Time capsule

I was pleased to see your story on the Linn House wall writing (“The Writing Is on the (Linn House) Wall,” Web Exclusive, August 23, 2013). Fun fact: My parents, Rafi (PhD’89) and Eti Kopan, the resident heads at the time, also made sure my three-year-old signature and the outline of the foot of my months-old sister made the wall of fame. I guess the wall made a mark on me as I made a mark on it, because years after we moved away at the end of that year, I returned to UChicago for my own adventure. I was in Shorey House, though (RIP Pierce). My parents were thrilled they got to visit me at the school they loved, and our first family weekend we managed to talk our way into Linn House to see the wall. Smiles all around. They enjoyed the piece as well.

Tal Kopan, AB’09 Arlington, Virginia

Music man

Thank you for the portrait of Easley Blackwood (“Set on Notes,” UChicago Journal, Sept–Oct/13). It reminded me of the course I took from him 40 years ago, Introduction to Music 102. Little remains in my mind of the course’s content except its enduring legacy: an acquaintance with the Beethoven piano sonatas through intensive study of one of them. After that course, my favorite study break was to queue up the Paul Badura-Skoda recording of the Waldstein Sonata in the recordings collection on the third floor of Regenstein (no iPods in those days) and listen to it at full volume.

All of the sonatas are still on my playlists today—they never fail to deliver, and I am grateful that I had the patient and skillful introduction to them that has provided so much enrichment over all these years.

Orin Hargraves, AB’77 Niwot, Colorado

I was glad to see a story about Easley Blackwood in the pages of your latest edition. Easley was a mentor to me during my time at the U of C (and thereafter). The line about his unpublishably filthy palindrome rang specifically true. There was a reference in the article to a sonatina by Mr. Blackwood for piccolo, clarinet, and piano. No such work exists in his catalog, but he did write a sonatina (a short sonata) for piccolo clarinet and piano. What’s a piccolo clarinet? “Piccolo” is Italian for “small”; the instrument we commonly refer to as the piccolo is really the “piccolo flauto,” or small flute. There’s also a piccolo clarinet. It’s pitched in E-flat. Easley is quoted in this article as saying that he doesn’t believe all his pieces are masterpieces. Well, this particular sonatina is—a small masterpiece for a small instrument.

William White, AB’05 Cincinnati

Grain of salt

Frankly, I disbelieve the religious results reported in “Growing Numbers” (Sept–Oct/13). I think there is still a huge stigma to atheism, so people will say they believe in God, but they have no religious affiliation at all, not even Unitarian. I think people disaffiliate because they are in fact atheistic humanists, but they won’t admit it, so they say they are “spiritual.” It is disingenuous.

Jason Gettinger New York City

Games and violence

I read your magazine with interest as the wife of an alumnus and as someone who was admitted to the Divinity School. Although I chose to earn my PhD at a different institution, I retain admiration for the U of C.  I was therefore appalled by your utterly one-sided article profiling Alex Seropian, SB’91, developer of violent video games and claimant to the dubious title inventor of the first-person shooter (“Big Game Hunter,” UChicago Journal, Sept–Oct/13). Since when is his biased and casually stated testimonial that violent video games are unlikely to lead to violent behaviors enough evidence for the intelligent mind? In an era in which seemingly increasing gun violence occurs concomitantly with the rise of violent video games, and in a year when the Centers for Disease Control has deemed it necessary to ask the Institute of Medicine to conduct further research on the possible causative relationship between violent video games and violent behavior, I’m deeply disappointed that you didn’t insert even two or three sentences to give a nod to those professionals, parents, and concerned citizens who believe sociopathic video games likely contribute to sociopathic behavior. Can’t you set a higher standard of indicating that there are at least two sides to this complex and troubling issue?

Chara Armon Wallingford, Pennsylvania

A question of values

I was pleased, as I always am, to receive the latest issue of the Magazine, but my pleasure turned to delight when I saw the full-page advertisement on the back cover for the Maserati Quattroporte. Years ago I stopped interviewing prospective students for the University because of growing doubt that I could, in the brief span of an interview, identify the qualities in the students that the University wanted. Having seen the ad for the Maserati, doubt has fled.

What the University wants is not some hard-to-pin-down interest in or commitment to learning, but a passion for wanting the most that money can buy. What better way to represent the University’s values than for students and their families to know that their education aims at owning a car that is rarely seen in Chicago, tips the scales at $150,000, and barely gets 13 mpg. To know that you might own a car that you can drive 191 mph in the University’s neighborhood will surely be a boon for student recruitment. And if the Maserati seems out of reach, then the University will be happy if you have to settle for a Porsche Panamera, also advertised in the Magazine, which is a mere $90,000 or so.

Jonathan Knight, U-High’59, AB’63 Warwick, Rhode Island

Crisis culprits to the east ...

I can hardly imagine the experience of being shamed by my neighborhood barista for donning a U of C T-shirt in public (Letters, Sept–Oct/13). Imagine not knowing what exactly might be going into that morning half-fat soy latte venti with free-range, rose-scented syrup.

Post Lehman, I too reflected on my time at the University of Chicago—the horror! Were we really responsible for what could be described as the biggest financial calamity in history? Paging Paul Krugman!

Addled over the eons by my “study time” at Jimmy’s and the Eagle, I decided to take a simplistic approach to analyzing this claim. I figured that if the U of C “freshwater” school of economics were culpable, we would find many of its alumni in positions of power at the heart of the crisis.

So I compiled a list of culprits. I split it up between those in private industry and those in the public (mostly regulatory) domain. While not exhaustive, I did get 50+ quality names. I then researched (today known as “Googled” or “wikied”) their respective academic backgrounds.

Alas, Shaggy the barista would be dismayed. For the inconvenient truth was that U of C alumni accounted for a whopping three folks out of said field. And that is with my throwing a professor emeritus who gave me a C under the bus. Noteworthy, however, was the number of graduates from institutions located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Oh, and one more thing. Every fall there’s a big lovefest in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where all the folks on this list get together to tell each other how brilliant they are. In 2005, it was exceptionally obnoxious, as it was the last time Sir Alan Greenspan would attend as Fed chairman. While just about everyone presenting there seemed to be competing for “Most Obsequious ’05,” there was one paper that delivered a scathing review of misguided Fed policy, lax regulatory oversight, and the inevitably resultant irresponsible lending practices. The author then went on to forecast a crisis based on these trends. Said heretic was none other than Booth professor Raghuram Rajan. Ironic, isn’t it?

Now Shaggy might be right. I guess that means I’d have to retire my “Ho-Ho, the University of Chicago is funnier than you think” T-shirt. But if I had to guess, I’d say that when the committee to save the world (mostly comprising those who caused it) convened in crisis in the fall of ’08, the only group not there were the U of Cers.

Frank Goebels, MBA’79 Coronado, California

... and to the southeast

I read with bemusement the letter from Jeff Deeney, AB’97, who described earning a barista’s disdain by wearing his UChicago sweatshirt and the embarrassment he now feels when people discover that he went to the University. In addition, he’d like UChicago to own up to its “role in ... advancing the economic policies that destroyed trillions of dollars in wealth during the financial crisis and created epic human misery.”

Jeff makes a pretty large conflation: Chicago school of economics = free markets = financial crisis = human misery. It’s a big leap from taking the view that free markets tend to work better than other alternatives (the Chicago school view) to giving unqualified support to the policies behind the financial crisis. The crisis had many causes, but the majority came from unfettered government intervention over decades in some of the biggest markets in the world: the US housing and related mortgage markets. If anything, the Chicago school taught that governments should stay out of the game of trying to direct capital.

But didn’t Wall Street create the financial crisis? Wall Street did create a range of structured mortgage products that were misunderstood by their buyers and even their creators. These certainly exacerbated the crisis. But were they the cause? No. These products needed building blocks to make them work, just as a well-designed bridge needs quality steel and concrete to keep it from falling apart. Where did these inferior structural supports come from? Departments of public policy within the federal government.

Acts like the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the Community Development Act of 1992, and the Clinton administration’s efforts in 1999 were all designed to allow/force FNMA and FHLMC (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) to accept lower and lower credits for their guaranteed mortgage pools (particularly Alt-A and subprime). These pools were the building blocks for tranched mortgage product, the building blocks that caused the vast majority of the problems. Without these pools of lower-quality (and essentially government-guaranteed) mortgages, there would have been no ABS^2 market, no super-senior paper that was really closer to junk, no run-up of home prices, and no inevitable crash.

The end goals were, of course, noble: affordable housing for everyone and a higher percentage of home ownership across our population. Yet as the US government forced institutions to make loans to less credible buyers and as Fannie and Freddie followed the mandate from Congress to guarantee lower and lower quality loans, the conditions were set for a huge bubble and eventual disaster.

One only has to watch Barney Frank and his congressional subcommittee turn down the “advice” (regulators don’t give advice, they give instructions!) from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (Fannie’s and Freddie’s regulator and eventual conservator) and vilify FHFA in congressional hearings (search for “Barney Frank 2005” on YouTube) to understand that Congress had no idea what it was doing. This was like a kid playing with a stick of dynamite. When Frank said he’d like to “roll the dice on subprime a little longer,” he meant that he’d like to roll the taxpayers’ dice.

Wall Street absolutely had a role in the size and length of the crisis, but it was the US government’s various policies that drove home ownership rates and home prices to an unsustainable level and sowed the seeds of destruction in 2008–09. None of this would have been possible without the all too visible hand of public policy and the guarantee by Freddie and Fannie (and thus, by proxy, the US government) of all those Alt-A and subprime mortgages. This in fact demonstrates what all those economics Nobelists were saying about unintended consequences and market distortions.

Peter Hirsch, AB’82, MBA’85 Port Washington, New York Carl Stocking, AB’82, MBA’83 Singapore Gregg Sodini, AB’82 Manalapan, New Jersey

Whence Hutchins?

As a 1949 AB grad (no ceremony until June 1950), my years at the University were exciting and intellectually satisfying, and I am forever grateful as there I met Ruth J. Black, AB’50, now married 63 years.

I wrote to Dean Boyer of my sadness in reading his 210-page book heralding three presidents for fundamental change in the College while ignoring the 22-year reign of President Robert Maynard Hutchins except in criticism (“A Hell of a Job Getting It Squared Around”: Three Presidents in Times of Fundamental Change: Ernest D. Burton, Lawrence A. Kimpton, and Edward H. Levi. Occasional Papers on Higher Education Volume XXII. October 30, 2012.).

His book reminded me of a scene in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon where a leader of the Russian Revolution was purged by Stalin, leaving only the outline on the office wall where his honored photo had hung many years.

It seems an odd way to start an appeal for $500 million.

George J. Fulkerson, AB’50 Novi, Michigan

Math by hand

I saw your ad in the University of Chicago Magazine and would like to apply for a job (Chicago Classifieds, Sept–Oct/13). I like art! I like math! And I have over 40 years experience in not getting the same result twice!

Sandi Hansen, MBA’91 Gurnee, Illinois

I help run a small, impoverished tech company, and we are in need of additional spreadsheet artisans. We love nothing more than seeing a young 20-year-old spend all day fetching Twitter IDs or categorizing Yelp data. Their boredom and lack of self-worth really shine through to our final product, and there are of course always numerous typographical errors.

We mainly pay our “employees” in college credit and worthless stock options. I trust this will be acceptable.

Anonymous for Obvious Reasons

Political discourse

Why is the person who later reduced the crisis in Syria, with 100,000 dead and two million refugees, to a political cheap shot (“Congress is now the dog that caught the car”) on the stage discussing political morality with Elie Wiesel (“A Question of Ethos,” UChicago Journal, July–Aug/13)?

Samuel Fitting, MBA’76 Redding, Connecticut

Uncommon Hutch

I would like to add to the comments of Lenore Frazier, AB’47 (Letters, Sept–Oct/13). When we went through the student orientation, Hutch made a speech that I never forgot.

He said, “Welcome to the University of Chicago. If you think that we are here to teach you to make more money you are in the wrong place. We only want you to learn how to think and if you learn that, we will have been successful.”

He was absolutely right. In my years of management, there were so many Ivy Leaguers I managed who operated like automatons and couldn’t think outside the box. I had an 8 a.m. math class and I would meet up with Hutch on his way to the office and he would walk along and just talk to me, asking questions, making comments, etc.

Heady stuff for a young guy from Los Angeles.

Leonard Dorin,AB’56, MBA’57 Lafayette, California

Un bon marché

Referencing your punctuation for sale (Chicago Classifieds, July–Aug/13), I have three questions: 1. Are any French punctuation marks available? 2. Do you charge an additional fee for accent grave, accent aigu, or circonflexe? 3. Do you accept French francs (new or old)?

Merci in advance.

Scott Sunquist, AM’80 Nimy, Belgium

Trebek days

I was interested to read the article in the Core about Benjamin Recchie, AB’03, and his experience on Jeopardy! (“Non-Trivial Pursuit,” Summer/13), as well as the stories from other U of C alumni contestants on the website (“So You Want to Compete on Jeopardy!,” Web Exclusive, July 18, 2013). Until I read about Dan Pawson, JD’06, I had thought I was the winningest contestant among U of C alums (four-time winner in 1990–91, including New Year’s Day; 1991 Tournament of Champions semifinalist—I think I even wrote a class note about it at the time); maybe I still am, among College alumni. I may still be right when I tell people I had more national TV exposure than any of my College peers until the discovery of David Axelrod, AB’76.

And, amazingly, people still occasionally stop me and ask if I was really on Jeopardy! One of the contestants you interviewed (Steve Mitchell, AM’92) said he was surprised at having to read the answers off the board. In my fifth game, I was second with two clues left in Double Jeopardy. I got the penultimate question and was $1,800 behind with “control of the board” for the last, a Daily Double. I bet $2,000, and the dollar value disappeared to reveal—a blank monitor! I listened closely to Alex Trebek reading the clue, and fortunately the correct response was the alma mater of a close friend. So I did not have to interrupt and ask, “Please read it again, Alex, because your set is broken.”

I can certainly understand the frustration Recchie described after he lost. Hey, I left as a loser twice. But he’s right, what you remember is the “playing of the game.” Winning money is nice; just plain winning is even nicer; but the competition itself was the peak experience.

Jonathan Jacobs, SB’76 Piedmont, California

Department of corrections

Jud Newborn, AM’77, PhD’94, rode on the Munich U-Bahn, not the Berlin U-Bahn (“Rose Up,” UChicago Journal, Sept–Oct/13).

Jay Berwanger’s (AB’36) wife’s name was Philomela, not Philomena (“That’s Squirrelly,” Peer Review, Sept–Oct/13).

In response to “Selling the Friendly Skies” (July–Aug/13), Lynn Burnett wrote that her grandfather Leo Burnett “may have lacked flash, but he was never an accountant as stated in the article. He was always a writer—and a risk taker.” We regret the errors.

The University of Chicago Magazine welcomes letters about its contents or about the life of the University. Letters for publication must be signed and may be edited for space, clarity, and civility. To provide a range of views and voices, we encourage letter writers to limit themselves to 300 words or fewer. Write: Editor, The University of Chicago Magazine, 401 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1000, Chicago, IL 60611. Or e-mail: uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu.