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
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