I have to admit, the setting was not as glamorous as I had pictured it. I was less than three feet away from Gloria Steinem, but despite the artful curve of Ratner Athletics Center’s side window I was still sitting on bleachers in a gym and two rooms away from a sorority pool party. Yet, as soon as Steinem took the podium last Saturday, that awareness faded. Laughing, she declared, “Progressives have taken over the University of Chicago!” 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 »