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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1986)
derson. a senior in math and physics. But if no one would mistake Chicago for a country club, students also admit they have their share of good times. Says sopho more Tom Inck, "Of course, there is a social life. Whenever you put 20-year-olds togeth er, they ’re going to party, "(let-toget hers at Chicago, however, are more likely to be small and intelligent than large and rowdy. That's especially true since, last spring, when Chicago’s administrators quashed the Lascivious Costume Ball—the more tit illating the costume, the cheaper the ad mission. The annual event, which inspired the school’s most studious drinking, died after administrators refused to let it take place on campus. Midway monsters: Not that Chicago stu dents lack for extracurricular activities. In the past few years more students have be gun to work on the campus paper, the Ma roon. And, stoked by star athletes in foot ball and women’s basketball, student interest in varsity sports has shot up. "The student body has become more well round ed," says Bruce Montella, who was the lead ing collegiate rusher at the Division III level last year as a senior and was a football All American before entering Chicago’s medi cal school. Then again, as the original Mon ster of the Midway, six-time winner of the Bie 10 championship before president Rob ert Maynard Hutchins ruled football out of bounds in 1939, Chicago is only returning to a noble tradition. The school re sumed intercollegiate play in 1969, and now competes in the newly formed University Ath letic Association, a league of eight schools better known for scholarship than sports. Walkingaround this campus, you’re less likely to overhear Monday-morning quarterback ing than rarefied intellectualiz ing. A casual discussion of the limits of nihilism, for example, dissolves into laughter when one person says, "Well, then you'd be Nietzsche.” Some times the conversation is even more singular. "You get a high number of people walking around talking to themselves, says Kon Becker, an M B A. student who attended Michigan as an undergraduate. The university prospers by letting bril liance take its course—hiring the best minds and giving them total freedom. This enticement has kept Saul Bellow, best-sell ing author and a 1976 Ndbelist, at Chicago for 23 years. Bellow, a 1937 anthropology graduate from Northwestern, teaches lit erature, and he's appointed to the Commit tee on Social Thought, one of the degree granting bureacratic structures created to encourage interdisciplinary work I m an ^ STKYf l H>NARD Scholarly storm: Simulating a tornado in the university's meteorology lab outsider, in a way,” confesses Bellow, "and one of the compliments I'd like to pay the University of Chicago is that it knows how to use this kind ofoutsider." Bellow teaches courseson Joseph Con rad or James Joyceor "whatever comes up" because, he says, “I get to talk to well-thought and extremely intelligent and feeling young people about literature. It gives mea real sense of wheth er I’m connected with contemporary intel lectual currents” To some extent, however, Chicago shel ters itself from other currents. Although it's located in the country’s third largest city, and surrounded by one of the worst ghettos in the United States, you'd never suspect this as you stroll thequiet sidewalks amid a campus dominated by Gothic-styled buildings. In the 1950s the school bought up much of the surrounding Hyde Park area and displaced thousandsof residents, many ofthem black. Today, with 95 percent of the studentsand 80 percent of the faculty living in the neighborhood, Hyde Park isa racially integrated, upper-middle-class place "We live in a beautiful, tree-lined community," says Steven Loevy, assistant dean oft he un dergraduate college. "My kid rides a skate board a mile home from school every day.” Protecting Hyde Park and the school from the South Side Chicago blight that surrounds it are 75 well-equipped campus police. The strong efforts of this security force have provoked complaints from black students, who say that they’re stopped and questioned indiscriminately Fewer than 250 of the nearly 8,(XX) students at the University of Chicago are black and the number is getting smaller—just as it is at schools around the country. The decline at Chicago seems particularly striking be cause so many blacks live near the school, but, says admissions' Dan Hall, "being situ ated on the South Side is not an advantage in attracting these people. There's u sense of wanting to get out.” For all of its past and present glory, the University of Chicago does not seek the spotlight "It's constantly rated in the Top 10,” says John Kruper. a virology graduate student, "yet it's not the school that comes to mind when you say, 'What are the top schools?' " Why is the University of Chica go somewhat less celebrated than its peers? Some say it’s because I he school is not as old and established as 1 larvard or Yale. Others contend that Chicago has been too arro gant—or preoccupied—to publicize its ac complishments And still others argue that the strengths of the University of Chicago just aren't mediagenic—that as long as re search and highly intellectual pursuits dominate the school, it will bo better known in academe than the outside world As John Could, dean of the graduate busi ness schiKil puls it, "Chicago graduates go out and make a terrific contribution that, by its nature, is not going to be very well known." The University of Chicago would never want to win a popularity contest— quite the contrary. Says Charles O’Con nell, who retired last year as vice president and UC dean of students, "The University ofChicugo is like a martini. There are some people who find it an acquired taste It's intense Hut wethink it's intense about the right things." Ron (jivkns in Hyde /\irk .. .. V . .. 00
