The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

Aaron Bros Sidebar

Newsletter for November 28

Patient info on U of C network was vulnerable to hacks; Organizers demand amends for Douglas gift; Free food at special Maroon issue release party

Good morning. It’s 10th week, and our food issue is out today. Take a peek for interviews with Hyde Park restaurateurs; a cooking how-to; a meditationon race, class, and Harold’s Chicken; and much more.

  • We invite you to join us in the South Lounge of Reynolds Club between 1–3 p.m. for the release party, featuring catering from Cemitas and Open Produce. Click here for the event info.

Health records left vulnerable on University network: An extensive Maroon investigation found that University hospital patient information, admin and UCPD files, and security cameras were potentially vulnerable to hackers. Three weeks after the University was notified, some, but not all, of the vulnerabilities identified by The Maroon appear to have been addressed.

  • The most serious vulnerabilities were due to networked printers potentially being vulnerable to having their printed documents stolen relatively easily by remote hackers (a vulnerability that experts say  likely exists at hospitals, universities, and even governments around the world). These documents can be quite sensitive–The Maroon found printers on the University network that appeared to be printing organ donation logs, surgery face sheets, prescriptions, and even medical records, some of which may have been protected by federal privacy law.

  • A spokesperson responded in a statement, saying the findings of the University’s investigation do not indicate “that any protected health information could be publicly accessed.” The spokesperson declined to say if “publicly accessed” meant publicly accessible to the general public or more specifically accessible to a person with some technical expertise.

Demanding reparations: Organizers will rally in front of Levi Hall today to call on the administration to “make amends for its founding ties to slavery,” referring to a land endowment from Stephen Douglas to the Old University of Chicago, which was established in 1856. More from this morning’s feature story:

  • At a press conference at City Hall today, a national reparations coalition will request that the city void all its contracts with the University until it meets a set of demands, which include establishing a “truth and reconciliation committee that would produce a comprehensive reparations program,” changing the University’s founding date to 1856, and signing a CBA for the development of the Obama Presidential Center.

  • “There is no Hyde Park without Bronzeville,” said Guy Emerson Mount, a member of a working group that laid out the case for reparations in a paper last May. A University spokesperson denied that there is a direct connection between the Old University in Bronzeville and the current campus, saying “the current University of Chicago, founded in 1890, had no financial or legal relationship with the ‘first’ University of Chicago, which was founded in 1856–57 and collapsed in 1886 in a state of debt and foreclosure.” 

Obama Center waits for approval from feds: The federal government has launched a review of the plan to build the Obama Presidential Center on more than 20 acres of Jackson Park, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Two federal laws triggered the review: The National Environmental Policy Act and The National Historic Preservation Act. 

Booth’s Initiative on Global Markets (IGM) Forum polled a group of leading economists on the recent tax reform bill spearheaded by Republicans currently moving from the House to the Senate. Most of the University of Chicago professors on the panel joined the majority in disagreeing with the statement that the GDP will significantly increase a decade from now if a tax bill like the one in Congress right now is enacted. Most also agreed that the debt-to-GDP ratio will rise if the current version of the tax reform bill is enacted.

 Last night, a 25-year-old man sustained multiple gunshot wounds to the back and abdomen at 54th Cottage Grove. The victim was transported to Stroger Hospital. No one is in custody and the circumstances are unknown at this time. Area Central is investigating the shooting. 

A bust of Georgiana Rose Simpson will be unveiled this morning in Reynolds Club by two University students. The bust of Simpson, the first black woman to earn a doctorate from the University, will be the first that honors a woman on campus for her own accomplishments. 

  • Asya Akca, one of the two students who will be unveiling the bust, wrote an op-ed in The Maroon today arguing that public pieces of art like monuments “have tremendous symbolic influence and importance” and explains how the organization she and Shae Omonijo founded decided on the bust’s artist and its location.


In Arts

Editor Alexia Bacigalupi writes in:

EDM powerhouse Galantis brought the beats and the confetti to the Aragon Ballroom.

Untraditional staging and gender-swapping characters brought to life new aspects of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar under the direction of third-year Taz Urnov.


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