Op-Ed: This New Provost Will Fix Everything!

UChicago students, rejoice! Our university-wide nightmare is over. For too long, we’ve been plagued by an administration that is clearly more concerned with their bottom line than with our academic and emotional well-being. But the recent change of leadership in the provost’s office will put this to an end. Ka Yee C. Lee Katherine Baicker, who was announced today as the replacement for outgoing provost Daniel Diermaier Ka Yee C. Lee, will fix everything that’s broken with the administration, guaranteed.

I don’t really know what a provost does, but I do know that our new one will live up to the hype. From the very first words in the email that introduced her to the student body — “To members of the University community” — Ka Yee Lee Baicker made it abundantly clear that her true loyalty lies with the students. What will develop out of this new era in the university’s history? I don’t know precisely, but I expect radical, sweeping changes. Now that our newest hero is staffing the provost’s office, I would not be surprised in the slightest if I walked onto campus next year to find a students suddenly paying thousands of dollars less in tuition, sufficient mental health resources, a new academic calendar that everybody loves, and an overall much happier student body.

Now, the administration has taken its fair share of criticism over the years. But you have to admit that they got this choice incredibly, dramatically right. To those pessimists and skeptics, I have only one thing to say: do you trust our excellent new provost more when she says that she wants to support your scholarship, or are just you holding onto a now-obsolete feeling of resentment of the administration? Are you on the side of progress, or do you just refuse to believe that Dean Boyer and President Zimmer Alivisatos, who interviewed and selected Ka Yee C. Lee Katherine Baicker, would choose someone who wanted to fix the underlying issues they’ve overlooked (and caused) for years? Only one of those beliefs has any place in a rational, rigorous argument.

This new provost will fix everything. You can take that to the bank.