MAROON IN HOT WATER FOLLOWING "CADAVER-GATE"

Once UChicago’s most respectable news outlet, The Chicago Maroon now finds itself the star of some rather unsavory breaking news following the now infamous “Cadaver-gate.” While the story has already been subject to numerous embellishments, what actually transpired is that several high-level Maroon staff members were caught breaking into a morgue to get physical information about the corpse of a recently deceased community member in order to provide more details in their upcoming feature about the death.

The feature, which remains unpublished, was meant to “go in-depth about the member’s medical conditions in order to raise awareness about how hard it is to get healthcare,” according to one of the Maroon editors involved in this fiasco, who is now at risk of suspension. An admirable aim, assumably, except for the fact that the deceased’s family confirmed that a) they did have healthcare and b) did not want specific details of their medical history exposed to the public. The Maroon, however, took this as a suggestion rather than a condition of publication, citing the need for “journalistic integrity” and “creative freedom.”

How, then, did they break into the morgue, and how did they get caught?

The plan originated among inner-circle Maroon members, who were eager to improve their journalistic standing to both students and Hyde Park community members. “We were totally desperate, willing to do anything to stop being made fun of. We thought that by including content that was more raw and real, people would actually read the paper,” admitted another high-level member.

Their plan was to visit the morgue under the guise of seeing a family member, then hide in the bathrooms until the building closed and they were free to wander as they pleased. Getting into the building turned out to be easier than expected, simply because they were so annoying that the receptionist couldn’t bear to speak to them: “They marched in and one of them started talking really loudly and quickly to me, saying that they were really busy and had to see their grandma and that if they weren’t let in they would bring this outrage to the press. I hadn’t even gotten a word in when they started walking past me, still talking at the top of their lungs. To be honest, I was so taken aback I had no idea what to do. I just knew I couldn’t bear to be around them.”

After they had passed the front desk, the group hid in a single bathroom stall for 6 hours until the building closed. Yet their success of crouching on a toilet was short-lived, as they realized they didn’t know where the body was. They decided to split up and see who could find it first, a questionable idea considering their scant numbers. Initially assumed to be a small group in order to deflect suspicion, the Maroon members involved clarified that they would rather not have shared writing credits with more people, wanting the glory of having their name on the title with as few others’ as possible. Some editors recognize that this could have been rethought, lamenting the fact that they didn’t make first-years do this task as part of a hazing ritual: “We make people do so much dumb shit to write for The Maroon, this wouldn’t have even been that out of place! Then they could’ve gotten in trouble instead of us.”

Perhaps it would have turned out different for these editors if they had had a crumb of foresight. Instead, one member triggered the building’s fire alarm after tripping over a dead body in the dark and slamming into the alarm attached to the wall. In their efforts to escape without letting people know they were inside, the group tried to find both the exit and each other, but ended up only running into corpses until the fire department came and found them calling for help.

The cost in damages to the building and the cadavers is immense; the morgue itself is considering a lawsuit against the University, which is trying to shift the blame to the individual students, advising the morgue to sue them instead. Many individual families of the damaged cadavers are considering legal action, as well as the family of the subject of the intended article, which accuses The Maroon of libel as well as physical damage. In terms of disciplinary action, these students are facing academic probation at the very least, but more likely suspension or expulsion, seeing as this doesn’t affect UChicago’s graduation statistics. The Maroon, while not improving its reputation among students, has certainly become the topic of much discourse, with a current UChicago Secrets trend of posts claiming “the reporters did nothing wrong.” Many of these posts have been dismissed as bait, but they have ensured the relevancy of The Maroon’s current actions.

In terms of Maroon leadership, everyone involved in “Cadaver-gate” has been removed, resulting in widespread chaos and a further decline in article quality. The Mauve will continue to report on the story as it develops and sends its best wishes to The Maroon in its future endeavors.