Reflecting pond

“How to Rebuild a Pond” (Spring/26) brought back many memories.

I entered the botany department of the University of Chicago as a master’s degree student at the beginning of the Summer Quarter of 1963. At the time, the main departmental teaching and administrative center was headquartered in Erman Hall, immediately adjacent to Botany Pond. The fourth floor of Erman Hall was for graduate students, with a jumble of desks, tables, and comfortable couches; the second and third floors housed most faculty offices. On the first floor, the chairman of the department, Charles E. Olmsted, EX’34, had a suite of offices facing Hull Court.

I was the only woman to enter the graduate program that year, and Professor Olmsted made it clear that he did not think it was appropriate for me to have a desk on the fourth floor with all the male graduate students. So instead he assigned me a place on the first floor, directly opposite his office, where he could make sure that I was properly supervised.

My allocated office was a corner room with two large windows facing the walkway to the Zoology Building and two matching windows facing Botany Pond. It was a big room (much larger than the faculty office I now occupy as a chaired professor) that contained three dilapidated wooden desks, a single wooden bookshelf, and a narrow wooden table. No one else was using the space, so I dragged the table and bookshelf next to the middle desk, and for the next four years spent most of my waking hours—when I was not in class or working in the lab—in that room.

I learned to think in that room. I grew into a scientist in that room. I attribute much of my later professional success to mental skills that developed while I studied in that room. But I never got over my resentment at the isolation that went along with being segregated from the other graduate students. Looking back, I am astonished that I didn’t appreciate that a curious side effect of the era’s prevailing sexism was that I spent my humble graduate student years occupying a large private office with what was then, and probably still is, the single best view on the entire University of Chicago campus—just a few feet from beautiful Botany Pond.

Joan Wennstrom Bennett, SM’64, PhD’67
New Orleans

No joke

While I thoroughly appreciated “Talking out of Both Sides of Your Mouth” (Spring/26), about Professor Jason Riggle’s course on humor and deception, I was surprised, and a bit disappointed, that it didn’t refer to the 1999 book Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, by late U of C philosophy professor Ted Cohen, AB’62.

As mentioned in his 2014 obituary in The Chicago Maroon, Professor Cohen possessed not only a piercing intellect and vast knowledge of European philosophy but also a sharp wit and a robust and engrossing sense of humor. He also had an appealing insubordinate streak; I distinctly remember one time when, after a class session, he lit a cigarette in the classroom and continued to puff on it as he chatted with me and another student on our way out to the quad.

In Jokes—a ranging reflection on humor, both admirable and frustrating in its refusal to arrive at any general theories of humor—Cohen arrives at many of the same conclusions as Professor Riggle, particularly regarding the prosocial aspects of joke telling. I’ve read the book a few times over the years, and I would recommend it to anyone who was intrigued about the content of Professor Riggle’s course. The jokes Cohen uses as examples are themselves worth the price of admission.

Greg Beam, AB’04
Champaign, Illinois

All fun and games

“Play On” (Editor’s Notes, Spring/26) brought back memories of the dark winter of 1993 and 1994 when I was in the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences. I would give myself rewards of SimCity. I could be found high above Lincoln Park at 2 a.m., nearly unable to stop building my cities.

Denise Shull, AM’95
Park City, Utah

There is a card game related to whist that my family enjoys. I think it might be unique to the family. We call it “back alley bridge.” It can be played by an even number of players (four or six). That version has partnerships. It can also be played “cutthroat” style with two or an odd number of players. In that version there are no partnerships. Each complete game has a number of “hands” equal to twice the number of cards that could be dealt at most to the players. There are many special rules that apply to various subsets of hands.

William Wilkin, SM’70
Nashville, Tennessee

Setting the Wayback Machine for circa 1980: Does anyone remember Adventure or The French Game?

Scott Ganis, AB’82, MBA’85
Sevenoaks, Kent, United Kingdom

Eye on the ball

I’m responding to your call for stories of intramural sports at the U of C (“Monsters of the Midway,” Alumni News Snapshots, Spring/26).

Back in the fall of 1980, I was a 1L at the Law School. I had been a football fan my entire life, but my athletic skills had been woefully insufficient to be able to play on any organized team past high school junior varsity. Therefore I jumped at the chance to join the 1L intramural football team.

On the team with me was David Lucey, JD’83. David’s father was well known to me because I had spent my entire life until that point in Wisconsin, where Patrick Lucey had been governor from 1971 to 1977. At that point in time, he had national notoriety because he was the vice presidential running mate of John Anderson on the Independent ticket.

David Lucey and I were both pass rushers on the team. David’s style can best be described as maniacal, with his arms flailing in wild and uncertain arcs. Unfortunately, one of those wild arm movements happened to catch me in the eye, and I immediately felt something was wrong. I left the game and went to look in a nearby auto’s sideview mirror. My eye had a little red in it, but what was more concerning was that my hard contact lens was nowhere to be seen.

For several days my eye continued to be sore, and it felt like it was scratched just about every time I blinked. However, it eventually healed and when I got a replacement contact, I thought everything was back to normal.

Until, that is, a year later in early September, when I was at home watching a Packers game on the TV. For some reason, I had trouble seeing out of that eye. I thought maybe my replacement contact was dirty, so I took it out and cleaned it. However, when I looked in the mirror to put that lens back in, I noticed that I already had a contact in that eye! There was only one answer. The lens that had gone missing while I played intramural football had been hanging out somewhere unseen on my eye for almost a whole year. This is something that medical professionals have told me is impossible, but I can vouch that it did actually happen to me.

Richard Ruswick, JD’83
Ithaca, New York

Standout speakers

I spotted a tidbit in the Spring/26 issue of The University Chicago Magazine (“Democratic Discussions,” Alumni News Snapshots) from the photo cutline: “Who was the most memorable politician you heard speak on campus?”

There are two individuals who stand out in my memory.

US Secretary of State George P. Shultz visited campus the same month the bombshell news of the Iran–Contra scandal hit in November 1986. Secretary Shultz skillfully and forthrightly answered student questions from the shocked Mandel Hall audience. Despite enormous pressure not to embarrass or incriminate US President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush publicly, it appeared to me that Secretary Shultz was equally shocked and angry about the clandestine bungling.

I remember distinctly Secretary Shultz’s unequivocal description of how the secret arms-for-hostages deal severely damaged the administration’s credibility with Congress, the American people, and US allies in the Middle East. Rather appropriately, Secretary Shultz, a former University of Chicago faculty member and dean of the Graduate School of Business, would return to Mandel Hall in April 1996 to give the inaugural George J. Stigler Memorial Lecture, “The Age of Promise Is Also the Age of Accountability.”

US Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) was the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner throughout most of 1987 when he visited campus during his nationwide book tour and second US presidential campaign. I recall how Mandel Hall was packed with eager young voters looking forward to hearing from Senator Hart, whose fresh new policies were swiftly garnering buzz for innovative thinking on and approaches to balancing the federal budget while addressing rapidly evolving global challenges.

I had just read his provocative America Can Win: The Case for Military Reform (1986), coauthored with William Lind, and was keen to hear more about how best to project US power within the framework of its international alliances, specifically in Asia. An animated Senator Hart spent several minutes responding to my question by detailing his proposed restructuring and repositioning of US troops and military resources domestically and globally. Several of his proposed military reforms were embraced by subsequent administrations.

In November 2004 Hart, by then a former US senator, diplomat, and two-time presidential candidate, addressed the University of Chicago Political Union in the Assembly Hall in International House. Once again Hart was on a national book tour, embracing the opportunity to engage listeners in a rigorous question and answer session.

Rachel C. Kitchener, AB’89
Barnstaple, Devon, United Kingdom

Planting seeds

I write in response to “The Beauty of Slag” (Winter/26) and “City, Garden, Classroom, Park” (Editor’s Notes, Winter/26).

Thanks to each of those involved in preparing this information on wild vegetation in the brownfields of the Calumet Region south of Chicago for readers of your magazine. I am gratified to learn that some rare native plants have been getting identified there. We do not find small capitate spike rush (Eleocharis geniculata) on the Atlantic Seaboard, but I have long marveled at our even tinier native spike rush (E. pusilla) that thrives in the intertidal Hackensack Meadowlands of northern New Jersey surrounded by dense eight-foot and taller stands of weedy non-native common reed (Phragmites australis).

I also was very pleased to see mention of Henry Chandler Cowles, PhD 1898, who pioneered research on plant succession back when the geographical layout of the Indiana Dunes allowed for accurate interpretation of the dates of old Lake Chicago shorelines. During my years in Hyde Park, we students of field ecology were still visiting Cowles’s classic sites in northeastern Illinois under the superb guidance of Harold John Frederick Gall, SM’42, PhD’47. By then Cowles’s critical interpretive areas of dunes had been destroyed, but Jerry Olson, PhB’47, SB’48, PhD’49, PhD’51, had recently confirmed Cowles’s work using the new technology of radiocarbon dating in the remaining dunes.

I seriously considered research on the ruderal weeds of Chicago but focused instead on the mostly cultivated vegetation of its residential areas. I sought to record everything I could find concerning Chicago vegetation but have not had occasion to delve seriously into work by others on either the wild or the cultivated patterns of Chicago plants for the past half century. Hurrah for the work of the Slag Queens and may it long continue!

James A. Schmid, AM’69, PhD’72
Media, Pennsylvania

Et tu, Art?

I was on Harvard’s College Bowl team from 1979 to 1981 (“Bowled Over,” Alumni News Snapshots, Winter/26). We were in the national championship finals in 1979, where we lost to Davidson College. Art Fleming, the original host of Jeopardy!, was the host.

He mangled the pronunciation of Julius Caesar’s quote “alea iacta est,” and we could not answer it. The die is cast.

Steven N. Kaplan
Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, Chicago Booth
Chicago

Great conversation

“The University of Utopia” (The Core, Spring/26) was a pleasure. I graduated from the U of C with a BA in 1955 at 18 and a BS in 1958 at 21. I met my wife, Verna, at the top of the stairs in Burton Judson Courts in 1957. She was visiting the U of C with a friend from the University of Alabama who happened to be my best friend’s girlfriend. So the world moves! We were married shortly after we met and raised two children, starting in Ithaca, NY, where I got my psychology PhD from Cornell in 1962. We then moved to Canada, where I taught at McGill University in Montreal until 1986. Verna died in 2020. Thank you for re-creating part of our memorable younger years.

Don C. Donderi, AB’55, SB’58
Montreal

The article on the Hutchins College implies that early entrance was discontinued as the nature of the Core attenuated. Not so. When I entered the College early in 1962, I was in a group that constituted 10 percent of the new students.

As to the Core, it had evolved into 10 discipline-based courses, of which a student took a maximum of eight. During O-Week all first-years took a series of exams. After a weekend somewhere in Wisconsin, we met with advisers to plan a program.

Since I needed only four courses (Hum II, Soc I, phy sci, and math), I was able to graduate after three years. Was this a good idea? No. I certainly would have benefited from more of the U of C offerings. But what can you tell someone who just turned 20?

Jordy Bell, AB’65 (Class of 1966)
Croton-on-Hudson, New York

The article on the Hutchins College in The Core emphasized social aspects of the College rather than its importance as an innovative, indeed revolutionary, reconsideration of college education. Normally changes in curriculum and other features of colleges are a slow, incremental, and conservative process heavily influenced by departmental interests and outdated tradition. Those who designed the Hutchins College were engaged in a revolutionary rethinking of curriculum and other features of college education, which is still relevant despite the beginning of the demise of the Hutchins College in 1951.

Among the revolutionary features was the great books emphasis. We had only four textbooks in the four years I was in the College. The rest was all great books, i.e., original source material, which taught us to think out of the box, as originators of ideas rather than merely appliers, a skill of enormous social value in the work I did in international development and most if not all other professions. The science texts—Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, etc.—were particularly important, though I’m not a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) person.

Other features of the Hutchins College were

• early entry (you could be admitted after two years of high school, if qualified);
• placement exams that enabled you to bypass courses and graduate in less than four years;
• a small number of college courses, followed by admission to graduate courses, permitted students to complete graduate degrees more quickly than normal;
• all-discussion groups, which those leading the classes were trained to conduct, and no in-course lectures (as one wag said, the lecture is a form of education whereby the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either); and
• grades based on six-hour “comprehensive” exams, half multiple choice and half essay, at the end of the year, which resulted in our remembering much more of what we had learned than did most of those who study for periodic exams.

Though the Hutchins College was revolutionary for its time, society moves on, and there are now more features of college education that deserve reconsideration. Most prominent, especially in the case of the more prestigious colleges, is preparing students for public leadership. If I were involved in a curriculum revision project, I’d recommend that all U of C College students be required to study macroeconomics, with which too many citizens and legislators are unfamiliar; foundational documents such as the Federalist Papers; sociology and elementary statistics; works of pioneering scientists, which teach us how to think creatively rather than just with reference to authorities; and ethics, particularly John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, the relevance of which is obvious.

I’d also recommend that students be required to engage in an effort to improve conditions in a low-income area, to give them an understanding of conditions that lead to poverty and what might be done to alleviate them.

All these ideas run counter to the current trend toward vocationalization, which is fine for ordinary graduates but not for those who might become leaders of our society.

I’d also recommend that well-educated and public-spirited individuals from outside academia be selected to participate in curriculum revision to offset the self-interest of academic departments and assure that broad social needs are considered.

Would that the U of C would set a precedent by engaging in such a comprehensive reconsideration of college education as that engaged in by the founders of the Hutchins College, and that other colleges would follow.

Richard Greene, AB’50
Ossining, New York

Specialty of the house

I was delighted to come upon the recipe for tortilla de patatas in the Spring/26 Core magazine. The way I make it also has a U of C connection. I spent a college year in a group house (5468 South Ellis Avenue) that had an ever-changing cast of residents. One housemate for a time was Pilar, a girl from Spain. One day in the kitchen she was making what she called simply “tortilla.” I was fascinated, so I watched her as she narrated the recipe for me. Later I tried it myself with Pilar by my side as a troubleshooter—and it is a dish that benefits from a troubleshooter. Since that time (40-plus years ago), Spanish tortilla, as I call it, has been a go-to in my kitchen. I include Pilar’s version in my cookbook, Wok Alone: Delicious and Efficient Cooking for One, Two, or More (2025).

Shiloh Miller’s (AB’26) recipe makes me suspect that every Spanish cook knows the dish and everyone makes it with their own signature tweaks—but there are surely invariables, which I take to be (1) partially cooking the eggs by adding the hot potato mixture to them, and (2) the fraught process of flipping the tortilla so that it gets cooked on the top side. A cooked tortilla with ragged and broken edges is a typical outcome, but once in a while you really stick the flip.

Orin Hargraves, AB’77
Niwot, Colorado

Corrections

In “Think Pieces” (Spring/26), we misstated Harper Center architect Rafael Viñoly’s opinion about art in the building. He imposed no restrictions on installing art. We regret the error.

In “The University of Utopia” (The Core, Spring/26) we mistakenly noted that high school degrees were required by the late 1950s. There was no such requirement instituted; however, the early entrant program was considerably limited. We also stated that Harold Swift, PhB 1907, was dean in 1948, but he was the Board of Trustees chair. We regret the errors and thank James Vice, EX’52, AM’54, and Jordy Bell, AB’65 (Class of 1966), for pointing them out.

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, civility, and style. To provide a range of views and voices, we ask letter writers to limit themselves to 300 words or fewer. Write: Editor, The University of Chicago Magazine, 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615. Or email: uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu.