answer everyday questions using economic principles.

“Because economics is all about optimizing—doing the best you can with what you have—it’s usually the first place you should look for answers if you want to maximize your happiness,” she said in an e-mail.

According to Oster, the offer came as a surprise.

“Chicago is a great place, which opens a lot of doors, although I will say I didn’t expect this particular one,” she said.

Oster joined the ranks of Booth in 2009 as an assistant professor, after obtaining her Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University in 2006 and teaching as an assistant professor in the University of Chicago’s Department of Economics from 2007–2009.

She currently serves as a Faculty Research Fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

—Thomas Choi

CS dept to offer joint degrees The Department of Computer Science will offer a new joint B.A./M.A. degree program for undergraduate computer science majors starting in autumn 2013. Anne Rogers, associate professor of computer science, announced in an information session for current students Wednesday night in Ryerson Hall.

The new four-year joint degree program will give computer science majors the opportunity to receive both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science while still enrolled as un-

Weekly Crime Report

By Marina Fang

This is a series the Maroon publishes summarizing instances of campus crime. Each week details a few notable crimes, in addition to keeping a running count from September 24. The focus is on crimes within the UCPD patrol area, which runs from East 37th to 65th Streets and South Cottage Grove to Lake Shore Drive.

Here are this week’s notables:

Since Jan. 1

Apr. 1Apr. 7

0

0

Robbery

0

0

Attempted robbery

8

0

Battery

5

0

Burglary

» April 1, 5505 South Ellis Avenue (Campus North Parking Garage), unknown time—Between 9:30 a.m. and 8 p.m., an unknown person keyed a word onto the door of a parked vehicle and deflated a tire.

0

Criminal trespass to vehicle

2

Damage to property

113

9

Other report

2

1

Simple assault

114

3

Theft

0

Trespass to property

2

Arrest

3

Traffic Violation

» April 2, 5815 South Maryland Avenue 3 (Mitchell Hospital), 5:23 p.m.—A physi18 cian reported an unknown person had 73 attempted to obtain controlled substances using the physician’s substance control number. Both the Drug Enforce47th ment Administration (DEA) and CPD have been notified.

Source: UCPD Incident Reports

S. Hyde Park

Blackstone

53rd

55th

59th 60th

62nd

Cornell

57th

Stony Island

» April 3, 5000 South East End Avenue, 11:34 p.m.—The UCPD assisted the CPD in apprehending three unknown males, who forcibly took a purse from a woman walking on the sidewalk.

51st

S. Lake Shore

» April 2, 5500 South Cottage Grove Avenue, 11:56 p.m.—A UCPD officer recovered a vehicle that had been reported stolen to CPD. The driver was arrested, and the case was turned over to CPD.

University

Local experts met to discuss the communitybased responses to the AIDS epidemic on the South Side and the ongoing research in the field, in a panel hosted by the UChicago chapter of United Against Infectious Disease (UAID) last night. Panelists included UChicago Professor of Medicine Renslow Sherer, who focuses on infectious disease and global health, and Karriem Watson, a leader in community-based public health in Chicago.

Watson began by introducing a recent study showing that from 2010 to 2011, HIV incident rates in Chicago dropped by 22 percent. However, this decrease in the overall number of HIV infections was not reflected in the black male demographic, which actually saw an increase in the number of new infections. Additionally, out of the six Chicago neighborhoods with the highest rates of infection, four are located on the South Side. Englewood, a neighborhood adjacent to Hyde Park, is listed among them.

“We now have to say, ‘what can we do to go into these communities?’ We can’t always wait for these communities to come to us,”

Watson said.

An early experience with a classmate testing HIV–positive led Watson to turn to community outreach programs, in particularly faith-based communities, to address the AIDS epidemic.

However, discussing a sexually transmitted disease in a religious setting can be difficult, he said.

According to Watson, another obstacle left in facing the AIDS epidemic is that there is still a lack of access to care and preventative measures.

Watson pointed to the different sexual health practices of two Walgreens locations within walking distance of each other on the South Side.

“It’s that mixed message. On one hand, you have the Walgreens on 75th doing free HIV testing with a multi-million dollar grant from the CDC, but within walking distance, there’s another Walgreens that has the condoms locked up,” Watson said.

Although there are many struggles still ahead in facing AIDS on the South Side, Sherer finds hope in the increased quality of modern medication.

“I would say that we have pretty close to a cure in effective therapy in that you can take one pill once a day and have near normal life expectancy,” Sherer said.

1 5

Ellis

Mara McCollom News Staff

» April 1, Hutchinson Commons—Between 8 and 9 p.m., a complainant reported an unknown male was verbally abusive and placed her in fear for her safety.

Cottage Grove

Renslow Sherer (left), University of Chicago Professor of Medicine, and Karriem Watson (right), Director of Clinical Research Recruitment at the UIC Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences, held a panel on Thursday in Harper to discuss the history of AIDS and explain the current state of treatment research, government policy, and community response to the epidemic.

JAIMIE MANLEY | THE CHICAGO MAROON

Type of Crime

*Locations of reports approximate

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | April 5, 2013

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NEWS IN BRIEF

Boyer: “The city ought to take credit” for UChicago’s popularity

See more at

Last page for Columbia

ADMIT continued from front

MyUChicago

Press, UChicago may get

Originally slated to close by the start of winter quarter this year, cMore will finally be decommissioned. Starting April 22, students will use MyUChicago exclusively to view and edit their student information online. MyUChicago integrates all information available on cMore, including grades, housing information, and tuition bills plus various student resources.

The main difference between the two systems is MyUChicago’s inclusion of customizable boxes of information called “portlets,” which group together the contents of cMore. They also include Web links to resources like IT Services, Transloc, the library Web site, and the academic calendar. According to an e-mail distributed to all students, MyUChicago is meant to serve as “a hub of campus and community resources” by consolidating them in “one central location.”

The University announced the phasing out of cMore earlier this academic year to prepare students and staff for the transition to MyUChicago. In addition, IT Services has developed online guides and a chart listing an application or function from cMore and its MyUChicago equivalent.

—Marina Fang

book contracts The University of Chicago Press will be absorbing some of the contracts from the Columbia College Chicago Press, which is being phased out of working existence. A meeting between the two presses to flesh out some of the details took place in early February.

The meeting was meant to facilitate the transfer of titles in Columbia College Chicago’s inventory to the University of Chicago Press, the largest single distributor of printed titles currently owned by Columbia College Chicago Press, according to Stephen DeSantis, director of academic initiatives at Columbia College. In the coming months, UChicago Press will choose which of over 100 titles to acquire.

“All rights to the titles reside with Columbia College Press. What happens to those rights as the press is phased out will be determined as the process happens,” DeSantis said.

According to DeSantis, an annual loss of $300,000 paired with decreasing undergraduate enrollment within Columbia College made the continuation of the press no longer feasible.

While Columbia College Chicago Press is still in the process of finishing production of several titles, it will officially shut down by the end of 2013.

The University of Chicago Press declined to comment for this story.

—Amos Gerwitz

top five percent of her class at her public high school and received a 35 on her ACT. “UChicago was my first choice, but I didn’t really consider it until my friend got in last year, and she talked about it all the time. She made it sound like all these students were exactly the kind of people I wanted to hang out with. They were driven, really passionate about certain subjects, the life of the mind, that kind of stuff.”

The launch of UChicago Promise, a multi-platform initiative which aims to assist both affordability and access to college for Chicago high school students, was cited by Boyer as one explanation for the increased number of local applicants. Through the distribution of grants, the program allows for admitted Chicago residents to attend the College loan-free.

“We got a lot more applications from students in Chicago, but I think we’ve always been an attractive option for students from parochial and public high schools. The majority of our students came from the city of Chicago up to the 1950s. We were what they called a ‘streetcar school’; most of the students lived at home and came here on street cars or buses,” Boyer said.

“To the extent that we’re reaching out to students from local high schools, I think this is returning us to a tradition where we began 120 years ago.”

According to Boyer, the swell in local applicants resonates with a wider commitment of the College to capitalize on its relationship with the city.

“The other thing that I think has played a big role [in the low admissions

rate] is the city of Chicago. There have been a number of studies done by sociologists and demographers recently about the trend of young adults wanting to live in large metropolitan areas after they graduate from college in the United States…. Chicago is driving part of the success as well. The city ought to take credit for it.”

In addition to an increase in admitted local applicants, the admitted pool is also more geographically diverse than ever. According to a University press statement, the larger national spread includes equal numbers of applicants from the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast. By contrast, 26 percent of the class of 2016 is from the Midwest, while only 15 percent is from the West Coast.

Kelton Anderson, an admitted student from Minnesota, pointed to national rankings in explaining the increase in applications.

“I think with UChicago being ranked number four by U.S. News and

by Forbes, a lot of kids look at that to try and figure out where to apply. I think consistently being among the top 10 draws more attention to the University.”

The University does not disclose breakdown data at this stage in the admissions process, but it reaffirmed its commitment to attracting high-ability students from a diverse range of socioeconomic backgrounds in the press statement. As of 2012, one-fifth of all college students benefit from Odyssey scholarships, which reduce or eliminate loans for students with annual household incomes of less than $90,000.

Similarly, 18 percent of UChicago students receive Pell Grants, situating the

University in eighth place in terms of economic diversity at the nation’s top 25 colleges, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Michael Borde, an admitted student from the Chicago area, is a recipient of an Odyssey scholarship.

However, he explained, that further negotiation of his financial aid package was still on the horizon.

“My mom is negotiating for a higher package. I’m not sure how it will impact my decision,” Borde said.

Boyer believes that this trend of the ever-decreasing admissions rate is unsustainable in the years ahead.

“I doubt we’re going to see these kinds of surges year after year. I think that’s probably not realistic. I think where it will level off I can’t predict— we may go up or down in terms of applications next year, and then level off.

I suppose you could say we should be able to get as many applicants as the Ivies, but I think we’ve already surpassed a number of the Ivies in application numbers,” he said.

Four Ivy League schools—Cornell with 40,006 applicants, Harvard with 35,022, Columbia with 33,460, and UPenn with 31,219—surpassed the College in terms of applicants. However, Brown, Dartmouth, Yale, and Princeton all received fewer applications than UChicago.

For Boyer, numbers aren’t the whole story.

“I’m not so concerned about the numbers as I am that we are communicating about the school and telling the kids that might consider coming here. If everyone who likes our kind of education knows about us, then I’m satisfied.”

FRESH.

FAST. TASTY.

FREAKY FAST

DELIVERY! ©2011 JIMMY JOHN’S FRANCHISE LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

VIEWPOINTS

Editorial & Op-Ed APRIL 5, 2013

Interface forward IT Services should do more to enable students to realize MyUChicago’s potential following cMore switch The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892 JORDAN LARSON Editor-in-Chief SHARAN SHETTY Editor-in-Chief COLIN BRADLEY Managing Editor REBECCA GUTERMAN Editor-in-Chief-Elect SAM LEVINE Editor-in-Chief-Elect EMILY WANG Managing Editor-Elect DOUGLAS EVERSON, JR Senior Editor JAMIE MANLEY Senior Editor CELIA BEVER News Editor MARINA FANG News Editor MADHU SRIKANTHA News Editor JENNIFER STANDISH News Editor AJAY BATRA Viewpoints Editor EMMA THURBER STONE Viewpoints Editor EMMA BRODER Arts Editor ALICE BUCKNELL Arts Editor DANIEL RIVERA Arts Editor DANIEL LEWIS Sports Editor VICENTE FERNANDEZ Sports Editor MATTHEW SCHAEFER Sports Editor SONIA DHAWAN Head Designer KEVIN WANG Online Editor ALICE BLACKWOOD Head Copy Editor JEN XIA Head Copy Editor BEN ZIGTERMAN Head Copy Editor SYDNEY COMBS Photo Editor TIFFANY TAN Photo Editor JOY CRANE Assoc. News Editor ANKIT JAIN Assoc. News Editor STEPHANIE XIAO Assoc. News Editor WILL DART Assoc. Arts Editor LAUREN GURLEY Assoc. Arts Editor SARAH LANGS Assoc. Sports Editor

The Office of the University Registrar and IT Services recently announced that, beginning April 22, MyUChicago will permanently replace cMore as the primary portal through which students can access their information online.

Since cMore’s launch in 2005, students have been able to use the site to easily edit basic personal information—such as insurance details and relevant addresses—as well as to view grade reports and financial information. MyUChicago will retain all of these important functions while featuring many more, though, unfortunately for students, it seems to do so at the cost of simplicity and ease of use.

While the University should be lauded for what has thus far been a smooth migration to an admittedly more integrated student portal, it should do more to ensure that students are aware of its capabilities and how it can be customized for optimal use.

The migration to MyUChicago is beneficial for two main reasons.

For one, students access the site through the Shibboleth authentication service, a sign-on system that is used commonly across University Web sites, such as Chicago Career Connection and the Class-

es Web site. The service is single sign-on, which means that students are able to log in just once and have access to all Shibbolethenabled sites in a single browsing session. MyUChicago also incorporates a huge variety of features, making it a centralized “one-stop shop” for students’ informational needs. The site is designed around portlets, which are customizable boxes that enable students to access everything that’s long been available on cMore, as well as things like campus bus and shuttle tracking, UChicago Marketplace, and hours and basic search tools for campus libraries.

An unfortunate downside to all of this added functionality and interfacial complexity is that MyUChicago can run quite slowly. Its Javascript-laden portlets take noticeably longer to load than cMore’s basic HTML interface, which will no doubt frustrate some students. One of cMore’s main flaws is that it was limited in the scope of information it provided and thus sometimes required students to waste time navigating between various sites. MyUChicago resolves the scope issue, but remains lacking in terms of speed and therefore convenience. After

all, for busy students, the convenience of any process is ultimately always going to come down to how long it takes them. MyUChicago’s frustrating slowness indeed leaves one wondering whether a featureheavy, and consequently data-intensive, “one-stop shop” model is really the best way forward.

However, given that the path forward has already been decided, students should know all the ways that they can customize MyUChicago—namely, the ways that they can minimize or even close those portlets that add more bloat than utility. To its credit, in the e-mail announcing the date of cMore’s deactivation, IT Services linked to guides to using MyUChicago’s portlets and to locating equivalents to cMore’s particular functionalities on MyUChicago. Students should use these guides to their advantage in retooling their individual MyUChicago portals to run optimally, but the guides should first be made more visible: The e-mail in which they were first provided to students was sent out on March 21, right in the midst of finals week—a chaotic time for most, when few minds are concerned with University Web site overhauls. IT

Services should place an information box on cMore that links not only to MyUChicago, but also to the portlet and cMore comparison guides they’ve already prepared.

They should also use the next few weeks leading up to April 22 to repeatedly redistribute and better advertise these guides so that students can best take advantage of this new service.

While it is unlikely that students gave cMore much thought while it was available, its simplicity is of the precise sort that is missed only when it’s gone. With the introduction of MyUChicago, students will likely begin to miss cMore’s quickness, but such frustration can be mitigated somewhat if steps are taken in the coming weeks to ensure that students know their way around the new portal. While MyUChicago has enormous promise and resolves some of cMore’s inconveniences, IT Services and the registrar must first do more to inform students how the site’s potential can be realized.

The Editorial Board consists of the Editors-in-Chief, Editors-inChief-Elect, and the Viewpoints Editors.

JAKE WALERIUS Assoc. Sports Editor

TYRONALD JORDAN Business Manager

SASA show a surface-level affair

TAMER BARSBAY Undergraduate Business Executive

South Asian Students Association’s cultural program hardly lives up to its name

JULIA REINITZ Assoc. Photo Editor FRANK YAN Assoc. Photo Editor

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By Raghav Rao Viewpoints Columnist I intend on going to the SASA show this Saturday. I know what to expect. There’ll be a dinner.

It’ll be OK, maybe even good.

Then I’ll sit and watch about 10 dances with most of the performers featuring multiple times. A nominal narrative will probably run through the show to break the monotony of the dancing.

The actors are likely to be the show’s organizers. The narrative won’t go anywhere but I doubt this is meant to be a satirical nod at Bollywood movies. The dances themselves will be amateurish but enthusiastic and I anticipate a lot of applause at the show’s end because the audience is composed of friends and wellwishers. That’s been the formula for the past three SASA shows and, judging from the promotional materials, this one will be no different. The show is a bit of fun, there to add some spice to our return to campus, and really there’s nothing wrong with that.

If they’d just change the name of their show to “Some Indian Dances,” I’d leave them alone.

The show is billed as the

“South Asian Students Association Cultural Show” and it’s my opinion that it’s neither representative of South Asia nor cultural in any meaningful sense.

What we’re left with is a “Students Association Show,” and that’s closer to the truth. The show’s two noteworthy performances come from the Bhangra and Raas RSOs. These student organizations get an opportunity to perform for an audience.

That’s wonderful for them, but the rest of the performances are poorly put together affairs that prompt chuckles rather than whoops.

South Asian cultural shows often end up as “India shows” since India ends up being disproportionately represented. It’s true that Indians are disproportionately represented at the University—we don’t have many students from Bhutan or the Maldives.

Yet influences from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, populous countries with their own distinct culture and a presence in the student body, hardly feature in the show.

The diversity is weak even within the context of India.

Aside from one Tamil performance (which is usually parodic), the rest of the show is dominated by North Indian dances.

Furthermore, aside from one Bharatanatyam or Kathak (forms of Indian classical dance) performance, the rest of the show

consists of the Bollywood-inspired numbers. Demographically speaking , the tendency for Indians to dominate cannot be helped. Yet the show shouldn’t purport to represent the entirety of South Asia if it can’t even do justice to the regional diversity of India. When it comes to proper representation, SASA seems to be an ineffective student organization. Last quarter, Erendro Leichombam, the founder of the Manipur International Center (an NGO that promotes human rights and socioeconomic development in India), gave a talk about the oppression faced by the various peoples of Northeast India. SASA didn’t promote the talk, although one would imagine it falls directly under its purview.

My biggest gripe with SASA is that it promotes “South Asian Culture” through a culturally bankrupt medium: Bollywood.

Indian commercial cinema is often the first contact that Americans have with South Asia and it’s a poor cultural ambassador replete with cheesy, classist love stories. However, instead of combating the erroneous notions propounded by these films, SASA panders to them. Last year, its show was wedding-themed— as if the world needed to once again be reminded of the fact that Indians have big weddings.

SASA apologists will say that SASA continued on page 6

Achieving affordable child care at the U of C Sliding fee scale needed to better support grad student parents Madeleine Elfenbein and Claire Roosien Viewpoints Contributors The past few weeks have brought signs of hope for the long campaign to bring affordable child care to the University of Chicago. First, there was the patch of construction on 56th and Drexel that mushroomed overnight into a day care facility.

Soon followed a letter from the deputy provost that recognized “the challenges of raising a family while pursuing graduate and doctoral studies” and named “affordable on-campus child care” a priority. The letter contained a link to a survey that aimed to gauge our interest in a “graduate student-focused child care facility on campus.” Did we dare to hope? We duly filled it out, along with every other graduate student we knew, and now we eagerly anticipate the results.

There’s just one problem: According to the survey, the projected fees for the new day care CHILD CARE continued on page 6

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | April 5, 2013

Full-court pressure College basketball player Kevin Ware’s injury reveals flaws in a scholarship system that gives insufficient security to student-athletes

By Jane Huang Viewpoints Columnist I don’t think I’ve watched a fulllength game of basketball since Michael Jordan retired, but for some reason I like reading about March Madness. It’s not so much the sport itself that interests me; rather, it’s the narratives. One of the more intriguing but unfortunate storylines has been that of University of Louisville basketball player Kevin Ware, whose serious leg injury has renewed debates about fair compensation and support for student-athletes.

As someone who has never attended a school with a strong sports culture, I’ve never quite understood the hoopla over Division I sports. Some of you reading this column might be thinking, “University of Chicago is a DIII

school. Why should we care what happens at DI schools?” Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, it would be good to know that our tax dollars (though probably not amounting to much at this point in our lives) are supporting educational institutions that take their academic missions seriously.

Second, some of us might attend or work at DI institutions in the future, or send our children there.

Finally, one cannot deny the amount of cultural sway that elite college sports have. The Penn State sex abuse scandal was an extreme example of the damage that can ensue when people are willing to neglect the well-being of individuals in order to preserve the well-being of a team. Behavior that might be condemnable in nearly any other situation somehow becomes acceptable when a lot of power, fame, and glory are involved. Changing policies concerning student-athletes help to combat this corruption and send the message that the well-being of individuals matters, along with profits and success.

But not all reforms are good

ones. A widely circulated cover story in The Atlantic last year, “The Shame of College Sports,” suggested reforming college sports by compensating college athletes beyond simply offering athletic scholarships because some programs, such as football or basketball, might earn millions each year for a school. I am not in favor of this plan because it would undermine women’s sports or the less mainstream sports that take in less revenue but nevertheless offer a good experience for undergraduates.

I am also generally not a big supporter of athletic scholarships. But I believe that, currently, student-athletes receiving athletic scholarships are under undue pressure relative to those receiving other scholarships. Even if athletic scholarships are offered alongside a variety of other merit scholarships, the renewal processes for merit and athletic scholarships are not equal. And that’s telling : The decision to initially award what we generally term “merit scholarships” (that is, scholarships for something other

than playing college sports) can depend on a variety of considerations including grades, letters of recommendation, leadership, school activities, and community service. However, getting these tough-to-get scholarships renewed—scholarships I looked at during my senior year of high school, for example—generally only required “satisfactory progress” toward a degree, or a reasonable GPA cutoff, usually somewhere between 3.0 and 3.5.

In contrast, although the NCAA began allowing the option of multiyear scholarships in recent years, schools can choose to offer annual scholarships with renewal solely at the coach’s discretion, with standards of academic progress not given prominence.

After Kevin Ware broke his leg during the NCAA tournament, journalists speculated about whether he would still receive scholarship money next year. Although we don’t really know anything about his specific circumstances, in general I think making multiyear scholarships standard would be fairer not only to stu-

University should apply need-based principles of aid policy to its child care offerings CHILD CARE continued from page 5 facility are anything but “affordable” for most graduate students. A week’s full-time enrollment will run upwards of $200 per child per week, or $135 per week for parttime care—an amount approaching what many of us already pay for rent.

Truly affordable child care means childcare on a sliding scale. Faculty, postdocs and graduate students share a common need for child care, but they differ enormously in their ability to pay for it. A postdoc’s salary is two to three times what the average graduate student earns at this university. Even among graduate students, our financial situations vary widely: an incoming Ph.D. student in the humanities can expect to earn about $24,000 per year for the first five years of her graduate school career. Afterward, she may earn her living by teaching, her earnings capped at $12,000-14,000 per year. Some graduate students have well-paying research fellowships, high-earning spouses, or live-in grandparents to help care for their kids, while others are not so lucky. To accommodate this diversity of incomes, schedules, and circumstances, a campus-based child care facility needs to allow parents flexible and sliding-scale access to its services—the number of hours they need, at a rate they can truly afford.

This is the need-based logic through which the University already offers financial aid to its students, and it’s also the policy in place for day care facilities at many of the University’s peer institutions. Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Northwestern, UC Berkeley, and Notre Dame are just a few of the universities that view genuinely affordable (that is, subsidized) child care as part of their educational missions. Many of the universities that provide such facilities have considerably smaller endowments than the University of Chicago. Several of these institutions also provide emergency child care, drop-in centers for children at libraries and labs, health care subsidies for dependents, and student-parent task forces that consult regularly with administrators to help them improve services.

The University of Chicago is unusual among its peer institutions in its lack of

provisions for graduate student parents, and for parents in general. The administration’s most recent measures—things like the Family Resource Center and its lists of nannies and market-rate day care providers in Hyde Park, as well as its efforts to encourage cooperative child care arrangements among student parents—are welcome but inadequate gestures toward addressing the gap.

As a university whose endowment places it among the wealthiest universities in the United States, and whose reputation makes it a leader among private institutions, the University of Chicago can do better. Rather than create another child care facility in Hyde Park priced beyond the reach of those who need it most, we urge the University to make its new facility genuinely affordable by offering its services to students, faculty, and other members of the university community on a flexible schedule and with a sliding scale.

We recognize that this proposal represents a significant expense for the University. We also believe that it’s worth it.

The cost of providing truly affordable child care to those who need it, including student parents, is considerable, but it’s a bargain compared to the cost of going without: a cost that makes itself felt in the graduate students we know who drop out of their programs each year, who take “breaks” from which they never return, or whose progress toward their degrees is dramatically slowed by the lack of access to child care. This cost is disproportionately borne by female students, who are more likely to be primary caregivers, and whose careers are more likely to be jeopardized by becoming parents. The consequences of their attrition are felt throughout the academic community: in the lost years of training they are unable to use, in the articles and books they don’t write, and in the students they never get a chance to teach.

The “choice” these women face—to become either a scholar or a mother—is not a free choice but a forced one. The University has the power to end this false dichotomy and increase the proportion of female scholars in its midst, along with the share of students from non-wealthy back-

grounds, by providing the resources they need to succeed as scholars.

In his statement on diversity at the University of Chicago, President Zimmer says, “We have an obligation to see that the greatest variety of perspectives is brought to bear on the issues before us as scholars and citizens.” One way the University can live up to President Zimmer’s words is to make on-campus child care a priority, and to make it truly affordable. A sliding-scale day care facility will help the University compete with its peer institutions in attracting the best and brightest to join its community and produce their best work here. It will reduce rates of attrition and time to degree for graduate student parents as a whole. And it will demonstrate the University’s commitment to a diverse scholarly community by committing its resources to ensure that people with children can still thrive as scholars.

We hope the provost and the president will choose to put the University’s resources where their stated commitments already lie. Affordable child care is a big investment for the University, but the returns are incalculable.

Madeleine Elfenbein and Claire Roosien are Ph.D. students in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and members of the Student Parents Organization.

SUBMISSIONS The Chicago Maroon welcomes opinions and responses from its readers. Send op-ed submissions and letters to: The Chicago Maroon attn: Viewpoints 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 E-mail: Viewpoints@ChicagoMaroon. com The editors reserve the right to edit materials for clarity and space. Letters to the editor should be limited to 400 words.

Op-ed submissions, 800 words.

dent-athletes but to the rest of the student body as well. Athletic scholarships should have the same renewal conditions as any other merit scholarship—namely, making good progress toward a degree and not engaging in misconduct.

A school might give a scholarship to a student in part for being active on his high school student government not because it necessarily expects him to serve the same role in college, but because it sees more genera l potential for leadership and extracurricular engagement. If schools really believe their own rhetoric about the greater good of sports programs, the same logic should apply to the scholarships awarded to studentathletes. If they do indeed foster teamwork, build leadership skills, and encourage diligence, then an athlete who for some reason is unable to play in subsequent seasons will still be an asset to the school.

And if a school doesn’t believe that to be the case, then perhaps it ought to reexamine its values.

Jane Huang is a third-year in the College.

“Brutally nonchalant” SASA show trailer a sign of things to come SASA continued from page 5 I’m exaggerating Bollywood’s influence in their show, but even their deviations fit within the meta-Bollywood structure.

SASA shows typically begin with a traditional invocation—the intent of this being to sanctify the show’s parodic nature with a culturally sensitive gesture. Bollywood’s Dharma Productions, headed

by India’s biggest purveyor of rehashed plotlines, Karan Johar, also begins each production with an invocation. SASA’s occasional departures from commercial cinematic themes may be intended to promote diversity, but only end up casting Bollywood as South Asia’s dominant form of cultural expression.

The trailer to this year’s show really bemused me. In it, each of the show’s dance genres is presented, with each performer sporting the head of a cartoon elephant.

It’s unclear what this means. Perhaps it’s a reference to the Hindu god Ganesha, who is elephant-headed, but if that’s the case the mytholog y at work is poor since Ganesha has a broken tusk and is a lot more dignified than the elephant the trailer is advertising. I’m not one to direct invective at the subversive usage of a religious symbol but this trailer seems brutally nonchalant. Or perhaps the organizers are just going with the tenuous image association of India with elephants—though, for the sake of their intelligence, I hope not.

The unexplained combination of an elephant’s head and some dance moves is SASA’s summation of one of the world’s most fascinating regions. It’s a quick and untidy reference to the region’s history and culture that somehow allows SASA to put up a series of homages to Bollywood. I’ll go to the show, but I don’t expect to see much of South Asia or experience its culture beyond a traditional dish or two.

Raghav Rao is a fourth-year in the College majoring in English.

ARTS

Trivial Pursuits APRIL 5, 2013

April rain, call it a wash in the theater: Spring movie roundup Daniel Rivera Arts Editor Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine): It’s loud, garish, triggering , voyeuristic—and above all, intentional. Harmony Korine’s latest film has drawn ire from critics all over for its LiteBrite depiction of girls gone wild on a Florida spring break.

Guy Lodge of Variety wrote that while it’s clear the movie means to mock shows like Jersey Shore, it’s questionable whether it “effectively [satirizes] them or [is] merely complicit in the glossy meretriciousness of the culture they represent.” And yet, that’s the point: From its repetitive close-ups of hyper-sexualized beachside debauchery to its concluding gunfight, Breakers revels in the fantasy and then attacks it, before finally deconstructing the whole cultural enterprise ( itself included ).

And if you’re willing to take the movie at more than face value— Korine challenges you not to—it becomes an examination of rape culture and sexual politics, of racial commodification and the value of bodies. There’s a reason Werner Herzog purportedly called Korine “the last foot soldier in the army.” The film’s star is undoubtedly James Franco as Alien, the gangster who takes the girls under his wing. I can’t overstate the importance of the scene in which he sits down at a piano to belt out Britney Spears’ “Everytime.” Runner-up would be Belgian cinematographer Benoît Debie, who makes magic of the sun-bleached, strip-mall’d Floridian coastline. Third place

goes to me, because the movie takes place in my hometown (shout out to the 727). In the words of pop culture blog The Coquette, Spring Breakers is “a mythical allegory with a raging case of neon herpes.” We’re having a cultural moment, people.

The Host (Andrew Niccol): Confession: I read The Host over spring break. Somewhere in the interim between sleeping on my bed and then sleeping on a floaty in my pool, it seemed like a good idea. And to Meyer’s credit, the 600-page tome about an alien who’s taken over a human body only to find that its original host won’t leave, is atmospheric and gloriously melodramatic.

Barring one major challenge— successfully depicting two people fighting within the confines of one body—the book seemed ripe for successful adaptation.

After all, its script attracted one hell of a cast: Atonement’s Saoirse Ronan and Inglourious Basterds’ Diane Kruger, plus Max Irons as the quintessential Brit-import love interest. Add to that director Andrew Niccol, the mind behind Gattaca, and all phasers are set for box office smash. Only…not. Niccol decided to expand the movie’s universe, cutting time away from developing both of Ronan’s characters just so we can stare at Kruger, standing in the desert, doing her best with lines like, “This is a big planet.” Speaking of Ronan, she’s saddled with the job of playing Wanderer, the alien, and then providing a countrified voiceover to represent Melanie, the human-cum-

Top: Wanda the alien (Saoirse Ronan) is in love with Ian (Jake Abel), but the human she’s occupying isn’t.

Bottom: Alien (James Franco) serenades his spring-breaking cohort with Britney standard “Everytime.”

COURTESY OF TPS AND LIONSGATE; COURTESY OF A24 FILMS

resistant-host. She has chops, but is curiously left alone by postproduction. Melanie’s voice often comes shrieking in with jokes that fall flat, and it’s like no one told Ronan this would

be happening—Wanderer never emotes at all. I suspect Niccol phoned in for the entire production: making out, a staple in any Meyer adaption, happens frequently, but is often filmed

from hilariously ill-conceived angles so that we’re just staring at the back of whichever dude’s neck. Ronan and Kruger bring it home in the film’s final act when SPRING continued on page 9

In the spirit of the West, novelist Haruf offers a blessing Emma Broder Arts Editor I keep saying to people that if Hemingway had had more soul, he would’ve written a book like Benediction. In the weather-worn hands of novelist Kent Haruf, you enter a flawless representation of a small town in the American West, where folks are religious and gentle and complicated.

Like Haruf ’s earlier books, including Where You Once Belonged (1990), National Book Award-nominated Plainsong (1999), and Eventide (2004), the novel takes place in the small town of Holt, Colorado.

Benediction (“the utterance of a blessing, an invocation of blessedness”) is primarily the story of Dad Lewis. Dad, the proprietor of Holt’s hardware store, is dying of cancer; he won’t live through the end of the summer. While his illness is progressing, his wife and daughter, Mary and Lorraine, take him for a drive, so he can see Holt one more time. They stop at the back door of the hardware store, and Dad wonders how many times he went in and out of

it: “Fifty-five years times six days a week times 52, he said. What’s that come to? … It amounts to a man’s lifetime.” In moments like these, Mary and Lorraine struggle to help Dad to a graceful end.

Interwoven with Dad’s story is the narrative of elderly Willa Johnson and her 60-something daughter, Alene; an extensive exploration into the story of the Lewis family’s estranged gay son and their regrets about him; and the saga of Lyle, a new preacher in town who gives a different sermon from the one the Holt church is accustomed to hearing.

Lyle’s wife desperately wants to go back to Denver, while his son is full of angst and ridiculously tangled up with promiscuous, empty Genevieve Larsen.

Though Haruf ’s work always glows with calm and simplicity, Benediction is especially pregnant with these qualities because the characters in the book are on the older side. They tend to look back into events surrounding their pasts instead of forward. Alene remembers her failed love affair with a school principal from the district she taught in for

40 years, and says she now lacks “that quality, that condition of being alive and interested and vital and active and passionate in my life… I’m going to die and not even have lived yet.” Dad’s daughter Lorraine, meanwhile, is saddled with the loss of her teenage daughter in a car accident and a flawed, erratic lover who’s unlikely to change. In the last weeks of his life, Dad’s parents and his estranged son, Frank, visit him in hallucinations. Alice, the eight-year-old orphan granddaughter of Dad and Mary’s neighbor, is one interesting exception to this reflective slant.

Many of the book’s characters bring their hopes to rest in her; they treat her with kindness and sensitivity (the Johnson women buy her new clothes and a bicycle). She is an almost holy foil to the sullied young and old adults of Benediction.

Haruf has written the novel at a fitting time in his career and life. As a young man, Haruf worked on a chicken farm, taught English in Turkey with the Peace Corps, and worked in hospitals.

BENEDICTION continued on page 9

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | April 5, 2013

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Friday | March 5

Do What You’re Told

“Please don’t confuse our show with typical antique shows,” advises the website for the Chicagoland Antique Advertising, Slot-Machine & Jukebox Show. The longest-running show of its kind (this is its 34th year), it will also feature strength testers, fortunetellers, gumball machines, and neons. It’s Friday of first week, so what else could you possibly have to do besides hop in the car and try to find a collectible “onearmed bandit” or classic jukebox? Going on Friday means potentially scoring before the weekend crowds come to the Pheasant Run Resort. That being said, if you actually buy something while you’re here, you’re way too cool. 4051 East Main Street, St. Charles, 7 a.m.–5 p.m. early bird preview Friday, $7.

At the Bottom Lounge’s Voyage of the Stag Party tonight, find out what happens when you combine dragons and drinking. The answer is: magic. Really.

For six years and counting, the Three Floyds brewers have collaborated with local indie band Sybris to roll the dice in bar board game mayhem, accompanied by live music performances and all the bubbling brews your wizard’s heart could possibly desire. Sybris will perform, as will similarly Chicago-based bands

Rabid Rabbit and Killer Moon; level up by purchasing Sybris’s limited edition Dungeons & Dragons–themed E.P. Voyage of the Stag Party. 1375 West Lake Street, 8 p.m., $10.

Get your Archer fix while you can— the show’s fourth season ends next week. To help ease the pain, the Archer Live! tour, featuring the show’s cast and creators, will be in town this weekend.

They’re slated to do live readings of some of the show’s most popular scenes, as well as a panel discussion and Q&A. If this quarter’s already feeling like the Dane Cook of your academic career, then this one’s for you. 175 North State Street, 8 p.m., $36.

It’s spring, which means Hyde Park will finally come alive again with daffodils and students who haven’t seen the light of day since last December.

In the spirit of life and soul, come see BOOMscat, otherwise known as Jennifer Patience Row and Asha “BOOMCLAK” Santee, a D.C.–based pair known for its body-rolling soul and R&B music. They’re headlining a night of performance and open mic poetry, cosponsored by the Organization of Black Students. 915 East 60th Street, doors open at 6:30 p.m., open mic at 7 p.m., $5 with UCID.

Saturday | March 6

The campus zine craze (think Special Collections exhibit My Life is an Open Book, Make-a-Zine at Logan, Chicago Zine Fest) continues with a symposium at the Newberry Library. Social media has made it easy for people to express their so-called controversial beliefs, but some folks used to get creative to get their potentially dangerous thoughts to the public. The library teams up with historically literary Caxton Club to present Outsiders: Zines, Samizdat, and Alternative Publishing, a half day of presentations and panels about the “use of self-produced books and pamphlets to express individualized, unconventional, controversial, or prohibited messages.” 60 West Walton Street, 9 a.m., free.

Temptation (Tyler Perr y): Good news! Where The Host flopped massively in being so bad that it was good, Tyler Perry’s Temptation comes a hell of a lot closer. Reliably ham-fisted, Perry’s latest is a cautionary tale for all women who want to enjoy evil things, like sex.

The movie centers on Judith, played by the underappreciated Jurnee SmollettBell (Friday Night Lights), who engages in an extramarital affair, and then suffers the consequences—many, many consequences. Like the prolonged wrath of her Bible-thumping mother, who waxes on and off about hell and wealth and urges, and is treated by the film like the only reasonable person in the room. Think

Marcia Gay Harden’s role in The Mist, only with the filmmakers having no sense that she’s not the good guy. And yet, that’s only the beginning—there’s also domestic violence and HIV. Most offensive is the film’s treatment of sexual assault and its adherence to the “no” means “yes” aspect of rape culture. As Judith tries to brush off the advances of the “other man,” he looks her in the face and says, “You can say you resisted.” Later flashbacks proceed to show their hot-and-heavy good time, indicating that, hey, she wanted it anyway. If you can just get past all the slut-shaming and awful gender politics, there is hilarity to be found. Vulture compiled a list of all of Kim Kardashian’s lines, which, while unremarkable in and of themselves, are made glorious by her robotic delivery. And if that’s not enough, a twist ending that defies any sort of logic, ever, is an added cherry on top—even if it’s too little, too late.

Ava (Kim Kardashian) to Judith (Jurnee Smollett-Bell): “This is my finest moment in life.”

COURTESY OF OPEN ROAD FILMS

Sunday | March 7 At the Haiku Fest There will be poets reading See the library 768 Oak Street, Winnetka, 2 p.m., free.

Light a cigarette, slick back your ALICE BUCKNELL

hair, and don your skinniest tie: Fat Cat is hosting a Mad Men Season 6 Premiere Party for the return of AMC’s shark-jumping albeit still riveting series, and the classiest guest wins a prize.

There’ll be martinis, dynamite Old Fashioneds, and lots of beer at 1966 prices, not to mention complimentary candy cigarettes and sexy secretaries with whom you can cheat on your wife. 4840 North Broadway Street, 8 p.m., $21.

| THE CHICAGO MAROON

The UChicago South Asian Students Association will present its annual cultural show The All-Nighter tonight. Between fancy sponsors like MAC and Zipcar and a video preview the group has posted on YouTube that includes footage of several people dancing and undulating in elephant masks, this is bound to be decadent. The intermission will be hosted by Be the Match and the Smart Museum. 1131 East 57th Street, dinner starts at 5:30

Movies so bad they’re almost not good SPRING continued from page 7 they’re allowed to do their thing without being crippled by poor stylistic choices, and it’s just as the film finds its footing that it ends.

p.m., show at 7:30 p.m., $15 for show and dinner, $10 for show only (both prices with UCID).

In Benediction, beauties large and small

Like his protagonist, Dad Lewis, Haruf seems to be reflecting rather than tumbling forward.

COURTESY OF CATHY HARUF

BENEDICTION continued from page 7 As he set out to be a writer after teaching, his first two novels were promising but not masterful. Now he lives in Colorado, where he comes from. He is one of the best regional writers in America, at the height of his writing powers. Like Dad, it may make more sense for him to look back—to search himself—than to tumble forward. In Benediction Haruf handles his characters with compassion and generosity, patiently wielding the self-assurance he’s worked to attain.

Haruf ’s literary vision has scope and completeness. He strings certain residents of Holt, Colorado from book to book: The McPheron brothers, bachelor farmers from Plainsong, appear again in this novel, but they no longer inhabit their old house. Dad mentions that the baby whose mother the McPherons sheltered in their house must be grown up now. But the story of Holt doesn’t end in that child, since we have Alice’s story to add to the

McPherons’. Threads of intergenerational continuity matter to Haruf ’s project. In the end of Benediction, “the days turned cold and the leaves dropped off the trees and in the winter the wind blew from the mountains and out on the high plains of Holt County there were overnight storms and three-day blizzards.” This gorgeous zoom-out passage contextualizes Haruf ’s understanding of his books’ place in the world and affirms his regional wisdom.

Despite its range, Benediction is also full of beauty on a small, common level. In one scene, three generations of women—the Johnson women, middle-aged Lorraine, and Alice—swim naked in a cattle stock tank on a hot afternoon. “The women watched her move to the tank, this young thin quiet girl, naked out in the country in the broad daylight. The cows looked at her.” In this moment of peace and play, a breath of resolution blows through Holt.

That is part of Kent Haruf ’s story, and he’s stickin’ to it.

10

THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | April 5, 2013

South Siders to begin outdoor season at Chicagoland Championship Track & Field Isaac Stern Sports Staff After months of indoor competition, the Maroons will get some fresh air this weekend as they compete in the Chicagoland Championships to start their outdoor season.

Lewis University will host the event, which will feature 30 teams and representatives from all three divisions of NCAA competition.

Last year, the men placed ninth while the women placed sixth.

In the Division III realm, Ramapo College of New Jersey and North Central (Ill.) will pose the greatest competition to the Maroons this weekend. North Central currently sits atop the nation on the men’s rankings and Ramapo holds the eighth spot for the women.

The Maroons will have to keep the momentum going from the indoor season if they wish to stay competitive. The South Siders men finished second and women third at UAAs, and fourth-years Julia Sizek and Billy Whitmore garnered AllAmerican honors.

However, while the Maroons will race to win, the Chicagolands serve more as a warm-up for the fast-approaching UAA Championship at the end of fourth week.

“The outdoor season is going to come and go very quickly,” first-year Jake Romeo said. “We don’t really have as much time to ease into it as we did with indoor, so these first three weeks are crucial to get into our rhythm.”

Romeo joined the squad earlier this year as a sprinter and will compete in his first outdoor meet for the Maroons at the Chicagolands.

“I’m really looking forward to being able to be a part of a really strong 4x100m relay squad. I definitely think if we do what we’re capable of, we have a shot at qualifying for Nationals,” Romeo said.

To prepare for the Chicagoland Championships, the Maroons have shifted their focus toward endurance, as various

South Siders will have to compete in a number of events over the weekend and throughout the season.

“We as a team have definitely taken up a more endurance-based approach to training since indoor ended,” second-year Francesca Tomasi said. “It’ll be the athletes who can run multiple races over the course of two days who are going to perform the best at the big meets.”

Tomasi did not compete for the majority of the indoor season, because she, like many other Maroons, had to rehab from an injury that happened during the season. Avoiding injury must remain a priority for the Maroons if the team wishes to be at full force.

“I’m beyond excited to be back and running on the track,” Tomasi said. “We have a lot of strong potential and, with UAAs just around the corner, it would be sweet to knock out the teams who came out on top during the indoor season.”

The outdoor season brings new obstacles for the Maroons to overcome. Besides the change in track size, the Maroons will have to compete in new events not held during the indoor season. However, the Maroons look at such changes as an advantage.

“I think for the most part the outdoor track is something we’re more comfortable and more experienced with,” Romeo said. “It has some additional events that aren’t featured indoors, but for some people that means being able to run in their main events that they haven’t been able to in the winte, so I know that will be a good feeling and good for the team.”

Today’s action in Romeoville, IL, began at 9 a.m. The championships on both the men’s and women’s sides will continue through tomorrow afternoon.

“Outdoor season will take some getting used to,” Tomasi said, “but as long as we continue to work hard and make the most out of each training and racing opportunity, I’m looking forward to a strong finish for everybody.”

Second-year Renat Zalov competes in the 1,500-meter run at the Chicagoland Championships on April 7, 2012.

COURTESY OF DAVE HILBERT

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | April 5, 2013

11

High school stars showcase skills at rowdy Ratner Alexander Sotiropoulos Senior Sports Staff Both current and future stars came to the Ratner Athletics Center on Monday.

For the second year in a row, the University of Chicago hosted the Powerade Jam Fest, a series of competitions gearing up for the McDonald’s All-American Game.

Featuring the top 48 high school boys and girls basketball players in the country, the sold- out Jam Fest did not disappoint.

“It’s a great environment for us at the Ratner Center,” McDonald’s All-American Games Director Douglas Freeland said.

“It almost feels like a miniature Cameron Indoor Stadium. Everybody is right on top of the court. The crowd goes crazy.”

The dunk competition, inaugurated in 1987, is now in its third straight year in Chicago.

“It’s our second year in a row [at the Ratner Athletics Center], and both times it was a great event. ESPN loves coming here, so we chose to move it from Chicago State [University] up to the Hyde Park area, and both years it’s been great.”

Freeland took note of the enthusiastic University of Chicago students.

“Those students sitting behind the bench were going nuts, which was a lot of fun for the players and for everybody in the house,” he said. “I loved those guys that

were going crazy.”

It was hard not to be enthused by the caliber of talent at the Ratner Athletics Center.

While the names Jabari Parker, Aaron Gordon, Andrew Wiggins, Julius Randle, and Chris Walker may not currently resonate with the general public, these future stars were alongside celebrity judges and broadcasters in the Ratner Athletic Center whose names do.

Windy City Live co-host Val Warner, ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith, baseball and football legend Bo Jackson, Chicago Tribune writer Teddy Greenstein, former Chicago Bear Anthony Adams, and upand-coming singer and actor Trevor Jackson judged the dunk contest, while former NBA players Jay Williams and Jalen Rose broadcasted the event on ESPNU. After witnessing an hour and a half of fundamentally sound performances in the three-point shootout and skills competition, the fans finally got what they wanted: showstopping dunks.

Chris Walker was the first to light up the stadium. The Florida commit threw up a lob from the sideline in front of a section of University of Chicago students, let the ball bounce once, and threw down an emphatic one-handed slam that even had Stephen A. Smith pulling out the “10” card. The dunk scored a perfect 60 points.

Andrew Wiggins, ranked No. 1 on ESPN’s rankings of top recruits for the class of 2013, was the only other competitor to earn a perfect score on a dunk. The undecided senior threw down a 360-degree, through the legs, right-handed jam. All of the judges stood up in awe and naturally gave him top scores.

But Walker was crowned the champion.

After his four dunks, he had a combined total of 226, beating second-place finisher Aaron Gordon by 13 points. Gordon went on to be the McDonald’s All-American Game MVP. Still, it was not only the All-Americans that displayed their dunking skills. University of Chicago first-year football player Colin Macri competed in a skills competition for fans and dunked the ball so emphatically that the crowd rose to its feet and both Jalen Rose and Jay Williams gave him high-fives.

While a decision has not been made as to whether the Jam Fest will take place at the Ratner Athletics Center again next year, the atmosphere made an impact on the celebrities, athletes, and organizers of the event.

“We’ve got a really good event at the University of Chicago, great support from the students and from the administration here,” Freeland said. “Once we get through the [All-American] Game, we’ll do just what we did last year: we’ll step back and figure out where we’re going to go next year.”

Dunk Contest The McDonald’s All-American team participated in a slam dunk contest, three-point shooting competition, and overall timed skills competition during the Powerade Jam Fest in Ratner Athletics Center on Tuesday night.

JAMIE MANLEY | THE CHICAGO MAROON

BASEBALL UAA Standings Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6

School Case Western

Record 12–6 (5–3)

Win %

Washington (MO) Emory Rochester Brandeis Chicago

15–9 (5–3) 13–12 (4–4) 7–8 (4–4) 6–13 (2–6) 7–7 (0–0)

.625 .520 .467 .316 .500

.667

Batting Average Rank 1 2 3 4 5

Player

School Chicago Chicago Washington (MO) Case Western Chicago

Bullock

Schwabe Lowery Gronski Engel

AVG .479 .452 .417 .386 .375

RBIs Rank 1 1 3 3 5

Rank 1 2 2 4 4

Player Pakan

School Case Western Chicago Emory Emory Washington (MO)

Cinoman

Iturrey Welch Lowery

Home Runs School Player Case Western Pakan Case Western Keen Chicago Cinoman Chicago Bullock

RBIs 19 19 18 18 16

Rochester

HRs 3 2 2 1 1

School Rochester Case Western Case Western Washington (MO) Rochester

ERA 1.06 1.60 1.70 2.08 2.30

Garry ERA

Rank 1 2 3 4 5 Rank 1 2 3 4 4

Player Cool Johnstone Gish Bonser Menke

Strike Outs School Player Dillman Bosner Menke Gish Johnstone

Emory Washington (MO)

Rochester Case Western Case Western

Ks 48 40 24 22 22

SOFTBALL UAA Standings Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6

School Emory

Record 37–1 (8–0)

Win % .974

Washington (MO) Brandeis Case Western Rochester Chicago

20–8 (5–3) 11–8 (3–5) 9–12 (3–5) 2–12 (1–7) 9–5 (0–0)

.714 .579 .429 143 .643

Batting Average Rank 1

Player Genovese

School Brandeis

AVG .508

2 3 4 5

Lopez Ryan Janssen Light

Chicago Chicago Washington (MO) Emory

.471 .469 .462 .423

Rank 1

Player Light

School Emory

Neal Sendel Kersthold Berg

Washington (MO) Emory Emory Washington (MO)

RBIs

2 3 4 4

RBIs 49 36 27 25 25

Home Runs Rank 1 2 2 2 5

Player Light Sendel Neal Mullen Berg

School Emory Emory Washington (MO) Washington (MO) Washington (MO)

Rank 1 2 3 4 5

Player Kardys Carpenter Brottman Neal Pitkin

Rank 1 2 3 4 5

Player Taylor Kardys Carpenter Pitkin Neal

HRs 11 6 6 6 5

ERA School Emory Emory Emory Washington (MO) Washington (MO)

ERA 1.13 1.44 1.60 2.58 2.88

Strike Outs School Case Western Emory Emory Washington (MO) Washington (MO)

Ks 91 82 78 61 59

SPORTS

IN QUOTES “Mike Rice says he’s learned his lesson - next time will make sure the camera is the first thing he throws at his players.”

—@TheFakeESPN takes a dig at recently fired Rutgers men’s basketball coach Mike Rice.

After sweep of Lake Forest, Maroons to face Vikings, Warhawks Softball Tatiana Fields Sports Staff The Maroons are going full steam ahead with a busy season just starting up. The team used spring break as a chance to get some serious practice in before conference games, something especially important for the four firstyears just starting out on the team.

The South Siders kicked off their season with a trip to Clermont, Florida, where they played 12 games throughout the week.

The team ended its spring break training with a 7–5 record, and had some impressive victories as well as a couple tough losses.

“Our season has not gone exactly how we expected to this point, but we are excited to dive into our regional schedule,” head coach Ruth Kmak said.

“We look forward to a fresh start and continued improvement in all aspects of our game.”

Due to weather, the Maroons postponed their Tuesday doubleheader against Lake Forest to yesterday at 3 p.m. The South Siders swept the two games with scores of 5–0 and 4–2 respectively. The winning pitchers were first-year Jordan Poole and second-year Tabbetha Bohac.

“Overall, we contributed well in all phases, but need to continue to work to elevate our play,” Kmak said.

After defeating Lake Forest, the Maroons will play Lawrence at home and UW–Whitewater in Whitewater, WI this weekend. The South Siders will play two games against each opponent, giving them four games total on Saturday and Sunday.

“We need to come into the games this weekend and play all 14 innings in both games,” fourth-year Victoria Tomaka said. “We need to play our game at our level and we can come and beat any team. We are looking for four wins this weekend.”

The Vikings (8–4) have a comparable record to that of the South Siders, but fatigue will be an important factor in this matchup. The Maroons have played all 14 games of their season within the past two weeks, giving them very little chance to recuperate.

On the other hand, Lawrence played its last game on March 22, giving them just about two weeks to recover and focus themselves on their game against Chicago.

However, if past performance is any indication of what is to occur this weekend, the Maroons should be able to handily defeat the Vikings. In their doubleheader last year, the South Siders won both games by 10 runs or more.

“The season has been going pretty well so far,” Tomaka said. “Our hitting as a team has been very good. We are hitting over .300 as a team. We have a

Third-year Kaitlyn Carpenter slides into third base in a game against the Hope College Flying Dutch last year.

COURTESY OF DAVE HILBERT

young team with all four freshmen getting starts and they have been producing well for us.”

The team will need their first-years to put out strong performances in order to top No. 13 UW–Whitewater.

The Warhawks (12–0) are currently

undefeated, and will be looking to carry that momentum into their matchup against the Maroons.

The South Siders and Warhawks split last season’s doubleheader, but this is a new year, and UW–Whitewater looks to be one of the toughest oppo-

nents Chicago will face. The Maroons will have to be on their top game to defeat the Warhawks.

The Maroons will play Lawrence at 1 p.m. on Saturday at home, and then play UW–Whitewater on the road in Whitewater, WI, on Sunday at 1 p.m.

Chicago the favorite in strong regional field Ten-game streak on the line as Women’s Tennis

squad heads to Wisconsin

Jake Walerius Associate Sports Editor The Maroons travel to Madison, WI, today to compete in the Midwest Invitational, where they will face eight of the region’s best teams.

The Maroons, unbeaten now in seven matches, are feeling confident, but as UAAs near, the most difficult part of their season is just beginning.

“I think we’re feeling pretty good,” head coach Jay Tee said.

“We’re happy with where we’re at in terms of improving and also winning at the same time, but the rest of the season the level of play is going to jump up on us and we’ve got to be ready to raise our level.”

Not only is the Midwest Invitational an opportunity for Chicago to stamp its authority on the region, it is also a chance to send a message to the UAA. Wash U, currently ranked third in the region, is among the favorites this weekend. Case Western will also be competing.

“We want to send a message that Chicago is still the dominant team in the region and that our goal is still to win the UAAs, not just get to the finals or have a good showing,” Tee said. “And we can do that this weekend by going out and playing like we’re capable of playing and win this warm-up for the UAAs.”

Men’s Tennis Sam Zacher Sports Staff

Senior Linden Li returns a ball during the second round of the NCAA Division III Women’s Tennis Championship against Carleton College last May. COURTESY OF DAVE HILBERT

Tee pinpointed Wash U and DePauw as the biggest threats to his team, but he is wary of a field that contains eight of the top 10 teams in the region.

“Wash U and DePauw are definitely two of the top teams that are going to be there,” Tee said. “It’s all the best teams in the region so they’re all dangerous.”

As defending UAA champions and the number one team in the region, there is a lot of pressure on Chicago. But with only one upperclassman on their roster, the Maroons have had to work on replicating the mentality that saw them finish as runners-up in last year’s national tournament.

“We’re really talking lately about improving our attitude, and that is to become more aggressive mentally and to really

have an attitude as though we’re the favorites when we step onto the court,” Tee said. “And we have to take the match to the other team. We’ve got to go out and win matches and not so much let the other team lose them. We want to be the aggressors.”

Whether or not the Maroons feel like the favorites, their number one ranking has put a target on their back and they will have to come out firing in their first-round match against 10thranked Gustavus Adolphus. If Chicago wins, it will go on to face the winner of the match between Case Western and host UW-Whitewater.

The Midwest Invitational is scheduled to begin today at 8:30 a.m. at the Nielsen Tennis Stadium in Madison, WI.

Chicago’s remarkable 10-match winning streak will be put to the test this weekend.

After returning home with a 4–0 record over spring break in Hilton Head, SC, the Maroons (11–1) get set to take on UW– Whitewater (7–11) and Carroll College (8–5) this Saturday.

Chicago’s one loss this season came against No. 2 Kenyon College (11–3) on February 10.

Since then, they’ve won 10 in a row. Head coach Jay Tee credits his team’s success to a particular strategy of focusing more on the preparation than the outcome.

“I was guilty early on of putting too much emphasis on our match versus Kenyon, and by doing that I think I distracted the team and made the result more important than the process,” Tee said.

“Since then we’ve talked more about personal accountability and competing at a high level mentally rather than wins and losses.”

Tee’s tactic has paid off: By not thinking about wins, the Maroons have accumulated 10 of them since that loss to Kenyon—and are hoping to grab two more this weekend.

Despite the two upcoming opponents’ records, UW– Whitewater is a stronger team than Carroll. The Whitewater Warhawks and Chicago have played two of the same teams this season, Kenyon and DePauw University (3–11), and have fared similarly.

Kenyon beat Whitewater 7–2 and Chicago 9–0. Comparably, Whitewater beat DePauw 8–1 and the Maroons beat DePauw 7–2.

Seeing as the Maroons are 11–1 while the Warhawks are just 7–11, Whitewater clearly has a tougher schedule. The Warhawks are ranked No. 29 nationally and the Maroons No. 30.

On the other hand, against Chicago and Carroll’s common opponents, the Maroons have dominated while the Pioneers have struggled. The Maroons crushed Elmhurst College 8–1; the Pioneers lost 9–0. Chicago beat Colby College 6–3; Carroll lost 6–3.

Tee has been pleased with the team this season. He attributes the hot streak to selfless play and hard work.

“The guys have bought into the team concept and are playing for each other,” Tee said.

“They’re also a very talented

and motivated group. We’ve worked very hard since last September and we’re starting to see the fruits of our labor. It sounds cliché, but we really are getting better every day.”

He also credits a deep lineup.

“The great thing about this team is our depth,” Tee said.

“During the past 10 matches, all 11 players have contributed at least one team point, which is a luxury as a coach. I have confidence that I can call anyone’s name and they can step up and get a win for us.”

Second-year Deepak Sabada has been the team’s No. 1 singles player this year.

He has upped his game from last season, when he was No. 6 in the UChicago lineup.

“Deepak has earned his teammates’ trust and respect with his play,” Tee said. ”For us to reach our goals this year, we knew we needed someone who could compete at the No. 1 position, and Deepak has been more than we could have asked for.”

Sabada and the Maroons take to the courts in Whitewater, WI, on Saturday, first against the Warhawks at 10 a.m. and then against the Pioneers at 2 p.m.