The Divinity School Coffee Shop is a staple of life at the University of Chicago. The Coffee Shop's motto is ”Where God Drinks Coffee,“ and the shop has cool and quirky attitude. Most (perhaps all?) of the employees are students at the Divinity School, which is relevant in what follows.
Like any self-respecting coffee shop, there's a tip cup out. But unlike most, the tips are used to decide head-to-head match-ups on the question of the day. Think "March madness" meets the Gallup Poll meets Change Wars. The tournament (single elimination, sixteen contestants) is set up by the employees (remember, divinity students?!), but the outcome of the tournament is a function of the tip-based voting. The clientele of the coffee shop is overwhelmingly university people: a bit more of a graduate student place than an undergraduate place, and a place that draws a lot of faculty from the main quads. (This means that professional school and biology faculty are somewhat under-sampled, whereas humanities, social-science, and mathematical sciences faculty are somewhat over-sampled).
Anyway, the most recent competition just concluded, a "Battle of the Evil Gods," and I think this is interesting as a touchstone for assessing the actual interests/priorities of this particular group of communities.
Here is an image of the final blackboard, which gives you a bit of the ambiance of the place, linked to a simple bracket diagram which is easier to read:
Note that the coffee shop is located in the basement, with classy brick walls, an expresso machine, etc.
Good luck reconciling either the cast of villains or the results of the voting with any preconceptions.
Peace
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