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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1986)
11 \ ‘An Ethos of Excellence’ The University of Chicago cares very much about intellectual challenge and achievement, and very little about making an impression ■ t's Tuesday night at 10:30, and we’re Btouring the most popular hangout at Bthe University of Chicago: the Regen stein Library. Everywhere you go through out the five floors of "the Reg," you can see Chicago students doing what they most en joy doing, upwards of 16 hours a day, every day—studying. Ei<eryone at the University of Chicago, it seems, goes to the library every night And that’s why the Reg is more than a quiet place to learn: it’s the social hub of the school as well. If economics jun ior Christina Tavares expects to see her boyfriend, she must go to the Reg—"second floor, first cubicle on the right"—not that she wouldn't be there most nights anyway When folks do party, it’s usually in the form of brief respites at nearby fraterni ties—and even these restrained festivities are truthfully called "study breaks.” But then, the University of Chicago has always been dedicated to intellectual rigor and scholarly success. Funded at its incep tion with a few of the Rockefeller millions, the school opened on Oct. 1.1892, witheight former college presidents on its fnculty. (Today nearly lOOChicagoalumsarepresi dents or chancellors at other U.S. colleges and universities * Thus far, 54 people af filiated with the school—as faculty, stu dentsand/or researchers—have won Nobel Frizes. Sometimes the profusion of laure ates can be dizzying When physics Prof. James Cronin won his Nobel in 1980, for example, heasked that his press conference be scheduled around a class that he was taking—from fellow physics Prof. Subrah manyan Chandrasekhar, who won hut No bel three years later. schools 01 mougni: .vs any nistory major can tell you, the nuclear age was ushered in at Chicago in 1942 with the first man-made nuclear chain reaction. Chicago also devel oped sociology and political science as scholarly disciplines Moreover, the uni versity has spread its influence so widely that "Chicago schools" of thought now flourish in several areas of study, including economics and law "There is an ethos of excellence here," says University of Chica go president Hanna Gray. "Our major goal is to maintain that." Chicago was one of the first schools in the country to be con ceived as a t rue u n iversity. ded i cated to research and a balance among graduate, professional and undergraduatestudies. To day that balance still holds: de spite a nationwide decline in the number of graduate stu dents, enrollments in the uni versity's three areas—under graduated, 100 students), grad uate (2.700) and professional (2,700)—remain roughly equal. Nothing matters more at Chi cago than the life of the mind. Significantly, the most intense campus event is strictly aca demic; each spring, in order to land the courses and teachers they desire, hundreds of stu dents camp out overnight on the Sunday before registration. Heidi Cuesta, a senior in eco nomics, remembers getting in line 21 hours ahead of time— and findin two people ahead of her Was the wait worth it? "Yes," she says, "I got the class I wanted.” 1 ms dedication to academ ic achievement can sometimes seem fanatic. Students grum ble that they pack a semes ter’s worth of work into each of their 10-weekquarters. Not sur prisingly, the combination of striving students and demand ing professors often produces strain Many students say they have trouble relaxing. "There’s always this pervasive sense of guilt—that you should be doing something,” says Angela An * Intense about the right things': Gothic atmosphere in Hutchinson Commons (top), camping out to get a choice class, fraternizing in the Regenstein Library STEVE LEONARD JIM WHKilfT STEV'K UONARl)
