The University of Chicago’s president Robert Zimmer spends much of his time traveling the country, often to discuss a favorite issue of his: academic freedom. This week, academic freedom comes to the University of Chicago in the form of a three-day symposium. The full schedule is extensive over the three-day period and includes hot-button issues on a college campus such as student journalism, the admissions process, and responsible investing.

The biggest event of the series, held on Thursday, May 5 from 2:50 to 5, is a conversation with President Zimmer, Law School Professor Geof Stone, Law School Dean Michael Schill, and Chronicle of Higher Education Editor Peter Schmidt, followed by a keynote speech by Professor Stanley Fish. Geof Stone is a legal heavyweight with an extensive body of work on the First Amendment. In addition to being a professor at Florida International University, Stanley Fish was formerly Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Fish writes extensively on the politics of the university, particularly regarding campus speech codes and political statements made by universities.

The Chicago Weekly, Metropolis Coffee, and the University of Chicago’s Student Run Coffee Shops invite you to a coffee tasting on the UofC’s campus. The tasting will take place at Hallowed Grounds (5706 S. University, 2nd floor) tomorrow, April 8th, from 5-7pm. For $5, witness a cupping session, hear performances by local bands Lakesigns and Sparrowdown, and enjoy a variety of desserts!

Tony Dreyfuss, owner of Metropolis Coffee, will be coming in to demonstrate a cupping session and discuss some of his recent adventures to Ethiopia to get beans. Stacey Brown, Coffee Shop Coordinator at the UofC, will be leading a coffee tasting, where we get to know what we’re drinking.

All proceeds of the event will go to promoting local journalism!

(Dan Forbush)

According to an article in yesterday’s Tribune, the Shoreland’s developer has hired an architect for the former hotel and dormitory’s renovation. Antheus Capital has hired Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects, designer of the award-winning Aqua residential tower downtown, to redesign the Shoreland’s interior for 350 rental units. Proposals include turning one of the ballrooms into a restaurant or event space and adding ammenities like a small bank and gym, but Antheus and Gang still have to convince the community to get on board. U of C students don’t come off too well in the article:

The Shoreland was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, an honor that meant little to undergrads. One student’s fond Shoreland memory, posted on a blog, was of hurling cans of Schlitz over the fire escape to the street below while taking in the downtown skyline.

At least they were having fun. (via Gapersblock)

This Saturday, Shades, Yale University’s youngest a cappella group, is performing at the University of Chicago International House. Shades’ repertoire draws on many different musical backgrounds, but its focus is on African-American music, particularly R&B, gospel, jazz, pop, and traditional music.  Having attended several Shades performances, I can attest to the true talent of the group. And normally I am a music snob. But their tone is rich, and their harmonies are tight.  And it doesn’t hurt that the group is incredibly good-looking across the board.  Some of the songs they’ve showcased have ranged from Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love” to a traditional Caribbean mineworker song (adapted from “Sweet Honey in the Rock”). The performance is free, but donations are encouraged.

Shades will perform at the International House at 8pm on Saturday, March 13th. Catch a video of their recent performance in San Diego here.

Tensions ran high last night in the packed McCormick Tribune Lounge, where members of the University of Chicago community gathered to discuss the UCPD’s arrest of a black male student in the Regenstein Library last Wednesday. Dean of Students Kim Goff-Crews, UCPD chief Marlon Lynch, and Assistant Director of the Library Jim Vaughan were there to mediate the discussion and answer questions. But as more than one student pointed out, they said very little, other than that the situation would be dealt with appropriately. The ongoing investigation—involving interviews of witnesses of the arrest—prevented them from disclosing the details of the case.

Some audience members asked about library and UCPD policy, and when it’s necessary to show ID (answer: on University property, almost always). Witnesses of the arrest described it as disturbingly violent, and at least two related their frustration with the lack of a quick response from library and university administrators. The main theme and sentiment of the discussion was summed up by one especially skilled orator, who said, to loud applause, “As someone who’s been affiliated with the University as a grad student for more than eight years, I’m sick and tired of black students being racially profiled by our own police department!” Several African-American students told their own stories of being harassed by the UCPD, and dozens of hands shot up in response to a query of who in the audience had been racially profiled.

The discussion ended without much closure, but Goff-Crews encouraged students to organize an executive committee to continue the conversation, with the possibility of more open meetings in the coming weeks.

You can read more about the meeting in a Maroon article.

Last Friday’s Maroon reported that on the evening of February 26, a fourth-year University of Chicago student, Mauriece Dawson, was arrested in the Regenstein Library for criminal trespass and resisting arrest. University of Chicago Police Department officers were responding to a complaint by a library clerk that Dawson and a friend were being disruptive, and claim that he refused to show ID or leave the library when asked. However, witnesses say the officers never requested ID and used undue force to arrest Dawson, who is African-American. There will be an open meeting about the incident this Tuesday from 6 to 8pm in the McCormick Tribune Lounge at the Reynolds Club, 5706 S. University Ave., with representatives from Campus and Student Life, the College, the UCPD, and the Regenstein Library.

In last week’s issue I wrote about poet Charles Bernstein, who gave a reading on the University of Chicago’s campus on February 14.  Here is the interview that I did with Bernstein the previous day. Read the rest of this entry »

A former Chicago Weekly writer and Features Editor like Katie Buitrago! All of us at the Weekly want to congratulate Katie on her excellent feature in the most recent Chicago Reader, “What sort of woman reads Playboy?” It’s about Peggy Wilkins, a forty-something Hyde Park resident and University of Chicago Library server technician, who has worked her way to the top of Playboy Magazine fandom. She’s even had to rent an second apartment above the one she shares with her boyfriend to store her exhaustive collection of magazines and posters. So what drives Wilkins’s passion? Read the article to find out!

The University of Chicago student activist group SOUL (Students Organizing United with Labor) got some big-time press coverage for their latest demonstration against hour cuts for residence hall staff. In addition to the usual chants, the activists sang their own protest-specific renditions of Christmas carols last Thursday outside the campus housing office and administration building. The story appeared in the online and Chicago print editions of the New York Times and was reported by the recently founded Chicago News Cooperative.

Our indicted former governor Rod Blagojevich will be speaking and signing his new memoir, “The Governor,” at the University of Chicago Bookstore (Barnes & Noble) this week.

The signing will take place Tuesday, December 8, at 2pm.

From the Times’s review:

His publicist has described the book, published by Phoenix Books, as a “six-figure deal.” But in his writing, Mr. Blagojevich seems to have a specific message for the public, and perhaps more precisely, for those who might sit on his jury in a federal trial next year: He did nothing corrupt, though others have. He then lays out what he portrays as Chicago’s gritty, crass political rules, established long before him, in which power is traded for favors.

…

Ms. Aimen suggested that Mr. Blagojevich might struggle to keep his own legal team because of his desire to talk openly about the charges. “I think he must be a hard guy to handle,” she said.

For those who don’t remember his term, this quote from a press conference about sums it up: “It’s like the little boy with a pile of horse manure, I kept digging cheerfully in that and found a pony in there — the pony is free public transportation for all seniors in the state of Illinois.”

The local branch of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty will be hosting a study break tomorrow at the University of Chicago with Mark Clements, a recently-freed victim of police torture. According to promotional materials by the group, Clements was wrongly imprisoned for 28 years (beginning when he was 16) and brutalized while in police custody, experiences which he will speak about at the event. This will all take place from noon to 2 pm at the Community Lounge at 5710 Woodlawn Ave.

The Chicago Police have a checkered history with regard to torture; former CPD detective Jon Burge’s 1993 conviction on charges of having, among other things, used a cattle-prod to elicit confessions from suspects in police custody led to a general scandal a few years back. The talk will address these and other issues in local criminal justice, including juvenile sentencing, along with its main issue of ending capital punishment. Check it out.

Maoist polemicist Raymond Lotta issued a reply to Keith Jamieson’s recent essay, Everything You Know About Communism is Right, and had it passed out in front of the University’s Cobb Hall today.

The reply argues that the atrocities carried out in the last century by Communist revolutionary governments are part of the “learning curve” of the revolutionary project, and corrects the claim that Stalin killed millions of people to reflect the mere 700,000 or so death sentences carried out between 1937 and 1938. He asserts that regardless of the atrocities of communism, people have been lied to about it, and that the record needs to be corrected. His rebuttal also corrects some factual errors from his recent speech.

One of Lotta’s fellow Revolutionary Communist Party members and polemicists (who is curiously unnamed on the flier) will be on campus to informally “take on all comers” next Tuesday, Dec 1, 11am to 3pm in Hutchinson Commons at the University of Chicago.

A favorite example of the Reg graffiti

Quinn Dombrowski, the enterprising Regenstein Library photographer who has been documenting graffiti in the stacks since the summer of 2007, has put a new spin on her photography by launching the RegRemix contest, encouraging people to “reuse and remix” the graffiti through poetry, song, something tangible, or just about any form imaginable.

The contest is being held in conjunction with the release of her photography book on the same theme, Crescat Graffiti, Vita Excolatur: Confessions of the University of Chicago. The expansive project, which contains over 700 photos, has been transformed by Dombrowski herself into buttons, mugs, and shirts.

The contest runs until December 20, and prizes include a shirt for the winner (with a graffiti of their choice) and a graffitied mug for the runner-up.

Observing the lecture delivered by Communist grand panjandrum Raymond Lotta, I couldn’t help but feel as though I should share my thoughts on his scintillating exegesis of two or three mid-1960s Mao Zedong speeches. Enjoy. Stay tuned for a blurb on this talk in next week’s issue.

7:13: Lotta begins with a parable about Christian fundamentalists seizing control of America and suppressing the theory of evolution. This is, according to Lotta, “an analogy for the situation that exists in intellectual discourse today with regard to Communism,” which is true insofar as Robert Conquest bases his entire opposition to Communist doctrine on a fervent belief in Jesus. Meaning it is not true.

7:15: Lotta can’t seem to find a comfortable distance from the microphone.

7:16: Lotta claims that the U.S. women’s movement was sparked by the Cultural Revolution. This explains that weird three-year period in which Betty Friedan was such a vocal supporter of the Red Guards.

7:18: Environmentalism is also Communist! Huzzah.

7:20: Lotta asserts that it is the capitalists who are living in the utopian Jesus Cloud Heaven Land, while the ultrarealistic governments of Laos and Cuba continue with their hard-nosed pen-pushing.

7:23: The greatest weapon in the capitalist arsenal appears to be PowerPoint, which Lotta still struggles to use.

7:24:  “Socialism is a new form of political power in which the formerly oppressed and exploited, in alliance with the middle classes and professionals and great majority of society, rule over society with the leadership of a visionary, vanguard party.” Guess who thinks they’re in the vanguard party?

7:28: Lotta attempts to imitate the voice of a Japanese imperialist and winds up sounding like Mickey Mouse. Read the rest of this entry »

Of all the pampleteers and signature-gatherers on the University of Chicago campus, one type stands out in particular for its smoldering eyes and overall inscrutability. No, I don’t mean the anti-circumcision activist by the Hospital, I’m talking about the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Avakianist entity that dispatches a mix of balding, shabbily-dressed weirdos and weirdo-ettes to hand out socialist newspapers and try to persuade students that the Cultural Revolution was a net plus, and that Stalin wasn’t bad, really, honest, check out our website.

This week’s issue of the Chicago Weekly includes a Perspectives piece by University of Chicago alum Ryan McCarl about an attack on the UofC Men’s Cross Country team that left one student permanently injured. At press time we still didn’t have all the details on the attack, but since then we’ve found out the whole story.

Two weeks ago, on Friday, October 15, 15 members of the Men’s Cross Country team were running west along Garfield Boulevard, a route they’ve often run before. At about 3:50, when they reached Garfield and State, an eastbound green Buick sedan drove by and opened fire with paintballs. Second-year Andrew Wong turned to look at the car and was struck on the bridge of his nose by a paintball, which ricocheted into his right eye. His cornea was scratched and his iris was partially (and permanently) detached, allowing bright light into his inner eye. Wong went to the ER that night and has seen an ophthalmologist several times since then. Read the rest of this entry »

At left, a civil discussion between both parties; at right, smokers and associates. (Sam Feldman)

While yesterday’s “rumble” at the C-Bench didn’t involve the much-hoped-for synchronized snapping face-offs or moody Leonard Bernstein music, it drew a sizable turnout and transformed the relaxed atmosphere of the C-Bench into one of palpably curious excitement. Students who usually don’t sit at the unofficial hipster hangout found themselves milling about within its acoustically perfect shape, and smokers who use the C-Bench for disaffected lounging took new pride in brandishing their cigarettes, drawing and puffing with distinct vigor. Read the rest of this entry »

The University of Chicago’s sizable Indian population has finally caught the eye of the supreme deity that is the Bollywood film industry.

Hitting theaters last month, “What’s Your Raashee?” stars Harman Baweja as Yogesh Patel, a Booth School student who studies by day and disc jockeys by night. Summoned home by his parents, where, like in almost all Bollywood movies, a marriage is forced upon him, Patel decides to meet exactly twelve girls—one from each sign of the zodiac. All are played by Priyanka Chopra in a deeply complicated undertaking of lengthy proportions.

While the film has received chilly reviews back in India, I, for one, am glad that some attention is finally being brought to the Booth School’s seedy underworld of wild DJs.

Check out this excerpt from the film of Patel break dancing in all his branded glory.

(Thanks to the University of Chicago Magazine, which tweeted this to our attention.)

Yesterday’s post titled “University of Chicago jocks move to take back ancestral bench” has generated a lot of hubbub. Patrick Offner, president of the Executive Board of the Order of the C, today informed me that he and the Order of the C “are NOT taking back the C-Bench, but rather using it as a setting for activities aimed at bettering the campus community.” He also called the email to the Women’s Athletic Association mailing list that I quoted in my last post “misinformed,” and said what’s happening at the C-Bench tomorrow is in fact the first larger meeting for something called the “C-Bench Initiative.” The Initiative, according to Offner, “will involve several projects over the course of the year, but many of these are still in the planning phase. Potential ideas are to pass out information about healthy lifestyles and provide nutritional information to students.” Offner also suggested that I was focusing too much on the C-Bench itself, which he says was chosen because of its “historical significance related to the athletic community” and because it’s in an area many students pass through.

So is that what’s happening tomorrow? Is the Order of the C just starting an initiative to improve health on campus?

According to emails obtained by the Weekly, Offner and other members of the Order of the C contacted a number of athletic teams in the past few days to alert them about the event tomorrow. One email from a member of the Order of the C Executive Board to a team mailing list was titled “TAKING BACK THE C BENCH” and began as follows:

“Team,

I’ve got something very important to discuss with you.

1. The year is 1903. The “C” bench is erected outside of Cobb Hall. Soon after, Varsity athletes and their girlfriends make it the coolest place to be.

Flash forward, the year is 2009. The C bench has become a haven for pretentious cigarette smoking hipsters and their star-crossed love affairs. Varsity athletes are rarely seen enjoying the C bench’s well designed seating and atmosphere, meant to encourage healthy discussion and social engagement.

This, gentlemen, is a problem.”

The email goes on to inform team members that “all of the Men’s Athletic Teams on campus, led by the Order of the C, will be staging a protest of our new organization, the SAAS (Student Athletes Against Smoking)” on Thursday. The last part of the email before the signature reads:

“I encourage all of you to attend, to wear either your lettermen jackets or some other athletic related attire, and to help pass out fliers and generally discourage hipsters and others who continue to besmirch the good name of the C bench. See you all there.”

This email, like the one sent out to the WAA mailing list on Monday, makes it sound like what’s happening tomorrow isn’t just a meeting about a public health campaign. It makes it sound like what’s happening tomorrow is a jocks vs. hipsters rumble.

And then there’s the picture at the bottom of a poster Offner sent to the orderofthecboard mailing list:

The Tribune isn’t predicting rain tomorrow afternoon, so I’d encourage everyone to drop by the C-Bench around 1pm and see for themselves what’s going on.

The C-Bench. (Sam Feldman)

The C-Bench, a large semicircular stone bench placed on the University of Chicago campus through the generosity of the Class of 1903, has always had a reputation. Until the 1960s, it was reserved for varsity lettermen and their dates. More recently it’s become known as the haunt of chain-smoking hipsters. But this Thursday, a group of athletes is looking to win back the bench. The Order of the C, the University’s varsity letterman group, is asking all interested campus athletes to gather at the C-Bench at 1pm the day after tomorrow in order to “take it back from the smokers,” according to an email sent out to the Women’s Athletic Association mailing list on Monday afternoon.

Patrick Offner, president of the Order of the C’s Executive Board, commented, “Our hope is that the university will openly embrace our intentions. The C-bench was once associated with all the positive ideals of the university: open discussion, tradition, and healthy lifestyles. This point of congregation for athletes, and later the entire student body, has been claimed by a smaller, exclusionary group and the consensus is for change.”

Update: For the latest C-Bench news, see our next post.