Search Results

Professors discuss amending the 13th Amendment to remove a troublesome clause. By Annie Zavitz Amend the 13th: “A Conversation about Ending Legalized Slavery in the United States and Abolishing the Prison System As We Know It” took place on Friday, Feb. 22, 2019 and was organized by Citizens Against Recidivism, Inc. and Columbia University Staff. It was moderated by Flores A. Forbes from Columbia’s Office of Government and Community Affairs. The panel consisted of Sheena Wright, President and CEO of United Way of New York City, Professor Kendall Thomas of Columbia Law School, and Mika’il DeVeaux, Ph.D., founder of Citizens Against Recidivism. Each panelist discussed the current incarceration system in the United States as it relates to their specific area of work. The event launched with a discussion of the importance of historically oppressed groups receiving education. For speakers, education has historically been seen as a gateway out of oppression for people of color, said Wright. Her work shows a significant connection between literacy and incarceration rates, allowing Wright to conclude that they are “inexorably linked.” “The purpose of the education system in the U.S. has been to prepare its populace for work and productivity and to maintain distinct social and economic class structures,” Wright explained. This makes it all the more important to continue educating systematically oppressed groups, especially African Americans. As Thomas stated, educating “black and brown children is revolutionary in itself.” Thomas also explained the significance, from a legal standpoint, of actually changing the 13th Amendment by removing the Exceptions Clause. The section in question states that “slavery” and “involuntary servitude” is illegal under the U.S. Constitution “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Though the 13th Amendment was established in order to abolish slavery, it actually creates a loophole in which slavery can still be committed within the U.S. According to Thomas, this loophole was created to continue “controlling black bodies.” “Eliminating the Exceptions Clause is a tool in getting to a democratic justice,” Thomas said. He argued that while the removal of the Exceptions Clause would play a significant role in fighting racism, it wouldn’t be sufficient to stop there. Once that goal is reached, there will be more work to to be done in combating racism as a social issue rather than an on-paper issue as it has been seen in the past. The Exceptions Clause allows for a system of legalized slave labor within incarceration to which millions are still subjected. Forbes and DeVeaux experienced this system first-hand, having both been formerly incarcerated. According to these panelists and audience members that were also formerly incarcerated, they were forced to work for wages ranging from 7 to 60 cents an hour. This, Thomas said, creates a “racial capitalism,” based on the “exploitation of black labor within prisons,” and establishes an “underdevelopment of racial democracy.” It is racial, he argued, because of the systemic roots of the prison system, the U.S.’s history of exploitation through slavery, and the mass incarceration crisis that targets African Americans. “Slavery,” Thomas said, “is an economic system that still goes on today.” So it is imperative that this system be fought from as many angles and “fronts” as possible. “Pivoting,” to attack other groups attempting to reach the same goal is a “distraction,” said Wright in response to two audience members accusing the panelists of not being “revolutionary” enough.

A international conversation on the accountability and protection of the Rohingya. By Amad Ross One of the most affecting moments of the International Conference on Protection and Accountability in Burma was not a particular statement made by one of many esteemed panelists, but rather the moment of silence—accompanied by sobbing—that came at the end of the first panel of the first day, when Ahmed Ullah gave us a momentary glimpse into the pain of being Rohingya in today’s Myanmar. The two-day conference was hosted by Barnard College on February 8th in collaboration with Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and a slew of international human rights groups. The college’s purpose for holding it, according to Professor Yvette Christiansë, the interim chair of Barnard’s Council for Diversity & Inclusion, was to “recognize the horrible consequences of refusing to embrace ethnic differences.” The Rohingya people are an ethnic and religious minority in Myanmar who have been severely persecuted in recent years. Since August of 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar in response to the bulldozing of villages, burning down of houses and indiscriminate killings carried out by Myanmar’s military in what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” That silent moment came at the end of a panel called “Rohingya Voices,” one of several panels to address the direct consequences of genocide, when a Rohingya refugee named Ahmed Ullah described the terrible conditions suffered by the hundreds of thousands Rohingya forced into refugee camps abroad. The panel would soon come to a decisive conclusion: the genocide’s perpetrators need to be held accountable. But the conference was full of debate, including between speakers. After the panel, Professor Elazar Barkan, Director of SIPA’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, presented a starkly different picture of the way forward: “There may be a time for accountability,” Professor Barkan said, “but it is not now. It is not that I do not believe in justice; it is that I do not believe in miracles.” Professor Barkan’s comments were soon challenged by audience members, including one who charged him with a form of “neocolonial intervention.” “You frame accountability in the language of ‘miracles,’” he said. “Every Rohingya I’ve known wants justice. You do not have the moral or intellectual authority to tell the Rohingya what they should want.” The specter of Professor Barkan’s comments seemed to loom over the next panel, “How Genocides and Other Atrocities End,” when Professor Gregory Stanton of George Mason University said that the first step of combating genocide is making those responsible “international pariahs, having their assets seized and putting them on trial.” Perhaps the most interesting part of the conference was this ongoing debate on whether the international community should focus its efforts on helping Rohingya people now or laying the groundwork to hold those responsible accountable as soon as possible. The question of what the international community ought to do was especially important in that room, where the vast majority of audience members were not students but activists, some in New York for work at various NGOs or the UN, others specifically for this conference. Much was said on both sides, but the silence during Ullah’s testimony spoke loudly. When Ullah broke that silence, he addressed the audience with tears in his eyes: “I don’t believe in government, I don’t believe in systems, but I believe in you. You can make this genocide stop.

The Blue and White remembers a Conversation from 2011 with Dean Awn. In 2011, The Blue and White published a conversation with Peter J. Awn, who for 20 years was the Dean Emeritus of the School of General Studies. He also taught Islamic and Comparative Religion at Columbia University. On Sunday, February 17th, Dean Awn tragically passed away due to injuries sustained last month when he was hit by a car. To honor and celebrate Dean Awn, The Blue and White has decided to re-release his conversation. Throughout his time as the Dean of GS, Dean Awn continually worked to improve, support and diversify the GS community. One of the most important initiatives that Dean Awn championed during his time as the Dean of GS was the creation of the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration. The Center helps bring service members retiring from duty to Columbia University and assists them during their transition to academic life. Dean Awn also helped to diversify the GS student population through the creation of dual degree programs with Sciences Po, the City University of Hong Kong, and Trinity College Dublin. As part of these programs, students spend two years at one of those three schools and complete the final two years of their undergraduate degree at the School of General Studies. Students then graduate with degrees from both schools. Both initiatives demonstrate the emphasis Dean Awn placed on expanding and diversifying the GS community during his time as Dean. After retiring as Dean in 2017, Dean Awn returned to his previous position in the department of religion, where he placed an important emphasis on making personal connections with graduate school applicants. Throughout his time here, Dean Awn showed incredible energy, devotion, and commitment to bettering the Columbia community. He will be greatly missed. The Blue & White: So, you were not quite 20 years here and you became Dean in ‘97? Peter Awn: That’s right, in ‘97 I became Dean, absolutely. But I think what’s important is that very early on … I got hired and I started teaching my undergraduate courses, which is what I did for the most part (I had a few graduate course[s]) and I said “Who the hell are these people in my class?” I thought I was going to be teaching 18-year olds! Or you know 18- to 21 year olds. And so it was this much more diverse environment, which I thought was a kick. And I went to my department chair, and I asked her, I said, “Who are these people?” And she laughed and she said, “Go over to Lewisohn Hall and you’ll find out.” So I came over here and in some was I was I was hooked. … I thought it was just a terrific, terrific model of education that I thought really complemented traditional education … The problem is, we’re so used to it, we don’t appreciate how incredibly cutting-edge it is in terms of undergraduate education and why. The traditional model of quote: “adult education” was seen as an appendage on the “real” university structure, the real colleges at the university, and they were always embedded within a broad continuing education division that ran non-degree programs. Come take a course, do whatever you want kind of environment. So you [created] a kind of culture in which when people reached a certain age they were allowed in, kind of, but never taken seriously. And so the culture creates this dichotomy between the real undergraduates and the older students who are here for self-enrichment, maybe self-advancement. But somehow age and experience have created a sort of mental deficiency that doesn’t allow you to compete. And that has become ingrained within the American private education structure… If you don’t begin to take in and take seriously the fact that 75 percent of Americans interested in higher education fit more the non-traditional model than the traditional model, you are going to become completely on the fringe of how American society is evolving. Realize how the demographic changes have affected education, and how people’s choices about how they manage their education have changed dramatically since the 1950s. B&W: You say that pretty early on in your career here you were hooked on GS because you saw it as a cutting edge model for education. PA: Well, it was but it needed a lot of fixing. It really did. It still suffered from the fact that Columbia had for decades, if not centuries, been wildly decentralized so that each dean hired his or her own faculty. The academic programs were determined by the faculty of the school, so that even [though] you might be in some of your classes with students from the other colleges, in fact the separation among the colleges was fairly pronounced. So that, I knew, and my colleagues around the University knew, as a model that was well on its way to being buried. That what matters most is an academic model of full integration and the creation of a model of education that the faculty can manage easily without worrying about “What the hell are the GS requirements. What are the College requirements?” A department should determine, “What do you think is critical for a student to know to engage in order to complete a major?” And if you determine that, why would you make a distinction between one population and another? … So the advantage that we’ve reached now is a Columbia graduate is a Columbia graduate no matter what school they’re from. And that’s how faculty see it and that’s the reality. Now my ability to really push this forward as a model as Dean has been really [been based upon] the enormous support that one gets from faculty for GS students. And that’s in contrast to what you will find at other elite, private universities. We’ve had 60-some-odd years to be able to bring the faculty along. When you broach this with other Ivy League faculties, they’re horrified. They have no context in which to see this work. Now, I know some colleagues at Princeton and Harvard for whom this is a really interesting idea, but they’re never really sure how to engage their colleagues on this. Now… when I came in the ‘70s- and this is true, it isn’t in any way to put Columbia College down, it’s just the reality- in the late ‘70s… The City was in such dire financial straits that everybody was as surly as can be. The neighborhood was to put it mildly dangerous. So in the late ‘70s Columbia College could not generate more than 3,500 to 3,7000 applications. We would take one of two applicants to try to build a class of 650. We’d sit at faculty meetings wringing our hands. The faculty was terrific, but why would anyone from outside the city send their child here when they read all of how terrible… And therefore it was hard to keep the level of quality that now seems so obvious. For a whole variety of reasons, in the ‘80s the whole city turned around. The College went coed and it really began to come into its own, as it should. So it became then, for GS: this is the bar you have to reach to be credible. It’s not just integration, but the students you have to integrate have to be as competitive intellectually as everybody else. And that’s been the fun of this for me. Admissions here is really interesting because you have to evaluate people in a very different way from the way you have to evaluate seniors in high school. It’s not less rigorous. It’s just more comprehensive, and in fact we try to prequalify applicants. When you contact us – and we try to make you contact us – we want to have at least one or two initial engagements to help you decide, is it really worth applying? The last thing we want is a pointless application. So we want to convince you not to apply if we don’t think you’ve got a good shot at getting in. So getting thousands and thousands of applications is not to our benefit, We want to be engaged with applications that are seriously viable. B&W: So do you think that accounts for the much higher acceptance rate in comparison to the College? PA: Oh absolutely. That’s exactly why. And we do that quite deliberately. Everyone says, “How can that be, how can that be?” First of all, we’re a small operation and we spend an average of four hours per application. You show me a traditional college that does that. Now we have to on some levels because you all come with very complex lives and there’re no two applications that are going to be the same. Rarely is it a question of your intelligence, but it is always a question of, “Well, how have you managed your life?” For example, we get people from the military, I’d say, and dancers. I talk to them in the same breath and they all look at me, but in fact you’re very similar in terms of background. Why? Frequently people who enter the military do so right out of high school… B&W: Typically, yeah. PA: If you just looked at their high school record, yeah, you’re going to get some sense of their potential. But you know, that’s a long time ago, so what’s been going on now? Do they read, can they think, can they write? And do they have the focus and the commitment to do this? And like the dancers who frequently do the same thing (in fact some of them don’t even go to high school, they frequently have to get a GED- they haven’t been to school. They’re mid-20s, late-20s. They’re like athletes: you get to a point where your body’s going to give out. You have to decide what you want to do with your life. The ones we take are voracious readers. They’re really intellectually alive. So they’re autodidacts, and I think in some ways the people we get from the military are like that. And so you transfer that focus to your work at Columbia in ways that students who haven’t had that rigorous environment don’t necessarily have or have to self-generate. And it really is interesting how those kinds of parallels exist in the GS population. B&W: So it seems like GS has flagged certain groups of people out there in society that you know from experience will likely do well. PA: Yeah, but I can give you half a dozen other groups. For example, entrepreneurs. We’ve had a long tradition of incredibly successful entrepreneurs. B&W: Well I think that the most common perception that I’ve head is that GS is the back door. PA: Which is bologna. It can’t be the back door if you’re doing as well as the College students, which is really true. The graduating seniors — basically the GPAs… There’s a little bit to go to make them identical, but it’s so close as to be actually irrelevant. And I also think in a few days it will be better than the College. [Laughs] So give me a break, when you’re the best student in the department as a graduating senior, tell me why that’s a back door. B&W: So… PA: The culture wars were ferocious. I find sadly now it’s the Barnard women who are taking the brunt of a lot of the negative sort of press, or negative kind of cultural push. But, oh, no, they were vicious, absolutely vicious to the point where GS students couldn’t join clubs. If you did, you couldn’t become an officer. It was, I mean, all of these kinds of ways to make you feel like a second-class citizen. Now, more often than not, and I don’t know whether it’s to make me feel good, but a lot of the College students I’ve spoken to (but it seems to come out naturally) say, “You know, I’ve really enjoyed being in classes with GS students. That I really learned a lot from having GS students in my class. It really does make the educational process something a little more complex than it might be were I at Princeton or Yale. B&W: Now that, at this point, it’s safe to say that GS is definitely working in the Columbia community, has definitely been accepted… PA: Where is the real problem? B&W: Well, my question was going to be: when are we going to change the name? PA: Oh, no, it’s a horrible name. I could give you a lecture on the Studium Generale, which is the origin of this, but it means absolutely nothing now. There’s nothing “general” about it. The issue — it’s linked to the issue I was going to bring up: where have I, in a sense, failed. Though I’ve done a lot better, but it’s not even close to enough and will really … and has already begun to have a damaging effect, is financial aid. You’re paying the same tuition as Columbia College students… We get, percentage-wise, functionally half the financial aid dollars that are available to Columbia College students. That’s untenable. B&W: I almost didn’t come for that reason. I was this close to not [coming] for that reason. PA: You and 98 percent of your fellow students, and you would be depressed to hear how many people do say no. Really, really, talented people who say no, who would thrive here, be an immense contribution to the community. And as I’ve joked, you could rename it [the college] whatever you want for a couple hundred million. But it has to be a name that is truly unique, that isn’t mirrored at other universities, and that therefore embodies the uniqueness of this educational experiment. Now, if the money doesn’t come, then the pressure that I feel – and rightly so – to change the name may lead us to make a move to pick a name. You know, you may go for a dead white male from Columbia’s history. Frankly, I would love to name it after a woman. I mean, what Ivy League college is named after a woman? I mean, other than women’s colleges, zero. So now’s the time to say: the majority of undergraduates on this campus are women and we [GS] were the beacon of women’s education, co-education anyway, and adult women’s education in the city and at Columbia. B&W: Possible names? PA: You know, I don’t have a serious list. If I did, I’d tell you. B&W: Well, you covered all my questions without me having to even ask them. PA: Well, I guess. But you can tell I really believe in this. And it does really disappoint me that colleagues around the other elite colleges and universities haven’t quite recognized this yet. Now realize that I’m not saying that something terrible’s going to happen to Columbia College or Princeton or Harvard. There will always be a very strong constituency for the traditional colleges. The model I’m arguing for is really the marriage of both. Traditional applicants are very different from how you approach a non-traditional student. Advising is different. And that’s why you need a separate division… And that’s a very interesting model where you have this parallel process of separate divisions recruiting different constituencies. But then they all end up in the classroom together and it’s that that I espouse – and elite traditional college as well as an elite non-traditional college. B&W: Does it seem to you like other (call them top-tier) colleges are testing the waters right now? PA: Well I think they’re starting to catch on…The best story is [Provost] Claude Steele when he arrived from Stanford. He had literally been here a week and I invited him to speak at orientation for the fall class. And he didn’t know the campus well. I had to go pick him up at his office and bring him over to, you know. And when I got there, he had to admit, “What’s GS?” And I gave him GS101 as we walked across campus and by the end he said, “Why doesn’t every private university have one of these? This is amazing. This is what I’ve been writing about my whole career.”

In April of 2019, Mo Crist, BC ’19, and the Barnumbia slam poetry team will head to the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) in Houston to compete with slam teams from across the nation. Crist, who joined as a freshman, is now a coach for the slam team. They will help poets on the team prepare for CUPSI 2019 by editing work, facilitating the writing of collaborative slam poems and more generally being a leader. Crist is majoring in English and CreativeWriting at Barnard, but initially came to Barnard planning to be pre-med. It was joining the Barnumbia slam poetry team that directly influenced Crist’s decision to change paths. With the help of their slam coach, Crist discovered a passion for creative writing as a freshman. “[I] had an amazing coach named Paul Tran who really encouraged my writing and showed me that I could be a writer and study English and make something really great out of that,” Crist says. “So that’s why I switched to English, and I haven’t looked back.” Outside of the slam team, Crist is one of the co-presidents of the Barnard Writing Collective and is also the president of GendeRevolution, which is the transgender support and advocacy group of Columbia and Barnard. In October, GendeRevolution hosted GenderFuck, an annual queer, body-positive underwear dance party. Following the event, Crist wrote an op-ed in the Columbia Daily Spectator titled ‘GenderFuck and the defense of trans joy’; their article discussed the purpose of the event as a safe space for queer and trans students, as well as the policing of the event by university administration. “The op-ed was kind of a way of trying to explain the merit of the event and why it’s important and necessary but also why it’s incredibly, incredibly difficult to put on,” Crist says. In particular, Crist was motivated by feeling that student event planners aren’t granted enough recognition by the university and other students for the countless hours and dedication put towards organizing events like GenderFuck. “Especially for queer and trans communities on campus, there are so many of us that put in so much time and effort and work for this community that we’re a part of that we feel really passionate about, and it’s hard to continue doing that without feeling like you’re supported or given credit,” Crist says. Having helped plan the event for all four years they’ve been on campus, Crist has noticed a difference in how Barnard and Columbia’s administrations interact with the queer and trans student communities. Last year, GenderFuck was hosted at Barnard, and Crist specifically recalls feeling that the administration lacked trust in GenderFuck’s ability to put on the event safely or well. “It’s definitely hard to be queer and trans at Barnard because it’s a women’s college and it’s kind of hard to divorce that history from the current student body, which is very diverse in terms of gender identity and presentation,” Crist says. “I really saw the differences last year in planning GenderFuck and realizing that Barnard didn’t want this event to happen because it put a bad face on the school.”

By Amad Otis Ross By Wednesday, November 28th, the Columbia graduate student union will have decided whether to agree to a framework for negotiations offered by the university. Should the Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC) and the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers (CPW) agree to the framework, the university will for the first time begin bargaining with both unions by February 25th, marking a turning point in the years-long struggle for the right to negotiate contracts for better working conditions and better wages for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Should the unions reject the framework agreement, they will strike beginning December 4th. GWC and CPW, which have been legally recognized unions since August of 2016 when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decided that teaching and research assistants may be treated as employees, have previously been stonewalled by Columbia University, which has appealed the NLRB decision to federal court and refused to recognize both unions. Although nine private universities—including New York University and The New School—have agreed to bargain with their graduate workers, the framework agreement is the first indication that Columbia University is willing to negotiate with its own. The framework agreement, offered on November 19th, seems motivated by the threat of a graduate worker strike on December 4th. But many in both unions have misgivings about the framework, not least because it was compiled without input from the graduate workers themselves. Both unions are partnered with United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110, a larger and historically significant union, however some members of both CPW and GWC have expressed frustration that Columbia offered this framework agreement after going around the bargaining committee of the GWC and meeting with UAW staffers. Neither party consulted nor reported these negotiations to the rank-and-file members of GWC and CPW. One particular cause for concern is the framework’s “no strike” clause, which mandates that the two unions “shall not authorize or condone any strike… work stoppage, slowdown, or other interference with Columbia’s operations” until April 6th, 2020. There is  worry that without the threat of a strike, graduate students will have no leverage in their negotiations with the university. The Barnard-Columbia Socialists have come out strongly in opposition to the agreement, writing, “We don’t see why it makes any sense to give up the ability of to strike for the next 18 months while a contract will be bargained. A no-strike clause would tie the union’s hands before they even get to the bargaining table.” NYU’s graduate worker union has criticized the agreement in similar terms, concluding that “We urge that you reject the pledge not to strike until April 6, 2020.” These concerns and more are articulated in a petition signed by over 400 graduate workers titled “Vote No on the No-Strike Deal,” casting doubt on initial appraisals of the framework as a great victory for the union. Whether the unions accept these terms and the university side-steps the strike remains to be seen, but one thing is sure: neither side had much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving break.

Stephen Sullivan has almost spent as much time learning at Columbia as he has teaching high school students. With multiple awards and papers related to his work as a high school teacher, he spends his summers (and retirement) at Columbia teaching History of the City of New York. The Blue and White Investigations Editor Ufon Umanah, CC ‘20, sat down with Stephen Sullivan, CC ‘82, in the History Faculty Lounge in Fayerweather to discuss his history, Columbia’s history, and history in general. The Blue and White: Some of our leaders might be called ‘history-phobic.’ If you had to teach them one lesson, which moment in history would you choose to try to convince such a person that your field actually matters? Stephen Sullivan: Well, the easy answer is the founding of our republic is probably the single most important. I think that was a time of creation. I think creating our national Republic is probably the single most difficult moment, because no nation had ever broken away from a mother country before, creating its own set of norms. Now as a New York historian, I like to teach the students in my Columbia class, I like to teach high school kids, that New York is significantly more valuable to the Revolution than people realized; that at the beginning of the Revolution we have a tendency to associate Boston and Lexington and Concord, and certainly that was important in bringing on the revolution, but so many of the battles fought in New York City: the Battle of Brooklyn, the Battle of Harlem Heights, which was fought really on Barnard’s campus, the battle down in Kips Bay, in which the colonialists were overrun, Saratoga upstate. So much of what’s going on was there. How do you create the first new nation? How do you bind together southern slaveholding states, northern states, New York, which has interests in slaveholding because they were essentially the bankers of the slaveholding (states)? How do you bind together all these different people and create the first democracy in the modern world? And how do you create this large republic which had never been done before. Illustration by Jennifer Bi B&W: S o h ow d o y ou r eckon w ith t hat h istory? Because you mentioned in the founding of the republic, we had to negotiate with slave-owning states; New York had a giant interest in that. There’s a class taught in the Spring, a seminar: “Columbia University and Slavery,” where people have to research Columbia’s specific ties in the slave trade. There were protests, last year I think or two years ago, against Columbia’s ties to the slave trade, like Remington Arms, and I think it was Marcellus Hartley Dodge who owned that company, which sold guns to the frontier. So how do you reckon with that history? SS: I’m familiar with the professor who teaches that course. I’m not familiar with the course that you’re referring to. That was the Ebony and Ivy books. Columbia was one of the universities, probably every Ivy was, deeply invested in the slave trade going all the way back, because unfortunately slavery and the slave trade was one of the best single investments that you could put your money into, and particularly if nobody knew you were investing and there was no downside, the university would put its institutional funds into it. The Fugitive Slave Act made slavery a national institution, and made it very clear that it was a national institution. But, frankly, it was a national institution already. You had New York banks, you had Hartley, you had the universities, you had all sorts of trust funds investing in it already. So I think it’s important for students to get out and to protest, and for our students to get out and to make the point. I think Eric Foner’s book, Gateway to Liberty, was based on one of his students studying and just digging around up in the Collections and discovering that there were abolitionists in New York City, which was largely hostile to abolitionists. I think the more that is brought to light, both negative and positive; Syracuse, for example, was a very very abolitionist city, very abolitionist friendly, the Underground Railroad was essentially advertising in papers, whereas in New York City, you could be beaten and mobbed and have had the slaves you were setting free taken out and shipped back. So I think that’s exactly how we need to educate. I think we need to have students doing independent research. One of the things that I’ve done for the last 30 years at the high school level is to run an independent research class. You learn best by doing hands-on research. Now, that hands-on research has to be informed by a class in which a professor is showing you this and how to do it. But with the resources available at a university like this, with the research sources available online, why aren’t students at more universities with more professors going out and finding things for themselves, and arguing, and discussing, and having Socratic seminars, and having a chance to present your research to the other students, and letting them critique, and then having the professor saying, “Oh, wait a minute, what about this and what about this?” There are times where it makes sense for me to present my research to you and let you talk about it, but there are also times where you should present your research to me and to each other, because you guys are the future of this, and you need to explain to each other, to the world. There should be more undergraduate opportunities to publish this work on these things. You need to put that stuff out. B&W: There was a conversation about this during the last Fireside Chat less in that vein but, like, hearing that students weren’t curious anymore or they came in curious but the stress of Columbia combined with, I will describe it as a seeming lack of opportunity or really the idea that there’s not really that much opportunity to go outside of a career field. So there’s a sense of wanting that, as opposed to what I think I remember Bollinger saying, something to the effect of “The resources are here if you want it.” …the college application process, in some ways, has sucked the life and joy out of some of the discovery that 20 years ago I had with the high school kids. SS: Well is it the stress involved with career or is it the stress involved with the process of graduate school? Now, again, as someone who teaches both high school and summers here at Columbia, the college application process, in some ways, has sucked the life and joy out of some of the discovery that 20 years ago I had with the high school kids. For example, AP American History. Everything is so focused on the test, and the curriculum is so focused on testing, testing, testing. It’s only in the other classes that I have an opportunity for the kids to do things that are really interesting. Is it because of law school? Is it because of grad school? Is it because of LSATs and GMATs etc? Has that creeped in and overtaken? B&W: I think the sense I got from the person who was asking the question was a sense of going through the four year process, whether or not you went to graduate school, or whether or not you went on to a year internship that went on to a career. Getting in and going through Columbia and getting to the next step of your life so robbed of the opportunity of exploration. I wish I could review tape but… SS: Well, perhaps at Columbia we have to decide whether that (experience) is Columbia or whether that’s top-tier research universities. Now to a certain extent, it doesn’t matter whether that’s everyone or us, because we can change us, and we can hopefully make some changes in our department and our university. But if it is everyone, there’s only so much we can change ourselves without having the conversation with Princeton and Yale and Dartmouth and Stanford. If Columbia wants to compete and wants our students to compete, because our kids still want to go to grad school and still want to get fellowships, we can’t become ‘Kumbaya University’, but there are things that we can do if we want our students to have a better and more fulfilling life. If Columbia wants to compete and wants our students to compete, because our kids still want to go to grad school and still want to get fellowships, we can’t become ‘Kumbaya University.’ And I think some of that, with our graduate students, Professor Colburn has been doing with the History Now movement, where our PhD students are involved with everybody who has a PhD who isn’t going to have an academic job. Let’s look at some other options from teaching in private, prep schools, to getting involved in museum work, to teaching outside the academy, etcetera. And they’ve begun to do some of that so maybe there might be some more, you know, career based ‘Let’s prepare everybody for a broader thing’ and the liberal arts prepares you for so much more. B&W: So looking back to the late 70s. Why did you choose to attend Columbia? SS: I’m from New York. I grew up in Brooklyn, so there were some practical reasons and I really didn’t want to go that far away. I liked the idea of a core curriculum. And Columbia also paid the ultimate respect to my high school. Their assistant director of admissions came to our school to recruit us. I went to a very good Catholic school in Brooklyn, but Harvard sent us a graduate student who acted like he didn’t even want to be there. And it struck us as though Harvard has no interest in us. Princeton sent us the same. Columbia didn’t even call themselves Columbia in the City of New York at the time, but it was that Columbia was from there. A number of our students had gone to Columbia before and there was just a connection, and it was in the city. Even back then in 1977, when the city was not the draw that it is now; you know the subway was dangerous and blah blah blah. Now, again, I was from Brooklyn, so I wasn’t really afraid of the subway. My mom was, but I wasn’t afraid of the subway. So the city was a draw. He explained the Core Curriculum and what I was going to take: I was going to take a philosophy/ history course, I was going to take a great books course, Literature Humanities, I was gonna take Music Humanities, I was gonna take Art Humanities. That struck me as what I wanted, and my logic—which worked for me, but seems a little skewed right now—was that I wanted to take philosophy, but I wanted to take CC with a broad range of students. I wanted to take it with history majors and chem majors. Then I was pre-med, so I wanted to take it with students who were not only philosophy majors. I didn’t want to walk into the class where the professor would make a joke in Latin, you know, about something Socrates wrote, and everybody else laughed, and I had no idea what he was talking about. I wanted to be on an equal footing with almost everybody else in the class, and that’s what I got, and it was wonderful. I really felt that I was getting a wonderful introduction, and so was everybody else. Now, were there people who had gone to prep schools in Manhattan and had read Chaucer? Of course there were. But that was fine and I felt welcome and I felt fair. B&W: What was your favorite LitHum book or Contemporary Civilization? Because my assumption would have been, maybe The Histories, History of the Peloponnesian War, but you were a pre-med. SS: My favorite experience, I can’t say my favorite book, was Columbia’s soccer team. That was before big scholarships etcetera, and John Rennie was the coach my freshman year, then Dieter Ficken, who went on to be a great, great coach. Columbia was number four in the country then, number two in the country the year after I graduated. But Shahin Shayan was our great player at the time; he was the great star on the team. And so this was the fall and the spring of ’78, ’79, right as we’re about to go into the Iranian Revolution. He was Iranian and in the Columbia sports guide, everyone, every athlete in the entire university is listed by their hometown. His hometown is Tehran. I went in what then was reverse order. They wanted to take CC first, then take LitHum. Now I know they recommend it the other way. But, it just fit my schedule better so I took it backwards, and the only two students in the entire class who did all of the reading was this junior soccer player and me, the freshman. Everybody else was like “Eh.” So we got the only two As. This guy was a really rough grader. Freshmen: not supposed to get As, and jock: not supposed to get As. So the following year, we’ve got the whole Iranian hostage crisis etcetera. And suddenly in the guide you’ve got… he’s from Tehran. People didn’t realize that he was Iranian and now all of a sudden, he might be getting some problems. Dieter Ficken, who was German himself and had gotten some problems because his dad was in the German army during World War II, not a Nazi but he’d been in the German army, he had the entire media guide reprinted just to protect this kid. He changed everything to birthplace, because he was born in the Bronx. His parents were residents at Columbia Presbyterian when he was born. Now, most people their birthplace and the hometown are the same. But suddenly he went from Tehran to Bronx. He was already calling himself Persian and everybody else switched. But I mean, how great is that? How brilliant is that for the soccer coach and for the athletic department for one kid to make him feel more comfortable? B&W: I find it comforting that Columbia was that accommodating in the 1970’s given the news right now around the travel ban and Islamophobia, and random war-tweeting about Iran. SS: Well back then it wasn’t Islamophobia, it was Iranophobia. It was that one country because that was the country that was taking hostages and Columbia switched. But Columbia switched it before it became a problem. B&W: They were active instead of reactive. SS: They were completely and totally proactive, and it was because of the coach. I actually think they probably would have done it to protect the, you know, the eighth best player on the team. I can’t swear they would have done it to protect the, you know, JV player; the fact that he was the best player on the team probably helped. But I think Dieter would have done it to protect anyone. B&W: On another subject, history and Columbia’s history, we’ve touched on how Columbia is historically controversial. You already named a couple of instances. What was the most controversial moment during your undergraduate career at Columbia? SS: Well, Jerry Falwell coming here to debate Jim Shenton. James Shenton was a controversial, quirky, interesting character; he was a professor of history who got his PhD on the GI Bill of Rights. He also was a tremendous supporter of secular humanism, not a religious guy at all. So when Jerry Falwell (Editor’s Note: Falwell was a Southern Baptist pastor and activist, and the founder of Liberty University) wanted to come to Columbia to speak, when he was forming the Moral Majority. Shenton was big on “the moral majority is neither,” and he, at his own expense, had a thousand buttons printed up saying “the Moral Majority is neither,” distributed them to whatever hundreds of students, covered the campus in them and then challenged Jerry Falwell to a debate at Ferris Booth Hall. So my friends, compatriots, and I—I was one of Shenton’s work-study kids at the time—we blanketed the campus, ran around, you know, “James Shenton debates Jerry Falwell.” And he had his debate and we formed the Immoral Majority. The two of them went back and forth and debated points in the Bible, and it was pretty remarkable because Shenton’s knowledge of biblical text as a historian, as an American historian, was probably as good as Falwell’s. Falwell was just pulling stuff out of context, as televangelists have a tendency to do. And Shenton was like “No, no, that’s not exactly what it is. In context it’s this this this,” and “I believe that what Paul was trying to say was…” And then, you know, Shenton was like, “Well you know Maccabees, according to the Jewish tradition, said this this this and this…” and it was quite an evening and two of them went at it, you know. I mean The Columbia Republican Club at the time was only 37 people so the cheering was very clearly on Shenton’s side. Shenton had the crowd, there was no doubt. If you were scoring it on a debate fairly, Shenton won, although Falwell knew his scripture. I mean he is a preacher. That one was kind of a fun week. B&W: After your time as a Columbia student, what drove you to teaching high school, as opposed to entering academia? SS: Well what drove me to teach high school originally was need. Ronald Reagan became president. The aid to universities was cut drastically and it seemed as though it was almost aimed at me. Because the aid to universities was cut dramatically, universities got to decide what to cut. It wasn’t as if it was, “Okay the aid to the humanities would be cut.” But the aid to universities was cut dramatically and Columbia had significant matching grants from everything from the Agriculture Department, Defense Department and most of those grants were for STEM. So if you’re getting matching grants for STEM, you want to keep them. Obviously the Agriculture Department, the USDA, is not giving grants to the History department. So if you’re given a pot of money, you’re going to give less money to Anthropology and Archaeology and History. So the History department got less money. My first year, 22 of us were on fellowship in U.S. history. That went down to, I want to say five. I was rated (lower than others) in part because I had not yet completed my Master’s MA … I was rated number seven … so I wasn’t the next one, but I was close considering that I hadn’t passed my French exam. So in order to get your Masters, you need to pass one foreign language exam. In order to get your dissertation, you need a second foreign language. My Master’s essay got high grades. My grades were fine, but I didn’t have the Master’s in hand so my rating was not what it should have been. My fault. I told them that what I liked about high school teaching, and particularly about adolescence, was that I had 125 chances a year to change the world and to change lives. So I then took a job at a Catholic school in Midtown and I was still working as an RA. Once I got the job though, I fell in love with it. So taking the job was opportunity and necessity. At some awards ceremony for some, you know, teaching award that I won, I told them that what I liked about high school teaching, and particularly about adolescence, was that I had 125 chances a year to change the world and to change lives. And I still believe that. By the time you get college students, I can make a difference in someone’s life but I’m not going to dramatically change everybody. If I’m teaching elementary school I have 24 kids, I have 25 kids. But I have so many opportunities, I’ve so many chances, I’ve 100, 125 kids, and there’s just this connection. B&W: So from getting masters degrees at Columbia in ’84, ’85, I noticed that you got your PhD, also Columbia, in like 2013. How was teaching high school while pursuing a PhD? SS: It was really really difficult. Part of the reason is because I took teaching high school, like, seriously. Teaching high school was not something I was doing while I was working on my PhD, that was first. And John Irving in The World According to Garp has a line in which he describes someone as being a gradual student; that you’re going to school and you’re going to school and you’re going to school until you don’t go to school anymore. Well in my case, not going to school anymore is when I finally finished. I received four different notes from four different Deans of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The first two were snail mail—they were typed up on Columbia letterhead and sent with stamps on them. Now some of my high school and even some of my college students don’t really remember those things. The only things they get in the mail with stamps on them are bills. The last two were emails, to give you an idea of how long it was that these were going on. They were referred to as “insufficient progress towards the terminal degree” notices, meaning if you don’t finish your dissertation within six months, within three months, within 12 months—they all varied—you are no longer going to be a student at Columbia University. Well, Kenneth Jackson, (Editor’s Note: Read a Conversation with Kenneth Jackson from Feb. 2018 on our website) my doctoral adviser, and Eric Foner, who was the chair on my dissertation committee, would take a walk over to Low Library and talk to whoever the Dean was and say, “Please leave Stephen alone. He’s working with all those high school kids out there, and they do all this really wonderful work, and his kids publish, and they win awards. He’ll finish. I promise he’ll finish.” Then, after the Dean said “Okay, fine, I’ll give him some more time. I’ll leave him alone,” I would get a phone call in the evening, usually from Ken, and he would say “Stephen, I just went to bat for you, again. You owe me a chapter.” And I would write another chapter or I would finish something. My argument was always that I didn’t write my dissertation between summers, which really was true. I defended my orals in 1988, and then I defended my dissertation in 2013; so if you do the math that’s 25 years. I didn’t take 25 years. I took 50 months: July, August, July, August, July, August, July, August … And Ken Jackson always accepted that argument because his wife is one of the legendary public school teachers in Westchester. His wife was the chair of the English department at, I believe, Scarsdale High School, so Ken always got it. My mom always got it. My wife, my mother-in-law … eh, not so much. They were a little impatient. My wife has the patience of a saint but she always said “Stephen, come on. Finish your book.” So in any event, somewhere in between the 25 years and the 50 months lies the truth, because I really worked on it every Summer. During holidays I probably should have worked on it more, but my advisors have always shown tremendous patience. My kids, my own kids, who are now 29, 26, and 23 have lived with this their whole lives, have been making fun of me their whole lives, and my wife is just been long-suffering, like, “Ah man, Stephen, finish your book.” And ultimately I graduated from grad school, walked at Columbia the same weekend my middle child got his Bachelor’s at Binghamton, so that was a big party. B&W: So this August, there’s going to be a new batch of first-years inducted into Columbia. What is your advice to them as a high school teacher who has taught here over the summer? SS: Well assuming that Columbia still allows you to take one class pass/fail? B&W: One class pass/fail every semester. SS: Okay, use it. Take a class that is out of your comfort zone. Because that class that’s out of your comfort zone; astronomy, for example, when Professor Jasper was here. That class used to end up being some of his majors and some of his graduate students, because nobody goes to college to take astronomy. Take a class that’s out of your comfort zone. I realize that we have really strict requirements. I realize we have a big core curriculum. But take something that sounds fun, that sounds challenging, and if it’s more challenging than you thought it was, take it pass/fail. It’s perfectly fine. That’s one of the best programs, the best ideas at Columbia. Join a club. Not seven clubs that you think are interesting. And if it’s not then, you just quit, it’s perfectly fine. But do something that’s out of your comfort zone. Now when you are in high school, you are probably joining eight, nine, ten clubs because you were busy trying to get into college. No, now, do a couple of things that you think you want to do and then try one thing that’s new. Also make sure that you see the city. Make sure that you go downtown. Make sure that you get to the MoMA. Make sure that you get the Museum of the City of New York, which is wonderful. Make sure that you spend some time in Central Park. If there are free tickets to Broadway through the university or cheap tickets, if there is a walking tour of some part of the city through the university, do it. Do something different, something fun something outside your comfort zone, but don’t do everything all at once. You’re here for four years, take your time. You’re here for school but you’re also— you picked Columbia University in the City of New York because it’s in New York, and remember that it’s Columbia and it’s New York and you’re here for both of those reasons.

Getting elected is tough; getting re-elected is not Each September brings a sea of new (shining, hopeful, motivated, etc.) faces to Morningside Heights as the youngest classes of each college join their respective communities. This army of newly anointed adults, brimming with academic, social, and political potential, sets old Columbia clichés into motion, too: overcrowded East Campus hallways, furiously recruiting clubs, lanyards galore, and the birth of first-year politicos. As the early weeks of the semester slip by, party crowds thin, clubs relax, and lanyards slowly disappear. First-year student council elections, however, have a more lasting impact on campus. This is not to say that first-year council members reliably bring much change to campus. Each year first-year candidates seem to trot out the same hopeful, yet ultimately unfeasible, campaign promises: subway subsidies, meal plan reform, air conditioning in every dorm. With elections taking place a mere three weeks into the school year, it’s hard to blame candidates for lacking an achievable vision for a campus they hardly yet know. While first-year council members’ promises often amount to little, history shows that first-years who get elected tend to win big in subsequent campaigns. As a 2016 Columbia Spectator article pointed out, between 2006 and 2016, 37 of 50 first-year Columbia College Student Council (CCSC) members went on to be re-elected. Following the article’s publication, 20 of the 22 council members across CCSC, Barnard Student Government Association (SGA) Representative Council, and Engineering Student Council (ESC) who were elected as first-years in the Fall semesters of 2016 and 2017, won races the subsequent Spring. Incumbents win in part because of the name recognition they enjoy; between countless email announcements and Facebook posts, it becomes difficult to forget the names of one’s class representatives. Equally at fault, though, is a general disinterest across campus in the work of the various student councils. By the time first-years reach their second semester, it seems all excitement for student government has drained away. This phenomenon was demonstrated last academic year by a sharp decline in political parties between the first and second semesters. Between the Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 elections, the number of parties with candidates vying for Columbia College Class of 2021 President and Vice-President dropped from seven to one. Similarly, over the same period, the ESC Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections for Class of 2021 dropped from a five party field to an uncontested race. Illustration by Sahra Denner In the Spring 2018 election cycle, only five of 22 CCSC and three of 22 ESC races were contested. Though numerous at-large and executive board positions were filled by new faces, every election in which an incumbent ran was won by that incumbent, and every single class level race in both schools was won by the incumbent party, though some parties made changes to their ticket. SGA elections, while arguably more competitive, still saw 10 of 21 races go uncontested. The General Studies Student Council bans uncontested races in its bylaws and saw six of its 11 races nullified during the Spring 2018 election cycle for lack of candidates. Furthermore, even with contentious proposals like last Spring’s CCSC renewable energy and climate change referendum, voter turnout has struggled to reach even 30 percent, which happens to be the required threshold of votes for a referendum to even be valid, according to the CCSC constitution. Thirty percent of Columbia College amounted to 1,400 students in Spring 2018; exactly 1,414 students voted in the referendum. Fourteen fewer votes and what was touted as a wildly popular initiative that earned 84 percent student support would have been technically dead on arrival. Of course, one may reasonably respond to this information: “so what?” Students who have taken a political science class may have heard the term “rational ignorance” in reference to a voter’s decision not to educate themselves about an issue if the cost of doing so outweighs the benefits. The concept seems applicable here. Regardless of who it is that wins a student council election, each council will continue to operate in largely the same way, with no drastic impact on the day to day life of Columbia undergraduates. The hard work that student council members put in aside, no single council member, or even coalition of members, seems capable of affecting large scale change on the university level. For example, the administration would not entertain any severe sanction on the College Republicans last Fall as called for by the Black Students’ Organization, despite a request for an official investigation by CCSC. On a smaller scale, a CCSC initiative aimed at providing free tampons university-wide has resulted in little more than the placement of empty plastic bins in campus bathrooms. Even historic votes such as this past Spring’s SGA referendum on divestment from Israel and the CCSC referendum on a renewable energy initiative merely reflect recommendations of the student body and have no actual influence on university operations without further action from the administration. Some might argue that indulging this apathy towards the student council is reflective of a privilege not to care about the role of the University in the world. On the contrary, students have long made their voices heard independently of student government. While university administrators are more apt to view student councils as legitimate bodies for promoting institutional change, decades of activism on Columbia’s campus have proven that students don’t need that legitimacy. April of 2015 saw a five hour sit-in in Low Library by student activist group Columbia Prison Divest—in June, Columbia announced that it would be the first U.S. university to divest its endowment from the private prison industry. In March of 2016, the university announced that it would raise the minimum wage for student workers to $15 per hour following a lengthy activist campaign by Student Worker Solidarity. In April of that same year, another occupation of Low Library, this time for eight days by Columbia Divest for Climate Justice, eventually forced Columbia to move on thermal coal divestment. The question of how future change will be affected, though, remains to be seen. And, as the Class of 2022 picks their first representatives in the coming weeks, they will take the initial steps towards answering it.

With endless possibilities, all these clubs need is your contact info Illustration by Sahra Denner Illustrations by Sahra Denner

The case of the mysterious Riverside house, and why someone built it People go to Riverside Park for three reasons: to feel like they’re in “nature,” to jog, or to smoke weed. The nature revelers, speedy joggers, or high Columbia students might not notice the finer details of one of Manhattan’s few expansive green spaces on their jaunts down the hill from campus, but I am of a more observant type. The first time I went into Riverside Park, I too enjoyed the grass, trees, and lovely view of the Hudson. On my way back to my dorm, though, I noticed a house sitting inconspicuously off to the side near 108th street. Off-white and just a couple stories high, it practically blended in with the tall wall behind it. In my first two years of college, I glanced at this building many times and each time wondered who the heck was living in Riverside Park. Before this mysterious landmark was renovated, it was a rundown one-story limestone shed used to store tools. It couldn’t fit more than a few people inside at a time. There was graffiti on the walls and debris surrounding it. The backside of the house was commonly used as a bathroom for homeless people. It stood like this for 100 years. On September 14, 2003, the building reopened as the Peter Jay Sharp Volunteer House. The building could not be expanded horizontally without killing nearby trees, so an extra story was added on top and the original structure was renovated. Though it looks like a comfortable cottage, no one actually lives there. In a New York Times article published in 2003, James T. Dowell, president of the Riverside Park Fund and commissioner of the building, said that the house is meant to be an “architectural folly.” By this, he means that it is designed to be an unexpected visual experience that is semi-hidden in the landscape. My surprise and vague confusion at the building (and perhaps yours, tool) is actually well placed. Illustration by Yotam Deree The renovation project in total cost $1.3 million. It was financed by the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. Peter Sharp was a hotelier and developer who dedicated most of his life to building high-priced buildings in Manhattan. Additional financiers were the LuEsther T. Mertz Advised Fund of the New York Community Trust, the Booth-Ferris Foundation and Peter Sharp’s mother. The architect was Jeffrey Murphy of Murphy, Burnham & Buttrick. The first design for the house, according to the Landmark West preservation group, was not appropriate. “The precipitous height of the proposed building,” said Landmark West, “gives it the appearance of a ski chalet in Vail, Colorado, rather than a park structure in New York City.” After this criticism, the designs were redrawn to the structure as it stands today. Once a mere shack, the building now has heat and water year-round. The first floor remains a storage room. The mezzanine is used for plant propagation. A bathroom and small kitchen make the building livable even though no one occupies it. The newly-added second floor is home to the Evelyn Sharp Meeting Room, which has an 18 feet ceiling and is lined with pine and Douglas fir timbers. Picture windows look out into the trees in the park, giving the room the feeling of a treehouse. The most significant use of the Peter Jay Sharp Volunteer House is, fittingly, the center for the Riverside Park Fund’s Grassroots Volunteer Program. It is the only building in New York City dedicated to volunteer park work. So on your next excursion to Riverside, slow your jog (if it isn’t already slow), or take hike before you light up, and take a gander at the house among the trees.

Affirmative By Frank Baring “I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” The joke was made. And before its riskiness could be fully considered, the particles in the air between us had carried it from my mouth to their receiving ears. I guess we’re speaking before thinking today. The ball keeps rolling and new jokes bury mine. It’s great. This could turn out to be a successful amble through Riverside with two friends and enough snow on the ground to keep the number of electric delivery bikes on the footpath at a reasonable level. They will be the death of me, I’ve never been so sure of something —I hope it happens during graduation. God that would be beautiful. I can picture the headlines: ‘Undergraduate wise guy killed on his big day by motorised fast food’… ‘Shake Shack delivery customer gets their fries in record breaking time’… Fair trade. But I’m not dead yet, and as the three of us walked I noticed in the briefest instant that Jamiroquai (fake name for his protection of course. Let’s call them Jamiroquai and Voldemort), on hearing my unfortunate joke, shook his head slowly with a surprised grin, wide eyes and a steady exhalation of condensing breath. Wait a sec. Since when did you care this much? You’re lame but not THAT lame. So you made a dodgy joke. “Who cares?!” (Intended to be read in voice of Joey Tribbiani.) That joke isn’t who you are! No no no, that was someone else—you don’t have to worry about him. Illustration by Jennifer Bi Jamiroquai isn’t shaking his head at your schizophrenic dress sense or the way Voldemort’s nose (ironic) tends to whistle with every out breath. No. He’s surprised by the joke. OK, fine. Maybe you shouldn’t have made it, but come on, Jamiroquai needs to loosen up a little. And yet it seems, as you make your way back to campus with the two of them, you can’t help but fixate on Jamiroquai’s dissonant disapproval. Why is it that this time you’re struggling to suppress any authentic emotion like you are supposed to, on account of being a male above the age of 10? Ah of course, stupid question: because you actually care about what he thinks. (Walked right into that one.) See, Voldemort is a good friend but it’d be wrong to compare him to Jamiroquai. He hasn’t been there on the Milano’s H17- for – lu nch – a nd – dinner days—Jamiroquai was always there. You haven’t imagined ditching everything and moving with Voldemort to the hills of Tuscany where you’d both sleep 17 hours a day, waking only to make fresh pasta and lie in hammocks complaining about corporate control over consumer data until your old age—Jamiroquai is always the one rocking slowly next to you in that make-believe hammock. Caring what he thinks of you is a given at this point … admit it. The Riverside walk comes to a close. Jamiroquai lets Voldemort leave, pauses, and then says, “You know that joke you made back there wasn’t cool man. I think you already know that though.” You don’t know what to say. For some reason all you can think about is pasta and consumer data. “If I wasn’t honest with you, I wouldn’t be a friend would I? Even if it sucks to hear it.” Yeah, that’s about right. Negative By Zoe Dansdill Okay, so I’ve been trying out this whole ‘honesty’ thing since getting to college. Like trying to be super straight up with people? And, um, I guess this is where it’s actually important. Like, we definitely started out as friends, after that first NSOP day when we were the only ones not wearing our ID’s around our necks and stuff; we really bonded, but it’s kind of fallen apart since then. I think the real problem here is that, you’re not my friend anymore, but I’m still yours. I know that sounds harsh, but I think there’s something to it. Like, I’m always trying to make you happy, like going to Ferris with you so you can maybe see that swimmer guy you’re so obsessed with, even when you know that all I want is a Diana smoothie. It’s not like you ever go to Hewitt with me when the wrestling team is there. College is supposed to be a time for exploration and change, right? We’re supposed to be growing as people and making lifelong connections. So why do you ALWAYS have to do the same stuff as me? I don’t come to your a capella practices, so why did you have to sign up for the Pilates class I was in? I know at the beginning of the year we talked so much about our futures in New York and living together and being the “Serena and Blair of the Upper West Side,” but everyone talks like that during first semester. (Oh, and this is probably a good time to mention that I got asked to room with some girls from my yoga class next year and I think I’m going to do it. Two of them are rising juniors so we’ll probably get a dope suite. Sorry!) Anyway, the point is that it’s kind of unfair of you to tie me to all of these one-off promises and stuff we made back then … things have really changed. Illustration by Jennifer Bi I don’t want you to think that this means I hate you or we can’t ever hang out or anything. We’ve just kind of grown apart. Honestly, I think that this could actually be a good thing for you too. I know how much you hate going out downtown with my dance friends and me, and now you don’t have to come anymore! Like, I genuinely don’t think you would have had any fun on our girls’ trip to Mexico—it just wasn’t really your scene so that’s why we didn’t invite you. I just want us to have more space, more time to figure out what we really want out of college. Let’s not start acting like some old married couple that slowly grows to hate each other. Isn’t that what you said happened with your parents? I mean, I think now really is the best time to tell you all this. If I waited any longer it would have been just cruel, right? We’ve just become very different people, and I don’t want either of us to hold the other back. Like that time you wanted to go to that art opening and I wanted to go to the D Sig darty? Apparently they were serving drinks out of a watermelon. I’m not trying to be mean at all! Honestly, I’m just trying to make sure we both have the best college experiences possible. Oh, by the way, you can still get me on the list for St. A’s this weekend, right?

Postcard by Jennifer Bi

Abuse of power comes as no surprise. Senior Ünderground, aka CCSC, promised a drink special of $5 for 5 beers. People braved the line for 30-45 minutes only to find out that the promised price was a typo, and the actual price was $15. The following day, members of the Senior Ünderground listserv received an email from an organization called Senior Aboveground, which, despite claiming to be “legit as fuck” and “on the roof of Low,” has not done anything beyond that initial correspondence. Rumor has it that Senior Aboveground is actually Senior Ünderground’s repressed, self-hating Other, trolling itself. At a recent meeting of the Core committee, members received instruction that it was important to cut down the number of Core adjuncts, lest they—shock, horror—unionize. At the top of the 9th inning during game four of the Mets-Cubs series, Mel’s drowned out the game with its usual Senior Night playlist. Enraged, a passionate fan in Mets regalia accosted the bartender for trying “to turn this place into a nightclub.” The orange and royal blue clad masses joined her ardent protest, and the bar-goers cheered triumphantly when the music was turned off. Apparently people take the idea of Mel’s being a sports bar really seriously. When Professor Jason Barr asked his Urban Economics class how he thought 19th century Americans commuted, one student was eager to answer. “Chariots!” she exclaimed. The Office of Undergraduate Student Life video shown at this year’s NSOP, featuring several administrators in a lip dub to Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to New York,” has been removed from Vimeo “as a result of a third-party notification by International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) claiming that this material is infringing.” Columbia’s lawyers, the Columbia General Counsel, are available 24/7 lest a disaster befall the institution. Call their emergency hotline anytime day or night, and a member of the GC will be there. Perhaps tired of saying “it’s on the syllabus” in response to student inquiries, Joseph Howley, an assistant professor in the Classics department, decided to hide an Easter Egg on the syllabus for one of his courses, instructing students to send him an email with a picture of Alf, the 1980s garage-dwelling alien from the eponymous sitcom, with subject line “It’s Alf!” “Pith,” the restaurant in Hogan that your mom may have called you about after seeing it in The New Yorker, is reportedly being investigated by the NYC Department of Health. Students living on the fifth floor of Plimpton were asked by Res Life not to put feces in the trash bags. The Columbia football team makes up the majority of that floor. East Campus residents celebrating a 21st birthday went one step above a twerk wall and installed a stripper pole in their living room. The University is currently seeking funding upwards of $1 million to replace tenured faculty with adjuncts while the faculty—who have not earned sabbaticals— sojourn at a mythical, new Columbia global initiative, the Center for Ideas and Imagination. The lactation room in Carman was briefly under construction. It has since been reopened to the public. Columbia…making it great again!