The Trott Center is named in honor of a $100 million gift from Trott Family Philanthropies, managed by University Trustee Byron Trott (A.B.’81, M.B.A. ’82) and his wife, Tina. The gift is one of the largest in recent University history and part of a wave of significant donations over the past year.

According to a press release accompanying the announcement, the Trotts’ gift will be supplemented by $100 million in commitments from UChicago and another $100 million in planned fundraising over the next 10 years.

As part of the Center’s offerings, the University will expand its financial aid and pre-college “outreach, advising and academic preparation” programs for rural students alongside professional mentorship opportunities for both current students and recent graduates.

College spokesperson Katelyn Yoshimoto told the Maroon that the Trott Center will be located in the University’s Office of Enrollment and Student Advancement, in Rosenwald Hall.

Trott helped establish the University’s Emerging Rural Leaders program, a pre-college summer program for high school students; the STARS College Network, a UChicago-based initiative that encourages institutions of higher education to expand recruitment from rural areas; and the rootEd Alliance, a national program that funds college and career advisors at rural high schools. The Center will continue to fund those programs, Yoshimoto said. First-year enrollment of rural and small-town students increased by 160 percent since those efforts began in 2018, according to the announcement.

Trott also founded the University’s Jeff Metcalf Internship Program, which funds internship opportunities for undergraduates.

“There is extraordinary undiscovered talent in rural America. Too often, young people simply are not aware of the opportunities available to them or prepared to pursue them,” Byron Trott said in the release. “We want to help change that. Over the last eight years, we have learned a great deal about how to connect with these students earlier, prepare them for what comes next and open doors that might otherwise remain out of reach.”

Trott is himself from a small town in Missouri, and credits the University for his current success. “The University of Chicago changed the trajectory of my life, and Tina and I want more young people from rural communities to have that same opportunity,” Trott said.

Third-year Emily Price was part of an Emerging Rural Leaders cohort before her senior year of high school, which offered her the opportunity to visit campus and learn from UChicago admissions counselors about the University and what it looks for in applicants. Price was later admitted through a precursor to the Summer Session Early Notification (SSEN) program—a binding early option for students that participate in the University’s summer classes.

According to Price, who comes from Jefferson, Maryland, “a lot of the reason why I felt comfortable applying to a binding round is that they told us that there would be financial aid, and that UChicago gives out good need-based and merit scholarships, which made it a lot more affordable than any other comparative elite school.”

“[For] most of my friends and my brother’s friends, their parents didn’t want them to apply binding anywhere because they didn’t know the financial aid situation,” Price continued. “I think any transparency about financial aid would definitely be a huge plus, especially if there’s specific scholarships for rural students that they’re able to offer.”

Willow Rutter, a fourth-year from Townsend, Tennessee, told the Maroon that her “college process was very self-guided,” in part because her high school did not have any college counselors, and the guidance she did receive pushed her to attend the University of Tennessee.

“I run into my former teachers, and… they want to know what they did or like what they told me that got me to UChicago, and I’m always like, well, you were a great teacher and you taught me, you know, great things, but nobody told me that I could [pursue a highly selective school],” Rutter said. “I’m very grateful that I have a family that did see that as a possibility for me. But at school, that was never really a message that I received.”

Rutter said the University’s outreach to rural students was one of the reasons she ultimately decided to attend, and that expanding outreach will allow more students to feel confident in their ability to succeed outside of the place where they grew up.

“It really seems to be that [students who left the state for college] had more outside support and more family support that were telling them it’s gonna be okay and you should try,” Rutter said. “Having that extra—that’s not just like, oh, my parents think I can go to school there, but like the school actually is looking for people like me—[it’s] just so huge…. hearing somebody from [a prestigious university] saying that you belong here.”

The new Trott Center “reinforces UChicago’s commitment to access,” the press release notes, also exemplified in the Odyssey Scholarship Program, which provides expansive financial aid packages to students from first-generation and low-income families. And in May, UChicago announced that undergraduate families making less than $250,000 per year will not pay tuition beginning in academic year 2027–28.

Price also thinks the expanded effort to recruit from rural areas will be a “huge plus” for its ability to expand the number of colleges that an applicant might consider, because “people don’t really know that schools like [UChicago] are attainable.” Particularly when students are unable to take advanced courses and “might think that they’re automatically not competitive at any of these [selective] schools,” advice from admissions officers about how to stand out as an applicant will give students more options, Price said.

The University reports data on its first-year classes annually in the Common Data Set (CDS), a standardized survey that asks institutions nationwide to disclose student demographics, high school academic performance, and financial aid awards, among other statistics.

The College enrolled just 71 Black first-year students last year, down from 97 in 2024 and over 150 three years ago, the University reported in the CDS. The number of white students showed a corresponding slight increase, while enrollment among other demographic groups stayed roughly unchanged year over year. Black students made up about five percent of domestic students of known race in the Class of 2029.

The CDS release comes two admissions cycles after the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that colleges and universities could not explicitly factor applicants’ race into their admissions decisions, effectively banning affirmative action policies favoring historically disadvantaged demographic groups. The University had submitted a brief in the case opposing an affirmative action ban.

Without affirmative action, many selective universities have admitted fewer Black and Hispanic students and more white and Asian students, though those shifts have been uneven across institutions. At UChicago, white and Asian shares of domestic first-time enrollment have climbed by about three percentage points each since the decision took effect, while Black and Hispanic enrollment shares have dropped by three and four points respectively.

The number of new first-years who did not report their race to the University jumped sharply last year, from 52 to 126, or seven percent of the Class of 2029. International students, the third-largest demographic group in the College after white and Asian students, stayed roughly constant at about 18 percent of the first-year class—the first time that proportion has not increased since UChicago began releasing the CDS after the 2021–22 academic year.

The College also continued a years-long climb in male enrollment, the CDS release showed: more than 58 percent of the Class of 2029 identified as male, a three-point jump from the previous year and up from 52 percent for the Class of 2025. That weight toward male students persisted even as the College reported nearly 5,000 more female applicants than male ones.

UChicago had not welcomed an incoming undergraduate class with as high a proportion of male students since fall 1987, according to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data.

The University is an outlier when it comes to gender breakdown. Nationally, women comprised 57 percent of undergraduates in fall 2022. The only other Ivy Plus institutions with more male than female first-year enrollees last year—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, and Dartmouth College—also had more male than female applicants. Even so, none had a higher share of male first-year enrollees than UChicago.

Fifty-six percent of undergraduates at the University were male last academic year, per the CDS, as were 54 percent of graduate students.

The College admission rate for male students—at about 5.9 percent—was 66 percent higher than the rate for female students, which was 3.5 percent. That gap has widened every year since the University began filling out the CDS.

Many selective universities have for years admitted men at higher rates than women in order to enroll classes with rough gender parity despite female-dominated applicant pools, but UChicago’s gender admissions gap is particularly wide. MIT—where nearly two-thirds of applicants are male—is the only Ivy Plus school with a larger gap.

The CDS also allows schools to include admission statistics for students who do not identify as male or female, though many peer institutions report negligible numbers of such applicants. In the new CDS release, UChicago reported over 1,000 applicants of unknown sex, but no admitted students in the category. A University spokesperson did not respond to questions about how it categorizes these applicants.

The overall admission rate, 4.5 percent, was unchanged last year after several years of decreases.

Transfer student enrollment increased for the third consecutive year, with 311 new transfers arriving at UChicago last fall, up from 74 in fall 2022. That increase appears to be driven primarily by rising transfer applications, which have more than tripled over the past four years.

Those increases come amid an apparent focus on soliciting transfer applicants in recent years. The University added a transfer early decision option during the 2020–21 admissions cycle—one of the only top-ranked schools to do so, along with Northwestern University—and launched a new Transfer Student Office last year.

Even with applications growing, the transfer admission rate—11.8 percent—has remained significantly higher than the first-year admit rate.

The University did not respond directly to questions about shifts in student demographics, gender disparities in admissions, or transfer enrollment.

“Year-to-year fluctuations in Common Data Set numbers can stem from changes in CDS reporting requirements, efforts to align reporting with [the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System], and data availability,” a University spokesperson wrote to the Maroon, referring to the NCES’s higher education dataset.

The share of first-years awarded financial aid rebounded last year to 36.5 percent, up from a low of 33 percent for the Class of 2028.

The share of instructional faculty members who are minorities shrank from 26 percent to 21 percent last year, per the CDS, which includes some limited data on faculty demographics. International instructional faculty members appeared to drop significantly as well after a sharp rise in 2024, but the University spokesperson attributed the shift to definitional changes.

The message from the crowd was clear, with some attendees booing Johnson’s remarks and chanting, “Reverse the permits. Shut it down. Mayor Johnson, do it now.”

Community advocacy organization Southside Together held the “Community Over Quantum” event at Arnold Mireles Academy, just over a mile west of the Quantum Shore construction site. Residents and activists who spoke at the event argued the new facility would have negative environmental impacts for the area and after severe storms.

The construction site is largely built on landfill from slag, a steel byproduct, dumped in Lake Michigan while the South Works steel mill was active. Despite soil remediation efforts by U.S. Steel and the federal Environmental Protection Agency following the mill’s closure, previous attempts to develop the land have been unsuccessful as a result of the extensive contamination.

Johnson’s attendance at the town hall came following his August 11 signing of an executive order that directed city departments to strengthen regulations on data centers, adding tougher air and noise pollution limits and expanding city officials’ ability to review the facilities’ water and electricity usage. The order also called on the City Council to pass a moratorium on new data center developments.

Chicago is one of the hundreds of municipalities across the U.S. where residents have organized against the construction of hyperscale data centers, which are largely being built to satisfy demand for computing power driven by artificial intelligence projects. Environmental and economic concerns are often chief among the reasons for opposition, as data centers have been linked to both skyrocketing energy costs and pollution risks.

When pressed by organizers on whether he would stop the construction of the quantum facility as a result of the backlash, Johnson cited his background as a community organizer, saying that “his values have not changed,” but that “the information [supporting the project] is stronger.” He told the crowd that his office had received a letter from the Quantum Shore developers stating they did not plan to build a data center in the first phase of the project. Should those plans change, Johnson said, the mayor’s office would be just as strict in regulating the Quantum Shore facility as any other data center in the city.

“Was that a satisfactory answer?” Lia Terrell, a Southside Together member, asked the crowd.

“No!” The crowd shouted back.

“Not at all,” Terrell said. “[Johnson] made his opinion very clear. The reality is that we don’t have the mayor’s support. The data center executive order is not the same thing as stopping the quantum facility.”

In March of last year, Related Digital, a subsidiary of the main developer of the project, announced its intention to construct a hyperscale data center on the north end of the property. The data center would have a capacity of one gigawatt, on a similar scale to the 92-acre data center Meta is building in Lebanon, Indiana.

“I think that it’s definitely great as a politician to listen to your constituents to show that you’re willing to meet people where they are,” said Justin Cosby, a member of Southside Together who spoke at the town hall. “However, I’m not thrilled with his answer because it seems like he was setting up the possibility for the construction to continue.”

Cosby cited the recent closure of seven grocery stores on the city’s South and West Sides as an example of city and state officials’ misplaced priorities.

“It’s weird that the city and the state have money to subsidize a quantum computer, but not a grocery store,” he said.

So far, the state of Illinois has invested roughly $700 million dollars into the development in addition to an estimated $175 million over 30 years in promised county tax breaks. The City of Chicago has allocated $5 million from a city-run bond program. Additionally, the UChicago-based Chicago Quantum Exchange—a partner in one of the major projects at the quantum park—recently received nearly $55 million in U.S. Economic Development Administration grants to build a quantum computing supply chain.

“If you are standing with us, just say straight up, data center construction can’t happen in South Shore,” Cosby said. “But when you say that it can happen with certain restrictions, you’re basically saying, ‘Hey, it’s okay to exploit the community as long as you do it in a more friendly way.’”

Writer-director David Robert Mitchell introduces Denise as a complex protagonist from the onset the audience watches her escape the noise of the block party to visit the home of Mrs. Huddleston (Anne Gee Byrd), her elderly neighbor. The two discuss a manuscript she keeps hidden from everyone else in her life. The camera seamlessly moves between wide shots through the outside window to close frames within the living room. The oscillation of shots from outside and inside the house and between the faces of Denise and Mrs. Huddleston reveals Denise’s care for her writing, orienting the audience to a complex character that drives the action of the film.

Instead of leaving the audience to remember Denise’s complexity solely from this one scene, Mitchell solidifies her love and dedication to writing by building in screen time for the family’s routine, including Denise sitting in the basement wearing headphones each night, diligently typing away. This choice facilitates a deeply devastating moment after Oak Street is revealed to have been transported back to the Mesozoic Era. Teenage Audrey lets her mom know that the basement has flooded due to the environmental changes that come with living amongst dinosaurs. Denise lets out a biting “Shit,” realizing that the manuscript she dedicated her nights to is gone. The confusion that flashes across Audrey’s face highlights how Denise keeps pieces of herself hidden. Moments like these demonstrate that Mitchell writes Denise as a full character that functions beyond her central role as a mother. By building the visual rhythm of Denise’s nightly writing it becomes clear that her sense of self is emotionally tied to her writing. Losing this manuscript represents the sacrifice she is forced to make of her old self to lead her family to survival.

The End of Oak Street is a refreshing take on the modern sci-fi film. Modern sci-fi has a recurring problem, often over-relying on special effects and an action-filled plot, while neglecting what made 80s films from the same genre (such as The Goonies and E.T.) beloved: strong writing that centers character dynamics and arcs resulting in an emotional relationship between the audience and film. The film is a character driven narrative, which makes the devastation more intense and visceral.

Opening with a block party and the everyday routines of each of the four characters paints an image of classical suburban life. The characters that drive the film are familiar, which is weaponized against the audience to make each twist of the knife all the more shocking. Editor John Axelrad came together with Mitchell to build incredible suspense. The pair subvert the audience’s expectations through gradual pacing; the action we expect to show up throughout the film does not make an appearance until the latter half. Instead, a foreign plant that hasn’t been seen in 250 million years is found on a neighbor’s lawn. Strobe lights blink in the middle of the night. Instead of hearing the lively chatter of the block party, the screams of neighbors ring in the distance. Each of these small clues gives homage to the pre-CGI lower budget visual effects of 80s sci-fi films. As suburbia slowly fades, suspense quickly builds.

Then the action sets in. Scene after scene, the family barely escapes death. Around each block corner, they encounter morbid visuals that raise the stakes. They watch as their next door neighbor is torn apart limb by limb by Pteranodons, run past dead bodies being fought over by Velociraptors, and are themselves brutalized again and again. The makeup and special effects produce disturbing displays of death, heightening the stakes of the film as the family realizes the only way to survive is to find a way to go forward in time. The visual design of the dinosaurs and their ruthless pursuit of each of the characters felt as inevitable and real as any predator hunting their prey. However, what was terrifying was how the family’s unity built simultaneously as they moved closer and closer to either death or survival. Because the pacing invested time in non-action scenes, each moment of action was consequently filled with more intense dread as well as excitement, ultimately creating an even more gripping cinematic experience.

Although The End of Oak Street is bookended with inaction, during the action the emotional stakes grow even further with displays of normal family dynamics amidst the terror. After catching that the coast is clear, Greg and Denise venture out alone expecting to encounter another near-death experience, but instead they find two mating dinosaurs. The editing facilitates the hilarious transition from them walking on guard through the neighborhood, to their fear spiking as they hear dinosaur grunts, to turning the corner and jump cutting to two dinosaurs mating against a house. The horror of watching people being eaten is broken by such laugh out loud moments and visuals. This dichotomy built incredible suspense and simultaneously made the audience crave the classic family dynamic scenes as a respite and guaranteed laugh after the action.

Critics may argue that The End of Oak Street wraps up too perfectly, making the action and devastation unworthwhile. However, the choice of ending landed as a relief. The catharsis in the final scenes of action made the picture-perfect ending feel earned. It was satisfying to see the characters return to suburban life, with a fresh perspective of how much privilege there is within a loving family. Beyond being set in the 80s, The End of Oak Street embodies a central aspect that makes the 80s sci-fi genre enduring: humor, believable characters, and a plot that seriously tests them with palpable horror and visceral stakes. In the end Denise sits in an office instead of a basement, behind a laptop instead of a typewriter writing her first novel: The End of Oak Street.

UCMed, the report alleges, “used misleading or potentially fraudulent diagnostic and procedural codes in securing insurance coverage,” billing insurance companies at least once for puberty blockers and describing the medication as necessary to treat precocious (early) puberty in patients between 13 and 17 years old.

The report does not provide specific evidence to support its allegations, including that the patients in question were transgender. Instead, it cites the ages of patients, all between 13 and 17 years old, to cast doubt on the documented reason for prescribing puberty blockers. Pediatricians generally agree that puberty is no longer precocious after age eight in girls and nine in boys and typically recommend ending treatment between ages 10 and 12.

Diagnosing patients with precocious puberty was intended to increase the likelihood of insurance coverage for puberty blockers—also a common early treatment for gender dysphoria—the report argues. 

According to the report, which says it examined an unspecified database of medical billing and insurance claims, approximately 300 patients across the providers were improperly diagnosed with precocious puberty and prescribed puberty blockers between 2015 and 2025, at an estimated cost of $11.1 million billed to private and government insurance.

The report does not indicate when or how frequently the alleged activity at UCMed took place—inclusion in the report indicates only that at least one bill was submitted—nor does it distinguish between mistaken and intentional uses of inaccurate diagnostic codes or identify whether insurance companies ultimately paid for treatment in question.

Vice President JD Vance has since referred the report to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for investigation. In a statement, the DOJ told the Maroon that it “has received the referral from Vice President Vance and takes allegations of health care fraud seriously,” and that it will “review the referral carefully and will not hesitate to pursue additional cases where the evidence supports it.”

At the time of publication, UCMed had not responded to multiple requests for comment from the Maroon that included questions about its practices related to insurance billing.

Doctors use standardized sets of codes to maintain statistics, classify treatments and diagnoses, and document of the “medical necessity” of treatments for insurance purposes. The International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) system, in use since 2015, is a set of codes developed and maintained by federal health agencies to classify diagnoses and some services. Another set of codes, the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) system, is maintained by the American Medical Association and used to classify treatments. When the ICD and CPT codes align—for example, with a diagnosis of precocious puberty and a prescription of puberty blockers—insurance companies are more likely to cover the cost of treatment.

According to government data, inaccurate uses of these codes account for about 10 percent of improper Medicare and Medicaid payments. In 2024, “incorrect coding”—when a provider bills for an ICD or CPT code that does not reflect the services provided or the appropriate diagnosis or treatment—accounted for 49.1 percent of all coding-related improper payments, which includes both intentional and unintentional errors.

It is unclear how common this phenomenon is in the private insurance market.

HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard told the Maroon in a statement that the report “draws on peer-reviewed scientific literature, federal guidance, hospital records, claims data, whistleblower testimony, and firsthand patient and parent accounts to examine pediatric gender medicine and its institutional, financial, and policy drivers.”

When asked how the report reached its conclusions or whether the claims had been independently verified, HHS said the “analysis identified claims carrying a precocious puberty diagnosis for patients ages 13–17.”

“As stated in the report, these findings are directional signals that require verification against underlying medical records. An organization’s inclusion in the appendix means it billed at least one claim meeting the report’s criteria,” HHS said.

Federal agencies under the second Trump administration have broadly sought to cast doubt on the existence of transgender people and restricted access to gender-affirming care for both adults and minors.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in conjunction with the release of the HHS report, issued a final rule August 11 prohibiting the use of federal Medicaid funds for coverage of pediatric gender-affirming care. Trump has signed numerous executive orders directed at what he calls “gender ideology” and called for the restoration of “biological truth to the federal government.”

UChicago Medicine’s Trans CARE clinic, established in 2021, provided a wide array of gender-affirming care—including hormone therapy, surgery referrals, and mental health care—to adults and adolescents until 2025, when the program stopped providing care to minors amid threats from the Trump administration to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding.

UCMed did not respond to requests for comment about its diagnostic criteria for providing hormone treatments or how many patients the Trans CARE clinic treated before it stopped providing care to minors.

The guidance, issued by SSCD Master Jenny Trinitapoli in consultation with sequence chairs and instructors, reflects a “strong consensus… that our sequences are best understood as a pedagogical setting without AI,” the memo reads. “Although practices have varied course-by-course in recent years, in AY 2027 sequences are collectively designed to be taught as ‘analog’ courses.”

Under the new guidelines, students will primarily read texts on paper and engage with them via device-free guided discussions, in contrast to previous years, when technology policies were left to the discretion of instructors, with many permitting the use of laptops and digital texts in class.

“[I]n the SOSC Core we first equip students to read, write, and think without dependence on AI, just as we equip students to read, write, and think beyond the bounds of conventional views or leading ideologies,” the memo reads.

The memo also states that “AI-assisted grading has no place in the SOSC Core unless faculty are carefully assessing its validity against human grading,” and that all sosc syllabi will be produced by human scholars.

While the policy recommends a total ban on AI use in sosc classes, it allows for “thoughtful experimentation” by professors who want to incorporate AI into their classes, in consultation with divisional leadership.

Instructors may also “carve out exceptions to the device-free norm for specific purposes,” such as “to collectively examine tabulations in a dataset, to troubleshoot code, to revise a page of text, or to access library website [sic] for guidance about citation practices and learn shortcuts.” Students with certain accommodations through Student Disability Services will also be permitted to use devices in class.

In response to questions from the Maroon, Katelyn Yoshimoto, a spokesperson for the College, provided additional context on the reasoning behind the new sosc guidelines and cited the University’s broader strategy related to AI and academic life.

An individual familiar with the policy changes told the Maroon that civilization studies sequence instructors were asked for their perspective on adopting similar guidelines, but that no explicit AI or technology restrictions are being implemented at this time. Yoshimoto told the Maroon that course chairs for the humanities Core are “currently having discussions regarding the 2026-27 academic year.”

The memo cites as influential a 2025 report on AI and education by the University’s Artificial Intelligence and Education Working Group, which, according to the memo, “emphasizes the centrality of human engagement, human interaction, and human expertise to UChicago’s educational mission.”

Other committees addressing the University’s relationship with artificial intelligence were announced earlier this summer alongside the unveiling of a partnership between Anthropic and UChicago. Beginning in September, students will receive free access to the Claude Enterprise suite of large language models; faculty and staff were given early access to the tools in July.

In response to a question about how sosc’s AI guidance would intersect with the University’s Claude rollout, Yoshimoto wrote that “[u]sing generative AI well requires judgment and discernment: different contexts have different expectations, and access to Claude or any AI does not mean that every use is appropriate or permitted. In the classroom, College students should follow the expectations around AI established by each instructor and course.”

SSCD is not the only division of the University to go AI-free in its introductory sequences. In July, the University of Chicago Law School announced a similar prohibition on electronic devices in the classroom and that it would require in-person exams for most 1L courses beginning next academic year.

“[T]hese guidelines afford students the freedom to think for themselves, to listen to one another without the cacophony of other (disembodied and non-human) voices in the room, to make mistakes, and to change their minds as they engage with thinkers of the past, with us, and with their fellow students in good faith, face-to-face,” the SSCD memo reads.

Editor’s note, August 24, 2026, 11:20 a.m.: This article has been updated to reflect comment from the University and from the College and to clarify that students with certain accommodations will be permitted to use devices in class.

Watching footage from the early years of the festival in the 2024 TV miniseries Lolla: The story of Lollapalooza feels like getting a glimpse into a different world, one more reminiscent of Riot Fest or Warped Tour, only more unhinged. Young fans are shown sporting piercings, mohawks, goth makeup, and fantasy-colored hair, talking about skipping school to attend the festival, and even jumping the fence to gain access. Rage Against the Machine’s lead guitarist Tom Morello described Lolla ’91 as “the Declaration of Independence of the alternative nation—it was like ‘Revenge of the Nerds,’” while Surfrider Foundation representative Tim Donnelly described it as a “complete gathering of the misfits that had one thing in common, which was music.”

Throughout the early ’90s, acts like Rollins Band, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Living Colour, Beastie Boys, and Butthole Surfers helped establish Lollapalooza as a defining festival for alternative music, with the performances themselves matching the intensity of the crowds. Nine Inch Nails famously destroyed their equipment on stage after it melted in the Phoenix heat, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder frequently climbed the stage scaffolding before diving into the crowds, and Ice-T and Body Count brought politically charged performances that addressed issues like police brutality.

But since its earlier runs, the festival has faced a tug-of-war between staying true to its alternative roots and booking “mainstream” artists with the broad appeal to routinely attract bigger crowds. In 1996, Metallica was booked to headline the festival, a decision that drew criticism from both fans and select members of the production team who considered the band to be too commercial for the festival. “I was into alternative and punk and underground. So I was not sure about Metallica back in those days,” founder and former Jane’s Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell told Rolling Stone in 2015.

Thirty-five years later, the festival, which once visited 20–30 cities across North America each summer, is now established as a four-day annual event in Chicago with more than 170 acts, including eight headliners, spread across several stages. At this monumental scale, the question becomes: how are the organizers preserving some of its alternative music roots? And perhaps more broadly, what does “alternative” even mean in 2026?

While pop artists led some of the weekend’s biggest performances, the 2026 bill also devoted significant space to a variety of genres that exist under the alternative music umbrella, including hardcore, shoegaze, post-punk, indie rock, pop-punk, emo, gothic, and alt rock. Curious to explore the diversity of these acts, and perhaps excited to find remnants of the early ’90s chaos, I ventured to six alternative-leaning sets across the weekend.

Wet Leg

Lollapalooza is no stranger to female-fronted bands. The original ’91 lineup included Siouxsie and the Banshees, and bands like Lush, Babes in Toyland, and The Breeders soon followed. This year, one of the most anticipated indie rock acts was a female-fronted band from the Isle of Wight.

Wet Leg was founded by vocalist and guitarist Rhian Teasdale and guitarist Hester Chambers and has won multiple Grammys, including Best Alternative Music Album and Best Alternative Music Performance in 2023.

Closing the Allianz stage Thursday night, Teasdale emerged with soaking wet pink hair, wearing a white bikini that peeked under a chainmail crop top and skirt set, knee-high black boots, and smudged black eyeliner. In contrast, the rest of the band donned T-shirts, sneakers, and shorts or jeans.

She slowly walked toward the mic and struck a front double-biceps pose before the band launched into “catch these fists.” “I know all too well just what you’re like / I don’t want your love, I just wanna fight,” she sang as a giant box fan blew on her face and bright strobe lights that pulsed in sync with the drums cast a glow behind her.

After the song ended, she briefly stepped back to sling a translucent neon green electric guitar on as guitarist and keyboardist Josh Mobaraki, seemingly energized by the crowd, began running in place before screaming into the microphone. The crowd yelled back, prompting another scream from Mobaraki and a few random strums on his guitar before the band continued on to its 2022 single “Oh No.”

Although Wet Leg is a five-piece band, Teasdale remained the visual focal point for much of the performance, framed by a constant wall of smoke that spilled over the sides of the stage. At times, the smoke was so thick it only gave the crowd peek-a-boo glimpses of the other band members as the stage lights cut through the haze.

Teasdale’s stage persona is magnetic; she doesn’t speak much between songs and instead lets her body language drive the performance. When she was not holding her electric guitar, she dragged the microphone stand across the stage, twirled strands of her hair around her fingers, and danced with a dramatic, almost theatrical style.

During the band’s closing performance of “CPR” she dropped to her knees to pick up the receiver of a bright red telephone. As she swayed her hips and played with the phone’s coiled cord, she recited the spoken-word lyrics: “Hello, 999 / What’s your emergency? / Well, the thing is / I, I, I, I, I / I’m in love!” In one swift move, she was on her feet and strutting across the stage with the telephone cord trailing behind her. As the song ended the band disappeared into the luminous cloud of smoke while a sustained distorted guitar note rang out. Even though the set was over, the crowd lingered for a moment, perhaps wanting more.

YUNGBLUD

It’s 2 p.m. on Friday at the festival grounds, and suddenly, a banner-towing plane passes overhead with a message that read: “YUNGBLUD 6:30 p.m. tonight at Lollapalooza.” The 28-year-old alt rock musician, (whose real name is Dominic Harrison), from Doncaster, England, took over the city ahead of his set, with similar ads displayed across trains and on the sails of Windy, Chicago’s official tall ship.

Fast forward to 6:30, and black wings surrounding a crest with the word “IDOLS” in it, the title of his latest studio album, hung over the Bud Light stage. On the screens, a video showed Harrison walking around Chicago before boarding an L train and eventually getting into a vehicle, seemingly making his way toward the stage in real time.

The screens faded to black and a new graphic with the word “Hello” written in dozens of languages flashed across before he finally burst into view, fittingly opening with his 2025 single “Hello, Heaven, Hello.”

Wearing low-cut studded leather pants, black shades, wet slicked-back hair and a matching vest, which he promptly took off, he poured a drink over his head and jumped off the drum riser before yanking his microphone out of its stand. “Hey motherfuckers, are you ready to rock ’n’ roll?! Because we came all the way from the United Kingdom for this!” he shouted.

A few songs in, his attention locked onto the audience as he spotted a fan holding a sign. “You! Yeah, you the fucking girl with the sign up. Can you fucking play it? Do you promise me?” he asked before inviting her onstage. While the sign was not visible, Harrison has a habit of inviting fans onstage to play guitar during his song “fleabag.” As she set her belongings down, he motioned for her to run to him. The fan then sprinted across the stage and leapt into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist.

Harrison’s relationship with his fans is famously close-knit, so for longtime fans the interaction was no surprise as he hugged and spun her around a couple of times before setting her down and handing his own guitar over, gently adjusting the strap on her shoulder. To the delight of the crowd the fan immediately started playing the chords to the song as he began to sing.

There is no doubt that Harrison fully embodies the “rock star” persona onstage, performing with intensity and chaos. Throughout the set, he jumped down into the crowd, crowd-surfed, danced provocatively across the stage, and continued to curse up a storm. At one point he screamed, “Chicago, show me your fucking tongue right now,” sticking his tongue out à la Gene Simmons. “Chicago, why are you so fucking serious?! Bring them up in the fucking TV right now, show me your tongue motherfuckers!”

As much of the crowd complied, the camera focused on an older gentleman at the barricade who refused to participate. The audience immediately began chanting, encouraging him to stick out his tongue. When he finally gave in, cheers erupted across the crowd as Harrison launched into the ’90s Brit-pop-leaning track “Loner,” singing, “All my friends will desert again / And I don’t want to be a loner in my head.”

This natural stage presence does not go unnoticed and even contributed to the late rock legend Ozzy Osbourne telling Harrison that he saw a lot of his younger self in the musician. Widely regarded as one of Osbourne’s protégés, Harrison took a moment to dedicate his cover of Black Sabbath’s “Changes” to the rock legend.

“Right now, I’m gonna pour one out for Mr. Ozzy Osbourne,” he said before emptying his cup onto the stage. “It’s been a year since we lost that motherfucker, but I still feel you every fucking day man!” he screamed, before transitioning into the song.

By the end of the set, Harrison seemed touched and overwhelmed by the energy of the crowd. He closed with his popular hit track “Zombie” as smoke, fireworks, and fountains of sparks went off across the stage. As he sang the final lines—“Would you even want me looking like a zombie? / Would you even want me, want me, want me?”—he stretched out his arms before raising them triumphantly. He slowly stepped away from the microphone, looking from side to side, as he took it all in.

The Smashing Pumpkins

The long-awaited return of the Pumpkins to a Lolla stage took place Friday night. The band last headlined the festival in 1994, when they were already one of the defining forces in alternative rock. More than three decades later, their homecoming drew tens of thousands of fans to the Bud Light stage.

The band turned their performance into a weekend-long event, playfully called “Pumpkinpalooza,” with a pop-up shop on the corner of 9th Street and Wabash Avenue that sold exclusive merchandise and an installation of Madame Zuzu’s (lead singer Billy Corgan’s tea house and record store) on festival grounds.

Given the band’s Chicago origins and history with the festival, one might have expected the audience to be dominated by longtime fans. Instead, the crowd was a mix of generations, with young adults making up a surprisingly large share of the audience. The clock struck 8:30, and the air was filled with anticipation as three giant inflatable clown-like figures stood on the stage. Yet, unlike many festival performers who make a point of creating a dramatic entrance, the band pretty much just walked on and launched straight into their hit song “1979.”

Bringing surprise guests on stage is a common occurrence at Lollapalooza, but The Smashing Pumpkins took this a step further by inviting multiple guests to join them throughout their set. “We’d like to bring a friend out right now. Very special guest!” Corgan exclaimed. As Corgan began playing the first chords of “Luna,” YUNGBLUD walked onto the stage. Harrison’s soft raspy voice was a perfect fit for the song as he sang the lyrics: “I’ll sing for you / If you want me to / I’ll give to you / And it’s a chance I’ll have to take / And it’s a chance I’ll have to break.” “This is a…dream come true—let me see them hands in the air Chicago!” he screamed into the mic.

Unlike Saturday, Friday was spared from weather delays, experiencing only intermittent drizzles throughout the day. But in a moment that seemed almost orchestrated by the band themselves, heavy rain began to pour just as they launched into their 1995 hit “Tonight, Tonight.” The crowd, slightly caught off guard, seemed to become energized from the rain, smiling, jumping, and unceremoniously wiping water off their faces before continuing to sing along. As the song came to a close, Corgan lifted his hands up and looked to the sky, almost in disbelief at the special moment. Then, once again as if on cue, the rain let up moments after the song ended. “We’d like to thank the rain!” guitarist James Iha exclaimed. I was not at Lollapalooza in 1994, but I’d like to think this is what it felt like: carefree, unpredictable, a little messy, and a little magical.

The biggest surprise of the evening came as Corgan announced, “I’d now like to bring out a very, very, very special guest, Miss Olivia Rodrigo!” Rodrigo, who had been spotted at O’Hare International Airport earlier in the day by fans, had sent the internet into a frenzy, with people speculating that she would appear as someone’s surprise guest, some mistakenly believed she was here to join Charli XCX. The crowd erupted into chaos as Rodrigo emerged, dressed in a flowy white ensemble and knee-high socks. Rodrigo quickly bowed to Corgan and waved to the crowd before taking the mic and singing “Thirty-Three” as Corgan played the acoustic guitar.

The band continued through a career-spanning setlist, and just when fans thought there were no more surprise guests, Melissa Auf der Maur, a former touring member of the band, came out to play bass during “The Everlasting Gaze.”

After all the surprises and memorable moments, the set ended just as it began, with no grand farewell or unnecessary pomp and circumstance. Most of the band simply walked offstage as the crowd erupted in cheers. This understated exit felt fitting for a band of their stature, carrying the quiet confidence of a group that has long cemented its place in rock history and just delivered one of the weekend’s most memorable sets.

Corgan remained onstage for a moment, and after tossing his guitar pick into the audience, two of his children ran out to join him, taking his hands and waving to the crowd. He walked around with them, bowing in gratitude and smiling wider than he had throughout the entire set before picking up one last guitar pick to throw into the crowd and handing one to his daughter for her to do the same.

Ethel Cain

Lollapalooza founder Farrell suggested on the TV miniseries that it’s good for the immune system to be shocked. But what constitutes a shock? At the time, he was comparing the boundary-pushing ethos of his band Jane’s Addiction to the jolting effect of an ice bath. But shock can also be found in unexpected places—one of them, perhaps, an Americana Gothic–inspired set nestled between loud, high-energy performances, so quiet at times that you could almost hear a pin drop.

Braving the mud that resulted from hours of nonstop rain and pushed doors back four hours on Saturday, fans gathered at the Bud Light stage as Ethel Cain’s Southern bayou-inspired set came to life. The props included hanging moss, marsh grasses, utility poles strung with glowing LED power lines, and a backlit cross-shaped wooden podium that looked like an altar, echoing the religious imagery found throughout Cain’s visual world. The complexity of the setup was less like watching a festival stage being assembled and more like watching a theater production go up in a record 60 minutes.

Cain took the stage in a black sweater, wearing little makeup and minimal jewelry, her forehead, neck, and hand tattoos acting like accessories of their own. When Cain introduced the act, which included a complete backing band, as “We are Ethel Cain!,” it became clear that Ethel Cain is more than simply her stage name; it also functions as the moniker for an immersive conceptual live project. All of a sudden, the elaborate visual elements on stage made even more sense.

For “Ptolemaea,” she walked to the end of a small stage runway and crouched to get closer to the crowd’s eye level, looking up and then closing her eyes almost like she was in a trance.

Much of Cain’s music borders on spooky, with soft vocal textures like breathing, cooing, moaning, and sighing becoming part of the songs’ atmosphere. Ambient, experimental elements, including heavy reverb and distortion, create an eerie, haunted sound. In songs like “Perverts,” distorted spoken phrases such as “No one you know is a good person” emerge through the instrumental, adding to the music’s unsettling mood.

It is tough to translate that feeling into a multi-genre music festival, where artists with vastly different sounds sometimes share the same stage. In Cain’s case, that challenge was substantial, as South Korean K-Pop artist Jennie was set to follow as one of the night’s headliners. As a result, the more intimate, quieter passages occasionally competed with loud conversations from some of the fans who were camping at the stage for the BLACKPINK rapper.

Regardless, Cain seemed either not to notice or not to mind, and the emotional weight of the performance was not ruined. Her fans proved to be just as enthusiastic, and even during the slower songs, they roared the lyrics whenever she turned the microphone towards the audience. During the explosive climax of “A House in Nebraska,” the camera panned to several fans who were intensely crying.

Hot Mulligan

In the early ’90s, alternative music was often defined by emotionally direct, unfiltered performers focused on authenticity rather than spectacle. Nowadays, that spirit can be difficult to find, but even harder to fake. Hailing from Lansing, Michigan, there’s something refreshingly unpretentious about Hot Mulligan. Despite earning one of the higher billing spots on Sunday’s lineup, they still carry the energy of a band you’d expect to see at a packed no-barricade underground venue.

In an unexpected twist, they opened with “How Do You Know It’s Not Armadillo Shells?”, a song usually performed as their set closer. The crowd instantly recognized the song’s three-count introduction and sang along from the very first word: “So scared that you don’t want me here / In the corner of the living room / Reading subtitles ’cause I can’t hear / The show you put on for noise.”

Known for raspy scream-like vocals and emotional lyrics, the band has become one of the defining acts of modern Midwest emo. “We’re just gonna scream at you for a while,” rhythm guitarist and vocalist Chris Freeman exclaimed before launching into “Drink Milk and Run,” and that’s when the crowd-surfing began. While there were fewer crowd-surfers than you would see at one of the band’s more intimate club shows, spirits remained high, and a mosh pit also opened up.

Vocalist Tades Sanville’s banter is a staple in between songs. Equal parts self-deprecating, honest, and sarcastic, he is not one for fake niceties, and it’s often hard to know whether he’s serious or kidding: “I’m having a dogshit day if I’m honest, I’m so tired, but you know what the cure for that is? Fucking screaming for like 40 minutes!” Yet, there is something to be said for the level of skill and concentration required to sustain the throat-tearing vocals the audience has come to love.

The Tito’s stage doesn’t allow for the intricate productions of its larger counterparts; instead, a row of giant asterisk-shaped lights remains in place throughout the day, serving as the visual backdrop for the performances. The band programmed these lights to mimic some of the visual effects of their latest tour, which included colorful strobing effects and pixel-mapped lighting during songs like “And A Big Load” and “Monica Lewinskibidi.” Despite its unusual title, the latter track carried considerable emotional weight, as Sanville sang about the grief of losing his grandmother: “I’m sitting in a parking lot, you’re laying in your grave / And now I am afraid of you, to know that it’s all done / I didn’t try hard enough to be a proper son / Please wake up!” he screamed as the lights dramatically flickered.

Turnstile

From Baltimore, Turnstile was perhaps the most anticipated performance for fans of heavier, more aggressive music. Composed of lead singer Brendan Yates, guitarists Meg Mills and Pat McCrory, bassist Franz Lyons, and drummer Daniel Fang, the band has recently been experiencing a surge in visibility, partly due to their explosive live shows. This is the type of crowd that probably most closely resembles early Lolla days, where even those who didn’t plan on jumping around for an hour found themselves swallowed by a sea of jumping fans.

The band opened with “NEVER ENOUGH,” from its namesake Grammy-winning album. Although the song began with a slow, quiet melody driven by atmospheric synthesizers as Yates sings “Running from yourself now / Can’t hear what you’re told / Never let your guard down / Anywhere you go,” the mellow intro is deceptive. Perhaps the first clue that something big was coming was Fang, who could be seen doing cross-body shoulder stretches at his kit during the intro, as if preparing himself for the chaos. The song then quickly built up with guitars and percussion before exploding into a fast-paced passage.

For those who usually prefer a milder experience, the “stand to the sides to keep out of the mosh pit” strategy quickly failed, because all at once, several pits opened up across the crowd with fans jumping, shoving, dancing, and colliding into one another. While this physicality is deeply rooted in hardcore culture, few bands can generate more than one mosh pit simultaneously.

Experiencing Turnstile in a live setting brings out an energy in people that few acts are able to achieve. The band is well aware of this and travels with a dedicated internal live video and camera crew that has one goal: to capture the audience. The videographers roam the crowd, dive into mosh pits, race along the barricade, and film from the stage in search of the most electric moments in the audience.

The result is a patchwork of run-and-gun style footage that is continuously projected onto the massive screens behind the band throughout the performance: “I flew out of BWI to get here!” a message displayed on a phone reads, cut to a mosh pit, cut to a Turnstile lapel pin on a bucket hat, cut to a fan headbanging, cut to the band on stage, cut to a fan wearing a shirt that says “Baltimore isn’t that bad you’re just a pussy.”

What truly sets the footage apart is that rather than posing for a perfectly curated moment, fans get a few seconds to act with carefree abandon. It is almost evocative of a time pre–social media, before every moment had the potential to live on the internet forever. No one seems worried about how they look on camera; they just want to be on it.

The connection between the band and its fans is genuine, and even as it’s hitting new milestones, like playing a sub-headlining slot at the Bud Light stage, you can tell Turnstile actively tries to retain some of its underground hardcore punk roots, from back when they played small no-barricade shows with fans habitually crowd-surfing onto the stage, singing into the mic, and then stage-diving. Three songs in the band dove into “ENDLESS,” and Yates jumped down to the barricade, steadying himself with the help of a fan’s hand as he danced along with the crowd and waved the microphone into the air.

The set closed with the hit song “BIRDS,” which starts with a fast-paced intro before slowing down into a melodic guitar riff. “Chicago!” Yates screamed into the microphone. Perfectly on beat, he followed with “Jump, jump, jump, jump jump, jump!” right before the bass drop, a low-frequency sine wave effect that could be physically felt from the speakers. The band jumped in unison to the beat as Yates moved toward stage right, half two-stepping, half bouncing as he clapped his hands over his head. “Finally I can see it! / These birds not meant to fly alone!” he screamed into the microphone.

As the set ended, Yates jumped down from the stage and ran along the barricade, shaking hands and thanking fans for being there before launching himself into the crowd and crowd-surfing to high-five some of the fans that were further back. Footage from the crowd continued rolling on the screens before it settled on a silent blue-hued scene of waves rolling on a beach, a nod to the visual elements featured in the “NEVER ENOUGH” music video.

The quest to find remnants of the original Lollapalooza was not straightforward. While glimpses of the counterculture spirit remain, such as YUNGBLUD’s provocative stage presence, electrifying female-fronted bands like Wet Leg, the dark, macabre world of Ethel Cain, the enduring legacy of the Smashing Pumpkins, the raw emotion of Hot Mulligan, and the chaotic energy of Turnstile, alternative music is no longer the festival’s defining identity. And perhaps that is not a bad thing, as many other festivals across North America now carry the torch for alternative music in ways early Lollapalooza once did.

What has endured is the festival’s willingness to build a lineup with a strong balance between emerging artists and established names, now spanning a broader scope of genres, and continuing to give the audience opportunities for discovery. Whether that means being exposed to an artist they would otherwise have never stumbled upon while camping out at a stage or hearing a new favorite song drifting through the air while walking around, Lollapalooza remains a place where both performers and attendees, misfits or not, are united by the power of music. As Farrell put it, “I want the greatest musicians to be heard and seen,” and more than three decades after its inception, that philosophy stands.

An angsty, insufferable, 19-year-old wannabe writer, Bourdain (played by Dominic Sessa) moves to Cape Cod in pursuit of his crush, who’s working in Provincetown for the summer. The sheltered world Bourdain inhabits is turned upside down after an unexpected turn of events leaves him working in a local restaurant’s kitchen.

From the opening lines of Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Tony begins with: “I was—to be frank—a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive, and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”

Tony’s script was co-written by Matt Johnson, Todd Bartels, Lou Howe, and Matthew Miller, focusing on the point in time when the exact “ass-kicking,” both literally and metaphorically, took place: Bourdain’s first kitchen job.

Although Bourdain is a traveled cultural icon, as comfortable in French kitchens as he is among Cambodian street vendors, he was not always this way. Johnson’s critical decision to complicate the globetrotting persona of Bourdain embedded in cultural memory with the contained narrative of one summer of intense learning in Provincetown adds extra depth and provides a newfound appreciation for the beloved icon. In Johnson’s words, “It’s a coming-of-age story about somebody we all think that we know.”

Johnson’s daring decision to focus on an unknown period of Bourdain’s life pays off in a big way. Bourdain is taken under the wing of a nameless Chef (played by Antonio Banderas). Banderas, who is involved in the food industry himself, is right at home playing a culinary veteran running a tight ship. The father-son dynamic between an immature Bourdain and a demanding Chef propels the narrative forward as dishes are washed, oysters are shucked, and life lessons are learned.

How does a teenager learn discipline? Show up on time? Navigate illicit substances? In Tony, Johnson transports the audience back to the summertime misadventures of 19-year-old Bourdain in 1970s Provincetown and explores how they’d go on to shape the man he’d become.

The film’s production designer, Ryan Warren Smith, crafts the world of ’70s Provincetown with finesse. Shot primarily in Cape Cod and Provincetown, iconic institutions such as Spiritus Pizza, the Lobster Pot, and the Old Colony Tap maintain their palpable charm even when translated into film. The characters are dressed with equal care by costume designer Chloe Karmin, featuring just enough bell-bottoms and wide lapels to evoke the time the story’s set in without taking away from the narrative.

Yet, capturing the time period extends beyond the world crafted on set. Cinematographer Michael Bauman plays an equal role in immersing viewers in 1975 Provincetown. Bauman employs vintage lenses from Panavision to emulate the visual language of classic films. “We used the PVintage series lenses and some of their H series lenses,” Bauman remarked. “Older glass that just has a lot more texture to it.” Bauman’s visual grammar of rich colors, soft rendering, and low contrast works in harmony with Karmin’s wardrobe and Smith’s design, grounding viewers in one particular moment in time, somewhere between archival photographs and footage and Bourdain’s own recollections.

Much like the kitchens Bourdain is known for inhabiting, Tony is testament to every constituent part working in perfect harmony, joining forces to tell a cohesive, captivating story. Tony represents a rare, utter triumph in contemporary cinema, a contained tale of a single person, grounded in a particular time and place, with of professionals cooking at the top of their game.

Irrespective of whether Johnson achieved his directorial vision of capturing a time capsule of Bourdain’s life, critical viewers may retort that this is not the version of Bourdain they wished to see on the silver screen, or that “Anthony would’ve hated Tony.” Yet, I worry such criticism risks missing the whole point.

Bourdain’s curiosity, authenticity, and storytelling are what help him linger in the cultural conscience all these years later. A user on TikTok even called Bourdain the “male Princess Diana.” As former president Barack Obama put it after the chef’s passing in 2018, “He taught us about food—but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown. We’ll miss him.”

Instead of creating the expected retrospective biopic of the character audiences already know and love, Johnson chooses something entirely different, embodying the confessional spirit of Bourdain’s writing in Kitchen Confidential. Johnson’s Tony transports audiences to an adolescent version of Bourdain and an authentic recreation of Provincetown, shining a light on an unsung chapter of the chef’s life and offering an appreciation for the person we thought we knew. After all, is there anything more Anthony Bourdain than exploring the parts unknown?

Randal Picker (A.B. ’80, A.M. ’82, J.D. ’85), the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, passed away on Saturday. He was 66 years old.

The cause of Picker’s death was not immediately available.

Picker “was a remarkably generous colleague, one of our most beloved teachers, an accomplished scholar, and a widely respected commentator on antitrust law and technology policy,” Law School Dean Adam Chilton wrote to faculty, according to a blog post by law professor Brian Leiter.

In another message to faculty, Provost Katherine Baicker wrote that Picker “was an extraordinarily generous and influential University citizen whose dedication and energy for the institution were seemingly boundless,” and that he “leaves an indelible mark across the University.”

After attending UChicago and receiving his undergraduate, master’s, and law degrees, Picker briefly departed the University to clerk for federal appellate Judge Richard Posner and spent time as a lawyer working in bankruptcy and debt restructuring before returning in 1989 to teach at the Law School.

He served as an associate dean from 1994 to 1996, was a member of the Council of the University Senate, and became a distinguished service professor in 2013. Picker was also a member of the faculty committee advising the Board of Trustees during its search for a new president in 2020. Outside of the University, Picker was a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference and a commissioner from Illinois to the Uniform Law Commission.

Picker was an expert in antitrust, bankruptcy, and intellectual property law. He testified before Congress numerous times and published more than three dozen journal articles and six books over the course of his career. Picker was also a frequent contributor to ProMarket, a publication of the Stigler Center at the Booth School of Business, and reviewed submissions for several academic journals.

Earlier this summer, Picker was appointed to serve as the University’s vice provost for academic affairs, tasked with overseeing all academic appointments and aligning institutional practices with the Kalven Report, a 1967 document outlining the University’s commitment to free inquiry and institutional neutrality.

During the pandemic, Picker taught a virtual seminar on antitrust to 24 Law School alumni from a wide range of graduation years aimed at recreating the “interactive nature of the classroom” for an online audience.

“Before this, I hadn’t ever had an opportunity to be in class with such a wide variety of people in various industries, who are in different stages of their careers, and who have varying levels of expertise on the subject,” Karice Rhule (J.D. ’16) told Law School news at the time.

Picker was also a member of “seemingly every significant committee in the Law School and across the University,” according to Chilton, notably chairing the 2016–17 committee that established UChicago’s current system for handling disruptive conduct.

In a 2025 interview with the Maroon, Picker emphasized that the purpose of reforming the disciplinary system was not solely to create a “punishment regime,” but to educate students on how best to exercise their rights to free expression safely.

University administrators “were focused on creating a disciplinary regime for [disruptive conduct]. I said ‘That’s great, we should do that, but I also want to create an educational regime,’” Picker told the Maroon in 2017. “Discipline is a small part of what we do; education is a huge part of what we do.”

The Picker committee’s final recommendation—instituted as the Disciplinary System for Disruptive Conduct—modernized the little-used All-University Disciplinary System, creating an independent committee to review disruptive conduct cases, shielding disciplinary proceedings from public view, and allowing any member of the University community to submit a claim to the committee for consideration. The disruptive conduct committee was most recently convened in the wake of pro-Palestine protests two years ago and faced scrutiny over allegations that University administrators had improperly intervened to temporarily withhold the degrees of several students who participated in the protests.

In addition to his academic and administrative work for the University, Picker began practicing improv comedy in 2013 and performed at the Revival—now Definition Theatre—in 2016.

“It’s been an interesting exercise to be a pure student again,” Picker said of his comedy education in an interview with Law School news. “I’d forgotten what that’s like, and I’d forgotten how intimidating it is. There’s this whole, ‘Am I doing a good job? How do you tell?’ And there’s the uncertainty that goes with feeling that. Experiencing that again has been super healthy.”

We ask anyone who has memories to share about Professor Picker to please contact us at editor@chicagomaroon.com.

“The University of Chicago has been a gracious and generous institutional neighbor,” Brad Braxton, CTS’s president, wrote in a press release announcing the move last week. “This agreement allows both institutions to deploy their respective resources in ways that best serve their distinct missions. CTS is grateful, and the mission of CTS—its brave, justice-centered work—continues.”

According to the press release, the University will “resume full stewardship of the building,” located at 1407 East 60th Street, on September 1. A University spokesperson told the Maroon that plans for the space have not yet been finalized but that the University would share more information soon.

The decision to terminate CTS’s “long-term lease arrangement” with the University was mutual, according to a frequently asked questions page released by CTS. Neither CTS nor the University responded to questions about what prompted the move.

The University agreed to build the 60th Street facility as part of a 2008 deal to purchase the seminary’s former home, now the Saieh Hall for Economics. The University had given CTS a 100-year lease for $1 per year to use the new space, according to CTS financial statements. CTS moved into the building in 2012.

CTS, founded in 1855 and located in Hyde Park since the 1920s, has faced serious financial problems in recent years. The seminary stopped admitting new students to its degree programs amid annual operating deficits exceeding $1 million, the Chicago Tribune reported in April, and its press release about the 60th Street building said it would welcome back only “continuing students” this fall.

Braxton told the Tribune at the time, and the school reiterated last week, that all currently enrolled students would have a path to completing their degrees. 215 students attended CTS as of fall 2024.

Chad Schwickerath, CTS’s vice president for advancement, wrote in an email to the Maroon that the school is “moving to a fully remote operating model.” Many of the school’s programs have been held online for more than a decade, according to the press release, and 78 percent of students were fully remote in fall 2024.

CTS did not respond to questions about whether its financial issues or admissions pause were related to its departure from the building.

In 2023, UChicago purchased another building—at 55th Street and University Avenue—that housed two other seminaries, the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and the McCormick Theological Seminary. Both schools now share a campus with the Catholic Theological Union, another seminary, in East Hyde Park.