Advancing our community
LAS influence
The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is filled with accomplished, thoughtful, and dedicated faculty, staff, students, and alumni whose work influences many advancements throughout our community. LAS strives to address the world’s fundamental problems and grand challenges through indispensable research, innovative courses, and an ingrained focus on diversity.
Read on to learn how the College of LAS is advancing our community in Urbana-Champaign and beyond.
Study: Some Chicago clubs use racist tactics to discourage Black patrons
Professor brings to light charges for ice and other discriminatory practices
Illinois News Bureau's Sharita Forrest interviews Illinois sociology department head and professor Reuben A. Buford May on his recent study. In this study, May and his colleagues investigated possible discriminatory practices in pricing and access in Chicago nightclubs by sending pairs of similarly dressed Black men and white men to 30 clubs that were located in a central nightlife district. The men visited the clubs on Friday and Saturday nights over two weekends. On average, the white testers paid $12.85 each for their drinks while the two Black testers were charged about 24 cents more for the same drinks, said May, who cowrote the paper with sociology professor Matthew Soener and doctoral students Carileigh Jones and Quinesha Bentley.
The team published their findings in the journal Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World.
While conducting observations in one of Chicago’s central nightlife areas prior to the study, May, who is Black, noted that on several occasions he was charged for ice in his drinks while white patrons who ordered the same drinks were not. He said that those discrepancies became the impetus for the current study.
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“I never would have thought about differences in alcohol prices, especially with the point-of-sale computers that we have now where staff just have to push a button for each item,” May said. “I would not have known this if I hadn’t started seeing these extra charges and asking the people next to me what they were charged. And so it just made me wonder where this is going on and why?”
May has been examining exclusionary policies in nightclubs for nearly two decades, including bouncers using fictitious reservations lists or discriminatory dress codes to deny access to Black patrons — practices that May called “velvet rope racism” in a 2018 study. However, the problem is not unique to Chicago, as May demonstrated in that study. Using high-profile media reports, he tracked incidents of racial discrimination in access that had occurred at clubs across the U.S.
940 Feet series
Join LAS professors and students for a stroll on the Quad, and learn more about the influential people advancing our community.
Researchers gain new insight into underground root nodules
Illinois plant biology researchers identified clusters of genes in soil bacteria that enhance plant growth.
Professor Ellen Buckley gives account of studying above the Arctic Circle
Ellen Buckley, professor of Earth science and environmental change, gives a first person account of Arctic research.
Bruce Rhoads on collaboration, friendship, and the environmental impact of war
Illinois professor of geography and geographic information science and river dynamics expert Bruce Rhoads touches on his decades-long partnership with Alexander Sukhodolov, a research group leader at Germany’s Leibniz Institute Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, to study the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam.
Faculty research
The College of LAS has more than 600 faculty experts working on the world’s fundamental problems and grand challenges. Learn about their work.
