Brought to you by the editors of the Core
 
 
 
 
 
 
Fall 2017
 
 
 
 
 
 
01 Here comes Santa Claus … to scare you
02 If you love free speech, eat a latke
03 Racing against the clock
04 Seek and find: UChicago mural edition
05 How Jesse Goodwin, AB'91, became Tyehimba Jess
06 Does this ring a bell?
 
 
 
 
 
 
01
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here comes Santa Claus ... to scare you
 
 
Adapted from "Some Observations on the Santa Claus Custom" by Renzo Sereno, Psychiatry, 1947. Sereno, educated at the University of Rome and the Sorbonne, was a postdoctoral fellow at UChicago from 1932 to 1941. He is thought to be one of the first to denounce Santa Claus.
 
The practice of dedicating a season of the year to children is widespread throughout the world. What makes Santa Claus so different from all other mythical Christmas figures is that the saint appears in person.
 
The child is led to Santa Claus and makes known to Santa some prearranged desiderata. The gifts are given against a pledge of good behavior, and they are in the nature more of a bribe than a spontaneous donation.
 
I had the chance to observe 20 children of kindergarten age taken to a department store for a personal conference with Santa. They approached him with patent discomfort, because they saw no reason for disclosing their wishes to a stranger who, for unexplained reasons, had so much power over them. The acute misery of the children is rendered visible by the joy with which they greet Christmas morning, actually a sense of relief. Santa--not unlike an ogre or a warlock--is away for another year.
 
 
 
 
 
 
02
 
 
 
 
 
 
If you love free speech, eat a latke
 
 
   
  The latke has historically been the principal driving force behind the constitutional protection of free speech in the United States, whereas the hamantash has been a powerful source for censorship.  
  --Geoffrey R. Stone, JD'71, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, Latke-Hamantash Debate, 1993  
 
 
  Watch this year's debate, featuring Ayelet Fishbach (Chicago Booth), Konstantin Umanskiy (UChicago Medicine), and Simeon Chavel (Divinity School).  
 
 
 
 
 
 
03
 
 
 
 
 
 
Racing against the clock
 
 
"I'm a planner and a scheduler and a lister," says Tali Naibryf, Class of 2019 (psychology and public policy). A sprinter/hurdler for UChicago, last summer Naibryf competed for the United States at the Maccabiah Games (sometimes called the Jewish Olympics). Here's how she gets it all done.
 
1   List: "I am a master of lists. I will list everything--I include showers. I used to write everything out, then I moved into Google Calendar."
 
2   Sleep: "I usually go to bed no later than 11 p.m. I need eight hours. There are certain things, like what I eat and how I sleep, that I don't compromise on."
 
3   Eat: "I cook all my meals. That's how I decompress. That hour that I'm cooking is my 'Tali time.'"
 
4   Meet: Naibryf makes a point of scheduling weekly lunches with friends she won't see through track, the Organization of Latin American Students (she's originally from Argentina), or her job in the Admissions Office. "It's very easy to be insulated and not reach out."
 
5   Pivot: Two weeks before finals in her first quarter, Naibryf broke her right hand in a fluke accident while hurdling. (She knocked hands with another runner and the impact was just right to break two bones.) The injury required surgery. She couldn't write or properly start from blocks.

Working with her adviser, Naibryf was assigned a scribe to write answers she dictated for a math test. She also went to practice, where she used modified blocks to keep training. "You make it work," she says.
 
 
 
 
 
 
04
 
 
 
 
 
 
Seek and find: UChicago mural edition
 
 
Last summer Jacob Goodman, Class of 2019, painted a mural in the College's Admissions Office. Among the Chicago iconography Goodman included:
 
Carl Sagan, AB'54, SB'55, SM'56, PhD'60. "We don't have a lot of famous-face-recognizable alumni," says Goodman. "It helps to have that to latch onto."
 
His textbooks for Soc. "The best class I've taken by far."
 
Broomball. "I was in Halperin House in South. We were terrible."
 
Latke-Hamantash Debate. "I'm not that observant of a Jewish person, but that's the thing I go to religiously."
 
Polar bear from Kuvia. "I've never done Kuvia. I can't. I can't."
 
Dean Boyer. "He's like the mascot-god of UChicago, always watching you from his bicycle."
 
CTA "L" map. "I forgot the Pink Line. That's something that bugs me."
 
See a larger, annotated version of the mural.
 
Read about Goodman's father, David Goodman, AB'84, executive producer of Family Guy and American Dad!
 
 
 
 
 
 
05
 
 
 
 
 
 
How Jesse Goodwin, AB'91, became Tyehimba Jess
 
Tyehimba Jess is the author of two poetry collections: Leadbelly (Verse Press, 2005) and Olio (Wave Books, 2016), which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Tyehimba, pronounced tie-EEM-bah, is a Nigerian name meaning "stand as a nation."
 
 
I'm from that time when a lot of black folks my age were changing their names. I decided I did not want to carry the name of the people who used to own my forefathers and foremothers.
 
My father's name was Jesse, his father's name was Jesse, my name was Jesse. So I decided to keep Jess. I got a book of African names and looked through it. I probably thought about it for three years or so before I was actually introducing myself as Tyehimba Jess.
 
By 1993 I had my first chapbook. In my chapbook I was Tyehimba Jess. It was a nom de plume but also more than that. In 1998 I had it changed officially.
 
Right after slavery, a lot of people did choose their own names: Washington, Freeman, all that. I think a lot of folks at this point think it's like turning your back on the name of your family. But at the same time, it's a political choice. For me, it was also a poetic choice. I like the way it sounds.
 
Read more about Jess and his work.
 
 
 
 
 
 
06
 
 
 
 
 
 
Does this ring a bell?
 
 
From the archive: The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Carillon, consisting of 72 bells, was cast in Croydon, England, and dedicated on Thanksgiving Day 1932. The bass bell weighs 18.5 tons.
 
Listen to Drake's "Hotline Bling" played on the carillon.
Request a song for your next campus visit.
 
College Review review (our favorite stories of 2017): Dean Boyer's words of wisdom from the Habsburgs. Misha Collins, AB'97, Supernatural star and former Burton-Judson resident. Hanna Holborn Gray, UChicago's first (and so far only) woman president. The furious Tweet storms of wikipedia brown, aka Eve Ewing, AB'08, who's also a poet. How sociologist Forrest Stuart learned to talk to gang members. How to get your finances in order before you turn 30.

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