Development in Hyde Park has been a contentious issue since the urban renewal of the 1950s, and judging by the crowd at the panel discussion “Making Hyde Park: Development in our Community,” it’s as hot a topic as ever. Over one hundred students and Hyde Park residents crowded into an undersized room in Ida Noyes on Tuesday, March 4, to listen as a diverse group of panelists put forward their visions for the future of Hyde Park. It was an occasion for “conversation, not debate,” as moderator and University Community Service Center director Wallace Goode emphasized, but that didn’t mean voices were not raised as the panelists argued about issues like retail, density, architecture, and the University’s involvement in development. Read the rest of this entry »

Last spring, Clare Johnson and her boyfriend went bike riding on the North Side in search of a neighborhood that wasn’t undergoing gentrification. Johnson, at the time a third-year undergraduate at the University of Chicago, was looking for someplace she could live without contributing to the controversial process whereby working-class, often physically dilapidated neighborhoods are redeveloped and then shoot up in property value. Although gentrification can bring benefits to a neighborhood, from better city services to more extensive retail options, it often has the effect of displacing the current residents, whose families may have lived in that area for generations. Johnson’s four-hour bike ride yielded disappointing results. “Some places are a little worse, some places are a little better,” she says, but nowhere is exempt. “Every neighborhood is in some process of gentrification,” agrees Rebecca Shi, Johnson’s friend and fellow UofC fourth-year. Read the rest of this entry »

On January 31, the Chicago Reader ran a feature exploring the local elections taking place on Super Tuesday. The message of change dominating the presidential primary was also infecting local races, the Reader argued, and for the first time in a long time, true reformers had a chance in local elections. While the results were mixed—few newcomers won—a few elections affecting the South Side and the city at large showed some cracks in Chicago’s vaunted political machine. More interesting, the winds of change came not from political outsiders, but from emerging power establishments and insurgent insiders. We examine some of the most interesting races and find that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Read the rest of this entry »

In their eagerness to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago, four of the city’s largest foundations have created a multimillion-dollar fund to help neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. These areas would likely see the greatest improvements in infrastructure as a result of the Games, yet they are home to the strongest opposition to hosting them. With this in mind, the fund aims to bring residents into the planning process for the Olympics while offsetting some of their potentially adverse effects. Read the rest of this entry »

For an issue that most students agree on, gay marriage has been a surprisingly hot topic at the University of Chicago these past few weeks. On February 5, Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, flew into town for a debate sponsored by the Federalist Society, “Gay Marriage and the Rule of Law.” Her opponent in the debate was University of Chicago Law School professor Mary Ann Case, whose primary fields of interest include the regulation of sexuality and early feminism. As the Federalist Society is a conservative organization, both professors approached the issue from a conservative perspective. In the tradition of ur-conservative Edmund Burke, Wax argued against a brash rationalist remaking of the tradition of marriage, which supports the traditional building block of society: the holy triumvirate of mother, father and child. The large audience of law students received this argument better than Wax’s later arguments, which focused on what she called gay men’s “ambiguous attitude towards monogamy.” Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday, February 5 was an important day for American politics, with five frontrunners among the Republicans and Democrats vying to win their parties’ nomination to become the country’s 44th President. For the event, the University of Chicago Democrats and Republicans transformed the Reynolds Club’s Hallowed Grounds coffee shop, installing a projector and setting up speakers so that students could huddle together and support their candidate as the night’s results unfolded. The place was packed. At the very least there were a hundred people, and though the results started coming in at seven, a solid group of students soldiered on until 11:30 as the number of votes in California and Missouri were still being counted. Read the rest of this entry »

Before 1970, primary elections to determine political candidates were like the Wild West: nominal laws existed, but precinct captains ran individual precincts however they wanted. Voters could be intimidated, influenced, or misled; celebrities and reporters jammed polling places, adding to the chaos. But a landmark court case in 1970 established strict rules which primary polling places have to follow, and people like Harold Wolff were given a task in managing democracy. Read the rest of this entry »

The campaign for president has dragged on for almost two years now. Despite the range of issues that are at stake (Iraq, the War on Terror, presidential power, the economy, torture, Supreme Court appointments, etc.), it would be easy for people, especially college students, to zone out and not participate. It’s understandable; after all, an individual vote doesn’t matter. The likelihood of casting the deciding vote in a school board election, let alone a presidential election, is about the same as getting hit by an asteroid. Read the rest of this entry »