T H E U N D E RG R A D UAT E M AG A Z I N E O F C O LU M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y, E S T. 1 8 9 0
THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXIV No. VI
December 2018
Scrambling for Funds The culture and controversy of Columbia's marching band
Strangers in Their Own Homes Not all residents in 620 go to Barnard
Also Inside: A
Conversation with Paul E. Olson
CAROLINE HURLEY, CC '19, Editor-in-Chief ESMÉ ABLAZA, BC '20, Managing Editor ISAIAH BENNETT, CC '20, Publisher UFON UMANAH, CC '20, Investigations Editor SHULIE WEINBERG, BC '20, Online Editor JENNIFER BI, CC '19, Senior Illustrator AARON SU, CC '19, Layout Editor VIRGINIA AMBELIOTIS, BC '19, Senior Editor JASMINE PARK, CC '20, Senior Editor RYAN MOHEN, CC '21, Senior Editor HUGH CECIL, CC '19, Senior Editor Staff Writers AMAD ROSS, CC '22 ANNIE ZAVITZ, BC '22 BANNON BEALL, BC '22 BILLIE FORESTER, CC '22 GABRIELLA FERRIGINE, CC '20 GABY EDWARDS, BC '21 GRACE ADEE, CC '22 HANNAH LIBERMAN, CC '20 IONA TAN, CC '22 JACOB SNYDER, CC '20 MARY ELIZABETH DAWSON, BC '21 MICHAEL GAO, CC '22 SANTIAGO COSTA PEUSER, CC '21 SARAH DESOUZA, CC '22 TAMAR VIDRA, CC '22 TILLIE LIGHTE, BC '20 URSULA MURRAY-BOZEMAN, CC '22
Technology EMILY WANG, CC '22 ZOE METCALFE, CC '21 Copy Editors CASSIDY SATTLER, CC '20 GIGI LEE, CC '22 MALIA SIMON, CC '20 Photography GABRIELLA PRIVITELLI, BC '20 Contributors REBECCA YAO, CC '22 SAM NEEDLEMAN, CC '22
Staff Illustrators KASSIA KARRAS, BC '22 KATE STEINER, CC '22 REA RUSTAGI, SEAS '22 ROSE KUAN, CC '22 SAHRA DENNER, CC '21 SUSAN STEINFELD, BC '22 YOTAM DEREE, GS '19
THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXIV
FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS
No. VI
Columns
4 Blue Book 6 Blue Notes 8 Campus Characters 12 Verily Veritas 16 Centerfold 24 M easure for Measure 34 Campus G ossip
Jacob Syder & Gi Ferrigine
Features 10 At Two Swords Length: A re We a Thing? Our monthly prose and cons
Gaby Edwards
13 SoHo’s Siltiest Spot A look at De Maria’s perplexing Earth Room
Ryan Mohen
14 Pouring Over Coffee Culture Coffee on campus was not always Joe and go
Ursula Murray-Bozeman
Grace Adee & Billie Forester Sam Needleman
Mary Elizabeth Dawson
18 Strangers In Their Own Homes Not all residents in 620 go to Barnard 20 Scrambling for Funds The culture and controversy of Columbia’s marching band 27 Hiding in Plain Sight Frantic first-years stow contraband on the eve of dorm raids 28 Nature’s Invisible H and A conversation with Paul E. Olson
theblueandwhite.org
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Cover by Kassia Karras
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR You think you know someone until it comes time to buy them a Christmas gift. You’re frantically browsing Oprah Winfrey’s Amazon gift guide, realizing that you actually have no idea what the perfect gift would be because you actually might not know this person well at all. And though Oprah probably does not know your friend better than you … she also might. I don’t mean to generalize–maybe I am just bad at giving gifts. Similar, but unrelated to the holidays, though, is when you think you know someone until you go through a rough patch, and the people who are there for you are not the ones you’d first expect. You think you know someone until they are completely gone from your life. Maybe you didn’t know them at all. I thought I knew a lot of things going into this semester, but it turns out I had a lot to learn. That’s cryptic, I know. It’s also kind of the point of education. But I’m talking on a more existential level than textbooks. The realization that I do not know as much as I thought is one that I have experienced every day I have been a part of this magazine. From this issue alone, I learned about a building in SoHo filled with dirt (pg. 13), unaffiliated tenants living in the Barnard dorms (pg. 18), and the next mass extinction event (pg. 28). This issue concludes vol. XXIV of The Blue and White. We tried to confront you with new perspectives– make you realize things you did not know–throughout this iteration. I don’t know if we were successful, because frankly, I don’t know how many of our issues actually get read, versus how many end up in the trash. So what does that leave me with? I guess it is time for me to go and find out. .
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TRANSACTIONS ARRIVALS Bargaining Hazing Scandals Big Cups in John Jay Panhellenic Recruitment DEPARTURES Nimesh Patel Striking 2022 Beginner’s Minds The Editorial Board
Come Again?! “I ordered wayyy too many activewear pieces from Soulcycle, realized I don’t have the space and am officially broke. Willing to sell wayyyyy below the price I bought at” — A member of Barnard Buy/Sell/Trade, on an incredible deal
— Caroline Hurley
The Blue and White
BLUE BOOK
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like... From The Blue and White editors, a little jingle to get you in the holiday spirit. Hum in Butler to the Michael Bublé version of “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas.” It’s beginning to look a lot like finals Even through your daze; Take a look at SSOL It's just about to yell With GPAs and Core audits ablaze.
It’s beginning to look a lot like finals Remember your Troy; There’s a B in Organic Chem, with a nice curve from STEM, It’s the sturdy kind that doesn’t mind the noise.
It’s beginning to look a lot like finals Kids are very irked But the prettiest sight to meet is the review you’ll submit To your class CourseWorks.
It’s beginning to look a lot like finals Soon exams will start, And when the reading week is through, regrets will choose to stew Right within your heart
A pair of 40-malt shots and a cheat sheet that rocks Is the wish of Barney and Ben; Tests that go home and don’t veer off the tome Is the hope of Janice and Jen; And Bollinger can hardly wait for school to start again.
It’s beginning to look a lot like finals Kids are very irked But the prettiest sight to meet is the review you’ll submit To your class CourseWorks. Sure it’s finals once more...
POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE
December 2018
Postcard by Jennifer Bi
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BLUE NOTES
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ew signs prohibiting animals on Columbia’s lawns may make caring for emotional support animals even harder for students. Columbia defines an emotional support animal as an animal that provides “therapeutic support to an individual with an identified disability.” Typically, emotional support animals can range from dogs to smaller animals like birds. Identified disabilities typically relate to mental health, though there is no definite list of disabilities that emotional support animals alleviate. While caring for an animal and having its companionship are part of the appeal of emotional support animals, attending classes, studying, and potentially working, in addition to caring for an animal may cause additional stress to students that are attempting to reduce anxiety or other mental health issues Especially in the case of dogs, not being able to take an animal out on the nearest lawn may pose a challenge to students who are already under severe academic pressure and are dealing with their own individual mental health situations. While Riverside
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and Morningside Parks are both near, the ability to walk a dog in a close, central location is important. Animals are likely becoming more prohibited on campus because of dog owners who don’t clean up after their animals. This problem, however, may be caused by other residents of the neighborhood, not just students with emotional support animals. By prioritizing the look of the lawns, Columbia limits accessibility for those who have animals out of necessity. The unintended consequences of the new signs may have much greater impacts on individuals’ mental health than on a nice looking lawn. While Columbia has made an effort in staying up to date on new ways to support students with disabilities, this effort should be spread across the campus—not just on paper. — Annie Zavitz
J
ust a 30-minute walk or seven-minute cab ride from campus, The Shrine World Music Venue is a great spot to see live music. For Columbia musicians, it’s also a great spot to book gigs. Entering the music venue, which doubles as a bar and a restaurant, my friend and I ordered an early dinner after lugging our guitars and amps inside. The all-male jazz band packed on the modestly-sized stage was phenomenal—a bit too phenomenal. “Uh, how the hell are we going to follow these guys?” I shriek-whispered in distress at Wyatt, the better half of our hastily cobbled together duo. “Hannah, chill. We’re fine. Let’s go hang downstairs until we’re on, ” he muttered under his breath, nodding at me and throwing an easy smile to the singer on stage, “No need to sweat.” The downstairs of The Shrine is dim and full, dense with posters and albums diligently plastered
Illustration by Rea Rustagi
The Blue and White
BLUE NOTES across all accessible surfaces. Wyatt and I scanned the walls as we waited for the guys upstairs to wrap up their set, discovering a handful of our jazz and blues favorites. Ten minutes until our time, boots knocking down the stairs halted our survey of the crammed walls. “Yo, you guys the next band?” came the question, followed by hesitant head bobs from the both us. “Awesome. We’ll soundcheck as soon as these guys are done. Here are some free drink tickets for the two of you to use whenever.” We grinned abashedly at one another before stuffing the tickets in our wallets for later use. Five minutes before we were on, we hucked two wooden stools on stage and took a seat in front of a prominent tapestry, the Shrine’s famous emblem. Indigo and deep green lights obscured the faces of a modest audience. Neither of us being enthusiastic conversationalists or storytellers, we broke between songs just long enough to catch our breath and meet the eyes of a handful of friends. The Shrine, an intimate, moderately-sized room, can accommodate approximately 100, depending on the audience’s willingness to sweat. After our set, and before making our return to Butler, Wyatt and I shared a beer and nodded to the group soundchecking on stage. Most of our friends had ducked out already, and a new crowd filed in to snag their places. — Hannah Liberman
December 2018
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n September 16th, the air conditioning system of C.V. Starr East Asian Library in Kent Hall leaked, filling the library stacks with water and damaging tens of thousands of books. The stacks have been closed since, and will likely remain such until next semester. A front desk attendant at the library walked me through the damage. According to him, the damage is worse on lower floors: about a fourth of books in Room 250 were damaged, compared to half the books in 200 and 150, and all the books in 102. It seems 40 to 50 percent of books in the old stacks were damaged, or about 60,000 in total. These books have been shipped to Washington, D.C. for repairs. Kent’s library blog states, “We expect that very few, if any, collection materials are damaged beyond repair.” Those books still in the stacks are undergoing a comprehensive dehumidification process. The Blue and White was unable to confirm the price of repairs, nor whether the dehumidifiers in use are Muji or some lesser brand. Rooms 105 and 106 sustained no damage, but are closed during the dehumidification process. On CLIO, damaged books are marked with Xs and presumably being dried in D.C. As to where students will study for finals, we may not be missing much: Kent’s desk attendant told me the stacks still stink. —Amad Ross
Illustrations by Rea Rustagi and Susie Steinfeld
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Campus Characters You might not know the following figures—but you should. In Campus Characters, The Blue & White introduces you to a handful of Columbians who are up to interesting and extraordinary things and whose stories beg to be shared. This issue, we bring you two people with interests in their Columbia class pages. If you’d like to suggest a Campus Character, send us an email at bweditors@columbia.edu..
Elise Fuller
“T
he funny story I always tell people is that in eighth grade, I went online, and I looked up history and sociology and how I could study both in college and the first thing that popped up was anthropology… and ever since then I knew that I was going to major in anthropology,” Elise Fuller, CC '19, says. We met in Lerner Piano Lounge, and Fuller arrived with coffee in one hand and her Ferris dinner in the other. Fuller, a sociocultural anthropology major, is the Vice President of Policy for CCSC, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and a member of the Black Student Organization. Fuller came to Columbia not only because of the strength of her major program, but also because of a “community aspect” she identified in Columbia
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pre-enrollment and that has only enriched her understanding of throughout her four years. Fuller chose sociocultural anthropology “because all I do is study people, all I do is talk about people… I think that’s a good skill to have in life,” and Columbia because she “wanted to be some place where [she] was going to grow and be completely different than [she] was back home.” “Not that me back home was bad, but I wanted to be some place that was different and I feel like you have to grow up when you come to New York,” Fuller elaborates. “You’re going to be in a lot of different places, people are speaking a lot of different languages, you just need to have a certain wear-with-all about you, and I felt that Columbia would give me the academic aspects and also that worldliness that New York has to offer.” “My favorite moments that have happened off campus have always been serendipitous,” Fuller says. The things that take Fuller by surprise are often those that she values most. Entry into CU’s ‘Urban New York’ lottery gave Fuller the opportunity to see Serena Williams play and to go to the Apollo Theatre. Running into a friend on the 42nd Street subway ended with Fuller exploring a fencing studio filled with accomplished fencers from all around the world. Fuller even joined CCSC in a moment of chance. “I was involved in some things but not too many on campus, I saw the application. My mom sent me a text message, she said, ‘You need to apply’.’” “I’ve created my own little niche there, which I’ve really enjoyed,” Fuller reflects. CCSC has only underscored for Fuller the importance of “creating organic relationships” and pushed Fuller to become an advocate for experiencing school holistically. For her, school and social life are not separable. She sees “college [as] not only a mental thing but also a physical thing.”
Illustration by Kate Steiner
The Blue and White
Fuller enjoys “think[ing] about Columbia when most people would just want to be done with it” and “being a liaison between” the many realms of campus life. She hopes to leave something for longevity. Columbia has taught Fuller to prioritize herself; to be unafraid “to say ‘this isn’t going to work for me, but I am also still so passionate.’” With a Columbia experience defined by tackling head-on ways to make the experience itself better, Fuller reminds herself, and us, that the four years she has spent on this campus are indeed her own. — Tillie Lighte
Mo Crist
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n 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 Creative Writing 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
December 2018
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.” — Rebecca Yao
Illustration by Jennifer Bi
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AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H
Are we T
ell me one thing: when it’s a cold Saturday night (anyone!) when the weather gets chilly. in late January, who’s going to join you in openWe’ll need an alternative, then. Here’s my proing a bottle of wine, turning on Netflix’s Dogs, and posal: instead of using ‘cuffing season’ to identify the having a violent, convulsive cry? desire for snowbound romance, how about ‘Annual Not your stupid friends. Trust me, they won’t Season Stimulating Thermoregulatory Instincts for feel eager to strap on pounds of clothes and trudge Mammalian Engagement?’ This term has the distinct through the gray slush flows lining Broadway, all advantage of being scientifically precise enough to while struggling to breathe air that isn’t even a real preclude any associations with handcuffs, impristemperature. Neither is any fuckbuddy or FWB or onment, or the justice system in general. I’ve been whatever going to make that journey. Unless you warned by skeptics that my term is unwieldy, and as promise them sex, which we all know doesn’t pair such will never catch on with this pithy, meme-fluent very nicely with sobbing. generation of Columbians. The solution is to use the What to do? Obviously, you could do the whole corresponding acronym, ASSTIME. drinking-and-crying thing alone. But that’s what Now that we have a more precise way of capthe whole month of October is for. turing the spirit of cuffing season, Better to share a special moment it’s easy to see that there’s nothing like this one with an adoring especially unhealthy about a wintry sweetheart; misery loves company, fling. Even the most independentaccording to my therapist. That’s minded of us could use someone who what cuffing season is all about at can act as a temporary distraction Columbia, and it’s something we from the Truth made apparent by can all get behind. Yet you hear winter—namely, that all things, all of the same thing every year, as soon us, must someday wither and expire as the last leaf turns red: in the cold void, alone. “I don’t get cuffing season. So I’ve taken the liberty of I’m a strong, self-caring, indecompiling a short list of ASSTIME pendent, etc. person. I don’t need activities you can enjoy around some flanneled schmuck with a campus with your sweetheart: ffirmative savior-complex to help me through 1. Share some gossip over hot cocoa. a couple of flurries. Besides, a rela2. Take a walk together in Riverside. By Jacob Snyder tionship would just distract me from Turn back immediately after the developing my career.” first gust of wind. I think I know what the problem is. The term 3. Pretend to feel confident about a shared future. ‘cuffing season’ was invented by Big Pharma and 4. Shit on a mutual friend. Big Data to coerce college students, ripe for recruit- 5. Fight recurrently over the lack of a shared future. ment, into prioritizing their professional ambitions 6. Take a class together. Regret it when you break by making winter romance sound like incarceration. up bitterly as the weather warms and now have to see By putting the term into use, all of us are unwittingly each other regularly. contributing to a stress culture that disdains intimacy 7. Volunteer to write a piece in The Blue and White and esteems workaholism. Either way, there’s no about ‘cuffing season.’ Feel guilty when you realize good reason to think of shackles when considering in the process of writing that your fear of commitment a perfectly healthy, basic human need to become crippled the relationship. Please come back, Laura. sexually and emotionally dependent on someone I’m so sorry.w
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Illustration by Jennifer Bi
The Blue and White
AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H
a thing? H
ot take: No. 20-somethings in all of collegiate America. This basThe first snow falls and as if on cue, tion of booty calls, this stronghold of sexual prowess couples are cropping up faster than a line in Ferris will never fall to a few relationships that won’t even on buffalo-chicken-wrap Thursday. I mean, it’s basi- live to see the tarps removed from the lawns outside cally a scientific fact that cold weather is directly Butler. Fortified by each 1am “wanna hang?” text, correlated with monogamy. The temperature dips we date-dodging few will stand tall against cuffing below 50 degrees just once, and what do we see? season and the notion that love of anything other than Yet another slew of suckers, mired not in the snowy the girth of a Milano’s sandwich exists. blanket January drapes around the shoulders of the Do you really want to spend your winter East Coast, but in the layers of a new fling’s paisley months shackled to someone when you could be out print duvet on some lazy Saturday morning. Sure, the in the game being the libidinous dog you were born warmth of that bed is alluring, but whatever happened to be? Aren’t we, as Columbians, all about waking to cable-knit sweaters and up not to the chiming of an fuzzy socks? Isn’t college supalarm, but to a polite smile posed to be about intellectual and a quick, awkward exit? pursuits and sexual freedom Isn’t the provisional pana(or vice-versa), not popping cea for any lingering highthe meeting-the-parents quesschool insecurities to hook tion? I thought Columbia was up with as many people as infamous for its hookup culpossible as a form of selfture, but the amount of handvalidation? We cannot give in-hand action I’ve seen on my in. We’re at Columbia, after daily runs through Riverside all—grab some glitter glue has me skeptical. and poster board, let’s start Sure, I suppose we can a damn protest. admire the gumption of the So the next time your schmuck who manages to scale distraught friend comes cryMt. Friendzone, reaching high ing to you at some odd hour enough to find that the view from of the night because her boyegative the summit brings only lesser friend told her he’d rather she not By Gi Ferrigine autonomy. keep a toothbrush in his EC suite “Sorry guys, I know I said (which means he’s totally hookI would go to Trader Joe’s to get the seafood risotto ing up with that NYU girl he interned with in FiDi ingredients for our suite dinner, but she really wants this past summer, and you knew it all along), conto take a trip to the subway grate on Lexington and sider yourself lucky, my friend, to be a sexual nomad. 52nd where Marilyn Monroe took that one photo!” Chilly, yes, and in need of that scarf, but unfettered by As you ponder the absurdity of the excuse the manacles of some significant other’s neediness, you’ve just been dealt (and whether or not Westside poorly hidden in the guise of dental hygiene. carries scallops in bulk), you find yourself shivering a *phone buzzes* bit, wishing you had worn a scarf. Ohmygod! He just texted me asking to get dinCuffing season does not and can not exist—not ner! How long should I wait to answer??? You think on this campus anyway, which is widely renowned I’m the only girl he’s talking to, right???w as a breeding ground for the most emotionally void
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December 2018
Illustration by Jennifer Bi
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V E R I LY V E R I TA S
TOLD BETWEEN PUFFS
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In which our hero gets E. coli
erily was eating a salad when his phone buzzed. Excited to hear back from his doctor about a particularly painful anal fissure with which he was dealing, Verily called unto his muse: “Siri, what notifications have I received?” “Hello, Verilyhandsome. You have one new notification: from The New York Times: ‘FDA warns Americans to avoid romaine lettuce potentially tainted with E. coli.’” Verily looked down at his fork, half-raised, which carried the potential disease carrier itself. Verily winced at the thought of all the romaine he had already eaten passing explosively by the aforementioned fissure. He wondered if he should contact his doctor. Eyeing the trash can nearby, Verily grabbed a handful of the green leaves from his plate. He held them tenderly, peering close at their furling edges. He traced their veins, and felt that this was the moment that would change his life. Instead of disposing of the devil’s lettuce, Verily opened wide, stuffing the tainted fronds into his mouth. To be clear, no masochistic impulse motivated Verily to act. Rather, it was all part of an ingenious plan: Verily needed an excuse to avoid his internship, where his cow of a boss expected genuine productivity. Because of his demands, Verily had had little time to focus on his project, the project that could change Verily’s life, granting him the renown and recognition he deserved. In a single month, Verily knew that his masterpiece would be read throughout the world in 40 languages and to 50 million people. Verily couldn’t go to work today. No, today he needed to perfect Tinder. “What shall I write today…what shall I write,“ Verily purred as he stared at his bio. He pursed his lips pensively, noting the faint taste of what he assumed could only be E. coli. He read the progress he had made over the weekend: “Non-threatening dog enthusiast. Connoisseur of fine Eurasian spices… and cute girls.
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Definitely a descendent of some European royal tradition. I like taking long walks to nearby Francophone bistros and watching the sunset. Carries Swiss Army knife in pocket for emergencies.” As he read these 40 carefully selected words, Verily groaned. Though, doubtless, each of those facts would alone impress a potential mate, their combination resulted in a product inferior to its parts. Verily began again. Thinking first of youthful internet trends, he typed a quick, “Hello, boo thangs,” but immediately regretted it. Delete. He pondered making an appeal as a potential father figure, typing “I love children and I like to see them happy,” before acknowledging that this statement was something of a stretch, and, more importantly, that it was probably unhealthy to fixate on children in one’s tinder bio. Delete. Verily grew quickly frustrated. With teeth clenched and his brow deeply furrowed, he bent ever closer to the brightly lit iPhone keyboard. He typed and deleted, again and again, stirring himself into a manic fervor at his seemingly Sisyphean task. His hand began to feel numb and sweat eeked from his pores, tracing his aristocratic bone structure as it ran down to the end of his nose. A drop fell onto the keyboard, momentarily thwarting an attempt to type out a winky face. Verily sighed in anguish and tossed the phone aside; glancing at the clock on the still-illuminated lock screen, he realized hours had passed. In that instant, Verily became acutely aware of what his own hubris had wrought. Uncontrollable sweating? Numb hands? His frailer peers might have experienced these symptoms out of lust or love alone, but Verily knew himself better than that. No, the romaine had struck back, catching him in it’s diseased grasp. Verily sprinted down the hall, leaving his unfinished profile, like the now certainly tainted salad, for later care.w
The Blue and White
I N S I D E R D I RT
SoHo's Siltiest Spot A look at De Maria’s perplexing Earth Room By Gaby Edwards
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room full of dirt? Art? I asked myself as I made my way down to SoHo. My destination was the Earth Room, an interior sculpture installation by Walter de Maria that has been on the second floor of a building on Wooster Street since 1977. While I knew the basics of the Earth Room—a 3600-square-foot room filled 22 inches high with dirt—I hadn’t expected the exhibit to impact me in such a meaningful way. Part of the appeal of the Earth Room is its permanent and unchanging presence in a city that is notorious for its constant evolution. The layer of earth resting above the bustling streets creates an unsettling divide and no succinct interpretation. It is also a space of relative silence, an oasis of dirt shielded from the liveliness of the city. Yet, this installation and its series of contradictions do not add up to one succinct interpretation. I left feeling a little bewildered—had I missed something? Did everyone else know some big secret I wasn’t let in on? It was only after, on the subway ride back to
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Morningside Heights that I began to appreciate de Maria’s project. De Maria intentionally remains elusive on any sort of message behind the Earth Room. It’s not just a quiet sanctuary in the city, or a time capsule, or a statement on environmentalism. While some may scoff at this vagueness, I found that the meditative nature of this piece, rather than having any outright political implication, is actually far more effective in evoking wonder and reflection. For me, one of the most striking aspects of this installation is its viscerality—it induces a sense of awe that can’t fully be expressed in any intellectual way. Yet, it also treads the line of being almost impossibly full of meaning; the dark dirt against the starkly white walls, the powerful smell, the vortexlike entrance are all deliberate and calculated. As Bill Dilworth, the caretaker of the installation since 1989, once described, it’s a monument of simplicity, and it is this simplicity that makes the Earth Room endlessly fascinating.w
Illustration by Rea Rustagi
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COLUMBIAN, COLOMBIAN
Pouring Over Coffee Culture Coffee on campus was not always Joe and go By Ryan Mohen
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offee is often a purchase made in motion, in most cases necessarily so. Endless nights and frantic mornings give way to brief gaps between classes, study sessions, and overly scheduled social plans, making spontaneous sharing of lunches and coffees next to impossible. Enter grab-and-go coffee, a model which continues to be replicated in establishments on campus and close to Columbia. Caffeine dealers have the needs of their tired and stressed student customers down to a science. They know we prefer ordering Starbucks over the phone to waiting in line, that we won’t spend any more than five minutes getting coffee from Blue Java, that we obviously wish to avoid human interaction in our barbarous, pre-caffeinated states. Technological advancement and speedy coffee bars aren’t the only thing depersonalizing students’ coffee experience. Following the form of Columbia’s modernized dining halls, coffee vendors operate with borderline-Orwellian efficiency, leaving much to be desired when it comes to atmosphere and comfort. Thanks to their monopoly on convenience, they operate in a perpetual state of full capacity, much like the sterile reading rooms of Butler. Those who are able to find the time to settle down can’t even find a seat. On-campus purveyors of this reliable brain fuel increasingly trend towards the formulaic. The addition of another Joe Coffee in the space adjacent to the School of Journalism, previously occupied by UP Coffee, marks the franchise’s third installment in the Morningside campus. Now only three alternatives to Joe remain: The Blue Java coffee bars in Butler, Lerner, Uris and Mudd, and the much less frequented Brownie’s Café. This only considers those who drink coffee at “normal” hours. For those in desperate need of late-night energy, the only option is Butler Café. Though some credit is due, ButCaf possesses a distinct atmosphere unlike its peers. Anyone purchasing after-hours coffee knows that thick fog of stress which seeps through the library’s walls, as one day turns to the next and midnight deadlines drift past café patrons’ collective whimpers.
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It’s hard to understand that coffee consumption in Columbia libraries wasn’t always like this. ButCaf is so integral to the Columbia experience that it seems to have been there as long as Butler Library itself. Actually, the café was added just before the turn of the millennium, along with massive renovations of the main reading rooms. A bulletin board for suggestions posted during construction captured just one of many discontent student voices: “Thank you for making the library so clean and bright. However, the atmosphere is now more like a hospital waiting room than a library and even if I did want to study in such a sterile environment, I would not be able to, because there are not enough seats.” The renovations injected the University’s characteristic coldness into the once-lively library, leaving the new café and lounge significantly less social than the standard many expect from any self-proclaimed café. Coffee houses, in their original form, were 18th-century epicenters of conversation and performance. They were places where people could listen to musicians, watch performers, catch up on news, and generally consume culture and socialize. Even modern-day coffee shops offer spaces away from home to work or socialize. This social function of cafés was not lost among many past Columbians. When Columbia left students craving that communal coffee house experience, or just communal spaces in general, students seized the opportunity to satisfy their own needs. The first and most lasting incarnation of this effort followed from the Beat Generation coffee houses that swept 1960’s Greenwich Village with regular performances from some of America’s most important folk musicians. In an effort to recreate that same culture uptown, Columbia students created the Postcrypt Coffeehouse in December of 1964. Postcrypt hoped to address calls for social gathering spaces, and it served that purpose almost too excellently by becoming the entertainment epicenter of the campus. A coffee house open Thursday through Saturday from 4:00 p.m. to midnight, Postcrypt began as an excellent place for students to gather and feel a welcoming
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COLUMBIAN, COLOMBIAN sense of community. But as Postcrypt’s strength as a platform for musicians and poets became more evident and pronounced, its focus slowly drifted closer and closer to being a performing arts venue rather than a coffee shop. Postcrypt’s ultimate failure to fulfill the campus’ need of a coffee shop was tempered by its eventual evolution into a performing arts space, which preserved the ambiance and spirit of those original coffee houses. Other short-lived student-run coffee shops offer even greater insight into exactly what Columbia students have clearly wanted for over five decades and now lack more than ever. Take the Hartley coffee shop, founded in 1978 by Hartley residents, or Barnard’s BHR coffeehouse, which began the same year. Both saw a need among students for a convenient and comforting space and tried to meet that need, offering late-night hours—BHR stayed open Sunday through Thursday from 9:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. No matter the short duration of these projects, one can’t help but spot a real prescription here for the campus-wide loneliness that current Columbia students read about, hear about, and talk about almost every day. Most remarkable of all—in concept, execution, adoption, and even in its eye-catching title—was Dawn. Billed as “a place to go, a place to talk, a place to be,” Dawn was a late-night coffee house created in May 1970 by students who wished to address pervasive loneliness on campus. The John Jay basement space was chosen because it was large enough to accommodate 30 to 40 people but small enough to create a sense of intimacy and closeness. Dawn operated from 10:00 p.m. until dawn every single night, which usually meant volunteers who operated the coffeehouse stayed there until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. seven days a week. Dawn had free coffee, snacks, board games, chess, relaxing dim lights, comfortable furniture, conversation, and pleasant folk music from the stereo or live musicians. At first glance, Dawn appeared to have created the perfect space open during the perfect hours for the most vulnerable and lonely people. After the Lion’s Den bar fell
December 2018
out of favor following the 1968 campus protests, Dawn became Columbia’s go-to late-night social space, packed full of students by midnight each night. It became a buzzing breeding ground for great conversation, good company, and the occasional study session finally freed from the confines of a claustrophobic library or isolated dorm room. Curiously, the space’s original founders had envisioned the coffee house while brainstorming ways to address what they saw as rapidly increasing drug use on campus and settled on Dawn after receiving a suggestion to start a late-night coffee shop with first aid volunteers on staff. This guiding mission didn’t last long, as leadership was swapped one year later, but it seems as though the popularity of Dawn arose from a widespread resonance with that principle. Through the lens of a sensationalized drug problem, the founders of Dawn miscalculated their audience, but they reached a different population of equally lonely students in need of the coffee house comforts they had to offer. College students are increasingly lonely, inactive, and unhappy. At the root of many of their mental health struggles are the ways in which campus life is structured. Many defining features of life at Columbia undoubtedly contribute to this loneliness. While reducing Columbia’s mental health deficiencies to lackluster coffee options would certainly amount to a misdiagnosis of sorts, it sure wouldn’t hurt to give us overly-ambitious world-savers a nice place to drink coffee with one another and feel a little less alone.w
Illustration by Rea Rustagi
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'Tis the season that brings out all the best, and worst, that Columbia has to offer. As we approach the end of another semester, countdown to break by checking off not only everything on your to-do list, but all of these December favorites as well.
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The Blue and White
Columbia Advent Calendar 2018 By Kate Steiner
December 2018
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I’M STILL HERE
Strangers in Their Own Homes Not all residents in 620 go to Barnard By Ursula Murray-Bozeman
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hen Victoria Sullivan moved into 620 W 116th St. in 1965, it was like any other residential building in Morningside Heights. But when Barnard bought the building just a year later, things started to change. “They, early on, were very aggressive in wanting people out because they wanted to make it into a dorm,” Ms. Sullivan said. She said that although she was never made an offer, the tenants understood that they would be paid a small sum to leave. New York City rent control laws prevented Barnard from evicting the tenants. Now Ms. Sullivan, an artist and playwright who moves between New York City and upstate New York, is one of a handful of tenants in a building that once held 40 private apartments. Ms. Sullivan said she is aware of only one other tenant, although four of the units in the building are occupied by tenants. While the students are largely indifferent to the fact that they have older neighbors, Ms. Sullivan says that life in the building has changed for the worse. “It’s extremely isolating. I have no friends in the building,” Ms. Sullivan said. She said that even though she’s been living there for 53 years, the public safety officers at the desk do not always know who she is. She said that she used to find the students oppressively noisy, but that now they tend to be quieter. “When you think between 1965 and now, the culture has changed—we had alcohol, we had drugs, we had loud rock music,” Ms. Sullivan reminisced. “A lot of that has changed.” She added that despite the general noise level, she did not remember it creating problems while her kids were growing up. She suggested that students might be quieter now because of electronic devices with headphones. For students, having non-affiliated neighbors doesn’t seem to make a big difference. “It’s very weird
in that I guess we all know that there are real people but we don’t necessarily know anything about them,” one RA, who asked to remain anonymous, reflected. She said that when she became an RA, the college did not mention the tenants to her or explain how a noise complaint from one of the tenants might be dealt with. Sometimes, she said, she warns her residents not to be too loud because she’s not sure if they would call the police. The tenants, the RA said, also don’t seem eager to interact with students. When she introduced herself to one of the tenants in the elevator, she said they seemed “very separate” and told her, “I won’t really remember [you], there will be someone else there next year.” Last year, the RA found an elderly woman who had fallen in her apartment and was calling for help. She had gotten a call from a 620 resident who could hear the woman yelling. Later that year, the woman died in her apartment; the RA noticed when an ambulance came to collect the body. “In our RA group chat we were all freaking out because there was an ambulance taking a dead person out of the building so we were like, ‘is it a resident?’” The RA said she wonders if the tenants, most of whom are elderly, would live in the buildings by choice: “I wonder why they would live there. I imagine it’s terrible living amongst a bunch of college students.” And indeed, Ms. Sullivan seems to agree. “It’s not at all pleasant living in a building where there’s 40 apartments and there’s only two that have regular tenants.” According to the floor plans, there are actually four units occupied by unaffiliated tenants in 620. The building itself, one tenant, who wished to remain anonymous, noted, has deteriorated since Barnard acquired it. “This used to be a really elegant
“I wonder why they would live there. I imagine it’s terrible living amongst a bunch of college students.”
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The Blue and White
I'M STILL HERE building, it had moldings on the walls downstairs, it had beautiful tiling, it had beautiful chandeliers,” she remembered. “Every time [Barnard] had a problem, they just put a new pipe hanging from the ceiling in the lobby. They simply don’t understand being landlords … Sometimes they don’t even heat this building on the weekends.” Barnard bought 620 116th St. in March of 1966 as part of an urgent effort to expand their housing at a time when, according to a contemporaneous Barnard Bulletin article, Barnard dormitories only housed 731 students. By December of that year, 27 Barnard seniors lived in 620, and the college planned to expand further as soon as the original tenants moved out. Then-Director of Residence and College Activities, Elizabeth Meyers, told the Barnard Bulletin that “Barnard wishes not to be unfair to the tenants so that apartments are available to us only when the tenants can find new housing.” This assurance came after criticism from the tenants that Barnard was forcing them out of their homes. It is not surprising that the purchase was a contentious issue; the same newspaper issues that reported the purchase contain headlines such as “CU Republicans Back Gym in Park.” In 1967, the New York Amsterdam News cited the Morningside Tenants Committee’s estimate that 8,000 tenants had been moved out in recent years by Columbia University. The Tenants Committee protested “Columbia’s ‘anti-people program,’” arguing that the University was re-segregating the neighborhood. Just a year later, Columbia students would occupy five campus buildings in protest over the proposed gym in Morningside Park. In 1971, Barnard bought 600 W 116th St., another residential building, and allegedly sent out eviction notices, stoking further resentment. The tenants took Barnard and the company that made the sale, Jacard Realty, to court for allowing students to move in before the sale was finalized. In a letter to the editor in the Barnard Bulletin, the tenants railed against Barnard’s expansion: “Housing imperialism on Morningside Heights by Barnard College and Columbia University against residential buildings has got to stop.” Barnard maintained that, as with
620, no tenants would be evicted, although they also allegedly assured students that units would become available more quickly than they had in 620. In a recent statement to The Blue and White, Barnard suggested they have revised their policy of automatically converting residential units to dorms once the units are vacated: “As apartments are vacated entirely and returned to the College’s inventory, the College assesses its current needs along with available capital funding, and slates apartments for conversion based upon the needs assessment.” They clarified that no units have been rented out to new tenants, although their policy suggests that it’s a possibility in the future. This change in policy comes at a time when Barnard relies on students studying abroad to provide housing to students who are guaranteed it, and when Barnard transfer students still do not have guaranteed housing. “They haven’t put any pressure on me to leave in recent years,” Ms. Sullivan observed. “So I’m still here. And they’re waiting for me to die. Which isn’t my favorite state to be in.”w
“I’m still here. And they’re waiting for me to die.”
December 2018
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G(TB)²
Scrambling for Funds The culture and controversy of Columbia’s marching band By Grace Adee and Billie Forester
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he Columbia University Marching Band may sardonically call itself “the cleverest band in the world,” but lately it has become one of the most underfunded: in October, the administration announced its decision to cut $15,000 of the organization’s $25,000 budget for next academic year. CUMB, the organization's affectionate and suggestive acronym, is nothing like the massive militaristic marching bands of state schools or the traditional band that played Seven Nation Army at your high school’s homecoming game. Part musical group and part comedy troupe, committed to their venerable oral tradition yet bent on challenging Columbia’s culture, the marching band has a past and present full of contradictions. Legend and Lore According to band lore, the Columbia University Marching Band formed in 1904 when seven college musicians and a high school clarinetist played the last game of the football season and then led a victory parade to a student hangout called the Lion Café. In 1905, both Columbia football and the band dissolved. But the band returned in 1913, and has existed ever since, except for a short hiatus during World War I. For many years, CUMB was a fairly standard marching band, marching in formations and playing traditional instruments in support of Columbia sports teams. But around the 1950’s or 1960’s—the exact year is unclear—this began to change. “We realized that walking in straight lines was not something that we were great at or interested in,” said Vivian Klotz, BC '20 and head manager of the band for the past year. “So they devised this scramble band format.” A scramble band, also known as a scatter band, subverts the rigidity of the standard marching band in a number of ways. The Columbia band tends not to march; instead, they scramble around the field and tell jokes over the loudspeaker, eventually assembling themselves into a simple formation and playing
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music. CUMB claims to be one of the original scramble bands, though the matter remains disputed, as many of the other marching bands in the Ivy League scrambled around this time as well. Many of the marching band’s traditions originate from this transition period, creating remarkable camaraderie across generations of alumni. “A lot of alumni weekends, we’ll be sitting around the piano playing songs, and there’s a dude who graduated in the 60’s who will know the same songs I know,” Klotz said. Not only does the Marching Band not march; many of its members don’t even play band instruments either. That’s where the band’s segment of ‘miscie,’ short for miscellaneous, come in. While none of the miscies play traditional band instruments, they still come to rehearsals for the comedy and community. Some simply play instruments unconventional for a wind and brass marching band, like the violin or didgeridoo, but many of miscies stretch the band’s musical component even farther, repurposing “wet floor signs” and “toilet seats” as drums and shaking “El Capitan,” a parrot puppet with a maraca shoved up its rear end. The miscies also play a crucial role in writing the comedic scripts that are so integral to the band’s performances. Indeed, Klotz makes it clear that no one is required to play any music at all to participate: “We’re not a music group. You don’t have to play an instrument, and you don’t have to have the desire to play an instrument to join the marching band, because we care so much about having this comedy aspect.” Newly elected board member Josh Tate, CC '22, emphasized the community spirit present at CUMB rehearsals, which combine traditions with lore and inside jokes. “If you’re in such a stress culture, it’s so important to have an outlet like that,” he said. Sam Rowan, BC '96, is one of the founders and leaders of the Columbia Marching Band Alumni Association. She called the band “a steward of the legacy of Columbia,” highlighting its role as a spirit
The Blue and White
G(TB)² organization for what can sometimes feel like a decidedly unspirited campus. “If you ask anybody on campus, the band is one of the few groups where everybody can sing all of the fight songs, or people know a lot about the history of the school or the organization itself,” Rowan said. According to the band, one of the most crucial ways they share their particular brand of school spirit is through the infamous Orgo Night. Comedy and Controversy Orgo Night is a marching band tradition that takes place each semester at midnight before the first day of finals. First occurring in 1975, the name “Orgo Night” comes from the rumor that the event first originated as an attempt to distract students studying for their organic chemistry exam the next day. As part of the tradition, the band invades Butler Library, putting on what has become the most wellknown of their notorious part-comedy, part-music performances. Klotz described the joke as a way “to mess with people, you know, who believe that this one test is going to be the end-all-be-all.” She argued that the act of disrupting a “space that is really the center of stress culture at Columbia” is a valuable reminder to students that “every single moment of every single day doesn’t have to be for studying. There’s time for community on campus, for coming together.” The night has become well-known, not only for being one of the more rambunctious Columbia traditions, but also for the risqué, often political, and at times divisive humor written and dramatized by the group’s writer, dubbed the “poet laureate.” There are two main aspects to the controversy over Orgo Night. The more concrete issue has been the administration’s objections to the occupation of Butler Library, which began in December 2016 when CUMB was denied access to the main undergraduate library. That year, they elected to do their performance outside Butler instead. In December 2017, however, the band defied administrative orders and elected to play inside Butler. Their board voted to do the same last semester but, according to Klotz, were told after briefing administrators that each band member who participated in the performance would be individually sanctioned. Because this would threaten students’ ability to attend Columbia, they decided to hold it outside
December 2018
instead. Officially, this disruption of Butler against administrative orders is the reason for the administration’s change in funding allocations. But objections to Orgo Night started way before then. A few years ago, CUMB was embroiled in controversy because of the questionable racial and sexual content of their comedy routines. In May 2015, The New York Times ran an article about Orgo Night’s treatment of sexual assault prevention efforts on campus. While some of the jokes were directed at administration’s handling of sexual assault, mocking, for example, the arts option of the Sexual Respect Requirement, other jokes seemed to make light of sexual assault policy reform activism. An op-ed in the Columbia Spectator from 2014 called the marching band “an unsafe space for students of color,” citing CUMB recruitment posters from that semester which featured racist images of Nicki Minaj getting slapped on the rear by two white men. This year’s poet laureate Alex Parkhurst, CC '19, has kept CUMB’s controversial history in mind while writing scripts for more recent Orgo Nights. She described the writing process leading up to Orgo Night as detailed, emphasizing, in particular, the large role that the band members play in revisions. “In the past, there were some very inappropriate jokes that I could just never see us doing now, and I do believe that is because the script process has changed,” said Parkhurst. “Before, we didn’t have this extensive review process where you would have to go to the band and talk about it, so thank god for that. Jokes like that would not happen with this current band.” Parkhurst emphasized the importance of “punching up” at more powerful structures, as opposed to “making fun of people we have no right to make fun of.” But at the same time, the band still remains committed to using their platform to talk
Illustration by Susie Steinfeld
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G(TB)² about controversial political issues on and off campus—with the acknowledgment that this might ruffle some feathers. “I think there’s agreement in the band that we don’t think there are topics you should not joke about,” said Klotz. “There are stances that you should not take; there are ways that you should not joke about things. But I think that most people in the band agree that there’s nothing that’s truly off limits.” Funding the Future CUMB has been a uniquely funded student organization. Instead of getting their funds through either the Student Governing Board (SGB) or the Activities Board at Columbia (ABC), CUMB gets $10,000 from Columbia Athletics as well as $15,000 directly from Columbia College and Engineering— until next year, of course. Cristen Kromm, Dean of Undergraduate Student Life, informed band leaders in a meeting at the end of last year that they would need to become a recognized student group, most likely through ABC. “This would give the band the same privileges and responsibilities as all other recognized student groups, and would allow them to be funded in the same way as those groups,” explained a Columbia College spokesperson. Many students might be surprised to learn that the marching band had a $25,000 budget in the first place. According to the band, about $15,000 of this is typically spent on buses to and from games; other funds are spent on food, so that students don’t need to buy extra meals on game days. Instrument repairs and uniforms are not accounted for by this budget; they are paid for by Columbia University Band Alumni Association. Klotz, Parkhurst, and Tate all emphasized that financial accessibility is the numberone priority as cuts are made. “We don’t really spend frivolously,” said Klotz. “All of our money is there so we can make the band an accessible organization to people of all financial backgrounds.” By using funding as leverage to encourage the band to become a recognized student group, Columbia Administration claims their main motivation is to increase the marching band’s accountability through the structure that nearly every other student group on campus answers to as well. “The push for the band to become a recognized student group is in direct response to the band’s
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decision to violate a directive from the Libraries and Provost in December 2017,” said a Columbia College spokesperson. Band members argue that joining a student board will not allow them to recover the funds lost in next year’s budget cuts; new student groups tend to get less funding than more established ones, typically no more than a few hundred dollars. “We don’t know where the $15,000 dollars that as of now funds us will be going,” said Klotz. “I have not been told in any way that it will travel to the board that we choose to join.” Furthermore, the average budget allocated to all student clubs (old and new) is significantly lower than the $15,000 portion that CUMB will be losing. Student groups receiving funding through ABC, for example, received an average of $2,386.39 for the 2016-17 academic year. So what next? They haven’t decided yet. “That’s a question for the next board, really,” said Klotz, who has just reached the end of her term. Tate, a member of the new board, says that there are many hours of discussion on that subject yet to come. Culture or Counterculture? At its core, the primary goal of Columbia’s Marching Band is not so different from any other: to act as a source of school spirit. Is this contradicted by their self-proclaimed identity as “the most nihilistic band in the world?” From the beginning, they have aimed to subvert the dominant culture, striking at everything from politicians to administrators, sports teams to Columbia as a whole. But at a prestigious university in New York City that promotes itself as an institution of critical thought, should it be surprising that its marching band expresses school spirit through hypercritical, challenging, and sometimes abrasive comedy? From their ironic pretensions to their efforts at accessibility, from their valued historical traditions to their controversial emphasis on free speech, it’s possible that CUMB might be a product of Columbia’s culture more than anything else. And in the same way Columbia can be shrouded in mystery, the marching band had some secrets of its own. The writers of this piece asked Tate if there was anything else we should know about the marching band. “GTB squared!” Tate declared with a slight chuckle. We asked him what that means. “I can’t tell you, but it’s the spirit of the band,” he replied.w
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December 2018
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M easure
for
M easure
Hummingbird There is an absence in their home. They feel it in the morning when they open their eyes and later, in the evening, when they close them. It throbs. Sometimes, they worry that it will grow so large it will eat their house, gulping each of them down whole. It is hard enough the way it nibbles and naps at them, curling around them in their sleep. There is a forest stretching up a long hill, behind their backdoor. The summer sunshine, catches in its aspen leaves and fawns chase one another through its tangled grass. Mother hangs a hummingbird feeder in front of the forest— and watches the little birds flit, emptily. The only room Son can tolerate in the house is the living room, where there stands a wall of windows. Today, he sits in the room alone and watches the sky throw a cloud blue hummingbird smack into the glass. Through the crystal, it’s bright body grows still as stone, sprawled on their chipping deck, wings wide as a crucifix. He scoops it into his palm and buries it in the weeds. Mother will never know— He is trying to mitigate her pain, absorb it, really. — Hannah Liberman
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M easure
for
M easure
Black Coffee She served the coffee black to me, he said. And I heard the cicadas hissing from outside and the slurp of his noodles and I stared at the stained rim of his mug, which was printed with Japanese I wondered if the cement hissed, if there was an audible rise of smoke off the burnt, black ground I doubted that there were many people who paid attention to the sounds of black cement He looked at his wife adoringly when she passed the mug to him Like he saw an image of her that I couldn’t see, a materialization of love Like she was wearing one of those halos, A crown of light, that we see in Christian art Yesterday, I gave him an American flag T-shirt. He showed me his others. His daughter had one that read, “I AM LUCKY AND BE HAPPINESS” The girls at Hiroshima were wearing the T-shirts too Red, White, and Blue Black Are the carbonized imprints on buildings Are the shoes in the Honkawa River And the bodies and children’s clothes The steam that swirled above his coffee probably seemed ethereal to him That’s how I like it now, he said — Tamar Vidra
December 2018
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D O N ' T O P E N T H AT
Hiding in Plain Sight Frantic first-years stow contraband on the eve of dormitory raids By Sam Needleman
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mong the residents of John Jay Hall who spent Tuesday evening preparing hastily for the following day’s room inspections, perhaps the most disconcerted was Karish, a betta fish who normally enjoys a lovely view of W 114th Street from his perch in an eleventh-floor single. His owner, a first-year in the College, appeared desperate as she described her plans to stow him in a drawer between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. the following day, when inspections were scheduled to take place throughout the dormitory. Pet fish are allowed in Columbia residence halls, but Karish’s tank is larger than the half-gallon limit; the only solution would be to hide him or smuggle him out. Karish’s owner chose the former option, citing an email from Columbia Housing, Residential Life, and Fire Safety last week that assured undergraduates that “staff will not be opening drawers, closets, or anything that is closed.” Down the hall, a petless student weighed her options. Her Housing-approved mini-fridge, she thought aloud, would be the ideal place to store bottles of wine, vodka, and an unknown Greek liqueur that, for now, sat prominently on the windowsill. Taking a cue from a crafty friend on the fourteenth floor, she planned to shroud various prohibited items in piles of clothing—even her inflatable chair, which consumed no small portion of the room’s square footage. Up and down the corridor, students described their preparations in hushed tones, with a mixture of amusement and angst. Many feared imminent goodbyes to the best of their illicit possessions: electric kettles, heat blankets, bread knives, lava lamps. These fire-prone items appeared to be the sort of contraband about which Housing was most concerned; the authorities’ emails seemed to imply that even a cunning Columbia first-year would have trouble starting a fire with a bottle of Svedka. Indeed, it wasn’t the thought of losing her Bacardi, stashed in a large Amazon box under her bed, that sparked grave concern among one nervous resident; it was the notion that her waffle-maker may
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have to go. “No, scratch that! They can have it,” she said, as long as they let her keep the scented candles. That student’s neighbors made no secret of their favored forbidden fruits, the two ubiquitous indulgences of the college freshman: alcohol and caffeine. A wine lover concealed a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, gifted gratis from the oceanside hotel at which he took his Thanksgiving hiatus, with care. He disassembled his Keurig with matched precision, stowing its parts in separate pieces of furniture, not unlike a hedge-funder diversifying his assets. In the great Columbia tradition of institutional critique, multiple students complained about misplaced priorities. “Why don’t you focus on the Carman kids putting their Juuls in the microwave?” asked one dishevelled resident, who had taken great pains to bury her extension cords in a spare suitcase. Another, who took a quick break from drafting an essay about postcolonial masculinity in Africa and noshing on homemade chocolate peanut-butter cookies to secure his quarters, expressed frustration at the overbearing nature of it all. “We are mature enough to know when we should and shouldn’t have things,” he said. Across the hall, his floormate agreed, but opted for the pathway of denial. Asked about how he might conceal his microfridge—disallowed, as it was not rented directly from the University—he paused, then shrugged. “My plan is for them to just ignore it.”w
Illustration by Jennifer Bi
The Blue and White
T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N
Nature's Invisible Hand A conversation with Paul E. Olsen By Mary Elizabeth Dawson Paul E. Olsen is the Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia. Olsen currently teaches Dinosaurs and the History of Life, but his research focuses primarily on the evolution of continental ecosystems. He is particularly interested in mass extinction events and climate change. For this month’s Conversation, Olsen sat down with Mary Elizabeth Dawson to discuss everything from the Precambrian to the post-apocalypse. The Blue & White: I just wanted to start with your history of getting into dinosaurs and studying them, because I remember from the very first lecture of the semester you had the picture of yourself at the World Fair and you were always interested in dinosaurs and I feel like I’ve only very rarely met people who knew what they wanted to do when they were young and then actually did it. So why dinosaurs? Paul E. Olsen: It started basically with an interest in natural history as opposed to dinosaurs, but of course I loved dinosaurs, especially when I was really little. I remember vividly watching some TV shows, some movies on TV that I guess were fairly recent at that point that had dinosaurs, or something like dino-
saurs, as their monsters, and I thought that was kind of interesting. I even remember having dreams about being chased by a dinosaur, or some version of that. But I really early on got interested in rock collecting and marine biology and all kinds of things like that, basically anything that had to do with natural history. I just kept following that as a kid. Arrowheads and rocks and fossils and shells and plants and pets—anything that had to do with natural history and science in general. I kind of liked mechanical things. I used to take things apart; in fact, when I was a baby, my nickname was “Knobby,” because I would go around the house and take knobs off of everything. I can remember being about two—I don’t remember being two, but I know I was two—and all the appliances being roped up so that I couldn’t open them. BW: I remember taking the door handle off the door in my room at one point when I was young and then not knowing how to screw it back in and thinking I was trapped in my room forever. PEO: [laughs] Forever! Of course you did, of course you did. So, when I was in middle school, I did a lot of drawing. I was very involved in art, and I often drew things that were related to natural history. I remember one drawing in particular that I was thinking of recently that was a frog dissection, and I had devised a device—never built, but devised—that would recirculate its blood so that it wouldn’t die, because I thought that was a nasty thing to do. Although, somehow I guess dissecting it alive was okay! I didn’t think it through. In any case, when I got to middle school, I was very involved with having various fish, various vertebrate marine fish in tanks, and I converted my garage into an aquarium. I must have had 20 tanks
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Illustration by Rea Rustagi
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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N going at a time, including some really big ones, hundred-gallon tanks, and I would collect a lot of my own specimens because I thought they were more interesting than these fragile little tropical things that kicked off if you looked at them wrong.
PEO: Which you are then going to take into the ocean and use, right?
BW: Yeah, I think I had like five Betta fish growing up, and I always got tired of them and kind of ended up waiting for them to die.
PEO: Yes, that was the Riker Hill site.
PEO: [laughs] Yeah, yeah. But I got interested enough that I wanted to build a submarine, and in middle school I started doing that. My metal shop teacher was very kind and let me actually build the frame in the metal shop. I actually finished the hull, more or less, and then I started hearing about—I was still interested in fossils—and I tried to convince my parents to let me go to the Gobi desert, and that didn’t work out because of the Cold War, but they did take me to Europe when I was eight, and we went to museums and places like that. It was very interesting. They always took me to museums, and I think that’s how I developed the core of my interest in paleontology. I do remember going to the American Museum of Natural History specifically and how much fun that was. So many people in science were influenced by going to these museums and seeing the fossils, and I was one of them. So, while I was working on my submarine, a newspaper article came out in the local paper, about a fossil footprint being given to the local library in Livingston, New Jersey, and it had been found in a quarry near my house. I thought, “Oh boy, I’m going to go out there,” and I grabbed one of my friends, Tony, and we went out, biked out a mile or so from my house, and there was this quarry, and there were amateurs already collecting who showed us what they were finding and how to do it. We befriended one of the guys, a guy named Bob Salkin, who was very encouraging, and I met him multiple times after that. He showed us what to find, and we started finding dinosaur footprints immediately, within minutes. That’s rather characteristic of that rock, not our skill. The footprints are so common that anybody with even a tiny instruction of what to look for and how to look for it can find it in minutes. That, within a year, completely diverted my attention from the submarine, which my parents were incredibly grateful for. BW: Yeah, I bet. Better to look for footprints than build an entire submarine.
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BW: So, the place where you found the footprints was the Riker Hill fossil site, right?
BW: I actually have a question about this. How did you go through the process of getting that site established as a National Natural Landmark? PEO: Yes, so, you did some Googling, obviously. BW: Yes, and I think you also mentioned it in class at one point. PEO: That’s right. I cannot claim credit for originating the concept or having the wherewithal to follow through. However, one of those amateurs, actually Bob Salkin, was an educator in the New York public school system, and he used dinosaurs as an avenue to get underrepresented, underprivileged kids to read and write and do drawings and so forth. It was a very effective program, which he did for most of his life. He was a metal shop teacher, interestingly enough, but he was really interested in fossils and devoted himself to those public education efforts. He had been involved in a project to try to preserve another place in New Jersey where dinosaur footprints had been discovered called Tom’s Point in Lincoln Park, and that failed and became a golf course. He thought it would be a good idea to try to preserve this place too, but he had learned that direct ways of doing that simply would not work. He had a friend at the Newark Star-Ledger, which was a very well-read newspaper at the time, who had a different kind of plan. So Salkin thought that he could engage us to do the effort so that it would be kids trying to drive this thing rather than just adults, and that proved, in fact, far more effective. I was very willing to do this because I also thought it should be preserved. He, through his friends who were involved with the Newark StarLedger and other educational things as well, made sure that we got some publicity starting right off the bat. Eventually we were attending town hall meetings and getting lots of people involved. There were quite a few local people who also got involved in the town to try to preserve it. Strangely enough, the one group we never contacted was the actual owners, who
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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N turned out to be a very large company called Walter Kidde & Company, and they eventually called me—I remember this vividly, sitting in the kitchen on the phone—and they said, “You know, you never actually asked permission to do any of this stuff. Don’t you think it’s not right that here you are, asking us to donate this property, and we never gave you permission to do that? We think that you should stop doing that.” That’s what they said. But, that’s when the publicity for this was kind of getting going. I got a call two days later from Life magazine saying that they were going to do a story. I said, of course, that they should speak to the owners by that time. Somebody at that company [Kidde]—a publicity person—realized that this would only be negative coverage for their company, and they realized that, in fact, at least half the property was very difficult to develop. It was on a very steep hill, and if they donated that, they would get a tax write off on that part of the property, and if they kept the other half, they could develop the lower part for condos, as it turned out. They announced that in time to take advantage of the Life magazine article, and hence, “The dinosaurs finally win one” was the title of that, and it became a huge success. In the meantime, prior to that, I wrote the National Parks Service, the Essex County Park Commission, and ultimately Richard Nixon. I got a nice reply back saying, “The President is very interested in hearing from you, but very busy,” blah blah blah blah. What I didn’t know was that right next to the quarry was a light industrial company called Kidde Precision Tool, which was a separate company than the company that owned the land, although connected at some deeper level. Kidde Precision Tool had a Vice President of Public Relations named George Green, and Mr. Green took an interest in us and helped us in getting soda and tools and things like that, and there was no bathroom at the quarry so we could use the facilities at this light industrial plant that was really right next to it. He was really nice, and what we didn’t know was that he was writing President Nixon. He was a staunch Republican supporter, and he wrote Nixon saying, “Wouldn’t it be a good thing if you had the boys visit you in Washington and showed America what the good youth of the United States looked like?” BW: The good youth. That’s funny. PEO: Well, at that time, we were involved in Vietnam
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and there were protests all over the country. Kent State had just happened. So, this was was a big deal, the protests, and the youth movement was a really big thing in the late 60s. There were drugs and the whole “Turn on, tune in, drop out” business, so he thought by getting us to the President that this could be a publicity thing. And it turns out that there was a massive amount of communication between the President’s staff members about this that, in fact, involved almost the whole high-level Watergate group. Haldeman, Ehrlichman, they were all involved in this discussion about these two kids. Meanwhile, they’re invading Cambodia! Obviously there was an attention span issue here. They’re spending all this time—which I didn’t learn about, by the way, until 2008… Finally, William Sapphire, who used to write for The New York Times but before that was a speech writer with Nixon and was one of the group that was involved in this discussion, said, “No, that shouldn’t happen because of the inevitable jokes about the Neanderthal Wing in the White House.” Instead, after the article in Life magazine came out and after the company said they were going to donate this land, Nixon sent a presidential commendation to Tony and I for our efforts in trying to have this converted to a park. The National Natural Landmark status came about immediately thereafter, and by that point I was going to Yale, which I only got into because of my fossil efforts, because my grades were truly hideous, and because of the professional friends I’d made inside the community through the efforts of Bob Salkin. We were, in many ways, being used by well-intentioned older people to further their agenda, which was mostly my agenda. I wouldn’t have known how to do that. So, it all worked out quite well. Even Nixon got something out of it. Not much! But a little bit. BW: Do you think it’ll ever be developed? PEO: I think so. It’s a good resource for the region, but it has to overcome the inertia that’s been there for a while, and I haven’t been focused on it, certainly. BW: I wanted to move on into what you’ve been researching and studying more recently, which is focused on mass extinction and climate change, as I understand. This has obvious connections to dinosaurs, but why teach a class on dinosaurs instead of a class on climate change?
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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N PEO: So, I do work on dinosaurs, I work on dinosaur footprints, I’ve published on that, I’m writing a book on it. It’s certainly not my major area of research. I have contributions I’ve made, and I think they’re important ones. I have another one in the mill on how dinosaurs took over, but my basic research focuses on climate change, mass extinction, and, oddly enough, celestial mechanics. The reason I started teaching the dinosaur course goes back to when I was first hired at Columbia … I discovered when I came to Columbia that I was basically expected to be funding my own graduate students … I did some digging into funding, and I discovered that, at the time, our department would receive a certain number of graduate student fellowships from Arts and Sciences based on, in part, the number of undergraduates we were teaching. I thought, “Well, I could do something about this … I can make a contribution indirectly to graduate student funding by engaging undergraduates in an attractive course.” The second point of this is that I was recognizing, at the time, that people were coming from Columbia, going into politics or going into law or whatever, and had basically nothing but bad contact with science. All of their contact was unpleasant. BW: Right. I think there’s definitely a lot of people at Columbia like that. PEO: And they had structured their high school career to very carefully navigate around to avoid taking classes in which they would do badly and therefore hurt their chances of getting into a prestigious college. This still goes on. It’s a real problem, because the very people that end up being in local to national leadership positions are some of the very people who have avoided that contact. So, I tried to do something about that, so I started this course on dinosaurs. As a student you may have noticed that I constantly refer to how things are done, how do we understand this, what does this mean, how does this intersect with current things going on. The idea is, and I say this in the preamble to the course, that it’s an attractive way to get undergraduates involved with science. It’s a ready portal, there’s some framework already there, you can get into it without any prior information, and even for people who have science backgrounds, cladistics for example, they don’t have any experience with that. It’s a completely different
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way of thinking. BW: In further relation to your studies on climate change, at this point, how are you feeling about the future of the environment and the hypotheses that we’re at the cusp of the next great extinction event? PEO: Let’s start with the extinction event. That’s well underway. If you look in the fossil record, humans have basically wiped out almost all large mammals. The only ones that still exist are really endangered. There are two species of living elephants, maybe three, some people like to split off some varieties, but there are certainly well-accepted species of elephants, the African and Asian elephants. Those are the largest mammals that are on land, and they’re endangered. Whales are clearly endangered. If you looked at the fossil record, you’d already see that a mass extinction is happening. These large mammals are in many cases keystone species that structure environments. We’re not familiar with what North America would look like with these mammals around. We know from fossil evidence that, were we, as modern human beings, to look back at what things looked like before mammoths and mastodons and giant ground sloths and giant armadillos that lived in this region went extinct, we wouldn’t recognize the area. Even pristine areas, “pristine” in quotes, looked more like a chaparral than they did a forest. Eastern North American forests are a modern construct that date since the extinction of large mammals in North America. They would have been much more open and had much more grass than present, modern forests. There are a whole bunch of smaller species which relied upon those large mammals to structure the environment, and many of those are endangered or even extinct. That extinction’s already happened. Now we are endangering enormous numbers of species by habitat loss. That’s the principle mechanism by which species are being driven to extinction. Almost all those species will not leave a fossil record, so future paleontologists wouldn’t even recognize those extinctions. Also, most species exist in very small numbers and in very localized areas, so those just would disappear without any record of them ever existing. Not a very cheery thought, but that’s the way it is. Even in our efforts to preserve habitats, there is a whole issue of whether island habitats are actually successful in maintaining their diversity or
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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N not. I would guess no, they’re not, because things are changing very rapidly. They change naturally very rapidly, but we’re accelerating them in a directional way. Even without human intervention, climate change happening on a random basis would result in decades of drought happening naturally and result in these island habitats becoming uninhabitable for certain species, and that would be their end. So, I believe that mass extinction is already underway. We would look to the future, if we were paleontologists looking at what happened after this mass extinction, and see a different history. Smaller animals would give rise to larger animals in the future, with or without us. How that’ll work out, who knows. We don’t know which animals will be successful. We know which animals are successful in our presence, but those aren’t necessarily the ones that would give rise to other forms in the future, they may just continue happily the way they are. Blue mussels are incredibly successful in the oceans. They haven’t given rise to giant blue mussels. BW: One thing you just touched on, human intervention contributing to climate change, I discussed in my research paper [for your class]. I find it really interesting that this is the first time one of the primary driving forces of climate change, which is humans and human actions, has been a sentient force, something that can comprehend the implications and consequences of its actions. What do you think about that? Is there a significance there? PEO: Oh, there’s a big significance to the fact that we’re the only species that has existed on our planet that knows what it’s doing. We can predict the outcome of our actions, and we can understand them, and we can change or not change in order to mitigate or not those results. We are not the first species to have massive effects on climate. We’re far from it. In fact, our effects on climate will be relatively minor compared to the number of evolutionary events that have happened in the past. For example, the invention of oxygenic photosynthesis, which gigantically changed the planet in much more profound ways than anything we’re planning on doing. In retrospect, we think that was a good thing, but if you were an anaerobic bacterium, you would disagree. That was a bloody disaster! It made nine tenths of the earth uninhabitable, so that’s an enormous change. Forests changed the world tremendously. The ability to live on land, free of water—open water—was an enormous
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change, again, to organisms that were around. Many of them, if they could have, would have thought it was a disaster, but it was an enormous biochemical change, far greater than the change we’re doing now. Our change in climate is in a direction that the Earth is used to, if you will. Most of Earth’s history has been spent in the non-glacial period, so the current climate that we have is not normal for the Earth. You could even take the point of view that we are bringing it back to normalcy. However, our effect is temporary at the scale of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years because, sooner or later, our fossil fuels will run out, and then we will cycle back to the situation in which we were beforehand. The oceans will absorb that carbon dioxide and the pre-industrial climate will reestablish itself, we think, although that’s not necessarily the case. Sometimes climate change produces changes that aren’t reversible, in the sense that they change the climate state and it’s in a new mode that’s stable until something kicks it over in the other direction. So, something kicked the planet over into the Ice Age mode, which it hadn’t been in for 300 million years before that—more like 350 [million], actually. We think that kick was a rather steady decline in carbon dioxide levels to the pre-industrial levels, which at some point caused the northern hemisphere glaciers to start cycling on and off, and the antarctic glaciers started quite a bit earlier than that. Again, the carbon dioxide levels dropped below a certain threshold. BW: So, do you think a complete extinction, or at the very least a severe bottlenecking event, of humans is plausible or possible? PEO: No, I don’t think climate change as driven by human beings would produce such a bottleneck. Warfare related to that climate change could do it, pretty easily, as a matter of fact, if not result in the extinction, but that’s actually fairly unlikely. Humans are very resilient and very inventive. Even with nuclear war, survival is plausible, but that would create certainly a bottleneck. What is quite likely is that climate change—it’s not just likely, it’s happening—results in stress for populations that are already under stress and makes things a lot worse. It triggers migrations, migrations cause instability, political problems that can result in warfare and that can cause mass mortality. Related to that—and related to our large and fluid population—could be large epidemics.
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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N The combination of an epidemic plus a very stressed population could lead to very significant deaths and, again, population bottlenecks. Although, even with things like the Black Death and Influenza—the early twentieth century Influenza outbreaks—they have not caused the kinds of bottlenecks that humans have experienced before when we had much, much smaller populations. It does result in natural selection, which does modify the population, and this is probably why we don’t suffer from that kind of Influenza outbreak that occurred before, because the strain is still around. So, yes, I do think bottlenecks are possible, but not as a direct result of climate change. You could argue that the percentage of arable land will actually increase as a result of global warming, but not in the same place that we have agriculture now and that change is occuring, so it’s definitely stressful. To animals that are already in habitats that are restricted, and plants, it will probably result in extinction of those groups. Many species, by the way, could be replacing those in relatively short order, so it’s not necessarily that those organisms like insects and things which provide most of the diversity on earth that may not produce a visible change in diversity when viewing a fossil record. BW: So, I remember a while back reading something and the author was talking about a new form of environmental nihilism where people have started to say that the earth is so screwed up and the environment is so screwed up there’s nothing to do at this point … The author continued to make the claim that this view was just as dangerous and detrimental as that of people who completely deny that climate change is even happening. So I was just kind of curious about what you think about people who are thinking that way. PEO: It’s an interesting point of view that harm has already occurred, and we can’t do anything about it, so why bother, but it is true that we’re already down the path of enough carbon dioxide to significantly change the climate. However, that doesn’t mean it won’t get much more dramatic if we continue along our current path. Now, it’s clear that adaptation— resilience is often spoken of—will be necessary. We need to be able to deal in practical ways with climate change that is happening and will continue to happen regardless of what we do. But the fact that it’s going to continue to happen no matter what we do does not
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mean we shouldn’t stop making it worse. Right? And it can get much more dramatic. Now we’re expecting some significant sea level rise as a result of current climate change, but you can deal with it in the same way Holland has dealt with high sea levels by building dykes, moving populations inland, and so forth. But, if the ice caps were to melt, which is not impossible— in fact, in 2400, beyond the scope of most people worrying about—if the current increase in levels of carbon dioxide continues, we’ll have levels of carbon dioxide about 4,000 parts per million, which is at the level at which in past times that we had no ice caps at all, and sea levels would rise over a hundred meters. At those conditions we would lose entire states, like Florida. Gone. Completely underwater. Whole levels of Asia would just be completely underwater. Now, of course, at the rate at which that could happen, would humans be adaptable? Yes. We would. In terms of the whole earth’s history, high carbon dioxide levels themselves are not necessarily bad at all. You could make the case that eliminating the ice caps and [having] high carbon dioxide levels are much better for life, on average, than our current situations. The entire polar regions are uninhabitable now by most large forms of life. Period. That’s not normal. That’s a significant reduction in area that’s viable for life on the planet, advanced life on the planet, complex life on the planet. So you could argue, at the biggest scale, undoing that is a good thing. However, like I said, we will exhaust our fossil fuels or at least bring them down to levels that you couldn’t pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. By 2400 we’ll be certainly in that territory. So what happens then? Then it goes back, right? So then you’ve got the ice caps and you’ve had a mass extinction, so that’s really… I mean if you think a lot of life is good, that’s not good. These are value judgements, they’re not scientific opinions, they’re not scientifically based ideas, but if life is good, then that’s bad. BW: That’s interesting. I’m trying to wrap my mind around it. PEO: It’ll be great for organisms, and by 2400, you’ll have significant advances of forests into the arctics and arctic regions, but then again, when carbon dioxide starts lowering in 400,000 years, which is how long it’ll take for that carbon dioxide to come out of the atmosphere, the ice caps will come back. Of
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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N course they’ll come back probably to greater extent than they were before that because the trend to lower CO2 globally will still probably be maintained. By the way, why CO2 has been dropping is not understood in a very basic way. Why did CO2 drop 350 million years ago? The leading idea is that it was due to the spread of land plants. Why is it dropping now? One leading idea is the growth of mountain belts, but another possibility is that the growth of grasses as super plants, they may be shunting much more of the carbon dioxide, also through fertilizing the oceans into sediments and thereby on a very long trend, by their own diversification, lowering CO2 globally. They will still be around when the effects of humans on CO2 are not, and that will result in even lower carbon dioxide levels. At what point that stops, we’re not sure. There are even scenarios in which we could trip back, because of the action of life—not us, but because of other organisms—into the snowball Earth condition that happened several times, we think, in the Precambrian. The entire Earth was covered with ice. That is surely not good for higher life forms. BW: It seems like everything is so cyclical. PEO: There are cycles, but there are also singularities. Evolution produces dramatic singularities. Inventions of life forms that do things with their metabolisms that nothing ever did before and take hold of the Earth’s climate and metabolism and basically completely take over. This has happened multiple times, and it will happen again. But, the results are not what we would call good for everybody around. BW: I remember at the beginning of the semester you had mentioned that you were working with celestial mechanics, and I feel like some people laughed because they were thinking, “What does that have to do with anything you do?” I was definitely thinking that. PEO: Right, right. The thing is, about science and geology and paleontology and sedimentology, they’re all related, and they’re reflecting things that we think really happened. They tell us things about our world and our universe that we wouldn’t be able to get any other way.
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BW: Yeah, I think it’s really fascinating. Okay, well, I wanted to end on something light. Do you have a favorite dinosaur? PEO: Do I have a favorite dinosaur? That’s kind of like kids, you know. Which is your favorite child? Do I have a favorite dinosaur? It’s a very difficult question. Actually, I do have a favorite dinosaur. It’s a parrot. Although presumably you mean a non-avian dinosaur. I like those strange dinosaurs we saw in the Jurassic—a class called Scansoriopterygidae. The dinosaurs that have a web of skin as a wing, instead of feathers. That, I think, is superbly bizarre. I think that is really, really out there. Right now, that’s my group of dinosaurs du jour. BW: I’m thinking about it. It’s kind of like a batdinosaur. PEO: It’s a bat-dinosaur! That’s exactly right, it’s a bat-dinosaur. Now, it’s conceivable that that interpretation is wrong, because the membrane that’s supposed to be the wing is not all that well-preserved, but it has this extra bone that extends way out of its wrist, and it’s really hard to imagine what the heck that thing’s for, except to support a membrane. BW: We’ve looked at a lot of things in class that are just so, so weird. And you just kind of have to speculate why they were there and what they did. PEO: Right, right. Well, a platypus is a living animal and it’s… BW: It’s weird. PEO: Yeah. Really weird. And you probably wouldn’t guess that it has venom, but it has a spur on its leg that has venom. And you wouldn’t guess that its nose is electric, either. It has electrical receptors, and it snarfs around for food in lakes using electricity. BW: Whoa, I didn’t know that. Nature comes up with some weird stuff. PEO: It sure does. Whatever works! That’s basically nature’s motto—whatever works.w
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CAMPUS GOSSIP We A pprove Columbia, in its good judgement, has given the space formerly belonging to the Columbia Daily Spectator to the Alumni Development Office and the School of Professional Studies. We Disapprove Someone decided to play Kerbal Space Program in the back of a Columbia lecture with an external mouse, going boldly where no student has gone before. e Walgreens will be open 24 hours throughout Christmas and New Years, like it was open this Thanksgiving. Reports say these hours were really popular with The Grinch. e If forcing a pledge to eat chemically laced chicken and do knuckle push-ups until they’re crying and bleeding is Lambda Phi Epsilon being tame (apparently compared to other universities), then we really don’t want to know what Lambda is like wild. e The website for the Columbia College Student Council is down at press time; someone might have tried to hack it. We congratulate the hacker on their reported steal of dozens of professional headshots, but in the meanwhile, don’t log in to your UNI through any CCSC link. Events Somewhat A broad Professor Jennifer Hirsh spoke at Princeton in November about her SHIFT survey. She reported that “Drinking is a big part of heterosexual students’ strategies to accrue sexual experiences,” but that
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“what a student perceives to be the general Columbia drinking culture is often only his experience as a wealthy white man.” She continued to say that access to alcohol and spaces where alcohol is served act as precious social capital at the University. e Everyone having a moral panic over Yale offering emergency contraception in vending machines completely missed Columbia offering $40 emergency contraception in the same way this semester, and Barnard announcing they would do the same thing. Housing in Morningside Beta is currently under chapter suspension from Columbia University. Unlike ZBT, Beta alumni own the house, so the brownstone will not be available in the Housing lottery. e The Vandewater Building, which arose from the space JTS sold for $96 million, is now offering showings. If you have a cool $900,000 sitting around, you might be able to get a studio. 1st Place in Dining Served at Ferris Booth Hall, mashed potatoes served with a tack. Columbia Dining only serves the sharpest arrangements. e Ferris Booth Hall is popular with all populations at Columbia. They even have a section for mice under the fruit stand. e A Columbia College student was treated by CAVA for E. coli after eating mainly at John Jay in days previous.w
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