Whatever they did, assuming the newspaper story is correct and it involved some vandalism and animal endangerment, it was a mistake to do it at the Shedd Aquarium, which is one of Chicago's major world-class cultural and educational icons, right up there just behind the Art Institute, the Field Museum, and so on. Causing damage and messing with the animals is not likely to win you any friends in the Chicago power structure. Actually, I'll go out on a limb and say it was a big fat mistake, because the president of Northwestern is a member of the board of trustees of the Shedd, according to his biography on Northwestern's web site at
http://www.northwestern.edu/president/shortbio.html