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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2010 • VOLUME 122, ISSUE 18 • CHICAGOMAROON.COM
TRANSPORTATION
SafeRide forum draws four students
Director of Transportation Rodney Morris and second-year Undergraduate Liason to the Board of Trustees and Frank
Alarcon share thoughts on future SafeRide improvements at a poorly attended forum last Tuesday in Cobb.
CRYSTAL TSOI/MAROON
By Jonathan Lai and
Crystal Tsoi
News Staff
Just four students attended the forum
on concerns over SafeRide organized by
Student Government (SG) and Director
of Transportation Rodney Morris in
response to an online petition that
garnered 500 student signatures. At the
meeting Tuesday in Cobb, Morris said
he believes current plans for improve-
ment, combined with more student
HYDE PARK
Former UCMC admin starts alderman campaign
By Jingwen Hu
News Staff
Anne Marie Miles, a former presi-
dent of the U of C’s Comer Children’s
Hospital Service Committee,
announced last Tuesday that she
would join eight other candidates
challenging incumbent Fifth Ward
Alderman Leslie Hairston.
Miles is on the steering committee
of Safe Youth Chicago of the Union
League Club of Chicago. A former
president and secretary of the U
of C’s Comer Children’s Hospital
Service Committee, she has also
been an active presence in the Lab
Grey City Journal
INSIDE
input, can improve the SafeRide system.
Among the four students attending,
three were creators of the petition; the
other student, fourth-year Katherine
Isaac, was the only unaffiliated under-
graduate to attend.
Though Morris expressed frustration
over the low turnout and called for
future meetings, he discussed several
changes being made that are intended
to improve evening transportation.
“There are deeper issues, and we
can’t just do it with seven people in the
Schools, which both her daughters
attended.
Miles hopes to stimulate econom-
ic development and increase security
in the ward that encompasses Hyde
Park and South Shore, advocating
the expansion of emergency blue
lights to beyond the immediate
University of Chicago vicinity.
“The fifth ward has for many
years been known for the inde-
pendent voice of reason in the city
council…I just don’t see it in the cur-
rent moment,” Miles said.
Last summer, Hairston used ward
funds to finance $62,000 worth of
free parking lots. Miles said she
The MAROON's quarterly magazine
A question of corporatization
Q&A with Andrew Abbott
Daddio, a personal essay
OICES
TOP
room,” Morris said, referring to the three
administrators and four non–SG affili-
ated students who attended. “Getting
things changed takes a little time, but
we are working on the process. I need
your help, I need your input, I need your
honesty.”
Morris said that the University is
looking into hiring a dedicated dispatch-
er for SafeRide, that transit supervisors
will take two-hour shifts at night, and
that a script is being written that will
SAFERIDE continued on page 3
would have used that money to fund
employment.
“I thought in a summer of
astronomical youth unemploy-
ment that money could have been
used to employ people,” Miles
said. “Full-time jobs, part-time
jobs, summer jobs...it just seemed
wrong to me.”
Miles grew up in Morningside
H e i g h t s , Ne w Yo r k C i t y. S h e
practiced elder law in New York
City before moving to Hyde Park
in 1999 with her husband Emil
Coccaro, chair of the department
of psychiatry at the University of
Chicago.
In this issue
Lipstick Killer (X ’50)
Woodlawn, revisited
PAGE 6
FACULTY
Council bridges
faculty gender gap
and Associate Dean of the department
of medicine Halina Brukner said.
Part two of a two-part series on the The WLC now holds semiannual lun-
cheons in an effort to help female faculty
Faculty Gender Gap find support from women across aca-
demic disciplines. They are the group’s
By Christina Pillsbury latest efforts to make the University
Associate News Editor more welcoming and supportive to
women at an institution where women
Women make up about a quarter are largely underrepresented. In every
of full-time faculty at the University department save one—Slavic Languages
of Chicago, leaving many women in and Literature—women account for less
departments with few or no other than one-third of faculty.
female colleagues. The University’s gender gap is
“If you’re the only woman [on a comparable to that of peer institutions,
faculty], this is not a good place to be,” but Zerilli said that’s a poor measure.
said Linda Zerilli, director of the Center “We’re always comparing ourselves
for Gender Studies. “There’s always that to Princeton and Harvard, and saying
feeling that you’re the woman up there ‘We’re not worse,’” she said. “Yes, but
speaking, and that you represent all what’s the standard?”
women, so you’d better say something Associate Provost for Program
smart.” Development Mary Harvey established
Designed to help eliminate obstacles the 12-member WLC in June 2008
to recruiting and retaining female fac- at the request of Provost Thomas
ulty, the Women’s Leadership Council Rosenbaum. WLC member and
(WLC) is trying to make the University Professor of medicine Suzanne Conzen
of Chicago “the destination for women said the group is still gathering data on
in academic careers,” WLC member WLC continued on page 3
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LAW SCHOOL
Law students promise public
service with pro bono pledge
By Jonathan Lai Pro Bono Week, is part of an effort
News Staff to encourage students to serve the
public and to help them get experi-
Along with 95 of her peers, first- ence in real-world situations. “This is
year law student Mishan Araujo another way of telling law students
promised to donate at least 50 hours that even though they’re not quite
of legal volunteer work through a yet lawyers, they have a professional
new, Law School–run program at obligation to give back to the com-
the end of October. “I would have munity in their new profession, in a
probably tried to do it on my own,
but it would have been more dif-
law-related way,” said Susan Curry,
director of public interest law and
ficult,” she said. policy. “They can help meet great
Araujo is taking part in the Law client need, and we know that stu-
School’s new pro bono pledge, dents will be receptive to this.”
which is itself part of the larger The program, which helps stu-
Public Interest Program. The pledge, dents find pro bono projects in order
which took place during National PRO BONO continued on page 3
2 CHICAGO MAROON | ADVERTISEMENT | November 30, 2010

With daycare center in the works, Women's Leadership Council now aims to build faculty connections
WLC continued from front page
“what seems to be any obstacles for retaining and
attracting women to the U of C.”
The council’s first major campaign—to add an
on-campus daycare center—is underway. “There
was one thing that didn’t need any data and
that was child care, so that was one thing we
did tackle,” Conzen said. Junior faculty often find
problems trying to balance their careers while
starting families.
The planning committee met yesterday to
sort through corporate applications for building,
designing, and running the childcare center, set
to be completed in 2012. While the plans for the
daycare center are in the works, members point to
increased networking opportunities as the coun-
cil’s biggest development.
The WLC was “struck by limited ability for
faculty to meet other faculty among other divi-
sions,” in its initial stages, according to committee
member Lenore Grenoble, associate chair of the
department of Slavic languages and literatures.
This spring, the council brought together
Morris blames student frustrations with SafeRide on service's lack of mission statement
SAFERIDE continued from front page
allow dispatchers to politely encourage students to
head toward shuttle routes if they are nearby.
According to Morris, many students take
SafeRide despite other available options, a problem
that stems from the absence of an established mis-
sion statement for SafeRide usage. “This is where
we need a group decision from you, the student
body, as to what SafeRide is for,” he said.
Aside from these changes, Morris does not see
expansion of the service in the near future. “Putting
more buses out there? Not necessarily the best
thing to do,” Morris said. “We’re looking into it, it’s
an option, but if we don’t change what SafeRide is
for it’s just going to add insult to injury.”
The Facebook petition, written by four first-year
You have books,
but do you have a
book collection?
• Do you love searching for books on
a particular topic?
• Are you interested in the physical
features of books, such as illustrations
or bindings?
• Are you passionate about owning
books by a favorite author or on a
specific topic?
If so, you may be eligible to win the…
T. Kimball Brooker Prize
For Undergraduate
Book Collecting
Prizes awarded:
$1,000 to a fourth-year student
$500 to a second-year student
Applications are due
by 11:59 p.m., Wednesday, January 19, 2011
to brookerprize@lib.uchicago.edu
www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/alumnifriends/brooker
CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | November 30, 2010
female faculty from across the University for a
luncheon to hear their concerns and to encourage
a community across divisions. The council found
that the camaraderie established in this gathering
was as important as hearing concerns from the
women. The WLC, composed of faculty mem-
bers from each of the major academic divisions, is
looking to create other avenues of support and to
help departments find ways to recruit and retain
female faculty.
The council is looking to educate hiring com-
mittees about methods to attract and retain the
best female faculty. But its scope is limited to
campus-wide education initiatives because search
committees are closed within each department.
Hiring, Mason said, is a “more tricky problem
because search committees are very local matters
and our ability to get involved is very limited, so
we focus on things University-wide.”
While efforts to improve the gender balance
among the faculty gradually move forward, the
WLC is focusing on strengthening the commu-
nity of female faculty who are at the University.
graduate students, argued that SafeRide’s require-
ment for students to wait outside for shuttles is
a safety issue. It further requested that SafeRide
answer all calls made during its hours of operation
and for vans to arrive when promised by dispatch-
ers.
Noticing that hundreds of students signed
the petition, SG partnered with the Department
of Transportation to hold a forum in hopes of
allowing students to air their grievances and make
suggestions for improvement. Fourth-year and
SG President Greg Nance, second-year and SG
Vice President of Student Affairs Patrick Ip, and
second-year Undergraduate Liaison to the Board
of Trustees Frank Alarcon attended. Daniel Pascale,
director of communications and security technolo-
Without the ability to directly impact hiring, the
council hopes improvements like the childcare
center and a career office that places faculty part-
ners in University jobs will encourage women to
join the U of C faculty.
For the moment, the WLC will continue to
hold quarterly luncheons for junior and senior fac-
ulty and hold more seminars with outside experts
on recruiting and retaining women. Council
members said they hope these luncheons will
provide an opportunity for women to meet inter-
departmentally.
“It has been our experience that it’s enjoyable
to get to know colleagues from other disciplines,”
WLC member and Professor of neurobiology
Peggy Mason said. “It’s fun for us and we actually
look forward to our meetings, so we want to give
the same experience to other women.”
Luncheons have been separated by junior and
senior faculty, but bringing the two together will
enhance mentoring opportunities. Zerilli said
women mentors are often essential for junior
members of an academic division—especially in the
gy, and Brandon Dodd, assistant director of transit,
also attended with Morris.
Students at the meeting agreed that SafeRide is
often misused, though they still had concerns over
inability to reach a dispatcher, long wait times, and
lack of estimated arrival times.
Morris described a lack of clarity over SafeRide’s
usage as a cause for the majority of student frustra-
tion. He said usual SafeRide delays occur when
students are not ready for pickup, when they ask
drivers to change the van’s route, or do not tell dis-
patchers in advance about multiple destinations.
To make it easier for students to track down
standard evening transportation routes, Morris
said flatscreen TVs displaying the TransLoc map
of various shuttles’ locations will be installed in the
Pro bono pledge part of new Law School focus on public interest law
PRO BONO continued from front page
to satisfy the pledge, is open to all Law School
students. The pledge is the main component
of the program, asking students to commit to
50 hours of supervised volunteer legal work.
In order for the hours to qualify, students
may not receive academic credit or financial
compensation—and it must be supervised by
attorneys or faculty members.
Araujo took the pledge because the pro-
gram makes finding organizations easier. “It’s
a more streamlined way of getting access to
the different areas of law that need pro bono
help,” she said.
In order to help students find qualifying
work, the Office of Career Services (OCS)
will offer help with pro bono opportunities, a
new focus for the office, according to Curry.
“This is a formal way for the Office of Career
Services to recognize that pro bono service is
also critical to the development of a career,”
said Curry.
Over the course of three years, 50 hours
may not seem like a lot, but they are still
important, according to Associate Dean of
Career Services and Policy Initiatives Abbie
Willard.
Araujo said she jumped on the program
right away because it allowed her to continue
her other extracurricular obligations. “We
always want to do more, but students do also
CORRECTIONS
» The November 23 article “Rape Victim Demands A Form Of Counseling The SCRS
Is Unable To Give” incorrectly described the scope of Rape Victim Advocates. It is a
Chicago-based rape crisis center that provides direct services, including counseling,
to sexual violence survivors in the area.
The MAROON is committed to correcting mistakes for the record. If you suspect
the MAROON has made an error, please alert the newspaper by e-mailing
Editor@ChicagoMaroon.com.
3
physical sciences, where women are most under-
represented.
“This does not mean that men cannot mentor
women, of course,” Zerilli said. “But we know from
studies that having a female mentor can make a real
difference in a woman’s ability to envision a career
in science or math for herself.”
Professor of organismal biology and anatomy
Victoria Prince said having a female mentor as
an assistant and associate professor was essential
for her success. Prince is one of just three women
among 23 full-time faculty members in her depart-
ment. With so few women in many departments
“It is generally a problem that women are dispro-
portionally asked to be members of committees,”
Prince said. “I was lucky to receive mentorship here
as a junior faculty member about when it’s okay to
say no and when you should say no,” said Prince.
According to Grenoble, campus culture can
discourage women from seeking out mentors. “It
seems that there’s a stigma of weakness if you need
mentoring,” Grenoble said. “And that’s kind of
funny because everyone needs mentoring.”
Reynolds Club, the Regenstein Library, and the
Ratner gym throughout next quarter.
Alarcon proposed using the UCPD Umbrella
Coverage services as another means of alleviating
the strain put on SafeRide. Umbrella Coverage has
historically been underused, according to fourth-year
and SG Community and Government Liaison Allen
Linton, but may be more appropriate than SafeRide
for students only needing to walk a few blocks.
Alarcon expressed hope that future forums
would involve more of the community. “There
are various factors that affect turnout: students are
very busy, holidays are coming up, it’s cold outside.
We’ll hold future forums and hopefully get some
more turnout just so Rodney and his staff can hear
more ideas and more perspectives.”
work in clinics, and work on journals, and do
other things outside of school. It’s important
to give students an option where they can
fulfill the requirement and not have to give up
their other extracurriculars,” she said.
According to Dean of the Law School
Michael Schill, the Law School’s pro bono pro-
gram is part of a larger public service program.
“We are launching a public service program at
the Law School. This is a piece of a broader
program that will involve a variety of elements
to enhance our training of students to go work
in jobs in government, the non-profit sector, as
well as advocacy organizations,” he said.
Curry said the launch of the program is a
part of the Law School’s new focus on public
interest law and voluntary service. “This insti-
tution values community service and values a
high level of legal education. We believe that
making it a voluntary program is consistent
with the practice,” she said.
In addition to learning the importance of
pro bono work as a résumé booster, Curry
said the program will allow students to try
out different types of law to see what focus
they want to pursue. “You’ll have something
to put on your résumé, something about
which you can speak in interviews. And more
importantly, it might just give you an idea of
what you want to do with your legal career,”
she said.
4 CHICAGO MAROON
VIEWPOINTS
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MAROON
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EDITORIAL
Final resort
Offering alternate exam dates would level the playing field and avoid overburdening students
It’s 10th week, and that means
the Reg will experience a surge of
sleepless residents, the skies will
darken to an ominous black, and
campus will fall silent except for
the beckoning whisper of winter
break. In these last two weeks,
studying for finals becomes the top
priority for students, with reading
period offering the only respite
between classes and exams.
Ev e n i n a l l t h i s d o o m a n d
gloom, a particularly dark possibil-
ity stands out: taking two or more
exams on the same day. Since this
situation puts students at such a
clear disadvantage, it’s unclear
why they are rarely allowed to
reschedule.
In a five-day exam week, with
an average load of four classes,
it’s normal for two or more finals
to fall on the same, dreadful day.
Such a dilemma currently has no
OP-ED
A more
courageous U of C
The University’s stance on
investment policy and social
values is ultimately contradictory
By Colin Bradley
Viewpoints Columnist
I’m sure almost every student at
the U of C has listened to a brief
history lesson from Dean Boyer,
often referred to as the University’s
“resident historian.” I recently read
two publications by him that remind
us of two very important documents
in the University’s history—two docu-
ments that are all too easily forgotten
by the student body at large and that
present a debate which needs to be
brought to the public eye.
We are proud to
prove that the U
of C is not where
fun goes to die,
but it’s time we
show that it is
not where global
citizenship goes
to die.
The first document is a preliminary
draft for a World Constitution written
by, among others, President Hutchins
and Mortimer Adler in 1948. The sec-
ond is the Report of the Committee
on the Role of the University in
Political and Social Action, or more
popularly, the Kalven Report of
1967. These two documents present
two diametrically opposed views on
the University’s responsibility to the
world at large—an issue which is as
| VIEWPOINTS | November 23, 2010
viable solution: Professors almost
never allow postponement of an
exam or paper, so the student is
forced to accept that, in all likeli-
hood, their efforts on one of the
two will be compromised.
All teachers should allow for an
alternative exam date sometime
during finals week. Professors and
the administration should support
any and all fair methods by which
students can alleviate the stress of
exams. If a student will do better
on an exam by not taking it on
the same day his 10-page paper is
due, then he should be offered the
option to take it at a later date. If a
student is overly burdened on one
day of exam week, it makes sense
to request the postponement of
one of the finals.
There is no detriment to such a
policy: In fact, requiring alternate
exam dates might even create a
relevant now as it has ever been in
the history of this institution.
The World Constitution is exactly
what the name entails—a fully formed
constitution for a new world federa-
tion (seriously, I highly recommend
you read it; see the Mortimer Adler
archives online). Hutchins under-
stood that after the role the U of C
played in ushering in the nuclear
age (it was the first home to the
Manhattan Project), it had a respon-
sibility to “unite the world.” As Boyer
puts it, Hutchins and Adler “felt that
their dual obligations as private citi-
zens and public intellectuals mandat-
ed that they speak out on significant
civic issues.” The second document
strikes quite a different note. The
infamous Kalven Report stands today
as the primary document governing
the University’s social and political
policies. The Kalven Report essential-
ly states that in order to protect the
individual rights of faculty to voice
opinions on controversial issues, the
University itself cannot publicly take
a stand in either direction. The report
argues that since the University is a
place for furthering knowledge, “it is
not a lobby” and cannot “take col-
lective action on the issues of the day
without endangering the conditions
for its existence and effectiveness.”
So how are these documents, over
60 and 40 years old, respectively, rel-
evant to students today?
When the Kalven Report was
published, it was not greeted warmly
by students, nor is it greeted warmly
now. The University’s inherent role
in social and political communities is
unavoidable—it shapes the thoughts
KALVEN continued on page 5
fairer system, since those students
that don’t have same-day exams
enjoy an unfair advantage. An
administrative mandate forcing
professors to offer “late” exam
days would level the playing field
and create more balanced finals
schedules for the student body.
Some might worry that such
an initiative would both incon-
venience professors and facilitate
w i d e s p r e a d ch e a t i n g . B u t t h e
University already requires that
professors offer early exams for
graduating fourth-years; the rea-
son for opposing exam reschedul-
ing therefore cannot be rooted
in the inconvenience imposed
on teachers. Cheating, the other
possible problem, is also a non-
issue: It has not prevented the
College from offering early exams
to fourth-years, so why should
we expect that cheating would
COLD SNAP
Thinking about
Thanksgiving
We should rethink the meaning
of Thanksgiving by separating
myth from reality
By Emily Wang
Viewpoints Columnist
In the past few days, I’ve
come to the realization that the
dreaded Freshman 15 doesn’t
come from the dining hall, but at
home, where Mom and Dad and
Grandma and Aunt Sally fret over
how skinny you’ve gotten. In
response, we joke (although for
many, it’s the sad reality), “Well,
I don’t have time to eat—I’m too
busy crying over my problem
sets!” And of course, in true mom
fashion, your mother believes you
and proceeds to feed you until it
causes you physical pain to crawl
away from the dinner table.
Thanksgiving, for every college
student who has the privilege of
going back home for the four-day
holiday, is one continuous feast.
Family and friends attempt to
make up for your nine weeks of
malnourishment in as little time
as possible. I, for one, had three
epic Thanksgivings in a row, not
to mention all the leftover-ridden
meals in between. But I’m not
complaining, by any means; the
“I’m too full!” pain is probably
the best kind of pain there is.
It’s a nice respite from all the
times I forgot to eat in the midst
EDITORIAL & OP-ED
NOVEMBER 30, 2010
suddenly run rampant if similar
accomodations were offered to
younger students?
Difficult workloads are part of
the package when attending a
top-tier university, and finals are
always a trying time. But if there
is a sensible way for students to
maximize their performance on
exams, then there is no reason
why it shouldn’t be allowed.
Offering a second exam date dur-
ing finals week would not resolve
every possible conf lict, but it
would eliminate the vast majority
of them. So the next time a stu-
dent asks for an alternative time
to take a final, cut her some slack.
Rescheduling a final is better than
failing one.
The M AROON Editorial Board
consists of the Editor-in-Chief
and the Viewpoints Editors.
of frantically writing papers and
studying for midterms and then
suddenly realized, at two in the
morning, that I was starving.
S o Th a n k s g i v i n g i s m o s t l y
about eating, eating…and more
eating. But what, exactly, does
Thanksgiving mean to us, as col-
lege students, as almost-adults,
besides the extra pounds? The
frequent case against celebrating
Thanksgiving is that it’s rooted
in a falsified encounter between
the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag
Native Americans that we contin-
ue to perpetuate generation after
generation; the real story, accord-
ing to those who have completely
renounced the holiday, is one
of the mass extermination of
the Native American population
through epidemics of Old World
diseases. The first Thanksgiving
was declared not in some joyous
shared meal between Pilgrims and
their Native American friends,
but after the safe return of the
men from the colony who had
gone to participate in the mas-
sacre of 700 Pequot men, women,
and children. This “celebration,”
then, is a cruel reminder of the
suffering of an entire indigenous
population, of an entire culture,
that never recovered from these
supposed encounters of cultural
sharing.
This is certainly a valid, and
much more historically accurate,
argument. Yet the holiday’s most
fervent supporters contend that
Thanksgiving has been redefined
over time—that its origin no lon-
THANKSGIVING continued on page 5
 CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | November 30, 2010 5

Challenging our culture’s understanding of The University should not

Thanksgiving will make it a better holiday
THANKSGIVING continued from page 4
ger matters because we have other things
in mind; namely, family, friends, and tradi-
tion. Thanksgiving is a time of heightened
awareness of the loved ones in our orbits,
of being thankful for our past, present, and
future collective experiences. This, too,
makes a lot of sense, and for most people,
this justification will do. But then again,
this particular impression of being part of
a collective seems to give Thanksgiving
an extra layer of irony: A holiday that so
transparently evokes a time in our nation’s
history where one group’s arrival nearly
led to the extinction of the other now
symbolizes community, both on a personal
level and a cultural level.
If we’re not consciously celebrating the
dishonest, Disney-fied conception of how
the first Thanksgiving came about, should
we feel guilty? The greater implications of
my feasting never crossed my mind during
my three Thanksgivings, but I recognize
now that I have a responsibility to the
Native American peoples and to myself
to scrape beneath the surface of the tradi-
tions I’m buying into. At this point in our
lives, we should be questioning everything,
constantly trying to find the closest thing
to the truth, or at least the best truth.
From the standpoint of someone who
just participated, victoriously, in Chinese
Thanksgiving, Indian Thanksgiving, and
American Thanksgiving all in succession,
I do think that the holiday break is worth-
while, even necessary. As my multicultural
experience can attest to, Thanksgiving has
become a holiday of cultural convergence,
although it can’t be of much comfort to
Native Americans to see that Thanksgiving
has evolved.
If it really is about connection and not
difference, though, it’s morally repre -
hensible to continue to teach America’s
youth the fictitious Thanksgiving tale
that I believed for the majority of my life.
Until we separate, from the beginning, the
myths from the realities, Thanksgiving will
continue to have its other fundamentally
unethical significance.
Thanksgiving, I must profess, is my
favorite holiday. It gets better every year,
especially as we get older and suddenly
find ourselves adults—the bonds of friend-
ship become tighter, family reunions grow
less frequent and therefore bittersweet.
Yet I know, if we confront, and ultimately
change, the way we instill Thanksgiving
into our national culture, it could be so
much sweeter.
Emily Wang is a first-year in the
College majoring in English.
take a neutral stance regarding
its investments
KALVEN continued from page 4
of its accomplished alumni and conducts influ-
ential research in countless fields. More imme-
diately, however, it has a significant corporate
legitimacy. It has one of the nation’s largest
endowments, and this money is invested all
around the world. Billions of dollars in invest-
ments make an impact. The University cannot
be neutral on this—its investments fund other
firms which do take stands in either direction.
But it is. Why? The Kalven Report.
There is an interesting paragraph which was
excluded from the final draft of the Kalven
Report. Drafted by Gilbert White, a member
of the committee, it states that “in instances
where the public significance is large or where
the University’s influence is clearly strong it
may appropriately…make inquiries.” What
exactly does this mean? It means that when the
University is faced with what will ultimately be

AB URBE CONDITA
termed “paramount social values,” it can and
must act collectively.
But now the question arises: What do we
consider a paramount social value? Surely not
apartheid in South Africa; most certainly not
EARLY CITIES AT HAMOUKAR DURING THE state-funded genocide in Darfur; irreversible
environmental degradation may be a social

CHALCOLITHIC AND EARLY BRONZE AGE value, but it is definitely not paramount. Or so
maintains your University.
One of the University’s primary modes of

Dr. Clemens Reichel social and political influence is the investment

of its endowment. Yet, since the University has
resolved to take no stance on most political
and social issues, it has no structure in place to

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2010 consider the ethical implications of its invest-

ments. The current manifestation of this is a

7 PM - ORIENTAL INSTITUTE
laundry list of questionable investments. But
there is one situation in particular that I’d like
to discuss here.

Free and Open to the Public Consider an issue which the University has
deemed a “paramount social value”: namely,
environmental sustainability. To this end,
the University has created the Sustainability
Council and SAGE, two relatively visible and
Excavations at Hamoukar in Syria commendable groups on campus. But here is
have substantially enhanced our where the Kalven Report proves an impossible
policy to maintain. The University, against all
understanding of the emergence of odds, has taken a stance on the environment—
but it still has not understood that a neutral
cities in the northern part of the investment is impossible. Every step taken
towards sustainability by University-sponsored
Fertile Crescent. By 3500 BC, this groups (SAGE, Sustainability Council) is
undercut, if not completely overshadowed, by
site accommodated an early walled the University’s investments in environmen-
city with complex bureaucracies. tally devastating companies like Arch Coal and
Alleghany Energy, to name only a few. While
By 2200 BC, it had expanded to an we install new recycling bins and toilets with
two options for flushing to conserve water,
urban metropolis with large public we also financially support companies that
blow the tops off mountains and dump them
buildings and elaborate private in local water sources. So while the University
houses. This lecture presents new interprets the Kalven Report to allow for tak-
ing a stance on the environment, it simultane-
insights gained during the 2008 ously interprets the same report to maintain
ignorance over its investments—two mutually
and 2010 excavation seasons at incompatible policies.
As long as the University interprets the
Hamoukar. Kalven Report to justify its hands-off invest-
ment policy, it will never be able to make any
progress on those “paramount social values”

Dr. Clemens Reichel is the Director of which it has deemed important. Dean Boyer
reminds us that a great university such as ours
Excavations at Hamoukar in Syria, an Assistant Professor of “should have the capacity, the courage, and the
commitment to think about and to act upon
Mesopotamian Archaeology at the University of Toronto, an the future.”
Associate Curator of the Ancient Middle East at the Royal Ontario The University of Chicago certainly has the
capacity. Many students, administrators, and
Museum, and a Research Associate at the Oriental Institute. faculty even have the commitment. But the cour-
age is lacking. We are proud to prove that the U
of C is not where fun goes to die, but it’s time
The Oriental Institute we show that it is not where global citizenship
goes to die. It is time we turn from the disaffec-
ǺǺǾǾ
&ĒĤĥ
Ǿȁĥę
4ĥģĖĖĥ
t
oi.uchicago.edu tion of the Kalven Era and return to the globally
minded, courageous optimism of Hutchins and
Adler and their World Constitution.
Have an Android? There’s an app for that.
Search “Chicago Maroon” on appbrain.com to access the MAROON’s new Android app. Colin Bradley is a first-year in the
College.

6 CHICAGO MAROON | Voices | November 30, 2010
1. Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3 is one of, if not the most, highly praised mov-
ies of the year. The numbers alone speak for themselves:
It has a 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 92 on
Metacritic. It’s also the end to a consistently well-reviewed
trilogy (Lord of the Rings, anyone?). Add to this a dash of
nostalgia and Pixar’s nearly infallible luck at the Oscars,
and the Toy Story 3 team had better plan on bringing
a wheelbarrow to carry home all their awards. A win for
Best Animated Feature is obvious, and it very well may
win Best Picture.
2. The King’s Speech
While it won’t be released in the States until later this
month, this film already has so much Oscar buzz it’s
practically deafening. The Academy might as well give
Colin Firth his Oscar now, as his performance is basically
the only thing being said about this movie (that and the
relatively tame movie’s R-rating because of a few curse
words). Many saw Firth’s turn in A Single Man as deserv-
ing of the Best Actor award last year, so all signs point to
this year as being when he finally gets what he deserves.
3. Inception
If ever there was a film worthy of being called Oscar-bait,
Inception is it. The all-star cast, the Academy-favorite
director, the score, and, of course, the smart, imaginative
screenplay all mean that this movie makes itself a strong
contender in multiple categories. While the ensemble
Worst Fashion Trends
1. Plaid
As part of the ‘90s resurgence, all things plaid have
become popular. Even the classic grunge look of a plaid
shirt tied around the waist is now fashionable. Its worst
incarnation is probably the layering of plaid over plaid,
creating an unintentional lumberjack look. Men are par-
ticularly susceptible to this mishap by pairing their plaid
with Timberland boots (it’s okay, though, if they plan on
chopping down a tree later). While plaid can be stylish
when paired with the right accessories, make sure an
axe wouldn’t be the accessory to complete your look.
For women, plaid looks best on a skirt, dress, or jacket.
And always make sure to complete the grunge look
intended with the right accessories and not stray into
Fargo territory with Ugg boots.
2. Furry boots
To keep one’s feet warm during Chicago winters, boots
are a must, especially ones with fur on the inside to
keep your toes extra toasty. Lately, though, there has
been an excess of furry bunny boots trekking through
the streets. These boots, however, go beyond Uggs and
are covered with fuzzy fur on the outside. Furry boots
make feet look like bunnies or like they are sprouting fur.
To avoid looking like Big Foot, stick to boots with fur on
the inside only.
3. Shutter sunglasses
Ever since Kanye West sported a glow-in-the-dark pair
at the 2008 Grammys, shutter sunglasses have slowly
1. “Airplanes, Part 2”
B.o.B featuring Hayley Williams and Eminem
Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are
like shooting stars? Not really. But after a storm of
radio replays, remixes, and Facebook statuses mim-
icking the lyrics, now every time we look up and see
an airplane, this song comes to mind. Nonetheless,
featuring vocalists Hayley Williams of Paramore and
Eminem, “Airplanes” draws from the best of rock, pop,
and hip-hop to create a triad of musical deliciousness.
Williams is at the heart of the song with her lyrical
but tough rocker-girl voice, while B.o.B keeps the beat
with his skillful rapping. Eminem is just the icing on
top. As long as these three keep singing, we’ll keep
pretending that we haven’t already heard this song
five million times.
2. “OMG”
Usher featuring will.i.am
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh my gosh, you make me want to say,
“Stop!” Is Usher really a valley girl in disguise? Even his
velvety voice can only get away with so many “oh my
gosh’s.” With 30 percent of the lyrics comprising “oh”
or “baby,” this song gets old fast. Still, we can’t help
but wonder what manner of beauty has so stupefied
Usher as to replace his smooth charisma with a sixth-
grade girl’s vocabulary. Honey must really got a booty
like pow, pow, pow.
3. “Caifornia Gurls”
Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg
If this song were a food, it would be a saccharine,
gooey confectionary monstrosity of powdered sugar,
Oscar Contenders
By Hayley Lamberson
cast means that Inception likely won’t receive any acting
awards, it’s safe to say it will bag Best Original Screenplay
and probably Best Original Score.
4. The Social Network
No one expected The Social Network (or more com-
monly, Facebook: The Movie) to actually be good. Sure, it
may be directed by David Fincher, but one of its stars is
Justin Timberlake, of all people. But positive review after
positive review came out, and the movie is now generally
regarded as a success. The sheer factor of surprise could
very well be what gets this film a few Oscar nominations.
Since Fincher keeps getting shafted for Best Director
(especially for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), this
may be the year the Academy decides to hand it over.
5. True Grit
True Grit is a western starring Jeff Bridges and directed
by the Coen brothers, who also re-wrote the screenplay
from Charles Portis’s 1968 novel of the same name. That
alone is worth a handful of Oscars, right? There’s little to
no doubt that this movie will be good, but its late release
date and the hype surrounding other films may deter this
one from winning any of the major awards. Still, True Grit
looks like it’ll be a fine example of the raw frontier atmo-
sphere the Coen brothers are so good at creating, which
could allow it to pick up some of the more artistic awards
like Best Cinematography or Best Art Direction.
By Madalyn Frigo
been creeping their way into the fashion scene. The
glasses serve no practical purpose and are clearly just
an accessory. In fact, they can hardly be called sun-
glasses as they can’t block out sun. They barely even
function as glasses—it’s difficult to see outside of the
striped lenses. Basically, do not wear these while driving
or even walking. Making anyone who wears them look
like an alien or a Kanye West wannabe, these shades
should be left for the music videos.
4. Thigh-high stockings
This is the look of extra high knee socks, layered over a
pair of pants. It always causes me to do a double take:
Are those really socks outside a pair of pants? Not only
is this look ugly, it is unflattering. The socks cut off right
at the fleshy part of the thigh, highlighting the top half
of the thigh as the main part of the leg—not a slimming
look. Keep your socks in your pants.
5. Ripped tights
First there were the ripped jeans, then there were the
ripped leggings, and now, we are down to barely any
material at all with ripped tights. Many movie stars have
been pairing their ripped tights with shorts, making it
look as if they were just clawed at by the paparazzi and
escaped with minimal clothing left. The main concern is
what will fashion rip up next, because after tights, what
else is there to rip? To avoid looking homeless or as if
you were just attacked by a bear, keep the rips in your
jeans only.
Overplayed Songs
By Michelle Lee
whipped cream, and maraschino cherries. Add to that
a pair of daisy dukes and bikinis on top and you’ve got
“California Gurls” (yes, that’s “Gurls” with a “u”), an odd
mix of bubble-gum pop and California cool. We don’t
mind that mishmash so much as Katy Perry’s strange
warbling as she belts “oh” up and down various oc-
taves. It’s a mystery whether she’s yodeling or shriek-
ing from sunstroke. Even so, with its catchy tune and
cheery beats, “California Gurls” brightens up even the
gloomiest days. It’s unforgettable.
4. “Love the Way You Lie”
Eminem featuring Rihanna
Never has a song so brilliantly glorified sadomasoch-
ism. Eminem strikes again with this angry anthem on
venomous love-hate relationships. Is he trying to send
a message about domestic abuse? Alcoholism? Pyro-
mania? We don’t know, but hearing Eminem’s distinct
cutting voice makes us melt a little bit inside every
time. Yes, Eminem, you can tie us to the bed and set
this house on fire. We like the way it hurts.
5. “Hey, Soul Sister”
Train
Over a decade later, Train is still holding strong. Their
newest song “Hey, Soul Sister” whisks us back to the
good old days with wistful chords and a whimsical
ukulele. The warm and fuzzy feelings evoked can’t be
escaped. Indeed, Train seems to follow us everywhere,
serenading us at home, at supermarkets, and in the car.
But no matter how often we hear it, Train’s high croon-
ing voice is like cough syrup: sweet, soothing, and self-
medicating for the soul.
V
V
oices
Albums
By Lyndsey McKenna
1. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kanye West
In the wake of the poorly received, Auto-Tune-laden
808s & Heartbreak, West originally claimed that this
album would be a follow-up to College Dropout, Late
Registration, and Graduation. But, born of recent con-
troversies, what he delivered was My Beautiful Dark
courtesy of allmoviephoto.com
Twisted Fantasy, a self-aware but not self-loathing
journey into the mind and ego of West himself. The
rhymes are West’s best and the production is his fin-
est. And if that weren’t enough, My Beautiful Dark
top
Twisted Fantasy features every prominent hip-hop
artist at the moment, plus a few from left field, like
Elton John and Bon Iver.
2. This Is Happening
LCD Soundsystem
I
“And so you wanted a hit/well, this is how we do hits/
f 2010 is any indicator of what’s you wanted a hit/but that’s not what we do,” James
Murphy proclaims in his signature speaking/sing-
ing voice on “You Wanted a Hit.” This defines LCD
coming in the next decade, then Soundsystem’s third album, This Is Happening. The
album is a collection of hits for LCD Soundsystem,
get comfy, because it’s going to who are admittedly quite different from how the
music industry would define them. The album kicks
be a boring ride. For god’s sake, a movie off with “Dance Yrself Clean,” a slow build with a cho-
rus of triumphant “oh’s” that is later reiterated near
the album’s conclusion on “Home.” Murphy’s lyrics
about Facebook starring Justin Timberlake
are full of irony and tongue-in-cheek humor—even
courtesy of rick chung’s flickr
more so than before—and the beats are still the dance
is one of the best-reviewed movies of the year. rhythms that characterize the band. This is Happening
proves that LCD don’t take themselves too seriously,
Sure, Kanye might have created a masterpiece, but but can still turn out top-of-the-line musicianship.
where’s the scandal, where are the shocking outbursts on live television? You better hide your kids and your 3. The Suburbs
Arcade Fire
Few bands can construct ambitious, concept-driven
wife, because it’s getting dangerously dull out here. albums and consistently produce superb results. But
for Arcade Fire, whose previous albums tackled the
If this was an exciting year for anyone, though, it was Katy Perry. What with her cotton candy scented album themes of death and religion with few shortcomings,
it seemed that making a statement on suburban living
and her corrupting the young minds of Sesame Street viewers, she was simply the most important person of
2010. Let’s not let this happen again. Let’s start making our own lives more interesting, because it sure as hell
Viral Videos
seems like no one else will. So get rid of those tired, trite plaid shirts and slip on some daisy dukes (with bikini By Charna Albert
tops to match, of course), and keep on chasing those teenage dreams. 1. The “It Gets Better” Project
Video series like the “It Gets Better” campaign affirm
YouTube’s potential to enact social change. After Billy
Lucas, a 15-year-old high school student from Indiana,
hung himself after being the target of repeated bul-
lying because of his sexual orientation, celebrity sex
columnist Dan Savage launched the project to tell
other gay and lesbian teens that it gets better as you
grow older. YouTube’s accessibility allows homosexual
adults to bypass the restrictive rules of churches and
schools that will not allow them to reach out to gay
teens who are being bullied. And as the project has
gained critical acclaim, politicians and public figures
have also stepped up to offer their support. Hopeful-
ly, the “It Gets Better Project” will make a difference
in the lives of the teens being bullied and serve as a
wake-up call for a society that lets it happen.
2. Chatroulette Piano Improv
At the zenith of the Chatroulette craze, an unidenti-
fied pianist known only as “Merton” posted a video of
himself playing the piano for the random strangers
he connected with during his session. The encounters
are hilarious, with the strangers either disconnecting
courtesy of allmoviephoto.com
almost instantaneously (as is typical of Chatroulette)
or, in the case of a group of teenage girls, typing re-
peated hearts. The best part, of course, is that none
of the people Merton connects with realize he is mak-
ing fun of them to a camera. Merton gained further
notoriety when a rumor began that the mysterious
pianist was actually the pop singer Ben Folds. Both
Folds and Merton discounted this, though Folds later
paid tribute to Merton, singing to Chatroulette on a
giant screen at a live concert. Merton was forced to
take his original video off YouTube after it garnered
millions of views, most likely due to someone in the
video requesting privacy rights, but an edited version
is still available.
3. Bed Intruder
A distinct genre of YouTube video takes serious foot-
age and makes it humorous. On July 28th, a Huntsville,
courtesy of little o2’s flickr courtesy of nw lens’s flickr Alabama news station aired footage of a particularly
7
was naturally the next move. The Suburbs is grand in
its scope: Over the course of its 16 songs, the album
delves into the problem of appearance versus real-
ity that exists in both suburban and urban living. It
is easy to say the album portrays a naïve longing for
urban life and casts doubt on the validity of suburban
lifestyles, but this isn’t the case. A sense of nostalgia
permeates the album. Arcade Fire manages to con-
struct a thesis on suburban living that is as sonically
wonderful as it is thought-provoking.
4. High Violet
The National
High Violet, not unlike The National’s previous album
Boxer, isn’t one whose brilliance is immediately evi-
dent. High Violet requires a few listens before the lis-
tener can appreciate the album’s dense soundscape.
Every song is vast and layered, and it takes time to
adequately digest each track. Singer Matt Berninger’s
vocals are lush and rich, and for a first-time listener,
often off-putting. The album opener, “Terrible Love,”
builds and builds until a chaotic conclusion. On High
Violet, it seems that every word and every note is
intentional, and upon each subsequent listen, this is
more and more evident.
5. Halcyon Digest
Deerhunter
Halcyon Digest is an autumnal album. It sounds
crisp and evokes an eerie sensation of nostalgia, and
the songs are as textured and variable as chang-
ing leaves. On the album closer “He Would Have
Laughed,” a song dedicated to the deceased Jay
Reatard, the initially playful melody provides a sharp
contrast to the somber conclusion of the work. The
entirety of the album dwells on the theme of soli-
tude and isolation but is never trite. Its sounds are
experimental and sprawling, but Halcyon Digest is
striking for its approachability. It is forthright yet
full of contrast, sonically gorgeous yet its lyrics are
anything but.
colorful interview with Antoine Dodson, the brother
of an attempted rape victim. The interview itself be-
came an Internet meme, and gained further fame
as it began to inspire parodies. The most famous of
these parodies was created by the Gregory Broth-
ers, the producers of the YouTube channel Auto-Tune
the News, who Auto-Tuned Dodson’s voice to make it
sound like he is singing an R&B song. While many find
the parodies bigoted and offensive for the way they
seem to be laughing at Dodson, he has taken his over-
night fame in stride, now maintaining a blog, Twitter
account, Facebook page, and YouTube Channel.
4. Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
Perhaps the most famous advertisement of the year,
this commercial aims to transform Old Spice’s image
from your 60-year-old professor’s cologne to your
boyfriend’s. The ad features a shirtless Isaiah Mus-
tafa, who is now a celebrity in his own right, produc-
ing a number of other videos for Old Spice, including
one in which he answers women’s questions in noth-
ing but a towel. The ads play up vague, stereotypi-
cal female desires, such as “two tickets to that thing
you love,” which turn suddenly into a stream of dia-
monds. The Old Spice ad sometimes veers towards
chauvinistic territory, promising “anything is possible
when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady,”
but it’s a nice change to see a popular ad feature a
scantily clad man.
5. Yosemite Bear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow
With over 20,000,000 views, this video of two rain-
bows over Bear Mountain with audio of a man almost
literally having his mind blown demonstrates the
sometimes arbitrary nature of how Internet memes
are created. The video became popular after Jimmy
Kimmel posted it in a tweet on July 3rd, and has now
received coverage from ABC News, CBS News, and
the Huffington Post. Paul Vasquez, who posted the
video and is now more often referred to as “Double
Rainbow Guy,” has said his over-the-top response to
the rainbows was not due to drugs, but that he was
“on pure rainbow power.”
 Grey City Journal
A "The
CHICAGO City Grey
MAROON that ne'er
Publication shall die"

VOLUME 8 TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2010 PRICE - FREE

LIPSTICK KILLER
U OF C STUDENT
MURDERED THREE
AT 82, CONVICT SPEAKS
TO GREY CITY
By CHRISTINA PILLSBURY
In 1946, before William Heirens had turned
18, he’d already skipped his senior year of high
school, gained admission to the University of
Chicago, been elected vice president of the
University’s Calvert Club, burglarized dozens of
apartments, and gained national notoriety for
committing one of the most gruesome killing
sprees in Chicago history.
More than six decades later, Heirens and his
defenders still claim he was railroaded by over-
zealous police and prosecutors, and by newspapers
and reporters hungry for a story. Time has worn
away Heirens’s memory of his arrest and trial, but
he remains insistent that he is not a murderer. Last
month, GREY CITY went to Dixon Correctional
Center to speak with Heirens about a lifetime
spent in the public eye and in a prison cell.

Courtesy of the Chicago Tribune

STORY ON PAGE 8 WILLIAM HEIRENS, 1946

THE STUDY The Kid From Woodlawn DADDIO, AN ESSAY

OF STUDYING
By BEN SIGRIST
Professor Andrew Abbott doesn’t
mind mixing things up. His time in
academia has taken him from Andover
to Harvard, to Chicago, to Rutgers,
and then back to Chicago. He’s done
advanced mathematics, researched
the operations of libraries, and written
about the evolution of professions.
So when GREY CITY met Abbott
for an interview, it was little surprise
that the conversation jumped from
Abbott’s high school years to the
golden age of the U of C, from his
time teaching the Core to his thoughts
on faculty governance, and from ideas
about reshaping the University’s phi-
losophy to why first-years always write
five-paragraph essays.
STORY ON PAGE 2
By MICHAEL LIPKIN
Tom Crane grew up a few blocks
south of the Midway in the 1930s,
and the University seemed to exist
in another world. “It was like a
medieval castle,” he said.
But when Crane was stricken
with a serious illness when he was
three, the “culturally removed”
Esprit de Corporatization
By ASHER KLEIN
The University today spends and
receives more money than ever before,
often thanks to wealthy donors.
Some faculty think administrators
are working too hard to bring in those
donations, risking the University's
commmitment to unfettered faculty
By MEG BROOKS
institution saved his life. Three My dad’s band is the Gravediggers
years later, he was brought to the because his bar is The Graveyard, EDITORS DESIGN
Medical Center again when he suf- but the bar’s name is happenstance. Jordan Holliday Jack DiMassimo
Michael Lipkin Douglas Everson
fered a serious injury. Still, Crane It was originally a motorcycle repair Ivy Perez
ASSOCIATE Jessica Sheft-Ason
never expected the institution shop of the same name and my father EDITOR Vincent Yu
would come to play such a promi- wanted to keep the old sign. Asher Klein
COPY EDITORS
nent role in his adult life. I like to think the name suits them. MANAGING Don Ho
STORY ON PAGE 4 These are the kind of musicians who EDITOR Victoria Kraft
Jake Grubman Holly Lawson
can hear “Stormy Monday in A-flat” Gabe Valley
PHOTO Bella Wu
and then play it without hesitation, Matt Bogen Lily Ye
who can tell you stories about the
Greats as though they’ve met them or GREY CITY
1212 East 59th Street
because they actually have.
Chicago, IL 60637
And yet they joke about missed Phone: (773) 834-1611
research. However, President Robert notes between numbers and tease www.chicagomaroon.com/grey-city
Zimmer said his administration always each other about their age. On slow
foregrounds faculty interests when nights, Bob, the pianist, refers to the The GREY CITY JOURNAL ran as a weekly supple-
ment to the CHICAGO MAROON from 1968 to 1993.
making decisions. weak, scattered applause as a “round In its new incarnation, GREY CITY seeks to delve
At the heart of this debate is the of indifference.” They laugh, and into larger issues affecting the University of Chi-
cago campus and its community. The magazine is
question of who runs the U of C. keep playing. produced by CHICAGO MAROON staff members and
STORY ON PAGE 6 STORY ON PAGE 11 runs every academic quarter
2 CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY

the
a Q & A with
study of Andrew Abbott

studying
I
n Andrew Abbott’s Sosc classes, the student is the subject. A sociology professor, Abbott quizzes his students on their personal lives, how they read for class,
and how they write papers. He also experiments with new teaching styles, like the day when he tried to capture the feel of an online message board by giving
each student a blue book to record his or her latest ideas about the class reading. After drafting initial “posts,” students traded blue books every five minutes
and responded in writing to each other’s thoughts, resulting in student-generated discussion threads.

These experiments are more than a whim for Abbott (Ph.D. ’82). He’s something of a jack-of-all-trades, and his varied research interests have led him to pioneer
computational methods, theorize on the development of professions, and examine the organization of knowledge. So when he wanted to know more about the
way students think, he turned to the sociological methods that have served him as a researcher for more than 30 years.

But Abbott is more than just a researcher. He’s also part of the most powerful faculty body on campus, the Committee of the Council of the Senate. The
Committee’s seven elected members meet twice a month with administrators, acting as the voice of the faculty on matters of University governance.

G REY C ITY : You’re deeply involved in the
faculty Senate, and you've said that one of
the great things about the University is that
it’s faculty-run. Over the past two years,
some have raised concerned over the cre-
ation of the Milton Friedman Institute and
other issues have led some to question the
faculty’s role in directing areas of research.
Do you think the University will continue
to be faculty-run?
Andrew Abbott: Yeah, the University will
continue to be faculty-run. It is faculty-run.
The provost is an active faculty member
who goes to his lab every Friday afternoon.
The president is the former chair of the
math department. These are active schol-
ars. Obviously, [President Robert Zimmer]
is not doing math anymore, but these are
people who are faculty. But much more
importantly, the deans, the masters, the
people who rotate steadily through these
positions…they’re chairing provost com-
mittees. They’re doing this kind of stuff.
One of the reasons the University will
continue to do this is that it’s cheap.
Unlike Harvard, we don’t have a lot of
minor deans and administrators who do
this and that and the other thing. The
faculty is doing it. The faculty is actually
running their own centers. There are, for
example, about 100, 150 centers and insti-
tutes here. Every single one of those has to
be run by a faculty member.
It’s also true that, let’s face it, academics
are pretty profoundly committed to what
they do. I’m sure that for any given fac-
ulty member there are at least 100 people
somewhere else on the faculty who think
that faculty member’s work is either use-
less, stupid, evil, unnecessary, or whatever.
And this is true of anybody. Anybody you
can think of will have attitudes like that.
It’s also true that probably every faculty
member here secretly thinks that there
are other whole units of the University
that, really, we don’t need…. But it’s also
a community where people are concerned
and are having debates and fighting about
this stuff, and that’s a whole lot better than
having the place be asleep.
“It was the mos t exciting place in the world.
It was also going broke because there’s no t a
business plan tha t could sus tain tha t over the
g haul.”
long
GC: If you were to do a sociological
study of any aspect of the University, what
would you like to do?
AA: The central problem for the University
of Chicago is really very simple. Between
1930 and 1990, the University of Chicago
pursued what the non-profit world would
call a “spend-down” strategy. They allowed
the College to get very small by indulging
in all kinds of wild experiments. Basically,
the University spent a substantial chunk
of its endowment being an extremely
unusual place. An unusual college, a very
small college, a university that was heavily
graduate-focused, that had more gradu-
ate students than it had undergraduates.
There’s never been a university like that
anywhere else. Wildly exciting. Wildly
alive. Filled with faculty, most of whom
were not teaching any undergraduates. It
was completely —it was the most exciting
place in the world. It was also going broke
because there’s not a business plan that
could sustain that over the long haul.
The decision was made to stop the
spend-down strategy. We were probably
the most unusual university in the world
for 40 or 50 years. We did that by spend-
down. We would like to continue being
one of the most unusual universities in
the world, but not continue spending
down. That means the central question
for the University going forward, the big
challenge, is to figure out how to do that.
I think that means we have to do it basi-
cally off of pure intellectualism. We have
to envision a kind of university, a way
of approaching knowledge, and a way of
thinking about things that makes us unique
and that people are going to come and be
excited about.
GC: In your Sosc classes, you’ve experi-
mented with your teaching methods, with
the goal of using a different teaching meth-
od in every class. What have you learned
from this experimentation?
AA: Mainly what I’ve learned from experi-
menting is that I didn’t know much before,
and that students are far more unique than
one thinks. Some of the general beliefs
we have about undergraduates are cor-
rect, but some of them are not. I taught
at Rutgers for 13 years before coming to
the University of Chicago. That’s a very
different kind of teaching. There you tend
to give lectures to large rooms, and I got
very, very good at that. I’m kind of an exhi-
bitionist and an egomaniac, and it works
very well to do that. It’s very physical
kinds of stuff. I’ve taught intro to sociology
to 600 people without a microphone. It’s
just a grand public performance. But it’s
also true that if, as I occasionally did, you
read the exams and see what people are
actually learning, [laughs] it’s pretty fright-
ening. It’s pretty easy for you to persuade
yourself that your students are learning a
lot when maybe they aren’t.
So what happened to me in teaching
the Core—you talked about these experi-
ments—was that in the mid-’90s I created
the course Democracy and Social Science,
and that went very well for some years. I
chaired the course for five years, I think.
But eventually it began to get really stale, I
didn’t feel the classes were very good, and
the whole thing was just bad. I decided
to reform things. So I spent a lot of time
in my classes, in the first place, trying to
figure out who the students are.
I do a lot of ethnographic writing where
students write stuff for me without any
name on it, and say who taught them
how to write and how they learned to
write. That’s how I discovered last year
that a fair number of students entering the
University of Chicago think that all essays
must have five paragraphs. The reason
they write long, amorphous paragraphs is
that, as people ask them to write longer
and longer papers, they still keep to five
paragraphs. So the paragraphs get longer
and longer, and it’s really strange. That
turned out to be extremely useful. It turned
out to be great news to everybody when
I talked about it in the Core staff meet-
ing. Nobody had actually ever thought of,
“Well, let’s just ask them how they’ve been
taught to write so far.”

GC: You studied history and literature
as an undergraduate at Harvard. What
brought you to study sociology as a gradu-
ate student at the University of Chicago?
AA: I went to Andover in the days when
it was transitioning between being an old,
upper-class bastion and the kind of school
that it is today. This was in the mid-’60s,
and it was just making the transition. There
were lots and lots of very, very smart kids
there who were basically upper-middle-
class kids trying to get a pipeline into
the Ivies. And so the curriculum was very
conservative, but took advantage of these
new students to push you as far and as
fast as you could go. I did real analysis in
high school. I did number theory in high
school. And on the English literature side,
my senior-year English teacher also taught
courses at Harvard.
I had a bunch of APs, enough to skip
a year at Harvard. So I went to Harvard,
and because I was skipping a year I had to
major immediately. I wanted to major in
social studies, which was an elite major that
Harvard had in those days. I basically had
a minor in every single social science, and I
was really interested in that stuff. So when
it came time to go to graduate school…I
was looking for a social science in which I
could do a lot of different things. Sociology
was the obvious choice, so I kept doing it.
I applied in sociology. I applied to various
places, including Harvard, which turned me
down, something I reminded them of when
they offered me a job some years later.
But at the University of Chicago I made
a different application. I applied to the
University graduate school when I was at
Fort Sill, Oklahoma. So I got the U of C
material and I decided [the Committee
on] Social Thought was where I should
go. That just sounded absolutely great to
me: really abstract, very philosophical. Just
suited my ambitions, interests, egomania,
whatever you want to call it. But I had gone
to Harvard and at Harvard, committees are
committees and can’t grant degrees. So I
interpreted the Chicago announcements
as saying that you were in Social Thought
to have your head in the clouds and then
you were also in a real department, like
sociology, with your feet on the ground. So
I filled all the forms and stuff for admission
to the department of sociology at Chicago,
even though I thought I was actually apply-
ing to the department of social thought. So
I applied to the department of sociology at
the University of Chicago by mistake, got
into it, and eventually became the chair.
That’s a kind of a funny story.
The broader story is I went into sociol-
ogy because I really couldn’t make up my
"If...you read the exams and see wha t people are
y learning,
ac tually g, it's pret
p y frigh
ty f g tening."
g pretty good credential because your grade
mind what kind of work I wanted to do
as an academic. I wanted to be able to
do work that took advantage of all the
different stuff I learned. And, certainly,
my basic project at Harvard was to learn
lots of different things, to learn some
psychology and some sociology and some
political science, and I just took courses
in everything when I was there. I didn’t
learn much in terms of skills, so sociology
gave me the opportunity to do whatever I
wanted. Some of my work has been very
mathematical. Some of it’s been talk. Some
of it’s been theory. Some of it’s been his-
tory. Some of it’s been ethnography. I’ve
just done whatever I’ve damn well pleased
for the last 40 years.
GC: In an Aims of Education speech
you argued that students shouldn’t view
their education as just another tool to get
ahead, but should take advantage of oppor-
tunities for their own sake. How does the
University help students do that?
AA: Most of what happens to you in col-
lege is a function of what you do. It’s a func-
tion of the student, not of the University.
This is a place that certainly affords the
possibility to get an extraordinary educa-
tion, to just study all different kinds of
things, to open your mind up in new ways
at the same time, maybe, as you’re special-
izing in something…. The central issue is
whether students take advantage of that.
What it looks like from the faculty’s side,
and I think especially from the advisor’s
side, is there’s this huge, wonderful table
spread out and most people just eat a Big
Mac with fries, or whatever. They just eat
food that they like. I think there are many
of us, the older folks, the advisors and fac-
ulty, who feel that students are very unnec-
essarily tracked. We think that students
have this relatively narrow vision of what
they can take.
On the other hand, when you’re that
age, things seem really consequential! Just
like when you’re a first-year, your grade on
your first paper seems like the whole world
CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY 3
MATT BOGEN/GREY CITY
because, as of that moment, it is the whole
world. It’s your entire grade point average.
And so, of course, you take it very seriously,
whereas by the time you’re a fourth-year
student you realize that one more paper is
not going to move your grade point average
very much at all.
On the other hand, I look at my own col-
lege career and realize that I just took all
the courses I damn well pleased and it kind
of worked out in the end. I could have gone
into law or any other field without much
difficulty. And that would be true actually
for the majority of people here.
So what’s to say? It’s hard to know what
the College should do to try to get under-
graduate students to educate themselves, to
set that as their challenge for themselves,
rather than acquiring credentials. I mean
you really have already bought the cre-
dential when you get it in. It’s that simple.
You’ve got it. You do that and you pay the
money. You’re going to get the credential.
And, furthermore, you’re going to get a
point is going to be pretty good. It’s just
going to work out that way…. It’s very easy
for [professors] to say because we’re look-
ing back at this and our lives turned out fine
even because of all this accidental stuff…
That’s why I do think you have to sur-
prise students into learning. Just do the
unexpected, because that’s one of the things
all of us do to make daily life manageable,
you try to make it expectable—set it up so
you know what’s coming, what’s going on,
you’re going to do this. So this might be
a much better interview, for example, if
I suddenly took my pants off and started
dancing on the table, right? This would be
an unforgettable interview. But, you know,
we’re just having an interview.
4 CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY
THE KID FROM
WOODLAWN
T
om Crane was three when
he caught lobar pneumonia:
practically a death sentence in
1936, the year he fell ill. Tom remem-
bers his sister dragging him through
the December slush in their Woodlawn
backyard. Their mother yelled at her for
getting Tom soaked.
Soon, Tom got chills, spiked a fever
of 106, and was put up in his parent’s
four-poster bed. He fell into a coma for
a week, and Dr. Frank Wall, from the
University of Chicago Hospitals, tried to
open his sinuses to let him breathe. It was
the first of two times before Tom reached
age seven that the University Hospitals
saved his life.
Dr. Wall pulled out Tom’s eyelashes
and stuck a hypodermic needle through
Tom’s eye socket, beneath his eye—the
doctors had to hold Tom down as he
struggled and kicked through his night-
mares. Tom’s mother was usually ushered
out of the rooms during the procedures,
but she provided her own remedy.
Vapo-Cresolene lamps, a kind of quack
cure from the Great Depression, were a
popular all-purpose fix. A kerosene lamp
would heat a platter of liquid; the instruc-
tions directed users to burn cresolene,
a coal tar derivative, to kill spasmodic
croup, scarlet fever, or diphtheria. It could
even be used for animals, the box said, for
“the distemper and pneumonia in horses
and does; gapes and roup in fowls.”
Mrs. Crane didn’t trust cresolene and
instead burned liquid eucalyptus in the
lamps. That’s one of the few things Tom
clearly remembers from his recovery. “In
the height of my pneumonia, I’d come
out of the coma, or a fitful sleep, and I’d
ask her, ‘Light the lamp. Light the lamp,’”
Tom said.
Tom awoke that first night in the
hospital to flashlights and ghostly
figures moving about the room—
Tom's family couldn't afford
surgery, so the doctor stole hours
after his shift to work pro bono.
When the fever finally broke, Tom was
nursed on pineapple juice. On Christmas
morning, he was so excited at the pros-
pect of seeing the tree that he ventured
out of bed on his own. His legs weak,
Tom stumbled and crawled down the hall,
leaning against the wall for support. His
sister and cousin downstairs laughed at
the toddler desperately grasping towards
the Christmas tree, falling over and over,
but when his mother asked, they carried
Tom to the tree. “It was a delight, just to
see things,” he said.
This is the story Tom told me over
a year ago when he called the campus
newspaper, the Chicago Maroon. Maybe
his memory was sparked by something we
had written about his old neighborhood,
or about some new research grant at the
Medical Center, his former employer. In
surprising detail, he told me about grow-
ing up on 61st and Drexel in the 1930s,
and his pneumonia. He went on about
other visits to the hospital, his time in
the Army, and his eventual job at the
University’s nuclear cyclotron during its
heyday.
Tom came from a blue -collar back-
ground and lived in a two-story greystone
just south of the Midway—still there at
959 East 61st Street. Growing up around
the University, he saw frat houses fly
banners with hammers and sickles on
May Day and read yellow stencils on
mailboxes: “Ban the A-Bomb, Support
the Communist Party.” And now, decades
s i n c e h e ’d l e f t , To m w a n t e d t o s e e
Woodlawn again.
Th r e e y e a r s a f t e r h i s p n e u m o n i a ,
Tom was back in the hospital. He had
gone with his father on a fishing trip to
Kankakee, IL, to get away from the city
and his father’s backbreaking work as a
roofer. When his father wasn’t looking,
Tom climbed a tree and fell, breaking his
arm in a compound fracture above the
elbow. The local county hospital set the
arm in a metal cast so tight it cut off Tom’s
circulation. The trip back to Chicago was
torturous, each bump on the road sending
Tom into another fit of pain.
by Michael Lipkin
Tom’s family couldn’t get him an
appointment at the Medical Center until
the next morning, so his father cradled
him in a rocking chair at home, singing
lullabies to soothe Tom’s moans.
"People from Woodlawn
used to look at the
University as being a little
bit out of the mainstream...
It was above you."
Once admitted, Tom passed through
the Billings Hospital’s marble rotunda
on his way to see Dr. Howard Hatcher,
the University’s first orthopedic resi-
dent. Hatcher took one look at the metal
cast, loosened the wing nuts holding it
together, and flung it into a trashcan.
“That cast is an instrument of torture
and that county hospital will never see
it again,” Hatcher said. He then pricked
each of Tom’s fingers looking for any sign
of feeling. With each finger that failed
to twitch, the odds of saving Tom’s arm
from amputation shrank. Finally, Tom’s
pinky jerked.
Tom was sent to the children’s ward,
still screaming in pain. From his bed in
the middle of the room, Tom could see
that the other children in the room were
in worse shape than he was. One girl,
maybe four or five years old, had broken
her pelvis and had a cast from her waist
to her ankles; she cried constantly as the
nurse turned her every which way to try
and make her comfortable. A boy about
Tom’s age had the bed next to the win-
dow, which let in the soft spring breeze
carrying the smell of newly cut grass from
the Midway. The boy was despondent
and would only stare out the window
singing: “Bring back, bring back, bring
back my Bonnie to me.”
Tom was awoken that first night by
flashlights and ghostly figures moving
about the room. The figures spoke in
low whispers and gently lifted him onto
a litter with wheels. He was whisked to
a room with equipment that glowed with
a bluish-white light; he was brought back
to this room night after night. This, Tom
would realize years later when he worked
at the Medical Center, was the operating
room Dr. Hatcher used to work on his
arm. Tom’s family couldn’t afford surgery,
so Hatcher stole hours after his shift to
work pro bono.
Tom had a stroke several years ago, but
his childhood memories are still remark-
ably sharp. His stories are full of vivid but
seemingly trivial details. He can rattle off
the first and last names of people he met
50 years ago or important addresses: Ira
Null, U of C Human Resources; DeForest
Training School, 4242 North Ashland
Av e n u e ; To m S k e l l i n g , h i g h - s c h o o l
friend; 808 East 63rd Street, his father’s
childhood home.
Perhaps that’s because Tom surrounds
himself with his past. He and his wife
still sleep on the same four-poster bed he
slept in during his pneumonia. He owns
two Vapo- Cresolene lamps and euca-
lyptus extract—a dollar each on eBay.
He knows, and has written drafts of, the
life story of Dr. Wall, details culled from
working with his protégés at the Medical
Center and research done on his own
time. Tom wrote letters to Wall’s son,
a doctor himself, and tracked both the
careers of father and son.
Whenever Tom tells his own story,
he starts with the 1893 Columbian
Exposition. He likes to start at the
beginning, he said, and the World’s Fair
and the University of Chicago are tied
together in his mind. “The University
was like a giant medieval castle, in that
the populace was drawn in around it,”
he said. But the seemingly stuffy sub-
jects and the lack of a football team kept
Tom and his family from respecting the
University. “People from Woodlawn used
to look at the University as being a little
out of the mainstream,” he said. “Being
in a working-class family, you couldn’t
understand the intellectual concepts. It
was above you.”
Woodlawn was tough in the 1940s,
and Tom and his friends were no excep-
tion. University graduate students often
visited the neighborhood to study
people like Tom. “You know, gangs,
urban people,” he said. Two students—a
slender, Swedish couple on thin-wheeled
bicycles—often hung out with Tom and
his friends. “One day, he didn’t show up,

but she did. She was lucky to get out of
there,” Tom said. “‘You’re a Communist.
You believe in sharing things,’ my friends
said. ‘How would you like to share some
of that with us?’” Tom grimaces as he
remembers his friends closing in on the
woman before she ran off. “When I say
the guys I hung around with had a differ-
ent perspective—what we saw around the
University was a little removed.”
Tom’s perception changed when he
was delivering pizzas as a teenager in
Hyde Park. Without a football team on
campus, Tom was taken aback to see a
hulking grad student answer the door
on one delivery. When he found out the
student played football in college, Tom
asked how a football player managed
to get into such a rigorous graduate
program. “He gave me such a lecture on
being scholarly,” Tom said. He began
dreaming of getting out of Woodlawn
and going to college. “I don’t know if he
knows to this day what an impact he had
on my life.”
Around the same time, Tom’s father,
a pinochle and three -cushion billiard
champ, opened a gas station near their
house. His father’s connections to orga-
nized crime ensured that runners of the
“policy rackets” visited the station to pay
their respects and keep it afloat.
O n e a l l e g e d h i t m a n , “a t y p i c a l
Humphrey Bogart type,” would often tell
Tom to appreciate what a great father
he had. “He had left all that. My father
counseled me against gambling. ‘Tom,
you can only lose. Stay away from it.’”
Tom returns to his father often, com-
paring him to his supervisers at the
University, or Dr. Hatcher, whom Tom
practically deifies. “They were exactly
like my father. Their word was law.”
The advice from his father and the
football-player-turned-student pushed
Tom into technical training. Drafted into
the Army towards the end of the Korean
War, Tom chose to build and repair electri-
cal devices: infrared sniper scopes, mine
detectors, and searchlights. When he came
back to Woodlawn, his technical expertise
made him think work at the University
was the natural next step.
His first job was a bit of shock: assist-
ing professors at the Fermi Institute’s
underground cyclotron. The cyclotron,
one of the most complex pieces of equip-
ment on campus, was used to study
radioactive particles. “And here I was,
with only seven college credits,” Tom
said. “I went to night school under the
G.I. Bill. Only seven college credits so
far, and I was working around nuclear
physicists.”
Tom took Geiger readings throughout
the complex and assisted researchers in
dozens of experiments. The self-styled
“kid from Woodlawn” was soon a part of
the University community. Grad students
shared their latest findings with him,
and during their downtime, tutored Tom
in the college math classes he was tak-
ing. “They were such a giving bunch of
people,” he said.
The lab’s work soon turned to radio-
active material’s medical applications,
and Tom was transferred to the Medical
Center. As cancer patients elected to
receive radioactive implants, Tom pre-
pared the materials and watched in the
operating room. “For any isotopes that
were put into patients, we had to be
there,” he said.
But the methods used at the Medical
Center weren’t initially successful, and
Tom had to attend dozens of postmor-
tems. After being saved twice by the hos-
pital himself, he now saw patients who
weren’t as lucky. “I saw a lot of death and
dying,” he said. “It made me appreciate
things more.”
Tom suggested we visit his old house
together, but his wife, Madeline, was initially
against the plan. Even though his memory of
the distant past is clear, Tom’s stroke makes
him easily confused about the present. He can
forget what train he’s supposed to catch or
where he’s going. Tom was insistent though.
His wife relented, as long as she could come
along—so my girlfriend and I picked both of
them up from the train station.
Tom's father's connections
to organized crime ensured
that runners of the "policy
rackets" visited the gas
station to pay their respects
and keep it afloat.
This was Tom and Madeline’s first
train ride together, and they talk about
the novelty as they get into my minivan.
They’re clearly a devoted couple—they
remember the Woodlawn bowling alley
where they first met and argue about
insignificant details. “They had the most
delicious pizzas there,” Tom said. “I never
had them,” Madeline replied. “They did.”
“I had the burgers.”
We drive through Tom’s old haunts, past
CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY 5
MICHAEL LIPKIN/
GREY CITY
where his father’s gas station once stood,
and pulled up on the house he lived in
when he was three. While my girlfriend
and Madeline talk about the colleges
her grandkids attend, Tom stands in the
yard and points to the room where his
father used to sit on the fl oor and read
the Sunday funnies.Tom walks around to
the back, and points to a window. When
his father stormed out of an argument, his
mother threw hot tea out the window, try-
ing to scald him.
He points to another window—this is
the one he looked out of while he was sick
with pneumonia, and his voice weakens.
His eyes water, and I begin to get uncom-
fortable. Tom pulls me aside and gives me
a speech that didn’t help. “Sometimes, you
feel like you’re forgotten in life. You’ve
not only honored me, you’ve honored
my family,” he said. “Basically, I’m a com-
moner. And you’ve taken this occasion to
really take an interest in myself. What I’m
saying is, you’ve taken this story of a com-
moner, and you have done a great honor
to me.”
The four of us pile back into the van
and drive over to the Medical Center
to find Tom’s old office, which, in a
strange coincidence, was the room he
stayed in after breaking his arm in 1939.
Madeline is tired from the day’s walking,
so only Tom and I get out of the car.
Like little boys, we hold our hands up to
the windows and peer into the main hall,
looking at the rotunda Tom was carried
through almost 75 years ago. The memo-
ries don’t come flooding back, Tom says,
because he’s blocked out most of the bad
ones, and he’s already told me most of
the good ones. We take a few steps back
and look at the building’s façade until we
see the window of his old office. Tom is
uncommonly silent.
6 CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY
F
or a university to be considered
great these days, it must have both
great teachers and a great deal of
money. Its administrators must
weigh the research needs of its faculty with the
financial needs of the corporation. But a group of
University of Chicago faculty claim that too much
of University administrators’ time and resources
are spent attending to the bottom line—that there
is a new, structural hunger for money that seems
to leave faculty’s interests by the wayside.
At the heart of the matter is the fear that the
administration no longer shares the faculty’s val-
ues, especially after a vocal protest two years ago
against the controversial Milton Friedman Institute
produced few results. It is born of a feeling that the
University Senate, which represents faculty, can’t
or won’t exercise the power it is given. “I think this
is a University that’s more responsible to its faculty
than most, but the idea that we are a faculty-run
university with some kind of democratic structure
and where major policy issues percolate upward
from the Faculty Senate” is a fiction, English pro-
fessor W.J.T. Mitchell said.
President Robert Zimmer and Provost Thomas
Rosenbaum defended the way the University is
run at length in a June letter to faculty. In an inter-
view yesterday, Zimmer expressed confidence in
the way his administration makes decisions and
faith that they are made for the right reasons. “We
are in a constant effort, and we need to be in a
constant effort, to make sure that this is the place
that faculty can do their best work. That’s a huge
piece of the University’s responsibility,” Zimmer
said.
But faculty aren’t so sure the University is liv-
ing up to that promise. Many concerns over the
corporatization of the University were outlined
in a petition circulated among faculty in May. It
argued the University’s intellectual life has been
corrupted by certain administrative actions. “The
University becomes an instrument through which
other kinds of actors—some well-intentioned, and
some decidedly not—seek to advance their own
pet projects and interests,” the petition said.
A recent flash point in the Near Eastern
Languages and Civilizations (NELC) department
exemplifies this alleged change in mission—where
fundraising for a faculty project takes precedence
Esprit
de
and faculty interest becomes an afterthought.
According to professors Janet Johnson and
Cornell Fleischer, who both signed the petition,
Martha Merritt, a study abroad administrator, told
NELC faculty this summer that a wealthy donor
had provided funds for a study abroad program in
Cairo. The program seemed to have been directed
by the donor’s wishes, though Merritt and NELC
chairman Theo van den Hout are adamant this
was not the case. The faculty took umbrage at the
fact that it hadn’t been consulted on the program’s
direction until what seemed like the eleventh hour.
“The University of Chicago calls itself a university
that is run by its faculty. If that’s true, then faculty
should be involved in major discussions of things
like this,” said Johnson, who also said she didn’t
think administrators acted in bad faith.
Though the program was soon changed on
the advice of faculty, the move came just a few
months after the petition that alleged that money
has undue influence on University decisions. “The
administration is quite frank in saying that [the
Cairo program] was not going to happen without
a donor,” Fleischer said, “and that doesn’t neces-
sarily sound very good to those of us who are
concerned about the galloping corporatization of
University life and governance.”
Signed by 174 faculty members, or about eight
percent of the faculty, the June petition was
released after months of bad feeling over the
establishment of the Milton Friedman Institute for
Research in Economics (MFIRE). The petition,
released by a faculty group called the Committee
for Open Research on Education and Society
(CORES), called MFIRE part of the trend
toward corporatization: “We would hate to think
that the University’s evident fixation on financial
assets and its desire to exploit the Friedman brand
name for fund-raising purposes would lead it to
neglect its most valuable assets—its students, fac-
ulty and staff—while committing itself to a project
whose very name reinforces a narrow, retrograde,
and now demonstrably failed set of social and
economic policies,” the petition said.
A collaboration between the Economics
Department, the Booth School, and the Law
School, the Milton Friedman Institute for
Reasearch in Economics is so named because
CORES organized in opposition to its founding
Faculty wonder whether a business
mentality is steering the University's
research focus
as simply the Milton Friedman Institute in 2008.
CORES’s outcries spurred the first full meeting
of the faculty in 14 years, an annual event that
had fallen by the wayside. The group was con-
cerned that the Institute was created mainly as a
fundraising tool, to capitalize on the recent death
of Milton Friedman. “I think that signaled to us
the University’s aggressive interest in fundraising
and its willingness to function in a novel fashion,
creating academic units and programs for their
fundraising appeal,” said religion professor Bruce
Lincoln (Ph.D. ’77), a CORES leader, in a recent
interview.
There were public protests, panel discussions
between prominent economics professors and
CORES co-chairs, and a closed meeting of
the University Senate, as the collected faculty
is known. CORES wanted Zimmer to put the
Institute’s establishment to a vote; instead, there
was a compromise—an addendum to the name
that clarified its research-oriented mission. Yet the
name change didn’t allay CORES’s concerns.
The allegation of corporatization is a seri-
ous one at a school whose president often touts
its longstanding guarantee of an environment
where academics can argue unimpeded. In a
long response to CORES’s complaints, Zimmer
and Rosenbaum—both U of C professors as
well—asserted the need for faculty involvement
in University governance while defending recent
investment decisions. “Our donors support our
work because they believe in the values of the
University of Chicago and want to enable us to
achieve our highest aspirations,” they wrote on
June 9. “These donors understand the importance
of academic freedom and the essential role of
unfettered inquiry. This University has stood firm-
ly on the principle that such external support must
never direct or limit our intellectual pursuits.”
But MFIRE is only one part of CORES’s
scattered constellation of evidence that purports
to show the influence of the corporate on the
University. They say another donor, the Chinese
government, will play an even more active role
in directing the curriculum of Chinese language
study at the University. China backs the U of
C’s recently established Confucius Institute, one
of over 300 set up around the world, including
one at the University of Michigan and one in
by Asher
Klein
MATT BOGEN/GREY CITY
the Chicago Public Schools. The Institutes run
Chinese language training centers funded by the
government of China. They have been called an
organ of propaganda by Sweden’s Parliament and
Canada’s intelligence agency, and in 2007, faculty
at the University of Pennsylvania voted against a
proposed Confucius Institute on their campus.
The U of C’s Confucius Institute was approved
without ever coming to a faculty-wide vote, but
Zimmer and Rosenbaum discussed it with a com-
mittee of faculty from the East Asian Languages
and Civilizations Department before giving it the
go-ahead; a June press release said it will be run by
a number of University administrators. Professor
Donald Harper, who has since taken the chair-
manship of the Center of East Asian Studies, said
the discussion with faculty was meant to vet the
proposal more than offer final approval. “It wasn’t
as if it was on the vote of the China Committee
that it happened,” said Harper, who also signed
the CORES petition, though he did not discuss it
or corporatization with Grey City.
Lincoln described such discussions of adminis-
tration-backed initiatives with groups most closely
concerned as “theater of consent,” meaning con-
versations held more to produce the impression of
accord than to generate alternatives or create real
compromise. These displays are a way of glossing
over dissent while being able to note that admin-
istrators received input on contentious issues,
Lincoln said. However, administrators always
maintain the importance of input received from
any group during decision-making processes.
Another major concern for CORES is the redi-
rection of University resources away from Ph.D.
programs and towards undergraduate programs,
professional schools, and one-year, terminal M.A.
programs like the Masters of Arts Program in the
Humanities (MAPH), Masters of Arts Program
in the Social Sciences (MAPSS), and Master of
Science in Financial Mathematics.
The University of Chicago of the 1970s was
a more informal, less bureaucratic place with
a much different way of thinking about its
students—especially undergraduates, who made
up a much smaller proportion of the population.
But the school changed in the 1990s, when an
analysis of University finances by President Hugo
Sonnenschein led him to conclude that enroll-

abcRS\ba
#
#
''
ing more College and M.A. students would help
sustain the University’s finances. “Even saying that
created a furor among many faculty who don’t
like economic thinking,” said Richard Shweder, a
professor of human development and psychology
who has been at the University since 1973.
Sonnenschein created three faculty-led com-
mittees that spent a year assessing the University’s
educational work and its strained finances.
Then came University-wide reform, resulting in
an increased focus on the College and profes-
sional programs, as well as the requirement that
all faculty teach undergraduate courses.. Shweder
and others said increased faculty responsibility
brought more money and more bureaucratic red
tape. Such bottom-line thinking persists, accord-
ing to Lincoln and other CORES members.
Lincoln gave a slew of reasons why Ph.D. work
needs to be prioritized, including challenging
faculty and training the next generation of think-
ers. “It’s where novelty occurs. It’s not just the
transmission of established wisdom, it’s where the
rethinking of critical problems is likeliest to occur,”
Lincoln said. The College, but especially the ter-
minal M.A. programs, bring smart students to the
University in a “broad and unfocused” program
that isn’t likely to produce deep, scholarly thought
in the same way as Ph.D. programs—professors’
time is better spent on students with more aca-
demic background and ability. “I think what those
[M.A.] programs do is well worth doing, but I’m
not sure this is the kind of institution that should
be doing it,” Lincoln said. “I’m pretty certain that
doing that is not in the best interests of this institu-
tion, except possibly in financial terms.“
Enrollment in MAPH, MAPSS, and the
Financial Mathematics programs have consis-
tently increased since their inception (see top
figure). The MAPH program had 102 students
last spring. With tuition and fees for a student tak-
UNIVERSITY
ENROLLMENT
ACROSS
DIVISIONS
After years of modest growth, the size
of the College and professional schools
increased markedly in the mid-1990s
after administrators reconsidered
University finances.
Both programs bring in tuition, and
CORES claims that developing them
over more intellectually rigorous Ph.D.
programs represents a trend towards
corporatization. In a recent interview,
President Zimmer was open to faculty
reconsidering the relative size of the
Divisions.
;ObV>V2
>]ZWbWQOZAQWS\QS>V2
;/>6
;/>AA
4W\O\QWOZ;ObVS[ObWQa;/ TERMINAL M.A.
ing three classes at $42,444, the MAPH program
would have brought in over $4 million that year.
The Ph.D. program has increased as well, albeit at
a slower rate (see bottom figure). While adminis-
trators have developed a graduate aid scheme that
works to ensure Ph.D. students receive funding
for four years of study, many think more funding
is necessary.
The flip-side of Lincoln’s argument is that the
terminal M.A. programs provide students with the
exposure to serious intellectual work that might
spur them onto great scholarship at the U of C or
elsewhere. Shweder called the programs “a bril-
liant institutional innovation,” bringing in needed
funding while allowing smart students to explore
stimulating graduate coursework. Philosophy
professor Candace Vogler, who co-directed the
MAPH program for a number of years, said
MAPH is a vast improvement over the system it
succeeded, in which many Ph.D. students were
cut after just a few years. To them, increasing M.A.
programs doesn’t supplant the intellectual mission
of the University, it enhances it.
Shweder did not sign the CORES petition this
spring, though he did publish a scholarly article in
2006 arguing that corporatization has broadened
oversight of faculty research, which is meant to
be unfettered. “The petition as it developed did
have a lot of points in it that should be discussed
and raised,” he said, but the opposition to MFIRE
seemed unreasonable. “To oppose something of
quality that has the support of brilliant members
of the faculty...I think there’s a live-and-let-live
quality that’s very important.” Shweder said the
opposition to MFIRE seemed instead to come
from those faculty who don’t like bottom-line
thinking.
But bottom-line thinking is a reality the
University must deal with every day. Clyde
Watkins (A.B. ’67) worked in the Development
6000
>`]TSaaW]\OZ;/>`]U`O[a
BVS1]ZZSUS
>V2>`]U`O[a
5000
2WdWaW]\OZ;/>`]U`O[a
4000
3000
2000
1000
0 think were very ill-advised, but there’s a discussion
''   that’s ongoing, and that’s good news.”
Office for six years during the ’70s, eventually serv-
ing as an associate vice president, before becom-
ing an education consultant. In the 1970s, he said,
the University raised $30–35 million a year; in
2008, the U of C finished a five-year fundraising
drive that exceeded its $2-billion goal. $500 mil-
lion now goes to research each year, according
to the director of the Institutional Review Board,
which oversees research. CORES accuses the
University of “metastatic growth of administrative
staff,” but according to Watkins, all large research
institutions have adapted the size of their fundrais-
ing staffs.
CORES isn’t advocating for any specific
changes, but Lincoln said a medium for faculty
input on University-wide policy already exists,
and should provide the kind of check that would
have put MFIRE or the Confucius Institute up
for a faculty-wide vote. The body of the faculty
that engages with the administration is called the
Council of the Senate, a 51-member group
elected from the Senate that meets with Zimmer
monthly.
The voice of the faculty isn’t heard because
the Senate and the Council of the Senate have
become a sounding board for administration con-
cerns—a model the administration has espoused—
or a “theater of consent,” Lincoln argues. “I think
the structural forces that produce those kinds of
errors are clear, I think they’re large, I think they’re
powerful. I think you sound the alarm early,
and you make your concerns very clear to warn
against going further in those directions,” he said.
Shweder had a similar take on the root of corpo-
ratization: Zimmer and Rosenbaum have the best
intentions, but “it’s not personality, it’s structural
issues that you worry about,” Shweder said.
Zimmer views the structure of the University
as less problematic, arguing that University-wide
decisions are made through a system of distrib-
CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY 7
ENROLLMENT IN
PH.D. AND
PROGRAMS
Key terminal M.A. programs were
established in the 1990s, and in the
last 10 years enrollment in some has
doubled. Over the same period, most
Ph.D. programs have stayed the same
size or diminished slightly.
Lincoln says Ph.D. programs are where
the meat of scholarly work is done on
campus. The work professors do with
M.A. students, Lincoln says, can be a
drain on faculty resources. That the
administration continues to invest in
these programs, the CORES argues, is
a sign the University is becoming more
corporate.
uted authority that is necessarily complex. “You
have literally hundreds of people making impor-
tant decisions about the Unviersity, and it’s good
that there’s this distributed authority. At the same
time, when you’re going to be dealing with people
who don’t like something or people who want
something, those things need to be addressed in
a vehicle that’s appropriate to the authority level
involved,” Zimmer said.
Lincoln, a Council member himself, said the
University statutes give the body jurisdiction over
all academic matters, but faculty rarely introduce
motions, something he attributed to a lack of real
information on day-to-day financial and adminis-
trative numbers. The reactive nature of Council
meetings means they are just “a top-down pro-
cess of disseminating the company line,” he said.
“Rarely is anything turned back.” Lincoln said that
among the information he would like to review
at Committee and Council meetings are detailed
budgets and an overview of administrative staff.
But when asked if the Council had access to the
information it requested, Zimmer said, “We’ve
attempted to give everybody the information
they’ve asked for, and if people want more infor-
mation, we can provide more.”
Another group, the seven-person Committee of
the Council of the Senate, meets every other week
with Zimmer and Rosenbaum. But there are prob-
lems here, too. “It really sits and listens and gives
some comments. It’s not like we can decide on
major things,” said statistics chair Yali Amit, who
serves on the Committee. Though he co-chaired
CORES in 2008, Amit didn’t sign the petition,
which he said raised no new issues on MFIRE,
and that its other complaints were not sufficiently
substantiated. Still, he said the Committee would
benefit from more information.
For Lincoln and CORES members, the ideal of
faculty leadership is a more of a myth than any-
thing, and one most faculty may not be interested
in pursuing—Amit questioned whether faculty will
ever want to be very involved in governing the U
of C. “The Administration is always going to set
the agenda. There are faculty initiatives, people
come up with ideas, but I think they’re the ones
sitting there, that’s their job. Large-scale agendas
are rarely set by faculty,” Amit said.
Zimmer said he told faculty at recent Council
and Senate meetings that his Administration is
always acting in the faculty’s best interest. “That
is what we need to keep asking ourselves at all
times: Are we responding to changing conditions
of all sorts so that we are ensuring that faculty
are continually saying that this is the best place
to do their work?” And he noted in the interview
that the Provost has set up a faculty committee to
assess any systemic problems raised by professors.
Lincoln heard Zimmer speak at the Council
and Senate meetings and took his words as a
tentative move towards a discussion of corporati-
zation. “I felt like he’s taking it seriously, and if so
that’s a hopeful sign,” Lincoln said. “It’s not con-
crete, material progress, no changes of policy were
announced, no reversals of decisions we really
8 GREY CITY JOURNAL Tuesday, November 30, 2010

LATE EDITION

MURDER,
THEY WROTE
THE STORY OF THE LIPSTICK KILLER
By CHRISTINA PILLSBURY

Early in the morning on January 7, 1946,

six-year-old Suzanne Degnan was reported
missing from her bedroom. A ransom
note demanding $20,000 for her return
was found by her bedroom window. Later
that night, the Chicago Police Department
(CPD) discovered her dismembered body
scattered in sewers across the North Side.
Newspaper headlines blasted the grisly
details. The crime remained in the news
for months as authorities uncovered more
and more evidence.
At 9 a.m. that January morning, William
Heirens (X ’50) was missing from his U
of C math class. By 10 a.m., he was in
his humanities lecture. The 17-year-old
Heirens was a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-
haired young man whose academic apti-
tude allowed him to skip his senior year
at St. Bede’s, a Chicago boarding school.
After matriculating at the University, he
became vice president of Calvert Club,
then a Catholic group on campus.
Heirens often spent his nights drink-
ing whiskey with his roommate in Snell-
Hitchcock and casually seeing girls. He
had also been arrested for a number of
burglaries since 1942, and done several
stints in juvenile prison. The burglaries
continued into his college career.
While Heirens kept up this double life
at the U of C, police investigated the
Degnan murder. Experts soon matched the
handwriting and fingerprint found on the Courtesy of the Chicago Tribune
ransom note to evidence gathered from CHARGED WITH HIS CRIMES
the scene of a murder that took place a 17-year-old University of Chicago student William Heirens, second from right, is arraigned in July, 1946.
month before.
The naked corpse of 31-year-old Frances murder, the Chicago Tribune called it “one The 82-year-old speaks in a comforting, custody at Bridewell Hospital, connected
Brown had been found on December 11, of the most atrocious American murders grandfatherly tone. He shifts back and to Cook County Jail, police routinely
1945, in the bathtub of Brown’s apartment. since the Loeb-Leopold case.” forth in his wheelchair while reliving ran his prints. Heirens’ fingerprint was
Brown’s pajamas were wrapped around The U of C reference proved prescient. his experiences slowly, putting together matched by nine points of similarity to
her head, suggesting a connection to an Later that same day, police apprehended memories from more than a half century the one found on the ransom note and
Edgewater murder earlier that year, where Heirens as he attempted to rob an apart- past. He often draws a blank—Heirens has smeared in Brown’s apartment. Officials
the victim was left in a similar state. Brown ment in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighbor- little memory of the ordeal that shaped the told the Chicago Sun-Times this was
had a butcher’s knife rammed through her hood. Almost immediately his fingerprints rest of his life. “adequate for identification.”
neck; a bullet wound in her skull. One were deemed a match to the fingerprint in The last thing he remembers before his Meanwhile, detectives searched Heirens’s
bloody fingerprint was found on a door- Brown’s apartment. Evidence, including a arrest is his Core humanities class at the U of C dorm room in Gates Hall, looking
jamb. But the evidence that would grab confession he gave while in custody, began University of Chicago. “They had a book for goods stolen from the murder sites.
the city’s attention was a message scrawled to mount against him. reading for that year—I forget the name The Tribune reported there were war
in lipstick on the wall above Brown’s On September 4, Heirens pled guilty to of the book, The Brothers Karamazov bonds, jewels, three guns, cameras, and
body: “For heavens sake catch me before I the three killings. The next day Harold G. or something like that,” Heirens said. “I other stolen items in Heirens’s dorm room.
kill more I cannot control myself.” Ward, chief justice of the Cook County wasn’t a fiction reader before. I was only The total value was over $3,400—almost
Whether a cry for help or a taunting Criminal Court, sentenced him to three a fact reader, and so that was new to me, $37,000 when adjusted for inflation.
jab at the police, the chilling message was concurrent life terms. Heirens, now inmate fiction reading. And I couldn’t read as fast The most damning items police found
photographed and splashed across news- number C-06103, was transferred to as the other guys, so I was kind of slow were two surgical kits which included
papers throughout Chicago. The note gave Stateville Prison in Joliet, Illinois. in class.” knives and saws. Degnan was dismem-
reporters a moniker for the murderer: the Through a furrowed brow, as if trying bered with such great precision that inves-
Lipstick Killer. to remember more, Heirens paused. “And, tigators believed her murderer had used
Degnan’s murder intensified the exhaus- well, then I got arrested.” special tools in the process.
tive manhunt for the Lipstick Killer. For the 63 years later, Heirens has been impris- Heirens became the police’s prime sus-
next six months the CPD took fingerprints oned longer than any other person in pect, and State’s Attorney William Tuohy
from every person they arrested in hopes America. began the interrogation process. During
of finding a match with the killer. Police During an interview with Grey City last Police chased Heirens out of the Rogers an interview with psychologists who later
detained two suspects in that time, but month at Dixon Correctional Center, a Park apartment he was robbing that June declared him sane but psychologically
both were eventually released, and public medium-security prison in Dixon, Illinois, day and through the complex, until an off- unstable, Heirens confessed to all three
interest in the case remained high. On Heirens sat hunched, his gray hair slicked duty officer dropped a flower pot on his murders.
June 26, almost six months after Degnan’s back, his face in a gruff, squinting stare. head, knocking him unconscious. While in Then Herbert J. Walker, a handwriting

WILLIAM HEIRENS WAS A KNOWN BURGLAR AND HAD

BEEN IN AND OUT OF JUVENILE PRISON FOR YEARS. AS A
STUDENT AT THE U OF C, HE LED A DOUBLE LIFE.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
expert, concluded that Heirens’ printing
matched that of the lipstick message and
the ransom note. It seemed the case was
closed.
Today, it seems that the pieces of the
puzzle don’t fit exactly. The handwriting
expert recanted in early January of the
next year; the Herald American reported
that he said the handwriting on the ran-
som note and the lipstick message had
“few superficial similarities and a great
many dissimilarities.”
Some have questioned the legitimacy of
the lipstick note itself. “It would be out of
the ordinary for a man to pick up a piece
of lipstick and write a message with it....
Others [believe] a sleazy crime reporter
scribbled the message on the wall for a
cheap headline,” crime historian Richard
Lindberg wrote in his 1999 book Return
to the Scene of the Crime .
Heirens has maintained for years that
the fingerprint evidence was constructed
by the police. “A ransom note is very easy
to fake a finger print on. You just touch
that and you’ve got a fingerprint on you,”
he said. “And that’s all there was to it, and
it was just one fingerprint.” He also scoffed
at the idea that the surgical tools were his.
“I think I had a razor blade to go make
model airplanes, that’s about it,” he said.
Heirens doesn’t know where the evidence
against him came from; he only claims his
innocence. When asked who he thought
committed the Lipstick murders, Heirens
pounded the table. “I can’t be a detective,
run up and down and question everybody,
put a gun to their head, say ‘You either
confess or I’ll blow your head off!’”
He said the police needed a scapegoat
to quell an increasingly impatient public.
“They were considering me because I was
a burglar before that,” Heirens said. “But
then they linked it in with a couple of
murders—the first one was a woman who
was murdered in her room. I [robbed] that
building a couple of times myself...then I
didn’t think any more of it, and before you
know it I was arrested and interrogated
by police.”
Some legal and criminal experts are
still convinced that Illinois is holding the
wrong man.
Dolores Kennedy, author of 1987’s Bill
Heirens: His Day in Court and a legal assis-
tant at the Medill School of Journalism’s
Center on Wrongful Convictions, has writ-
ten the Illinois parole board multiple times
asking for Heirens’s release. She believes
Russell Richard Thomas, a former nurse at
GREY CITY JOURNAL 9
Courtesy of the Chicago Tribune Courtesy of the Illinois Department of Corrections
FRANCES BROWN’S MURDERER SCRAWLED A NOTE
IN LIPSTICK ON THE WALL ABOVE HER BODY: “FOR
HEAVENS SAKE CATCH ME BEFORE I KILL MORE I
CANNOT CONTROL MYSELF.”
the Woodlawn Hospital, was responsible for successfully sued the CPD for false arrest tions, asked ‘What’s your name?’ and I
the crimes that cost Heirens his freedom. and brutality, and won $20,000. told them. And they said, ‘No it ain’t, it’s
Thomas had a history of violence against Police believed George Murman, the George.’ I said, ‘That’s my middle name,
women and kidnapping, and left ransom man Heirens named as an accomplice not my first name.’ And then he said
notes that Kennedy believes resemble the to the murders, was actually an alter ‘Yeah, your name’s George.’ So that’s how
note found at the Degnan house. ego. Psychologists submitted a report to George came into it.”
Thomas confessed to the Degnan mur- Chief Justice Ward: “These conversations His foggy recollection of the interroga-
der from a Phoenix prison cell the day regarding ‘George,’ in our opinion, reveal a tion may be due to drugs administered by
Heirens was apprehended. But two days power for hysterical fantasy, to be expected the police. The Tribune , Sun-Times , and
later, the Chicago Daily News printed dis- in a hysterical individual passing through the New York Mirror all reported that
crepancies in Thomas’s story, and before long sustained emotional conflict.” When Heirens was given sodium pentothal, more
Thomas could be seriously considered as this detail leaked to the press, it cemented commonly called truth serum, during the
a suspect, attention shifted to Heirens. Heirens’s reputation as a psychotic; on interrogation. A sedative then used on
Thomas soon recanted. June 28, 1946, the Sun-Times printed that veterans to dig up their most unsettling
Heirens thinks Thomas’s confession was he “lived a Jekyll and Hyde existence.” memories from combat, sodium pentothal
more convincing than his own. “He con- But Heirens claims that he never named is most often used today in inducing medi-
fessed to the murder that I’m accused of. a second person, that George was a police cal comas and lethal injections.
He was in Arizona, and he told the police creation. “The police in their interroga- According to U of C psychology profes-
there, ‘God told me to confess,’” Heirens
said. “While I’m sitting in jail, he’s saying
that stuff, and his confession was better
than what they got from me.”
Some writers claim Heirens’s confes-
sion is suspect as well. Kennedy is one
of a number who suggest that police
brutality and mind-altering drugs used
during the interrogation coerced a con-
fession out of the 17-year-old student.
Heirens says that before his interrogation
he knew little about the series of murders tied
to his name. “It might’ve been mentioned on
the radio, but in Chicago, you hear [about
murders] all the time,” he said. “It was part
of life in Chicago in those days.”
The interrogation lasted several days while
Heirens was in Bridewell Hospital, where he
was admitted for treatment of the concus-
sion suffered during his arrest. Newspapers
reported that he implicated another man
during this time, and gave details about
the murders. The full transcript from the
interrogation was lost between his stay at
Bridewell and his day in court.
Heirens said his questioning “was kind
of rough,” but he couldn’t remember
being beaten or given any drugs. He does
remember resisting. “They wanted me to
confess to the murder and I refused to, so
they kept on grilling me,” he said. “They
kept at me until they said, ‘They’re going
to kill you if they convict you.’”
Though Heirens himself may not have
been abused by the CPD, he knew of the
police’s reputation for violent interroga-
tions. Hector Verburgh, a 65-year-old jani-
tor who worked in an apartment building
near the Degnan home, was the first sus-
pect arrested in connection with the crime.
Police brutalized Verburgh during his days- Courtesy of the Chicago Tribune
long interrogation. “They hung him up by CENTRAL BOOKING
his hands over a bar behind him, and they Heirens collapses as he is photographed in Cook County jail in 1946.
crippled him,” Heirens said, recalling the
news coverage of the story. Verburgh later
10
sor David Gallo, the effects of the drug
might have influenced Heirens’s memory.
“The reliability of information that’s gener-
ated during interrogations is questionable,
especially when the exact methods that
were used are unclear,” said Gallo, who
has not studied Heirens’s case specifically.
“The social pressure from authority figures
can distort the information that one pro-
duces, and this can subsequently affect the
accuracy of one’s memory. It might not be
enough to convince an innocent person
that they’re guilty, but it might at least
confuse their memory.”
With enough evidence for prosecutors to
mount a convincing case against Heirens,
his attorneys suggested he accept a plea bar-
gain, which the state also favored because
it would keep a minor out of the electric
chair. Prosecutors required a public admis-
sion of guilt, and on July 30, police officers,
Chicago officials, and reporters gathered in
court for Heirens’s confession.
By then, few doubted that Heirens was
responsible for the murders. A month
earlier—and just days after Heirens had
been singled out as a suspect—Police
Commissioner John C. Prendergast told
the Tribune , “He knows he did it, and he
knows we know he did it.”
Two weeks later, the Tribune ran a story
detailing Heirens’s actions the nights of
the murders. Even though Heirens hadn’t
yet confessed to anyone, the Tribune was
convinced it had a scoop. “For a while,
Heirens maintained his innocence. But
the whole world believed his guilt. The
Tribune had said he was guilty,” the
Tribune wrote on August 7, 1946.
But the prisoner was not ready to admit
defeat. “They wanted a confession. They
wanted all these police officials to hear
what it is,” Heirens said. Though he had
earlier agreed to plead guilty, once in
court, he wouldn’t go through with it.
Heirens, middle, being taken to a police lineup on July 1, 1946. He would confess to the Lipstick murders that September.
GREY CITY JOURNAL
IN PRISON, HEIRENS TOOK CLASSES THAT SEEMED
USEFUL. “I FIGURED LOGIC WOULD HELP ME GET OUT
OF PRISON,” HE SAID. “IT DIDN’T DO ME A DARN BIT OF
GOOD.”
“They asked me [to confess to] the Degnan
murders, and I said, ‘I don’t know anything
about it but what you people told me.’”
Chicagoans were convinced police had
found their man, so Heirens’s very public
change of heart caused an uproar. “My
attorneys had a fit. Everybody did, really,
because everyone was expecting a confes-
sion story. They were broadcasting it all
over the country.” Heirens added, with a
smirk: “And I just messed up their show.”
But the state’s case against Heirens
continued. The plea bargain dissolved,
meaning he would go to trial, and from his
Cook County jail cell, Heirens could feel
the electric chair looming large. His attor-
neys spoke of it; prosecutors threatened
him with it.
“When they got me back to my cell, and
my attorneys got back to me, they told me
how I screwed up by not going through
with the confession story for them. They
said ‘You’re doomed for the execution
now,’ and I was—if the state’s attorney
would’ve tried me, with everything going
on the way it was, I would’ve been con-
victed just like that, and there’d have been
no appeals,” Heirens said. “So I changed
my mind. I went along with them. I said ‘I
won’t go back on you.’”
On September 4, William Heirens pled
guilty to 26 charges of burglary and three
counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced
to three concurrent life terms the next day.
Once convicted, Heirens was transferred
to Stateville prison, where reporters ini-
tially visited him on a regular basis. But
media interest slowly faded, and Heirens
eventually resumed his education through
correspondence courses. His first-choice
institution was no longer an option. “The
University of Chicago wouldn’t let me take
any courses from them—they barred me.
After I got arrested and convicted they just
wouldn’t have nothing to do with me any-
MEDIA CIRCUS
more,” Heirens said. “I wanted to go into
philosophy with them, but they wouldn’t
let me take it.”
Heirens continued to “shop around for
classes” by ordering college catalogues
from his cell. “I liked cultural anthropol-
ogy, because it was about people and how
life changes among different people that
you live with,” he said. And free from
strict graduation requirements or looming
job prospects, Heirens could afford to take
whatever classes seemed useful. “I took a
logic course because I figured logic would
help me get out of prison,” Heirens said.
“It didn’t do me a darn bit of good.”
On February 6, 1972, at age 43, Heirens
walked in the Lewis University com-
mencement ceremony, becoming the first
Illinois prisoner to earn a college diploma
from jail. Prison security accompanied
Heirens to the nearby commencement,
as did Heirens’ notoriety; photographers
jumped up on chairs in hopes of getting
any shot of the killer-turned-graduate.
After graduation, Heirens worked for
the superintendent of Stateville Prison to
develop a program to help inmates get
their degrees. He put together a library and
assembled necessary paperwork to jump-
start the prison’s education system. One of
the teachers from the Stateville program
was so impressed with Heirens that he
wrote to the parole board. According to
Heirens, the teacher singled his program
out as one of the best in the country.
Heirens has spent over 60 years in
prison and has been the center of a media
circus. Fact and fiction have twisted and
tangled into one: he claims he based his
confession on an earlier Tribune story that
trumpeted his guilt, his interrogation was
likely a drug-induced dream, and his life
has been turned into books, movies, and
articles over which he had little control.
His life is confined to a cell, but his story
Courtesy of the Chicago Tribune
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
is a public spectacle.
Heirens can hardly remember the bare
facts of his case. He no longer remembers
most of the burglaries he admits he com-
mitted. And when he’s been in jail for 63
years, it hardly matters any more.
Gallo, the U of C professor, researches
memory function and how people can
reconstruct their memories from outside
accounts. In addition to normal memory
loss, many other factors have shaped the
memory of 82-year-old William Heirens,
Gallo said. “Because he’s read a lot of
accounts of what happened in the media
he might not trust his own memory. He
might just have convinced himself that he
doesn’t know what he did.”
Heirens spent his early years in prison
trying to clear his name. But as his facul-
ties failed him, he has come to accept he’ll
always be best known as the Lipstick Killer.
Gallo thinks this resignation may help
Heirens cope with his experiences. “He
might have decided a long time ago that he
wanted to just put the ordeal behind him
and move forward with his life,” Gallo said.
“He might be at a point in his life right now
where his memory is not that important
anymore. That may be true if he did the
murders or if he didn’t,” Gallo said.
Except for some praise from a cor-
respondence course teacher, Heirens has
few happy memories. “They’re all bad,” he
said. “Even my graduation was bad. [Other
students] wouldn’t even talk to me.”
Heirens has talked with hundreds of
reporters, and each time he surrenders
control of his story. When reading over
what they’ve written, he laments the
details they’ve left out, the explanations
that might convince others of his inno-
cence. And with age, Heirens’s memories
have only gotten dimmer, sapping what
little control he once had over his own
story. “There’s all kinds of things I’ll want
to have said, but I didn’t say,” Heirens said,
before returning to his cell. “I’ll regret that
later on.”

M
y daddy is a jazzman. He wears a suit
that’s almost black but not quite—one
button, pressed slacks, starched shirt. No tie. He
wears leather shoes. One on the floor and one on
the beat. They reflect the stage lights like his hol-
low-bodied 1980 Gibson. He wears cufflinks, he
drinks club soda with lime. The tips of his fingers
are callused and quick. He closes his eyes when
he sings and smiles at the end of each song.
But only on Wednesdays.
Wednesday is the night my father’s bar fills
with dancers. They take over the space in front
of the stage in the corner, feet in comfortable
shoes practicing their steps in miniature. The
regulars, grungy East Atlanta hipsters, and young
families out to dinner, turn around from the bar
and peek out of the dark booths when the alt-
rock radio fades. Three middle-aged men, one
full head of hair between them, busy themselves
on the worn Persian rug, positioning the mic
stands and navigating the twisted topography of
black cords. When the guitar is plugged in, the
bass stood upright, and the lid of the old beat-up
piano lifted, they are a band.
They are the Gravediggers, because the bar is
The Graveyard, but the bar’s name is happen-
stance. The building was originally a motorcycle
repair shop of the same name and my father
wanted to keep the old sign. I like to think the
name suits them. I’ve never met a man who digs
graves for a living, but I imagine his personality
would be like those of the guys in the band—
reserved, deliberate, and practiced, but with a
dark, crucial sense of humor. These are the kind
of musicians who can hear “Stormy Monday in
A flat” and then play it without hesitation, who
can play every Jimmy Reed song ever written—
they’re all the same, really—and who can tell you
stories about the Greats as though they’ve met
them or because they actually have. And yet
they joke about missed notes between numbers
and tease each other about their age. On slow
nights, Bob, the pianist, refers to the weak, scat-
tered applause as a “round of indifference.” They
laugh, and keep playing.
M
y father is a businessman. Since the
early ’80s he has worked as an archi-
tect and developer, and now he runs his own
Daddio an essay by
Meg Brooks
urban planning business. He is an excellent
negotiator; he is fond of reminding me that
he “plays chess while everyone else is play-
ing checkers.” He wears a suit and tie, he
checks e-mail on his phone, he flies business
class. But he spent most of his young adult-
hood as a touring musician and a writer. He
was in a band called Choo Choo Wizard;
he published his first book when he was 21.
I wish I could have known my father as a
young man; I imagine the thrilling, mysteri-
ous life of a different version of the person I
know. Long curly hair and bell-bottom jeans
with holes in the knees, book in one hand
and guitar in the other, library cubicle by
day and dive bar stage by night. It took him
six years to get his degree because he was
touring to pay his way through school. He
says the only things he really learned in col-
lege he learned in the hours he spent in the
library reading everything he found inter-
esting. He started out teaching himself in
libraries, and ended up designing them. The
few times I saw Dad on stage with his guitar
when I was little were the first moments I
realized I could be proud of my parents, not
just the other way around. These occasions
were few; his public performances were
We let the blues do the negotiating--
music as mediator. This is how we
reconcile. We pour the day into something
melancholy and heavy and sweet.
COURTESY OF JAN MEHLICK
mostly as a businessman.
But at home my dad was still a musician—I
often woke up on Saturday mornings to the
sound of the Gibson from downstairs, Dad
playing whatever was in his head. Our house
was always filled with Howlin’ Wolf, Sarah
Vaughan, Count Basie, Louis Jordan, Frank
Sinatra, and I fell in love with all of them. I
learned to work the record player and clean
vinyl when I was six. Dad taught me to play
basic blues guitar when I was 12. My hands
weren’t really big enough, so I had to cheat
the chords.
When I was 14, Dad and I went to New
York for a weekend to see Jon Hendricks and
Annie Ross at the Blue Note.
We sat at a little round table in
the smoky darkness beside the
stage, and after the show Dad sug-
gested we go up to their dressing
rooms and see if we could meet them. I didn’t
know you could do things like that—these were
two of the Greats, they were too big to exist
off the stage. But I stumbled up the stairs in
the heels I wore to pretend I was older, and
knocked on Annie Ross’s door. I talked to
her about singing for what I insist was half an
hour but my father says was no more than five
MATT BOGEN/GREY CITY
CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY 11
minutes. The pictures we took in the dressing
room are like strange family photos—grandma
in her robe and stage make-up, grandpa in
his tux, Dad and daughter grinning like idiots.
These musicians had a kind of power, and it
seemed my dad had it too.
C
horal music, I discovered in high
school, had a different kind of power.
The intricacies of chords and harmonies I
learned from being one voice among 40 were
stunning and gratifying; I sometimes had to
stop singing for a few bars to grin and catch
my breath. Though the method was foreign
to me—I practiced at home by singing along to
CDs of a grating synthesizer—there was sud-
denly structure and theory behind the magic
of Dad placing my fingers just so on the neck
of the guitar.
But Dad didn’t come to my choral concerts. I
told myself it was because he didn’t like the music,
but even when I joined our 12-person vocal jazz
group in my junior year he was conspicuously
absent. Maybe, I thought, we lack that magic that
draws him to this music, the feel behind the notes.
We sounded too much like the synthesizer; no
amount of music theory can teach you to swing.
But peering into the audience time after time and
finding my mother’s face without my father’s, I
wondered why he couldn’t learn to love what I
loved. Halfway through “Bewitched,
Bothered and Bewildered” I was
so mad I could have hurled my
microphone into that empty seat
in the third row. By the end of
“Every Time We Say Goodbye” I
was fighting back tears. It’s impossible to
sing and cry at the same time, even when you’re
singing the blues.
T
hose early Wednesday nights at the
Graveyard five years ago were lonely.
There were no swing dancers and few cus-
tomers. Anyone who has ever tried to open a
restaurant will tell you that the first three or so
years are miserable, and most places don’t make
it. But my father and his best friend George
tried anyway; it was something they had always
talked about. When Dad found the old motor-
cycle warehouse and redesigned it with booths
and a bar and the stage in the corner, George
quit his job to become the head chef. The res-
taurant survived the initial troubles, but their
12 CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY
friendship didn’t. I hadn’t really thought about
my father’s friendships, but suddenly it seemed
that he didn’t have any. No more college band-
mates, no golf buddies, no one to share a cigar
with on the porch. Just business associates. It
was lonely, but he adapted. The businessman
negotiated and the musician improvised.
Now Wednesday nights find him sitting at a
packed bar with a new band.
Bob, Bill, and Jim. They joke
from time to time that they
only play with people
with one-syllable names.
Thank goodness I meet this criterion, because
it means that on those Wednesdays when I’m
home from the University I can pretend to be
one of them. Before we play, I usually sit at
a table by myself and watch. They eat alone,
but they drink together. There are minutes of
quiet storytelling broken by bursts of laughter,
and I want to know what they talk about. I sit
alone and observe them, like some rare species
evolved beyond mine.
The tips of the fingers on Bill’s left hand are
completely flat, like pads on frogs’ feet. I think
they would stay that way even if he stopped
playing the bass. Watching Bob play is like
watching a bear play the piano: He hunches
over and his arms move back and forth from
the shoulders, his large hands seeming to pound
indiscriminately on the keys, somehow produc-
ing chords. They hardly ever rehearse; they’ve
had years of rehearsal. Stepping onto the stage
with musicians like this is like being inducted
into some exclusive club; I only pretend to
belong.
The first Wednesday I got up the courage to
go sit with Bob at the bar, he told me a story
about the time he met Ella Fitzgerald. She was
singing in some little bar in New York, and he
was one of the only people in the place. She
finished her set and sat at the bar, and he went
to say hello. She looked around at the empty
tables and said, “Well, I guess no one loves old
Ella anymore.” I told Bob that was one of the
saddest stories I had ever heard, and then I
thought about my father. My father alone in the
library, in his office, on the porch. “That’s how
it is,” Bob replied. “You know, when you sing ‘Is
You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby’ you sound like
Dinah Washington.”
When they’re not telling stories about their
encounters with the Greats, the old blues-
men talk about their families. When I listen to
them tell me about their wives or where their
daughters go to college, I think about Dad
teaching me to play a Dm7 on the guitar. Dad
in our kitchen making silly faces until my mom,
my sister, and I laughed so hard we couldn’t
breathe. Dad here in his bar with the guys,
where the only empty table was the one I had
just left. I’ve always been my father’s kid, but
now that I’m older I also have the privilege of
being his friend. We keep each other company.
The music is lonely, but the musicians aren’t.
When I got home from those high-school
choral concerts I would walk into the parlor
and find this man with circles under his eyes,
flannel socks, gray in his beard. And the Gibson.
And we let the blues do the negotiating—music
as mediator. This is how we reconcile. We pour
the day into something melancholy and heavy
and sweet, something that we make but which
is separate from both of us. He sings melody,
I sing harmony, I love what he loves, and we
deride my choir mates for their inability to
swing. Squares, man.
I
’ve gotten better at pretending, at
stitching myself into their scene. The
seams are smoother. The swing dancers
ask me to dance. I can order a beer. And I
can sit at the bar with Bob, Bill, and Dad,
and dish out musician attitude like the pros.
Occasionally, a drummer will sit in with us,
but they never last long. It’s 10 minutes until
we start our set, the drummer-of-the-month
MATT BOGEN/GREY CITY
is nowhere to be seen, and none of us is sur-
prised. I mention something Chet Baker said
once about how it takes a hell of a drummer
to be better than no drummer at all. The guys
laugh and I want more. I tell a joke Dad’s told
a thousand times.
“Hey, what do you call a musician without
a girlfriend?
“What?”
“Homeless.”
More laughter; they are so tickled when the
protégée repeats the old standards. But from
my mouth the jokes sound weak and tinny like
the choral synthesizer. Without years of play-
ing to more empty tables than full ones, with-
out aches from hauling equipment in and out
of venues where there’s no guarantee you’ll
get your cut of the cover charge, and watching
the music you play slowly become obsolete—
without these things I can never really be one
of them. But I’m young and I think what they
do is anything but obsolete, and that’s enough
of a novelty for them to keep me around.
Besides, I don’t sing like the synthesizer; I sing
like Dinah Washington.
We start to move towards the stage and I
ask Bob if he looked at the chords we wrote
out for the new song. He smiles and puts a
heavy bear hand on my shoulder. “Nope. We’ll
just make it up.”
And we do.
Adaptability is what
makes jazz and blues
songs great. The stan-
dards are standards for
a reason, but it takes very
little to make them unique. Because they’re
strong to begin with, they can bend to the
musician’s will. And the best musicians know
exactly how they want to bend the standards,
often transforming them into completely
new songs. Listen to Ella Fitzgerald’s version
of “My Funny Valentine,” and then listen to
Chet Baker’s. Same words, same tune, but
one will make you laugh and the other will
make you cry.
My father knows how to bend the standards.
It is astonishing how seamlessly he manages to
be a developer, a musician, a restaurateur, and
a dad. Each has a different walk, a different tie,
even a different laugh. But I get to know all
of them. The developer and the restaurateur
sent me to college, the musician handed me
the Gibson when I was 12, and the dad still
teaches me to improvise.
T
here is a thing that happens when you
play music with the same few people
again and again. This thing is as intangible as
music itself, and just as thrilling. Call it a vibe,
a groove, an understanding. It’s the feeling of
simultaneous safety and freedom lent by the
combination of talent, practice, and guts.
Bob starts the intro, and whether we’ve
done this song a hundred times or never, I
can imagine I hear through the pounding of
the piano and the slapping of the bass and the
patter of the guitar—I am here, I am listening, you
are listening. I am following you, we are following
each other. Let’s go to the bridge. And if we miss
a change or skip a chord we’ll come right back
around. One wrong note is wrong, two wrong
notes is jazz.
I wear a suit, but mine is true black. My
jacket has two clasps instead of buttons.
I wear leather shoes that reflect the stage
lights, but mine are heels. One on the floor
and one on the beat. I wear earrings, I wear
stockings. My fingers have no calluses. I close
my eyes when I sing and I look at my dad at
the end of every song.
I leave the vibe on the stage and slip back to
my table. I watch them finish the set, my feet
still tapping and my cheeks flushed, and I real-
ize I can see it. I can see them making choices
about the music with no words or gestures at
all. I can see them swing. It is seamless.
COURTESY OF MEG BROOKS
8 CHICAGO MAROON | ADVERTISEMENT | November 30, 2010

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CHICAGO MAROON | VOICES | November 30, 2010 9
83. John, Paul, George, and Ringo, e.g. 38. Early middle-school event?
84. Short skirt 40. Fly south, maybe
87. The Beatles (1968) vs. Film Studies Center 44. Chicago-to-Detroit dir.
92. Revise 45. “___ Gone By” (Walking Dead premiere)
93. Chatty library locale 46. PSAT takers
94. Lecher’s look 47. Circle section
95. Ft. Collins campus 49. Small cups
96. Doctor Who’s robotic nemesis 50. 12, of 4 and 6
98. Cecil ___ Mille 51. Madrid month
99. They get smashed at parties 52. Prejudice
102. “Human network” sponsored by Ellen Page 53. “My way” songwriter Paul
105. Predicament 54. Norse God
106. Spanish fly? 56. Ackbar, e.g.
110. Village People (1980) vs. Chemistry 57. Long lunch?
117. Without ice 58. Slope lift
118. Oncologist’s suffix 61. George Costanza’s dream job
119. Lotion letters 62. Pay stub?
120. Fine-tune 63. Redo, in tennis
121. “Where ___ sign?” 68. Ray of light
123. ___-Magnon 70. Ancient strongbox
124. Infamous Hilton? 72. Purge
126. Nina Simone (1965) vs. Music 73. “The Book of ___” (2010 film)
131. Sheets, e.g. 74. They can ruin diets
132. Bit, as a zombie 76. Former Rockets great, casually
133. Dodged 77. Some screens
134. “New ___” (Shins song) 78. Jacob’s twin
135. “To be or ___ to be” 80. Unit of matter: Abbr.
136. Many millennia 82. Meditative exercise
137. Passover meals 84. Garbage pizza place, with “the”
85. Pub locale, familiarly
86. Zilch
Down 88. Jazz style
1. Low points 89. Brand of briefs
2. Vinegary 90. Director Spike
3. Pocket quarterback, say 91. Initial lunch order
4. Punch cousin 97. Tree-sitting activity
5. Money replaced by the euro 99. Olive stuffer
6. Photo finish 100. Shiba ___ (Japanese dog breed)
7. Med. care plan 101. Trinity member
8. Apple’s handheld software 103. NASCAR sponsor
27. Polished off 56. Collar 9. “I want to hold you in the bible-black ___” 104. Last place?
28. Two-thirds of D.I.Y. 59. Medieval Club (Wilco lyric) 105. “Kids, stop fighting!”
29. Frank Baum’s initial 60. 50 Cent (2003) vs. 10. Men of La Mancha 107. Pull out
initial Theater and Performance 11. Some Gmail conversations 108. Vocation
31. Rage Studies 12. Buddy 109. In disagreement
32. Mustachioed 64. Beliefs 13. Like llamas 110. Discount department store
Canadian revolutionary 65. Kurosawa of “Seven 14. Increase proportionally 111. Forward, perhaps
Louis Samurai” 15. D.C. figure 112. Mom’s mom
34. Nirvana (1993) vs. 66. Witch trial town 16. Improv 113. Larceny
Mathematics 67. Big Mouth Billy ___ 17. Egypt’s capital 114. The place to keep the devil
39. “Beat it!” 69. Sacred places 18. County in East England 115. Altar answer
41. MAROON division 71. “The Daily Show” and 21. Nincompoop 116. Encrypts
42. World-weariness “The Colbert Report” 24. DVR remote button 122. Man or Wight
43. Subside 75. What leaves do in the 30. Hosp. staffer 125. Wine prefix
46. Spree wind 33. Lard ___ (Simpsons donut mascot) 127. Rock producer Brian
48. Sacred song 79. Greek statue with a 35. Park of A.K.A. 128. Mil. bigwig
52. Dim sum delight noticeable boner 36. Chop down 129. Has too much coke
55. Chew on 81. Miami Heat genius Pat 37. Triangle man, in a way 130. Galvin who was the first to 300 wins
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Once again Tim Gant lights up the keyboards for
55th Street Jazz at the Cove. He will be joined by
the sultry stylings of songstress Jocelyn Winston
on Sunday, November 28th from 6-9pm. Seats
go waaaaay fast, so you might want to get there
early. The Cove is located at 1750 E. 55th Street.
M.S. and Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Counseling
As always — no cover, and raffle trip giveaways
abound. 773.684.1013 or www.thecovelounge. M.S. in Personnel and Human Resources Development
com for more info.
10 CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | November 30, 2010

WRESTLING The Hyde Park Language Program

Maroons felled by 30th-
ranked Whitewater
By Nick Foretek
Sports Editor
The University wrestling team lost decisively
to 30th-ranked UW-Whitewater last Tuesday,
dropping eight of their ten bouts and falling by
a score of 36–8.
Chicago began the match with a technical fall,
earning a 5–0 lead before Whitewater responded
by capturing the three following weight classes.
“Our lineup has not yet gelled regarding
having our wrestlers competing in the optimal
weight classes and everyone wrestling to their
potential,” head coach Leo Kocher said. “We are
looking to have those issues largely settled before
January.”
Second-year Jim Layton defeated his oppo-
nent 18–1 by a technical fall at 165 pounds,
while fourth-year Ryan Hatten, competing in the
heavy weight division, earned a 5–3 decision in
overtime.
Hatten and Layton stood out among other-
wise unsatisfactory performances on Tuesday.
Whitewater’s Cheston Kesslhon scored the first
points of the team with an early pin, a trend
that continued as the Maroons lost by falls three
times, and by one technical fall.
“Ryan Hatten’s overtime win was over an
excellent opponent who has been ranked 11th
among D-III 285-pounders this season,” coach
Kocher explained. “Ryan has demonstrated the
ability to come from behind against tough oppo-
nents this year and that is a rare talent among
heavyweights.”
“Jimmy Layton is still wrestling up a weight
class this season at 165 and is still dominating
the competition. It looks like he will be a force at
157,” he added.
Chicago (0–2) will not play a conference
opponent until February at the UAA Wrestling
Championships in New York. They host
Elmhurst this evening at 7 p.m.
“The only championship determined by dual
meet results will be the UAAs in nine weeks
in New York. We want to peak then,” Kocher
added. “In the meantime a lot of people are get-
ting their chance to step up and see what they
can do.”
offers its 2011 winter/spring intensive course in
Reading French
Mondays evenings, 5 PM – 8:00 PM, beginning January 17,
2011, and ending in time for students to take the U of C
spring graduate French exam.
Join the hundreds upon hundreds of students who have taken this
course to high-pass the U of C graduate French exam (even with-
out any prior knowledge of French) or otherwise to advance their
ability to read French.
Cost: $800
www.hydeparklanguage.com
cbrickma@sbcglobal.net
Interfaith Advent/
Christmas Party!
Wednesday, December 1, 5:30 pm
5540 S. Woodlawn Ave.
Learn about this time of anticipation and celebration for Christians or share
your own experiences of the season!
Featuring a potluck dinner (bring your favorite holiday food), an Advent
Service, caroling, and tree decoration. We will also be collecting donations of
money, socks, and/or small toiletries for the Night Ministry at this event
(www.thenightministry.org).
Come and leave any time you like! People of every faith, including none, are
invited! All questions are welcome!
For more information, email office@brenthouse.org or call 773-947-8744.
Sponsored by Interfaith Dialogue and Brent House—The Episcopal Center at
the University of Chicago

The MAROON salutes

Judy Marciniak,
who is retiring
after 25 years as
the newspaper’s
business manager.

Judy, thanks for so

many years of hard
work, and we wish
you the very best.
 CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | November 30, 2010
MEN’S BASKETBALL
St. John’s sends Chicago
to third-straight loss
Have a Question? By Will Fallon
Sports Editor
How do I
Last Sunday, while other students recovered
How do I access e-reserves? from tryptophan-induced lethargy, men’s basket-
How do I recall a book? ball lost 90–87 to St. John’s Minnesota.
How do I Throughout the first half, the Maroons led by
a small margin, holding on to the lead until six
How do I find full text articles? minutes remained. At this point, the Johnnies
wrested control from Chicago, holding onto
Ask your
their lead thanks in part to an onslaught by St.
John’s point guard Andy Burns.
With a 73–71 lead at the five minute mark,
Class Librarian.
Burns scored the next 15 points for his team.
Chicago came close to regaining their lead
when, with just 1:14 to go, they tied the score
at 81.
The rest of the game would prove to be a close
struggle, as the two teams alternated final shots.
“Their point guard took over at the end of the
game, and made some big shots,” said first-year
Sam Gage. “We executed well offensively, but
were unable to get stops on defense when it mat-
tered the most, late in the game.”
“Our inability to get big stops defensively
down the stretch, especially with their point
guard was the difference,” agreed head coach
Mike McGrath.
Unfortunately this is not the first time a loss
has occurred at the wire. The Maroons (1–4) are
well aware that their record would read differ-
ently had the games gone slightly more in their
favor. Of their four losses, two have been by just
Class librarians (l-r): a point, while Sunday’s was by three.
Jenny Hart (2013), Deb Werner (2011), “Both teams were scoring pretty easily and
Julia Gardner (2012), Rebecca Starkey (2014) they just ended up getting the lead at the right
time,” said third-year Michael Sistarsic of the loss
to St. John’s.
The only loss by a significant margin occurred
guides.lib.uchicago.edu/classlibrarians
Become a
SEXUAL
Resident Head ASSAULT
In the University
House System
Resident Heads live in the College Houses to provide guidance, advice and
direction to members of the undergraduate House communities. Advanced graduate
students are encouraged to apply. Single, domestic-partnered, or married persons
who are at least 25 years of age can apply. Children are welcome.
Compensation is valued at approximately $18,000 for a single person.
For married persons, the value is increased by the meals and health benefits
provided for spouses and children and has been estimated to be as high as $32,000.
Compensation consists of a cash stipend, furnished apartment for 12 months of the
year, meals when the College is in session, and University student medical insurance
Winter Quarter
for full-time registered students and their dependents.
Application materials and additional information are available on the
Office of Undergraduate Student Housing website at
http://housing.uchicago.edu
[ Information Sessions \
Information Sessions about this position and the selection process will be held on
Thursday, January 6, in the Dames Club at 7:00PM ~ 1369 E. Hyde Park Blvd.
(Fairfax); Monday, January 10, and Thursday, January 13, at 7:00 PM in Burton-
Judson Courts Residence Hall ~ 1005 E. 60th Street; Wednesday, January 19, at 7:00
PM ~ 5710 S. Woodlawn and Thursday, January 20, at 4:00PM ~ Family Resource
Center ~ Ida Noyes Hall ~ 1212 E. 59th Street Lower Level.
Student Counseling
Attendance at one of these sessions is required for all applicants.
& Resource Service
[ APPLICATION DEADLINE: JANUARY 24, 2011 \
11
last Tuesday at Lake Forest College where the
Foresters won 76–58.
“I thought that it was a tough game for us,
mostly because Lake Forest played exceptionally
well,” commented McGrath.
The game began with an aggressive attack by
Lake Forest who scored the first three shots in
the beginning minutes to set the score 8–0.
“They got out to a fast start, and we didn’t
score for the first four-plus minutes of the game,”
said Gage. “Every time we made a run to close
the deficit, they answered with a run of their
own, which was usually in the form of a few
three-point baskets.”
Of the 25 threes Lake Forest attempted, they
scored 15, or 60 percent. This is compared to
their shots-taken average of 50 percent, and
their significantly lower two-point average of 39
percent.
“We did a good job on their top player, but
they shot very well from the perimeter. We need-
ed to do a better job in this area defensively,”
continued McGrath.
Despite the rocky start, it is clear the team
knows what it needs to improve on, and is
ready to do so in order to come through when
it counts.
“We are a pretty potent offensive team and
are executing well, especially considering that
we have been without our top scorer,” said
McGrath. ”We need to get better at the defensive
end to compete for the UAA championship.”
They have quite a few games before confer-
ence play starts in January.
“We play two tough regional opponents
this coming week in Wheaton and Wesleyan,”
said Sustarsic. “We also start the new year with
Augustana, and they’re good.”
The Maroons play at Wheaton this Tuesday.
SURVIVORS
GROUP
Sexual assault is a violent
crime that may leave its victims
feeling fear, guilt, shame and
anger.
The Student Counseling and
Resource Service will be
offering a support group for
female survivors of sexual
assault during Winter Quarter.
This group will enable you
to share your feelings with
others who have had similar
experiences and together find
ways to heal.
Please contact Dana Regett,
dregett@uchicago.edu, for more
information and to schedule a
pre-group interview.
 IN QUOTES

SPORTS
“I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM
THIS??? HOW ???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO...”
—Buffalo Bills wide receiver Steve Johnson, tweeting @God after
dropping a game-winning pass against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Best of the Best

FALL 2010 HIGHLIGHT REEL
Top Individual Top Team Performances
Performances
UAA WOMEN’S
BRIZZOLARA CHAMPIONSHIP SOCCER
423 Dee Brizzolara
against Carnegie.
The second-year wide
FOOTBALL
13-10 Football beats Wash
U to win the UAA.
11 Years since women’s
soccer last won the UAA
title. Defeating rivals Wash
receiver broke school records by In perhaps the biggest U would be nothing special but for the
scoring 5 touchdowns, three receiv- understatement of the season, Marshall fact that this was the purest game of
ing and two returning kicks, for 432 Oium said about the upcoming game the season. By this time the Maroons
all-purpose yards. The Maroons "Playing for the conference champion- had already clinched the UAA title,
destroyed the Tartans 61-22. ship and the Founders Cup means a lot their first in 11 years, and an automatic
to our team." It's no Heisman, but the berth to the NCAA tournament. This
Chicago Boys claimed both the confer- was a game where they had nothing Chicago celebrates after beating Wash U on
LAWTON ence and the Founders Cup when they to play for but honor and a love of the November 13 to win the UAA football championship.

20:57 Liz Lawton at

NCAA Regionals.
Lawton capped her
defeated rival Wash U 13-10. Fans were
so excited that somewhere between a
dozen and two dozen stormed the field.
game, and they did just that. DARREN LEOW/MAROON

cross-country career by besting a field Not even a headstanding celebration Milestones

of 263 winners at the NCAA regionals, could take away from the victory.
finishing the 6K course in 20:57, five sec-
onds ahead of any other runner.
STONEWALL VOLLEYBALL WOLFF
CROSS COUNTRY
GORMLEY 10th Wo m e n ’ s c r o s s
country at NCAAs.
8 Shutouts on the season
for Emma Gormley.
“Stonewall” Gormley
1st Women’s volleyball
earned its first-ever
NCAA bid. Behind the
212 Points scored by Clay
Wolff. Wolff ended his
spectacular career as the

4th Emma Gormley

against Brandeis.
Gormley made seven
saves to shut out Brandeis at this sea-
son’s UAA title game. It was her fourth
consecutive shut-out, and eighth of the
season.
On the national scene
the women's cross country team
snagged 10th place on the chilly plains
of the Hawkeye State. The Maroons
were led by Liz Lawton's sixth place
finish, and more heart than 10 tin men,
after visiting Oz.
ended conference play with four
goose -eggs, leaving opposing
strikers weeping at the 18-yard-
line.
supersized prowess of third-year
All-American Isis Smalls, the team
traveled to Springfield, Ohio to
team leader in touchdown recep-
tions (35) and total points (212). In
addition, he captained the team to
compete in the eight-team tourna- its first conference championship
ment after finishing 30-12 on the since 2005.
season.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Offense falters as Maroons take loss at La Crosse

By Mahmoud Bahrani
Sports Staff
While many students were
traveling to their homes across
the country for Thanksgiving, the
women’s basketball team trav-
eled to LaCrosse, Wisconsin for
the annual Holiday Inn Express
Thanksgiving Classic. The Maroons
fell in the championship game
to hosts UW-La Crosse—ranked
22nd in the country—by a score of
62–56. Their loss came just a day
after defeating Luther 85–55 in the
semifinals tournament.
The game against Luther was
the best of the young season for
the Maroons. A 10–0 run in the
first half gave the Maroons the
early commanding lead. Luther
finally cut the lead down to 12
with 12:33 remaining after being
down by as much as 20, but the
Maroons quickly reasserted con-
trol over the game with a stifling
defense. Luther did not score for
an entire five -minute stretch in
the second half, during which the
Maroons were able to put up 18
points, placing the game out of
reach.
The Maroons shot close to 53
percent from beyond the three-
point line on 10–19 shooting and
made 56 percent of their shots for
Fourth-year Dana Kaplan makes a jump shot during a the game.
home game against North Central earlier this season. According to coach Aaron
MATT BOGEN/MAROON Roussell, the offensive efficiency
came from putting pressure on the
Luther defense. “We forced their
defense into a lot of scramble situ-
ations which helped us get a lot of
open looks. We are a good shoot-
ing team, but when we are able to
get wide open looks we turn into a
great shooting team.”
The Maroons dominated inside
play as third-years Taylor Simpson
and Morgan Herrick shot a com-
bined 13–16 from the field, scor-
ing 30 points and grabbing eight
boards.
“Taylor and Morgan had a great
matchup inside that they took
advantage of, [and that] helped
us get open looks from the perim-
eter,” said coach Roussell.
The championship game against
host La Crosse was a different
story. The Maroons were four for
17 from behind the arc against
a stingy La Crosse defense. The
women struggled from the field as
well, shooting only 37 percent for
the game.
However, the Maroons’ solid
defense helped keep the game close
and competitive, with the lead
changing 10 times in the first half
alone. “We played good defense
throughout that game, but we really
struggled scoring,” said Simpson.
The critical point of the game
came with 48 seconds left, when
La Crosse’s Taylor Larson drained
a three -pointer. The Maroons
failed to respond on the other
end of the court, and were forced
to foul. Free throws by Larson
clinched the game for La Crosse.
The Maroons failed to score in the
final two minutes and twenty-three
seconds.
“[University of Wisconsin La
Crosse] is a very good defensive
squad, but we found some holes
that we just couldn’t take advan-
tage of in the last few possessions,”
said coach Roussell. “I think in
those last couple minutes especial-
ly, we made some mental mistakes,
and paid for it,” said Simpson.
La Crosse’s ranking didn’t
intimidate the unranked Maroons.
Said coach Roussell, “We expected
to win that game and we’re disap-
pointed we didn’t.”
However, according to third-
year Bryanne Halfhill, the Maroons’
leading scorer for the day, it was a
valuable early-season experience to
lose a tight game against a tough
team.
“We’ve learned a lot from this
game and we’re going to come
back a better team because of it,”
said Halfhill. “We’re lucky it’s still
early and this loss stings, but we
will make up for it the rest of the
season.”
The Maroons will have a chance
to redeem themselves tomorrow
at home against Wheaton College,
another unranked opponent. The
game tips off tomorrow night at
6 p.m.