HYDE PARK — The University of Chicago’s bold pledge to support violence prevention programs following the deaths of three students has not lived up to expectations, South Side advocates say.
After three University of Chicago students were killed in 2021 — including a lunch-hour shooting, a fatal stabbing and Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng‘s killing near Hyde Park’s commercial center on the same day — university officials pledged $15 million over three years to support South Side anti-violence programs.
The Violence Intervention Fund was launched in July 2022. Nearly two years later, the university has given out $2.7 million to 10 groups. That’s less than the $3 million the school gave the city in 2022 to increase off-campus surveillance, and about $12 million less than promised.
The fund’s future is unclear. Assistant Provost Elena Zinchenko told a grant recipient in December “there are no definite plans” for renewing the funding, according to emails obtained by Block Club Chicago.
With the majority of the pledged money unspent, two grantees said the university has done little to ensure the money awarded is making a difference on the South Side — even though the stated intention is to gather more evidence that violence intervention makes “a significant impact.”
The fund offered one-year “pilot” grants for “promising new violence prevention programs or interventions,” as well as “scale” grants to help existing violence intervention programs grow for up to three years.
University officials did not answer repeated questions about which groups received the money until last week after weeks of requests. Spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan confirmed the grantees:
- Lost Boyz Inc.
- Male Mogul Initiative
- Metropolitan Peace Initiatives
- New Community Outreach
- Gary Comer Youth Center
- Woodlawn Restorative Justice Hub
- Inner-City Muslim Action Network
- Fathers Families & Healthy Communities
- Urban Male Network
- Cure Violence Global
The fund for programs in Hyde Park, Kenwood, Woodlawn, South Shore, Washington Park, Greater Grand Crossing, Douglas, Oakland and Grand Boulevard was intended to be “evidence-based,” officials said.
Pilot grants were issued with data collection and evaluation requirements, while scale grants would be renewed “based on demonstrated progress,” officials said.
But two grantees told Block Club that university officials haven’t asked for updates or responded to attempts to submit progress reports — even though their grant contracts required the reports months ago.
After Block Club informed the university of the recipients’ claims, McSwiggan said officials are “in the process of requesting progress reviews from grantees.”
University officials also have said “information about grant recipients and project impact will be shared regularly, along with updates about related efforts.”
UChicago shared the news of the fund online and directly to organizations upon launch, McSwiggan said. He did not share examples of any public updates on the fund or its impacts since then.
Some South Side neighbors were unaware the fund existed, and couldn’t speak to whether the program had improved safety or perceptions of safety in their communities, they said.
Following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, “promises were made by corporations, universities and governments around Black wellness and making sure that ‘We see you, we know these communities have been disinvested in,'” said LaVonté Stewart, founder and executive director of Lost Boyz Inc., a grantee of the program.
“That happened for a year or two, and guess what? Now they’re wiping out [those efforts]. I’m not necessarily saying the University of Chicago has done that, but [the fund] is kind of aligned with what the rest of them have done.
“They did a little something that made them feel good, and they ain’t thought about Black suffering anymore.”
‘One Foot In, One Foot Out Isn’t Helping Us’
Lost Boyz Inc., a sports-based youth development organization in South Shore, was awarded a one-year, $375,000 grant for its baseball, softball and Successful Youth Leaders programs in December 2022.
It’s unclear whether the funds were intended as a one-off “pilot” or renewable “scale” grant, though the contract says Lost Boyz will use the grant funds to scale up its existing programs and serve 150 more young people.
Stewart was confused by the “one-year, one-off funding” since Lost Boyz is an established organization seemingly eligible for a renewable grant. However, university officials never promised to extend the grant, he said.
A majority of the money was to be spent on staff and full-time coaches, according to the contract. No one hired with grant funds has been fired, but some staffers have seen their hours cut as Stewart “scrambles” to fill a significant funding gap, he said.
“You can’t really get mad at somebody who has done for you,” he said. “We’re just trying to send the message that, if you’re trying to be involved, be involved for real.
“One foot in, one foot out isn’t helping us. It actually makes it worse, because now we’ve got to figure out how to sustain that growth.”
The university’s award letter called for Lost Boyz to submit a progress report detailing the programs’ “metrics, outcomes, and associated expenses” by January.
Three months later, “no one’s followed up on it to enforce it,” Stewart said. He’s “disappointed” in the lack of evaluation and follow-up, as his staff doesn’t have the same data and analytics skills as university researchers, he said.
There also were delays in getting the money, Stewart said.
The contract indicated funds would be released around January 2023, but Lost Boyz didn’t receive the money until that summer — by which point the group was “pleasantly surprised” to receive the grant at all, Stewart said.
The Violence Intervention Fund has also been a “faceless” program. What little communication Lost Boyz staff receives from the university is largely via email, Stewart said. The December email saying there were no plans to renew the grants is the last update he received, he said.
The university did not connect Lost Boyz to new programs, funders or any other supports to boost the grant’s effectiveness, Stewart said.
Lost Boyz’s experience is “really surprising from the University of Chicago, given their reputation around violence prevention and data collection,” Stewart said.
“Something tremendous could’ve happened from this … . Who knows what we could’ve collectively learned together.”
‘The Work Is Still Going To Get Done’
The Male Mogul Initiative was “wondering what happened” with the grant before Block Club reached out, despite prior attempts to reach university officials, Executive Director Walter Mendenhall said.
The group — which offers mentorship and entrepreneurship training to young men in Woodlawn, Washington Park, Grand Boulevard and Englewood — received $50,000 in 2022, Mendenhall said.
Staffers prepared a report — due in early 2023 — with updates on hiring, leadership trainings, job skills programs and “qualitative stories about young men’s progress,” he said.
Mendenhall has tried to “figure out who to send that to” but hasn’t heard back from university officials and has been unable to submit the report, he said.
Mendenhall “did think that we would’ve had a chance to renew” the funds, but the university’s apparent one-off grant is “not a surprise to me,” he said.
“I know that we are in an industry where there’s no guarantees,” Mendenhall said. “Everything is one-year-renewable, so I kind of operate in that mode.
“… I’m not dependent on an institution to fund our organization. If [the university does more to support violence prevention], fine. If they don’t do more, that’s OK; the work is still going to get done.”
The lack of updates around the Violence Intervention Fund — to recipients and to the community — reflects the university’s relationship with some South Side organizers, said Vondale Singleton, founder and CEO of CHAMPS Male Mentoring in Greater Grand Crossing.
“I don’t think we have a strong relationship,” Singleton said. “We don’t talk about UChicago these days much at all, at least among the organizations and leaders I work with.”
Singleton called on university officials to support grant recipients for the long term two years ago, when they announced the violence prevention funding. UChicago should invest a “bare minimum” of $100 million, as it’s “a major, multibillion-dollar university right in the heart of where a lot of chaos is taking place,” Singleton said at the time.
CHAMPS did not receive a grant, and Singleton doesn’t recall whether the group applied, he said.
University Safety Or Community Safety?
The fund’s launch came eight months after the violent November 2021 day in Hyde Park and two months after City Council accepted $3 million from UChicago to place about 110 POD cameras and license plate readers in neighborhoods near campus.
The university continues to work with the city to place surveillance devices within the UChicago Police Department’s patrol area, roughly from 37th to 64th streets and from Cottage Grove Avenue to DuSable Lake Shore Drive, McSwiggan said.
The devices have helped identify and apprehend people “in multiple crimes,” McSwiggan said. He directed Block Club’s question about how the university measures the effectiveness of off-campus surveillance to city officials.
Spokespeople for Chicago police and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office did not respond, and officials did not say whether UChicago has provided Chicago police access to on-campus cameras.
Local leaders’ immediate focus on policing and surveillance after the violence in 2021 took too narrow a view of public safety — particularly in an area that’s already “one of the most policed” in Chicago, some South Siders said at the time.
Public oversight of UChicago police would make clearer whether the university’s responses to violent incidents are serving South Siders’ interests — or just the university’s, Hyde Park resident Rod Sawyer said this month.
UChicago has one of the largest private police forces in the country. Sawyer, who has backed state legislators’ pushes to require more transparency from private police forces, said the university has “the privilege to [police] without accountability.”
“In terms of the [surveillance], I don’t know if it’s led to more community safety. I don’t think that those things get measured,” Sawyer said. “I think that it has led to university safety, but I think that kind of gets conflated with community safety.”
Sawyer and other notable Hyde Parkers said they were unaware of the Violence Intervention Fund before Block Club contacted them.
Jackie Jackson owns Kilwins’ Hyde Park, 5226 S. Harper Ave., which closed for months after being damaged in the November 2021 lunch-hour shooting.
Though UChicago is the ice cream-and-sweets shop’s landlord, Jackson heard nothing of the university’s responses to the violence she and others experienced, she said.
The increased policing and surveillance is “very, very much needed” to deter violent crime, Jackson said.
The university “probably will deliver” on the $12.3 million in pledged funds yet to be awarded — and Jackson hopes some of that money can support her plans for a “chocolate garden” and community event space that’s set to open in the coming months, she said.
George Rumsey owns Computer Resource Center, 1525 E. 53rd St., and is a commissioner for Hyde Park’s special service area, which includes the 53rd Street corridor.
Despite Rumsey’s active involvement near the epicenter of the 2021 violence, the Violence Intervention Fund’s announcement “didn’t register” at the time and he was unaware of its implementation, he said.
“A program like that could’ve been very useful if handled properly,” Rumsey said. “It seems like a case where they were being reactive, not proactive, and realized they really didn’t know how to put it together … to accomplish what they would’ve liked to see.”
Rumsey, who “[walks] down 53rd Street every day,” hasn’t noticed more police compared to the past decade and is unaware of how additional surveillance has improved safety in the area, he said.
A concerted effort from the university to “establish better relationships with the community” is not only needed, but doing so “wouldn’t cost them nearly as much money as they’ve been throwing at the wind” in their attempts to address violence on the South Side, he said.
“They tend to [seek community input] when there’s an emergency, when there’s a problem,” Rumsey said. “Then, when they’ve done that, they think they’ve done their duty and move on.”
That perception is one the university must do its best to overcome, Sawyer said.
“There’s a level of trust that the university doesn’t have with the community, and a level of trust that the community doesn’t have with the university,” Sawyer said. “With the university being [a] major institution, it’s up to the university to foster that trust a little bit more, rather than expecting the community to trust it.”
This Story Was Produced By The Watch
Block Club’s investigations have changed laws, led to criminal federal investigations and held the powerful accountable. Email tips to The Watch at investigations@blockclubchi.org and subscribe or donate to support this work.
