December 2014

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. XX No. VI

On Tape How sexual assault activism works

No Second Guessin' A conversation with Keith Gessen, founder of N + 1 Also Inside

: A Blue and White editor goes church-hopping

December 2014

TORSTEN ODLAND, CC ’15, Editor in Chief DANIEL STONE, CC ’16, Managing Editor WILL HOLT, CC ’15, Features Editor LUCA MARZORATI, CC ’15, Senior Editor ALEXANDER PINES, CC ’16, Senior Editor NAOMI SHARP, CC ’15, Senior Editor HALLIE NELL SWANSON, CC ’16, Senior Editor SOMER OMAR, CC ’16, Editor Abroad CHANNING PREND, CC ’17, Senior Editor JESSIE CHASAN-TABER, CC ’16, Layout Editor ANGEL JIANG, CC ’15, Senior Illustrator MATTHEW SEIFE, CC ’16, Publisher Staff Writers NAOMI COHEN, CC ’15 MICHELLE CHERIPKA, CC ’16 VIRGINIA FU, CC ’17 TAMSIN PARGITER, BC ’16 JENNIFER SLUKA, CC ’17

Artists RACHEL CHIN, CC ’18 ZANE BHANSALI, CC ’17 WENDI LU, CC ’18 JOANNA ZOU, CC’18 IRINA TEVELEVA, CC ’17

Contributors SEAN AUGUSTINE-OBI, CC ’16 SOPHIE BRIDGES, CC ’18 NIA BROWN, CC ’17 JESSICA CALL, CC ’17 SCOTT FISCHBEIN, CC ’16 KUNAL JASTY, SEAS ’16 TATINI MAL, CC ’17 JOSEPH MILHOLLAND, CC ’17 JORDANA NARIN, CC ’17 JOSEPH RABINOVITSJ, CC ’18 MABEL TAYLOR, BC ’18 BEN SCHNEIDER, CC ’17 BRIAN THORN, CC ’15

Layout Staff HANA BEACH, BC ’18 TAYLOR SMITH, CC ’17

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XX

FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS

No. VI

Columns

4 Bluebook 6 Blue Notes 8 Campus Characters 13 Verily Veritas 27 M easure for Measure 34 Digitalia Columbiana 35 Campus G ossip

Alexander Pines & Mabel Taylor Ben Schneider

Hallie Nell Swanson

B&W Staff

Jessica Call & Joseph Rabinovitsj Nia Brown

Brian Thorn

Features 10 At Two Swords’ Length: A m I Clean?

Our monthly prose and cons 12 Royal Lineage

The transformation of 535 112th St. 14 On Tape

How sexual assault activism works 18 Legends of Carman

Debauchery through the ages 20 EC: Bastard Dorm

The complex conception of Columbia’s most coveted residence 22 Take the 4 to Woodlawn

The Blue and White tours the Elysian fields 23 Bean Boy #2

The funny pages

Luca Marzorati

24 Super Sunday A Blue and White editor goes church-hopping

Torsten Odland

26 The R ise and Fall (and R ise) of Crack Del

An ode

Kunal Jasty

theblueandwhite.org

28 No Second Guessin’

A conversation with Keith Gessen, founder of n + 1 f

cover :

“Crunch Time” by Angel Jiang

BLUE BOOK

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Passion is a word, perhaps a too purple one, that comes up often in descriptions of what an undergraduate education is supposed to be: a chance to expose yourself to the full spread of human doing, looking for your place, the thing that will drive your life. A passion, whatever it is. Locate it within yourself, and you will never have an excuse to be depressed.

I’m surprised to admit that my most passionate moments this semester–the moments I’m actually straining with all my attentive force, explosively motivated—probably arose in the context of PE Squash, where my class rank is approximately five.

I’ve never been an athletic kid, although my mom is ripped.

Still, I’ve astonished myself on the squash court: running until I can’t breathe, planning traps, working the angles, smacking the shit out of the ball. When I’m feeling it, that monochrome desire to win, I can’t help but try as hard as my body will allow. My body is in the service of something spectacular. Squash.

This isn’t a passion in the loftier sense. The feeling you’re after in sports is just sweet, salty domination. But passions come in various aspects, and that’s an important one; one perfectly well-suited to sexy, aerobic nonsense. Undergraduate life in our day, what with preprofessionalization, is also full of that passion for keeping up, triaging, planning, achieving­—surviving. Then there’s that interesting one, the passion we all feel to ... chill? Well: rage. And college may well be useless without its role as romantic, political, religious passionizer.

As a philosophy person and someone who’s serious about academia, I’ve also had my fair share of the passion that’s probably particular to college and places like it: the passion to learn and discuss, and to contribute to our explanation of what the world is like. I suppose most Columbia students do experience that, the passion for selfcultivation, at least for a portion of their time here. Hope so. It’s among the most nourishing. (It doesn’t make you feel like shit.)

And as word of caution (this is my last issue): I’ll bet most seniors wish they hadn’t given over so much of their time to their passions for raging and surviving and spent more of it, oh, spilling their guts on the squash court.

But, of course: you have to survive. And you have to rage.

— Torsten Odland, Editor-in-Chief

4

TRANSACTIONS ARRIVALS New songs from Beyoncé Serial Ugly Christmas sweaters Town Halls Mozzarella sticks at McDonald’s A GOP-controlled Senate DEPARTURES Salmon Shorts Strawberries from Westside Salad Bar Senior Night The Youth Vote Leisure

Come Again?!

“But I—I’ve been a dodo. A complete and utter dodo.”

– Annabella Hochschild, in her Spec Op-Ed

The Blue and White

BLUE BOOK

Theoretical Notation Match these class notes with the class that they were taken in!

1. Do we actually know ourselves? What are the boundaries of the subject?

A. Macro Economics B. Gen Chem Lab C. Advanced Body Sculpting D. Psychology of Addiction

4. The globalized self has become a commodity. With a deceptive genealogy. The phenomenology of gendered space has created trans-national reconfiguration of discourse on “leisure time.”

A. Eschatological Themes in Modern Legislature B. No policy on lateness C. Cell Biology D. You can eat in class if you aren’t too loud

2.

5. Historical status: didn’t actually literally happen.

Allusion to ancient Rome. Sex tourism. Atypical use of Tobasco sauce.

3. Marx’s labor theory of value: not true. Dope maybe?

A. Intro Level Korean B. Game Theoretical Modeling C. Navigating the American Prison Space in the 21st Century Through the Lens of Modern Critical Theory: The Story of American Gendered Spaces in Modern Memory and its Connection to Ideas of Self and Other D. Where am I?

A. Did they take attendance today?

B. I didn’t want to pay for the book C. Is there a final paper?

D. Probably just gonna sit in the back

Answers:

C, A, D, A, B

A. Intro to Quantitative Queer Theory B. Physical Systems C. Embryology D. New Math

POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE

December 2014

Postcard by Wendi Lu

5

BLUE NOTES

C

olumbia’s mascot was almost a goat called Matilda. Around the turn of the twentieth century, she lived in Morningside Heights and students used her for pranks. Upon her demise, Matilda was stuffed and displayed in a pharmacy on 118th street. What happened to her after the store closed has been lost to history, but one relic of the animal survives.

The children’s book Matilda, published in 1956, by Le Grand (the nom de plume of Le Grand Henderson) hasn’t been checked out from Teacher’s College Library since the 1960s. It tells a story that Le Grand says is passed down by the descendants of Matilda’s original owner.

Le Grand’s Matilda is a cute little goat owned by the heavily mustachioed Patrick Riley, a man of modest means who lives around 120th street. One day after fishing, Riley and Matilda bump into the Columbia University football team, which is losing because of its sleepy fullback.

As the football team is scrunched over, Matilda gets a “pinkish greenish feeling,” runs up to the fullback, and butts him in the behind with

6

her horns, causing the fullback to dart away and score a touchdown. If only we could be so lucky.

While Patrick Riley is apologetic, the coach realizes he can use the fear of Matilda to motivate the fullback. This strategy works, but Matilda is sometimes naughty. She eats many things, from a football to some English examinations, and gets lost right before the big game. At the last minute, Riley finds Matilda, and she comes back in time to give the fullback the incentive to score four touchdowns and clinch the victory.

After the win, Columbia’s president makes Matilda “an honorary student of Columbia University, with the right to eat all the old examination papers.”

That’s the story of how a goat became Columbia’s first animal student and first female student, although the book doesn’t make that explicit. Still, the message for our losing football team is clear: a goat horn in the ass will get you boys moving.

— Joseph Milholland

W

e all have a favorite dining hall, admit it. Since powdered eggs taste the same regardless of location, I prefer Ferris for the music.

Fellow lovers of disparate musical genres understand the pleasure that accompanies listening to Tears For Fears, Steel Pulse, and Little River Band, before getting to the end of the Ferris pasta line.

Those who can stomach Fergie and Taylor Swift— well, John Jay’s doors are wide open. Except for Fridays and Saturdays.

After enough rides on Ferris’ wild music-rollercoaster, I resolved to find and praise the rogue DJ. While swiping into Ferris, hearing “Safety

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

BLUE NOTES

Dance” play over the sound system, I asked the lady at the door if she had any idea who chooses the music, or at least what playlist they use.

She answered, “I don’t want to talk to you about this.”

My jaw dropped. Why so forceful? “I don’t want to talk to you” I’ve heard before. But “about this”?

My mind instantly jumped to conspiracy.

Do they use some kind of cultish selection process to determine the music for a given day? Does it involve monkish hoods? Do they use olive oil? Does it involve a giant onopoly board? Goat blood?

These were just theories. I needed facts.

So, I emailed Ferris’ dining manager about their music selection process and he immediately referred me to the director of Columbia Dining, who told me that the music is played off of a “shuffled playlist.”

Come on.

Don’t tell me that six consecutive mid-eighties reggae tunes followed by three glam rock hits constitutes one shuffled playlist.

So be advised, if you cannot appreciate Ferris’ seemingly disjointed music selection, their cryptic message, don’t worry: the Illuminati are not here to destroy us, but to teach us.

— Joe Rabinovitsj

O

n the last day of October, I walked into Camille’s to the tune of “Sexy Back” blaring through the sangria-drenched, candlelit, nearempty restaurant on Halloween night. I’d come for a weekly poetry reading, organized by Frances Pritchett, Professor Emerita of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies here at Columbia, and ghazal lover extraordinaire. At ten minutes late, I was the first to arrive, which, as Pritchett told me, was unsurprising. You know South Asians, she said.

True to form, people trickled in by twos and threes until, an hour later, the table was full.

With her interwoven shawls and short white hair, Pritchett is almost precisely what you’d expect

December 2014

of a career academic. In the respite before everyone arrived, Pritchett tried to teach me to pronounce “ghazal” properly. The word, an ancient Arabic term dating back to the sixth century, refers to a form of poetry involving a repeated rhyme structure, typically devoted to expressions of love and pain.

Discussing vocal nuances in different languages, she said, “On my first trip to Kolkata, everyone kept telling me to visit the Kolkata Jew. I couldn’t figure out what was so distinctive about this one Jew—surely they weren’t that rare. Eventually I realized they were saying ‘zoo.’ My first introduction to the sound system.”

Known as a mushaira, the gathering occurs every Friday at 6 in Camille’s, which Pritchett told me has effectively become her office. The mushaira is small and intimate, with around seven to eight attendees. Both students and non-students alike read aloud ghazals, usually written by the poet Ghalib, interpreting each line individually. It is a collaborative approach, with plenty of discussion.

Pritchett’s every word is given pause, and her brief asides are practically worshipped.

She insists it’s not a cult of personality, but everyone around seemed infatuated with her presence. Though she’s recently retired, Pritchett has hardly been lazing about. She divides her time between campus politics – she’s a member of the Columbia USenate board – and updating her website, which hosts an astonishingly prolific collection of ghazal analysis. True to her professorial roots, she guided the discussion with a heavy hand, aided by her abundant knowledge. “The truth is,” she says, “you just know whatever you pay attention to.”

With her considerable knowledge base and talent for pithy remarks, there isn’t much that escapes her notice.

— Tatini Mal

Illustrations by Rachel Agins and Angel Jiang

7

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. If you’d like to suggest a Campus Character, send us an email at editors@theblueandwhite.org.

J

Jaimie Boothe

amie Boothe, CC ’15, seems anxious as I turn on my recorder at the start of our interview. “I’m not a fan of the sound bite culture,” he explains as he adjusts his glasses, “[it is] very reductionist.” This aversion is unsurprising coming from Jamie, a figurehead of Columbia’s small and constantly scrutinized right wing, as well as a Senior Editor of The Columbia Political Review (CPR) and Director of Operations of Columbia University College Republicans (CUCR). What does surprise me is his background: growing up in rural Appalachia, he was raised by parents who teach grades K through 12 and who are, incidentally, Democrats. He jokes about wondering where he came from.

But Jamie is perhaps best known as the author of one Spectator op-ed in defense of Columbus Day. He wrote that Columbus Day should not be a day of protest, but should “remind us of the need for serious and levelheaded dialogue on the topic of European colonialism.”

I had been introduced to the piece by a friend who told me the article was an argument for how slavery led to the end of slavery—ergo Columbus’ discovery (and subse-

8

quent exploitation) wasn’t such a bad thing. For about a week after the op-ed was published, I heard his name in close proximity to ‘bigot,’ ‘privileged white male,’ and ‘asshole.’

“I don’t have a problem with being criticized,” Jamie says emphatically, “[but] I think it’s important to stop yourself and do a reality check and think: this reaction that I’m having, is this what this person actually intended, or is there another way to interpret it?

You should only work your way down to ‘this person is a bigot,’ or ‘this person has malintent,’ after exhausting all of the options before that. Giving people the benefit of the doubt is a very important principle in any form of academic discussion.”

Another principle important to Jamie, a biochemistry major with a research background, is that arguments have their roots in the empirical. “Some people say that the plural of anecdote is data,” he tells me.“I disagree; I would say that the plural of anecdote is anecdotes. Science is defined by verifiable, examinable evidence. Politics would do a lot better if our political decisions and ideologies were based more on evidence than emotion.”

Perhaps it’s this reliance on empiricism that leads to his dismissal of the ways in which emotion and anecdote can be valid persuasive forces, or to his view of public protests as “shows of intellectual intolerance” when considered to be a readily available option, as opposed to a last resort. Perhaps Jamie’s op-ed struck such a nerve because he underestimated the sense of injustice, even anger, that has become inseparable from Columbus Day. It could be that his argument was too divorced from the intangible: from the symbolism of a national holiday that, to many, proves America still hasn’t fully acknowledged its history of oppression.

Even when he faces harsh criticism, Jamie appreciates Columbia as a space in which students share an investment in socio-political questions. “They care so much about not themselves being right, but finding the answers,” he says, “That’s what college should be about:

Illustration by Irina Teveleva

The Blue and White

making answerable the questions that are unanswerable.”

As our conversation comes to a close, I turn off the tape recorder and Jamie visibly relaxes. He stops making references to Plato’s Republic, no longer feeling the need to provide examples to substantiate every claim he makes. He opens up about himself and his family and it’s this Jamie whom I wanted to meet. I had initially thought that his hesitation to my recording him was a wariness of saying the “wrong thing,” but Jamie simply understands the power of words - especially his own, contrary to what many might believe.

— Michelle Cheripka

“I

Virgilio Urbina Lazardi

don’t resent people who work at Goldman Sachs! I don’t resent them for behaving bourgeois or being a part of the system because we’re all part of the system!

I’m part of the system!,” Virgilio Urbina Lazardic, CC ’15, explains to me, though I am by no means the only person listening. “Abercrombie and Fitch!” he continues, standing and pointing to the small moose logo on the chest of his red coat, “Probably made in some gulag in Bangladesh, right?”

Virgilio — Vir-hee-li-o — is currently clarifying what he views as a mistaken conviction of modern leftism, the idea that people must live the revolution.

We are sitting at a table in the back corner of the Hungarian Pastry Shop, a place he considers “close to home, both physically and metaphorically.” And just twenty minutes into our conversation, Virgilio has already amassed a small audience of our fellow Tuesday morning pastry shop patrons who consistently glance our way each time his voice begins its distinct ascent.

Virgilio, it seems, is used to the attention. On a campus with a long history of leftism and radicalism, he has still made a name for himself as the most vocal proponent of Marxist socialism.

At his core Virgilio is an academic, intensely intellectual in a way that separates him from his activist comrades. Unlike many of the activists who dominate our university’s collective image of The Left, Virgilio fortifies his worldview — that decommodifying labor power, providing necessities like food and health care on a direct basis to meet human need, and reducing allegiances to nation-states will create a more emancipated society — through theory, cognition, and research.

“I dont think my Marxist aspirations inform the way I behave,” Virgilio says—a somewhat confusing confession from a man who sleeps next to a framed poster of Karl Marx. But Virgilio approaches the structural trans-

December 2014

formation of society in a more restrained manner than most. Rather than resent those who work at Goldman Sachs, for instance, Virgilio looks at the constraints placed on them by a capitalistic political or economic system that incentivizes such work.

Virgilio’s constant analysis and interrogation of the world around him—his habit of engaging in dialogue rather than dismissing those with whom he might disagree—has always distinguished him. Professor Axel Honneth, whose “European Social Thought” class Virgilio took as a first-year, recalls him even then as “an extremely impressive partner in discussion whose questions always gave debate new form, the type of student professors rarely encounter and never forget.”

Virgilio’s student persona, one that thrives off of discourse, is present outside the classroom as well.

Formerly both an op-ed columnist and an Editorial Board member of the Columbia Spectator, Virgilio originally joined the paper not just because it was a source of news but, in his words, “a source of discussion.” More recently, he is a frequent contributor to Bored@Butler, a web forum he describes to me as “the collective toilet of the Columbia campus’ collective mind.”

Virgilio, on the surface, might appear to be a vessel of contradiction. But, peeling back the layers, the inconsistencies in his persona wane. What’s left is an approach to people, a “political mission” if you will, that when stripped down is actually quite simple: “There was a Columbia Admirers post about me a while back that said, ‘Virgilio has the power to make people feel so wonderfully awkward,’ and that was probably the best compliment I’ve ever received. If the way I engage with people makes them feel awkward because it leads them to question themselves and how they’re living and how I live, then I’m so glad.”

— Jordana Narin

Illustration by Wendi Lu

9

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

Am I I

am a diamond. Flawless. My aura is porcelain when I was...five? perfect. If I were a toilet you could eat your dinner That baggie, the one that you’re looking at, straight out of my bowl. But then I would have your over there? That’s clearly on my roommate’s desk. tongue on me and doubtless it is disgusting. You It’s obvious which side of the room is hers—that fan should really get the smell of your breath checked out. is from K-Mart, for Christ’s sake. K-Mart. You can It could kill me. even tell from looking at the carpet. I think hers Do you see my teeth? might contain sentient They’re like chiclets. life. That is, if you could Sometimes I catch myself see it through the small smiling in the mirror and I mountain of polyblend want to pull them out and and, God, I think she pop them into my mouth even wears straight up and chew and chew because plastic. Like plastic that’s how cute and nice and bags. For when she runs square they are. out of panties. I had to And I only use Fiji start carrying Febreze to water to wash my face. It’s escape the toxic cloud of pure, unlike the swill everyJJ’s leftovers whenever one else seems content to I walk in. It’s her you douse themselves with (and should be talking to.

I imagine they drink it too!).

Look, I don’t That’s why my pores are know anything about invisible. It’s like they’re not arson. And even if I did, even there. Unlike yours, it would be for the better I’m sorry to say. that all of those horrible I had a special copy tacky things got burned of the Oxford English up, okay? The world Dictionary made so my picture doesn’t need any more neon pink could be printed next to “perfect.” jeggings, so whoever set those fires ffirmative Because I’m funny, too. Extra prints was doing society—no, humanity!—a are selling on eBay for up to three favor. And like, yeah, it’s sad and all

By Alexander Pines thousand dollars. I’m a minor celebthat sometimes the fires happened rity in Akron, Ohio, okay? This when people were still wearing the face? It’s basically a collector’s edition. abominations but still—hey! Put those handcuffs back And they love me on Tinder. on that slimy rubber belt of yours, these are freezing!

Drugs? Of course not. Well, not dirty drugs. And filthy, you pig! Do you have any idea what this I make sure that the pharmacist filling my Abilify could do to my nails? prescription wears gloves and a respiratory mask What do you mean fingerprints at the scene the entire time. I even make them double-seal the matching mine? Fire burns shit up, duh, how could bottle. Because a little bit of dust and...who knows there be fingerprints? Besides, I never leave the house what symptoms a tainted antipsychotic might trigger? without gloves. My father will have something to say Besides, my piss is as clean as a newborn’s, I’ve never about this, officer. Expect to hear from our lawyer. failed a test. Of any kind, actually. I joined Mensa I’m clean!w

A

10

The Blue and White

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

Clean?

N

o. But, heck, everyone starts their day a little bit not to wear out its natural fibers. And honey, the differently! I prefer to kick it off with a medita- grease says it all. tion on the fluids and crusts my body produced durA shower? There are occasions that warrant a ing the night. If I don’t have time to give a tissue a shower. I enthusiastically shower on the major Pagan mighty snot blast, wipe the crusted globs of gunk holidays and anytime I feel like my stench to quirk from my eyelashes, and pick the dried spittle off of my ratio is out of whack. But how can I be 100% sure I’m forearms, I won’t feel right. I look at it as a reminder shower-worthy? that I am alive.

I shower when I feel dirty… And I’m not talkLet’s see… I go down to ing about literal grime here, the bathroom. Generally, I don’t because I think that the world brush my teeth. Tooth brushes are would be a better place if we phallic. And I don’t like mint! all just accepted ourselves After I take a hot little piss a tad bit more, I’m talking and drip dry, I’ll wash my face about Morally-Disgustingbecause I’m already in the bathFire-Breathing-I-Am-A-Badroom. I don’t buy my own soap Person dirty. In those rare because I’m no Midas. Come on! moments where my own moral Instead, I’ll just throw on some poverty astounds me, showof Ms. Roommate’s Purell and get ering is a phenomenal relief. out of there.

The hot water pounding on my After my jaunt to the bathhead and shoulders cleanses room I head to my closet and rumme in a way nothing else can. mage around a bit. I’m not afraid I embrace the archaic to admit I love getting dressed. institution of showering only I wanna look good! Getting when I really need a sturdy dressed is an art, a prayer. I’m moment of self-flagellation, not looking for something simple, like after those occasional easy, or clean. bursts of violence that leave When it comes to undies I’m me with a hole in the wall and a egative sort of picky. If I’m in the mood to bloody stub for a toe or when I forget don some droopy drawers, I like to call my mom. Sometimes there’s

By Mabel Taylor to wear a pair of the black or dark nothing a girl can do but repent. blue variety. Dark colors are nice Now I wouldn’t call myself religious, because they contrast well with any vaginal discharge but there’s certainly something spiritual about washI might be expelling. ing away your sins with a bottle of 2-in-1 shampoo After my undergarments are taken care of, I conditioner and a coarse stone. But unless I’ve gone curate my outerwear. I don’t have a strict formula; I’ll on a sociopathic pleasure-bender, for the most part wear anything with a hole for my legs, I like to say. As I stink on. long as the color and smell is me.

So that’s it! If you have any questions, let me My beauty look is easy to achieve. I don’t wear know, but I can assure you I don’t do drugs or anymakeup because it creates a barrier between me and thing illegal for that matter. My roommate? She’ll be the rest of the world. I strive for open communication. around later. Oh, what? No, I’ve never used Tinder Hair: I only wash my hair once or twice a year in order before, I don’t believe in online dating.w

N

December 2014

Illustrations by Zane Bhansali

11

FA U LT Y T O W E R

Royal Lineage The transformation of 535 112th St.

By Ben Schneider

I

n 1906, a narrow six-story building was erected at 535 West 112th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam. Since then, the red-brick structure has been a hotel, two different restaurants, and a Jewish co-op.

In its early years, the hotel attempted to appeal to the bourgeois aspirations of local residents and students. A 1921 Columbia Spectator advertisement for the Hotel Royal Restaurant describes it as a “cozy place to pass the noon hour,” and highlights the “Table d’Hotel Lunch 60¢” The hotel ran a separate Spec campaign in the early ’20s, extolling itself as a “refined family hotel” with a “European plan and special student rates.”

But not every aspect of the hotel was so familyfriendly. A 1931 article in the Brooklyn Standard Union relates the matricide of Herman Diller, the owner of a drug store on 115th and Broadway. Along with his elegant Brooklyn apartment—in which he was found beaten to death by a hammer—Diller rented a room at the Hotel Royal that he shared with some of his young employees. After discovering his body and arresting his wife, police learned that Diller “frequently went to an apartment he shared with the young men and, according to the clerks, took women companions with him.”

Minor scandals aside, by the middle of the century, the hotel’s glory days were behind it. In 1954, the Hotel Royal Restaurant became the Hotel Roy Pizzeria, a transition very much in keeping with

the changes occurring in the neighborhood. Single Room Occupancy hotels, or SROs, were no longer seen as a viable housing option for anyone but the most desperate, and Morningside Heights had begun a dramatic decline. Across the city and the nation, white and affluent people fled to the suburbs, paving the way for large-scale “urban renewal” projects that would make places like The Hotel Royal relics of the past.

Powerful institutions like Columbia were essential players in this process.

Starting in the late ’60s, the University began buying every neighborhood property it could get its hands on, including the Hotel Royal and countless other SROs. In 1972, thanks to a $40,000 endowment from the novelist Herman Wouk, CC ’34, the building became Beit Ephraim (affectionately known as the Bayit), a “Jewish food co-op.” The structure was only minimally altered in the conversion, except for the addition of a large kitchen in the back.

Stephen Cohen, CC ’70 and GSAS ’74, one of the co-op’s founders, describes the Bayit’s early years as a “contentious time.” But one would expect no less from a community made up of “people who were very active in Jewish life but had different points of view.”

These principles, as well as a shared passion for food and cooking, have kept the Bayit going strong to this day. For inhabitants past and present, the building’s history has mostly faded into the background— though Cohen does admit, “I’d heard the place was a brothel.”w

Interested in writing or illustrating for The Blue and White?

WE WANT YOU! Drop by our weekly meeting Tuesdays at 9 p.m. in the Dodge Room of Earl Hall.

Or, email editors@theblueandwhite.org.

12

Illustration by Joanna Zou

The Blue and White

V E R I LY V E R I TA S

TOLD BETWEEN PUFFS

V

In which our hero explores

.V. has never been one for close comradeship.

From the days when he nursed Mother’s withered breast, he’s always taken to relationships of the stern, fumbling, Platonic variety. His years at Columbia, though softened by a succession of male acolytes–Geoffrey, Bastian, Dimitriev–have passed in near isolation, with only his valet Serj to soothe his doubts and nurture his delicate imagination. V’s analyst suggests this “pattern of attachment” has to do with the way the boy’s father regularly measured his member and forced him to wear colorful, anachronistic codpieces at the dinner table.

Some new feeling must have burst forth in him the day he first sat next to Henry Fredrico in German Romanic poetry, drawn weightlessly through the seminar room, as if by a thread of gossamer, to Henry’s crooked nose. After 10 weeks of glances and eventually chatting and snickering, they became real classroom chums and V.V. began to crave the aggressive, almost disgusting way Henry closed in on him whenever he spoke, his grey eyes no more than two inches away. They would exchange poems and discuss them after class as Henry smoked a cigarette out the window.

One Sunday, Henry finally invited V over for a visit at his flat in Schapiro, but only two minutes after his arrival, our hero decided the whole thing–the notes, the games, the wiry hair of Henry’s arm–all been for naught, as Henry’s only gesture of welcome was to produce four tabs of LSD from the fridge.

After V declined, Henry popped two, offered our hero a chair, which he declined in turn, and began to pronounce on certain unexplored features of his own psyche while V scanned the room for signs of civilized life. “I’m embarking on something special, man,” Henry kept repeating. Verily reached for the bookshelf, hoping for some reassurance, only to have his disgust overwhelm him: Salinger, Kerouac, Kesey, Gaddis.

December 2014

Americans!

“And last night,” Henry continued, “I took some mind blowing ketamine with my brother who lives out West now.” “‘Ugh,” our hero exclaimed, unable to control the parade of insults and curses that followed, the ultimatums, and long, enraptured descriptions of Henry’s physique. “I’m sorry I ever took up with you.”

“Sorry! Man do you remember the junk you used to write before I baptized you in my wake?

All the ‘fluttering dew drops.’”

“Stop it.”

“The ‘winsome willowy women.’”

“Damnation!” V spat, “Of course my Dorchester Odes sounds puerile recited out of context, Henry. I challenge you, you rat, to a poetry duel.”

“You’re on. Bougie old fascist. If we wait two hours this acid will really be taking off.”

Damn him! V thought, Damn his playfully crooked nose!

“No it must be now, and let’s let our pens do the talking, shall we? Make no mistake: your sallow eyes and melted gold curling hair will not beguile me. Nor the proud rump of your calf, nor the sweat besparkled stretch of exposed neck. I shall not shake upon the sight of your ripped up abs–” “Man,” Henry sneered, “do you want to write these poems? Or do you really want to fuck me?”

Shocked, sputtering, our hero saw himself clearly for the first time.

“I think I want you to... How is it called? When the submissive figure lies fetally and the dominant creeps up behind and fits himself curve on curve against–” “Spooning, man.”

“That’s it, Henry. I want to go spooning.”

So the two lay in Henry’s bed, watching as the red sun dipped beyond the Hudson.

“I suppose I’m gay,” Verily mused.w

13

MEASURING A MOVEMENT

On Tape How sexual assault activism works

By Hallie Nell Swanson

E

veryone knows about ‘the movement’­—the name that encompasses those who have banded together to change how Columbia handles sexual assault.

Be it on the front page of the New York Times, your Facebook feed, or Low teps, you can’t avoid it, in Morningside Heights or beyond. For most not directly involved, the movement is a collection of images and ideas: mattresses, angry students, narratives of miscarriages of justice and an uncaring administration. This common understanding primarily results from the work of No Red Tape (NRT), a campus student-activist organization. It is the product of a highly coordinated media effort that has ensured regular coverage of the organization. But while this strategy has secured NRT a place in the spotlight, i t has also crudely rendered the complex workings of the organization and the individuals involved in it.

‘We have to find ways to make them care’ How did we get here? To understand NRT, we must go back to a February meeting in the University Senate’s Low Library conference room. The previous week, an article (“Accessible, Prompt, and Equitable”?) had appeared in these pages detailing the experiences of survivors with Columbia’s adjudication process. As Anna Bahr, BC ’14 and the article’s author, recalled, “most of the faces that are still important to the movement right now were in the meeting on the first day.” Some had already been meeting and debating how to approach the issue since the beginning of the year, but only behind closed doors. At this juncture, and at several subsequent meetings, the people who had been talking about it were finally all in one room, and had to decide how to move forward, Making those decisions was hard. Some people in the conversation wanted to tackle the issue through policy-based initiatives, while others favored direct action. There was a clear clash, not just of ideology but of individuals, particularly Sejal Singh, CC ’15 and Zoe Ridolfi-Starr, CC ’15. Ultimately, these differences resulted in a schism. On one side there was

14

the Coalition Against Sexual Violence (CASV) led by Sejal; on the other, No Red Tape (NRT) led by Zoe. CASV’s membership tends to consist of “student-leader” types, who already have administrative relationships, though Abby Porter, CC ’17, CASV’s co-coordinator for prevention education and CCSC Vice President of Communications, is keen to emphasize that anyone can get involved. According to Abby, it’s “unfortunate” that the “so-called student leaders” get access that not everybody does - but it’s a status quo that NRT can use to their advantage: they agitate, others lobby. The groups also collaborate frequently.

NRT, on the other hand, was born out of opposition and frustration. Co-founded by George Joseph, CC ’16, a key member of Student Worker Solidarity (SWS), its membership was more drawn from radical activist groups, who conceived of NRT along the same lines. According to Zoe, “Really the only things that they [the administration] care about are money and their public image. We have to find ways to actually make them care.” For NRT, without administrative relationships to exploit, this has largely meant securing media coverage.

‘Doing what comes up’ “At the beginning,” said Camila Quarta, CC ’16 and a NRT member, “we pushed ourselves to sit down and establish things like our mission statements. Things like what we stand for. But the conversation ended there, and I think we’re just doing what comes up.”

For NRT, a nationally recognized organization, “doing what comes up” is practically a full-time job. In a typical day, the group receives requests for comment from media, requests for advice from similar organizations at other schools, and requests for help from individuals at Columbia. As a result, their public relations have become a well-oiled machine.

At the National Day of Action, a large rally held at Columbia and planned to coincide with other rallies nationwide, NRT distributed a memo to its mem-

The Blue and White

MEASURING A MOVEMENT bers about talking to media. “Reporters are not your friends!” it admonishes at one point. The first item in the document is a list of who is available to talk, about what, and when —Emma Sulkowicz, CC ’15, is listed as speaking to “top outlets only.” The sheet advises its readers to “stick to the talking points and focus on our main messages,” as well as stressing that you should say “what’s important for you to say” personally. Organizers told protesters to share the event on social media, and a typed sheet of protest chants was circulated. This sort of strategizing isn’t just for the National Day, but every day.

Reading all the coverage of NRT, it becomes clear that little new is being said. By way of example, part of the protest involved depositing the mattresses students had carried to Low steps in front of President Bollinger’s mansion. The action allowed for quotes like those from Michaela Wiehl, CC ’17 and a NRT member. To the Huffington Post she said: “The symbolism of them literally dumping the mattresses... they literally throw out rape cases.” Of the gesture, Zoe told the Socialist Worker “we have to bring this issue to his literal doorstep” while Becca Breslaw, BC ’17, told Jezebel, “we were putting all the balls in PresBo’s [sic] court, literally.”

NRT meeting notes from after the Day of Action tell another story. SWS, who booked Low steps for the protest and were charged for the cleanup, did not know that the mattresses would be left outside for workers to pick up rather than carried away by protesters. “Need to be more mindful of issues like this in the future with partnerships,” read NRT’s notes.

According to Camila, the focus on presenting a united set of quotes for the media, like those above, has the effect of dictating some of the group’s concerns for them, making meetings “purely logistical.” The notes about the mattresses focus on how to reclaim the image, concluding, “Let’s make paying the fine into a direct action?; spin to make admin look bad and use it as opportunity to publicize demands.”

Fair enough, that’s what they need to do. But is “spinning” it constructive for organizing in the future?

Perhaps this is an instance of, as Camila put it, “planning ahead, without talking about what we plan.”

An early meeting notes to the NRT listserv reads “GET SHIT DONE.” This sort of approach, Camila said, precludes conversations about how to develop strategy. “If you’re in the spotlight from the beginning, you don’t have the right to change your

December 2014

opinion as the movement develops.”

‘Standing in the background’ Students can’t have all the answers. Activism surrounding sexual assault at Columbia never happened in a vacuum, with people sharing resources and learning from national groups like End Rape On Campus, Know Your IX and SAFER (established at Columbia). The members or organizations like NRT don’t have the background to file a Title IX complaint. Gabriela Pelsinger, CC ’15 and former NRT member, said sessions with such organizations were “helpful to figure out a little bit more of the context.”

Carry That Weight, which Zoe conceives of as the national arm of NRT’s campus-based activism, is now a similar such organization. The group was founded at the beginning of this year by Allie Rickard, BC ’14. Upon reading about the senior art thesis of Emma Sulkowicz (whom Allie had never met before), she wanted to “find a tangible way to show my support for her and other survivors,” she said.

Carrying The Weight Together, as the group was originally called, orchestrated ‘collective carries’ to help Emma get from place to place with the mattress she was carrying around campus for the art piece.

“With Emma’s performance piece [NRT] finally found a symbol,” said Anna Bahr. “It’s something No Red Tape has capitalized on and with good reason.” As it had with Allie, Emma’s piece resonated with people all over the world. “I started getting a bunch of messages from people all over the country of carries they were doing,” said Allie. “One thing led to another.”

This process wasn’t completely organic, however. Allie wasn’t just getting emails from student groups asking for support, but from other national organizations, including Hollaback!, Ultraviolet, Rhize, and Fission, who went on to form official partnerships with Carry That Weight.

Unlike, for example, SAFER, these groups aren’t just dispensaries of advice on specialist issues like Title IX. They act as consultants for grassroots organizations to market themselves. According to Erin Mazursky, Rhize’s founder, Rhize provided a PR consultant to write the Day of Action press release and respond to the PR requests that “inundated” Allie and Zoe. Rhize provided CTW with a “huge” network of media contacts, said Zoe, as well as finding and funding Carry That Weight’s new website.

15

MEASURING A MOVEMENT They wrote a memorandum of understanding for affiliated organizations to sign, which dictated the partnership’s boundaries, for instance not being able to use Emma’s story for fundraising without her explicit consent. This is obviously all free for CTW, so what’s in it for a group like Rhize or UltraViolet?

Put simply, they have their own agendas.

“Agenda” is a cynical word; certainly, they are all fighting to make the world a better place. But the link between their national project and what happens here at Columbia isn’t necessarily clear. “In terms of what Hollaback! has done to make this campus safer, I have no idea,” said Gabriela. “I haven’t seen that.”

Zoe said that the first requirement for a partnership was that “the organization is focused on empowering and amplifying students rather than co-opting student work.”

When emailed for comment, Emily May, founder of Hollaback!, replied: “A big part of our role with #carrythatweight is standing in the background and letting students lead.” Gabriela, however, pointed out that “there are a lot of politicians and organizations that would want the endorsement or the connection with the activists at this point.”

Then there’s also the issue of money. Donations on the CTW website are split between NRT, CWT, Hollaback!, and Rhize. UltraViolet, who initially had the idea of a carrying of 28 mattresses, bought them for the Day of Action, and was going to pay for the cleanup fee. While keen to stress that she didn’t have experience collaborating with outside groups, Camila said, “I’m just concerned that it might create problems in the future if they want to do something we don’t want to, but then they’re giving us money.”

‘The Nation project’

doesn’t know about the

Safer Bars

What’s crucial to understand is that NRT is not all PR. Far from it. A key transition in NRT’s strategy was made at the beginning of this school year, when, according to Michaela, “we decided, or realized, that it was going to take so long to get the things we were asking for that some of them we just needed to start doing until the university would.”

A whole host of programs organized by NRT

16

has emerged on campus in recent months and or are in the works. NRT helped the Marching Band write its own internal sexual assault policy, and Gabriela is in talks with COÖP to see what can be done there.

They have also been highly involved in developing consent education programs. After the research has been done, NRT plans to extend consent education and bystander intervention training to frats, SICs, sports teams and other clubs. At the beginning of this year, NRT held an open consent workshop for freshmen during NSOP, focused on what questions to ask to engage productive conversations in the official Consent 101 workshop.

Michaela is working on the Safer Bars program, bystander intervention training for bar staff.

Nine people have gone through the program to become trainers, run by DC-based group Collective Action for Safe Space. But, as Anna remarked, “The Nation doesn’t know about the Safer Bars project, which is a genius idea, and it’s a little odd to me that that kind of Columbia-specific stuff isn’t being publicized. I don’t really know why.” According to Michaela, it’s because the program, like the other initiatives, isn’t finished yet.

But that still doesn’t explain why so few people know about arguably one of the most important programs on campus, not affiliated with any group but associated with them: CU Suvivors’ Circle. It’s a sizeable organization which hosts several peer-facilitated meetings a week, as well as online spaces, for survivors to share resources and support. Confidentiality for the survivors is paramount, especially after reporters showed up to a meeting last year, so instead of publicizing meeting times, the group uses an email—cusurvivorscircle@gmail.com—where interested people can ask for more information.

The ‘Resources’ page of Allie’s old ‘Carrying the Weight’ together website used to direct to the Gmail—but since the movement (and the website) went national, it’s been removed and the ‘resources’ page now directs you to an 800 number. (The upcoming NRT website will have a Columbia-specific resources page.)

When asked how the activists publicize the survivors’ circle to people who don’t have relationships with those in the circle, Zoe said, “It’s some-

Illustration by Irina Teveleva

The Blue and White

MEASURING A MOVEMENT thing we could do a lot better,” although some newer members joined independently. “We don’t really have a publicity strategy” for the circles, she said. But the group does seem to have one for everything else.

‘Cosmo wants it to be more personal’ These things actually make up the bulk of NRT’s work. Why not use interviews to talk about them? Apparently because nobody cares. “When we put out statements and policy proposals, nobody fucking reads those. When we talk about models for prevention programs, people are like, ‘I don’t care,’” said Zoe. According to Camila, “What gets attention is the individual narrative, not us being like, ‘these are the systemic failures of policy and of rape culture.’” An excerpt from NRT meeting notes about an upcoming article reads, “Cosmo wants it to be more personal.”

Camila agreed to an interview for a New York Magazine article because she wanted to talk about her activism, which had not been mentioned in previous coverage. This was expressed in the resulting article with the epithet “die-hard leftist.” These stereotypes abound in the piece: Zoe is “the daughter of Innocence Project moms,” Emma the “hipster fencer-artist.” “That was a shitshow,” said Camila.

“That was a bad fucking article.”

Darializa Avila-Chevalier, CC ’16, wrote a lead in The Eye about the intersection of race and sexual assault at Columbia. She called the New York Magazine-style approach, “portraying these five narratives and having them be the collective narrative,” one that is “frustrating.” Darializa, who identifies as Afro-Latina, has several times been interviewed, but often what she said is not included. “I honestly couldn’t say if it’s a matter of my race, or my ethnicity,” she said. NRT is extremely aware, and anxious, of the fact that they benefit from prejudices they emphatically disagree with. Camila points to the fact that people are much more interested in “sensationalism” surrounding rape on an Ivy League campus with “young white women.” But being featured often means playing in to, and perhaps even reinforcing, that mentality.

Both Camila and Darializa pointed to the strange paradox of the individual narrative-driven coverage: that the story is given an authority for being generalizable, but then easily dismissed on particulars. “It’s easier for them to say “Emma’s

December 2014

lying” as opposed to saying ‘sexual violence is bad,’” said Camila.

That said, this approach is what, according to Zoe, “has propelled this specific iteration of this movement to such prominent levels.” She said “older generations of what then was feminist activism” were focused on “rape crisis centers and reporting to their police, but people weren’t really telling their individual stories.” Doing that, said Zoe, lets other survivors know, as Anna’s article did for her, that “this is bigger than me.” It also helps to push back against “rape myths,” she said. And as Anna pointed out, to stop survivors from telling their stories “is a form of silencing.”

‘Who am I in this conversation?’

According to Zoe, not only is media attention “one of the largest ways we’ve been able to build power and leverage that against the university,” it is also important for promoting dialogue on campus, prompting questions like “‘Who am I in this conversation, how does it affect me, how do I participate in rape culture?’,” she said.

But on campus, it’s possible that the media strategy has been almost too efficient. Students take what appears of NRT in the media to be a reflection of the group’s main concerns. Columbia doesn’t know about the Safer Bars project either. If the questions Zoe, and NRT, want us to ask aren’t being prompted, then we won’t ask them.

Clearly, the approach has some limits: what will happen, for example, when Emma and Zoe, who have been most vocal in telling their stories, graduate? Zoe worries about losing the media attention, saying “not only would it slow down and stagnate the activism, but also that conversation would start to disintegrate or fade from people’s minds.” Clearly, the group doesn’t have all the agency in its relationship with the media. But perhaps it might be possible to have the conversation include more people and discuss NRT’s initiatives and their attempts to change campus culture.

Ironically, Jezebel put it well when reporting the fine for the mattresses left outside PrezBo’s house on the Day of Action. The fine was actually for those left on Low steps, but that doesn’t really matter: as the article admonished PrezBo, “the real issue at hand is the safety of students, not dirty mattresses.” If only their reporting reflected that.w

17

Legends of Carman

by B&W Staff, with contributions from Jordana Narin and Sophie Bridges Carman Hall has long been known as Columbia’s first-year party dorm­—it even inspired an ode-like song to its “joyful depravity” from the Spectator. Curious to probe past the limited reach of our collective institutional memory, The Blue and White delved into the depths of Carman lore and returned with many a story, from bodies in carpets to elevator fires to mysterious drawer punch. Carman may look like a prison, but you can’t say it’s boring.

In the spring of 2014, one resident decided to DIY an actual bar (from Craigslist) in his Carman dingle. He then inaugurated the bar with a massive paint party, for which he was dubbed “a hero” and “an alcoholic” in the same Bwog comment thread.

Someone smashed every exit sign during Bacchanal.

An RA, apparently at the end of their rope, ordered students to come up with designs for flyers instructing people not to smash ceiling tiles after said students smashed most of the ceiling tiles.

In the middle of winter 1984, three Carman boys found a rug on the street and dragged it back to their cinderblock abode. When they moved the rug vertically to fit into the elevator, two boots popped out of the bottom. Upon arriving at their residence on the 8th floor, they began to unroll the rug (at which point they noticed some blood), and discovered a body and called the cops.

18

The Blue and White

Overheard at a Phi Epsilon Pi reunion: “This would have been 1980, in room 303—our suite was Art Garfunkel’s old one. Across the street, we were level with the tops of all the fraternities. When they had their pledge weeks it got kind of irritating—all these idiots, me included, did it at one point. We finally had had enough—and one of our good buddies on the floor was pledging Fiji, and they were doing something on the roof and shooting off bottle rockets. We went out, got a bunch of bottle rockets, aimed them at Fiji, and started shooting at these guys on the roof. They got mad and started shooting back. I mean, it was a mess…we were handing out the window, and people were being hit! So the police came. We all just sat there, and the cops—when I think about it now, being older, the firemen, cops, walked on the floor, saw just young kids, and were like, in a disappointed voice, “guys, what are you doing?” And we were like, “smoking?”

So anyway, we were all threatened with being evicted and all that stuff. Everybody kind of loved, so…it was like a bad old Western. We eventually ran out of ammunition and beer.”

Fearing the dreaded airport baggage fees, one student decided to forego Manhattan Mini Storage and instead utilize Carman’s ceiling for a summer.

He returned for the following semester and found that most of his things were still there.

A student threw up in the first floor lactation room.

For a blackout Halloween party, a few residents unscrewed all the lightbulbs in the hall, put strobe lights in, and made punch in the stackable drawers.

Two football players kept a running tally of their hookups on their bedframe. The residents who lived in the room next year were appalled and tipped it to Bwog.

In 1984, with finals insanity closing in, one student couldn’t take the pressure and poured lighter fluid on a couch and set it on fire in the service elevator. Then he pressed all of the buttons so that the flames would appear on every floor.

He then ran to the 13th floor to admire his work but was badly burned when the doors opened. A resident of the floor saw him and carried him down to the lobby, only to find out that the man in his arms was the one who started the fire.

Illustrated by Rachel Chin December 2014

19

NOT SO EZ

EC: Bastard Dorm The complex conception of Columbia’s most coveted residence

By Jessica CAll & Joseph Rabinovitsj

L

ofted ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, a movie theater, a pub, large common spaces, a studentrun grocery store, and a gymnasium—could anyone ask for more in a college dorm? And while none of these amenities describe East Campus today, they each appeared and disappeared in the time between EC’s first proposal in 1956 and eventual groundbreaking in 1978.

The Concept of Columbia The original plan for East Campus, proposed in 1956, was for a dorm for graduate students.

Following the architectural trend of creating massive superblocks, Columbia planned to raze all of the buildings between 116th and 118th streets to make room for a new Law School and a complex for faculty offices and classrooms. The new dorm on site would, according to the New York Herald, “make 500 John Jay rooms available for undergraduate students.”

Law School architects Harrison and Abramovitz received the original commission for EC. Early plans indicated that the recently completed Carman Hall (then called New Hall) would serve as the model for the dorm. The design shifted frequently due to delays in fundraising and changes in other planned buildings for the site, including the International Affairs Building. At one point, according to the Spectator, EC was to consist of four individual buildings connected at street level, with each building containing singles with individual bathrooms but neither lounges nor kitchens.

Fundraising difficulties and the construction of Dodge Fitness Center, a necessary response to the crumbling Morningside Gymnasium, further delayed the East Campus project. The university didn’t seriously begin work on the structure until 1973, four years after the original expected completion date.

A space crunch lead Columbia to reassign EC as an undergraduate dormitory in April 1976. The building would be designed by the architectural firm Gwathmey-Siegel, with an expected price tag of $15.5 million.

20

Predictably, design battles ensued. The only point of agreement, it seemed, was that each bedroom should have a view of the park. That was about it. The Alumni Association wanted fewer rooms with larger common spaces, the administration wanted more rooms at the expense of social areas, and students wanted (as it seems we often do) a community hub.

What sort of facility could serve as such? A fundraising booklet for the new dormitory, titled “To Assure the Quality of Life,” shows a litany of amenities proposed by a student committee, including a pub, theater, and space for student groups. East Campus, according to the pamphlet, was to embody the “concept of Columbia, akin to the study halls of Oxford, but unique to the urban expanse of the greatest metropolis in the world.” It would replicate New York’s “famous brownstones” and “high-rise monoliths.”

The Concept of Compromise In typical Columbia fashion, though, increasing costs led the University to scrap the proposed 21,000 square-foot student activities center in the basement. (The empty space became CCE.) William McGill, then Columbia’s President, justified not building the student space over reducing expenditures on materials because he didn’t want “a cheap residence hotel.” Community, it seems, was a necessary sacrifice to avoid “aesthetic compromises.”

Of course, budgetary realities would eventually mandate aesthetic compromises. Lofty ceilings and large windows quickly became too expensive.

Townhouses were initially supposed to open on to a large, open courtyard, but it was shrunk, and the houses fell into the perpetual gloom under which they rest today.

Some aesthetic aspects of the project, however, managed to rise above such petty concerns as well-lit rooms or common space. Take the tiles: the reddish material that covers EC is not just any tile, but special, German-made tile that requires surprising amounts of finesse to install. Additionally, the administration updated Carman’s prison-drab white-

The Blue and White

NOT SO EZ washed brick interior walls; EC’s rooms have a nicer, wallboard construction.

By fall of 1980, the construction was almost complete. In November, a Spectator reporter trudged through the incomplete building and noted “missing walls, bare fixtures, mud-puddles in kitchens and bedrooms, missing toilets, dirty buckets, coiled wires, stacked tiles, bags of sand,” and more. Noting the dearth of bathrooms, he added, “None of the architects, it seems, ever had to jockey with five people for the toilet at 8 a.m.”

Welcome Home EC finally opened in January 1981, after a 25-year-long gestation period. Opened, however, did not imply finished. The first residents shared their suites with “live wires, construction debris, erratic telephones, and muddy bathtubs,” reported the Spectator. Utilities were sporadic and the construction equipment littering exits was declared a fire hazard. Rooms flooded. Poor garbage disposal resulted in extreme rodent problems. Residents posted lists of problems on suite doors for workers to fix.

Welcome home, indeed.

Security proved troublesome. Door security was lax, and construction workers made off with supplies as casually as first years snag silverware from John Jay. The Amsterdam overpass at night was a frequent site of muggings. Students petitioned to have lights installed on the bridge, but also tossed furniture from high windows and removed elevator buttons and stair railings. True to 1980s New York, graffiti was ubiquitous.

Kenneth Stuzin, CC ’86 and currently a financial analyst, lived in EC during his sophomore and junior years with his frat, Phi Gamma Delta. He described his campus life as full of parties and “little moral oversight” from the administration.

Courting Danger EC’s isolation, which enabled its vibrant party culture, also contributed to an aura of danger because of its proximity to Morningside Park, which was perceived as more dangerous then than now. David Rakoff, CC ’86, a late alum and writer, told New York Magazine that during his first year at Columbia, a rumor circulated about an EC student who “narrowly avoided the bullet that came through his window and lodged itself in the plaster above his head. The shot

December 2014

had come from—where else?—Morningside Park.”

Stuzin echoed the sentiment about the park, saying that Columbia’s orientation advice to new students was: “If you walked into Morningside Park after dark, you would die.”

Students, while wary of Morningside, seemed to take the rumored danger lightly. Stuzin recalled evenings spent with his fraternity brothers on EC’s roof, looking over the park and “work[ing on their] golf games by hitting balls” into the distance. For Stuzin, Columbia and, by extension, New York, was a playground—bad things don’t happen to students like us.

Despite the looming specter of Morningside Park, it would seem that EC’s first real scandal came from within the residence hall itself. On October 10, 1985, Sarah M. Thomas, a SEAS student, was stabbed in the face, chest, abdomen, and legs in her EC single. Her attacker was 21 year old David Fillyaw, a friend of another EC resident who had been signed into the dorm the previous evening. Thomas and her suitemates reportedly had a party in their dorm where Fillyaw and Thomas are believed to have met. Fillyaw used a nine-inch butcher knife to break into the locked dorm and to attack Thomas, who survived after plastic surgery and replacements for a lacerated kidney and punctured lung. Fillyaw was arrested and indicted for three sex attacks in addition to the attempted murder of Sarah Thomas.

In response, Columbia updated security protocols to include keeping guests’ IDs at the entrance desk, so to maintain a better record of those entering and exiting the building.

Surprisingly, few alums recall the incident, and it didn’t receive a lot of media play. Stuzin attributes this collective forgetfulness to a general sense of invincibility. “We thought ourselves immortal, and frankly, given our often less than decorous behavior late at night, I’m not sure even local thugs wanted to deal with us.”

The first East Campus residents were pioneers, journeying from the pristine McKim, Mead & White main campus onto a monstrous architectural feat resting at the edge of Columbia’s forbidden forest, Morningside Park. The apartment style dorm seemed one step closer to The Real World, lurking beyond the 116th gates and graduation. But for a time in EC, the Real World seemed at a remove: they were still students, and it couldn’t get them yet.w Additional reporting by Daniel Stone.

21

THE END OF THE LINE

Take the 4 to Woodlawn The Blue and White tours the Elysian fields

By Nia Brown

I

notice the brightness around me as the nearly empty 4 train makes its last stops. The thing about taking the subway so far out is that it’s no longer sub(terranean), but up above the streets in the air and light. The automated voice declares “This is Woodlawn” at the final platform—I have arrived. The station’s stained glass windows let in a hazy light and, apart from a few transit workers, it is empty.

The Woodlawn cemetery gates and the entrance structure are elegant yet understated and slight for “America’s most architecturally resplendent cemetery.”

Designed in the post-Civil War landscape-lawn style, graves aren't visible from the entrance, it instead looks like the beginnings of an expansive park. The large map, past the lone, whistling guard, is immediately overwhelming with its many red bubble-marked points of interest and faded details.

I take one of the avenues to the right and see a seemingly endless number of mausoleums. They are the works of artists from McKim, Mead & White to Daniel Chester French. All are impressively ornate and dignified in shades of grey, but the stylistic variances couldn’t be more different. Some look like scaled down Parthenons, with impossibly rounded columns that seize the the rays of the high hanging sun to radiate it out themselves, immortalizing their occupants like the gods. Others resemble small Notre Dames, gothic, crowned with an eau-de-Nil roof; bas-reliefs of biblical scenes.

I pass a muted grey sarcophagus without a conspicuous name, and a vast number of obelisks.

There is a palpable stillness over these four hundred acres. It is broken only by the rattle and crunch of the autumn turning leaves underfoot and the scattering

22

of squirrels, unsettled by my apparently disruptive presence.

Large stones mark family plots with names carrying antiquity: Closius, Eylers, Megrue, Gould.

The surrounding smaller stones designate individuals together in death, one even marked only with “Father.” The feeling of being in an endless space is subdued with the view, from atop a hill, of a crowded sea of modular grey cubes. Many of these were pairs, a husband and a wife, sisters, but many were individuals buried alone. I wonder how many of the 300,000 people buried in this necropolis were resting in lone graves.

Next to the grey valley there is a sign reading “Notice of Lots Abandoned” and I wonder how it is that lots can come to be abandoned. Information on buying plots was in small print at the bottom of this curious bulletin, a reminder that this is still an active cemetery.

I keep exploring the many avenues. Central Ave, the wide thoroughfare, is populated by people with eyes on their cellphones and suits with briefcases. I take a few turns off it to Jazz Corner, where Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Irving Berlin and many others are laid to rest. Miles Davis’ tombstone is the most pronounced, at a fork in the worn down road. It’s sculpted from a darker stone than the usual gris, engraved with oddly theatrical and modern looking music signage with little rocks placed on the top, surrounded in deep green ivy. Another resting place with a quiet grandeur. None of it, not one part of this place, feels morbid—just still. All these people in beds of earth, in well landscaped rows, behind arches and housed in stone.w

Illustration by Zane Bhansali

The Blue and White

F U N N Y PA G E S

December 2014

23

H O LY M O LY !

Super Sunday A Blue and White editor goes church-hopping

By Luca Marzorati

D

espite its reputation as an academic acropolis, Morningside Heights is actually closer to a holy city. In a neighborhood that covers less than a quarter of a square mile, there are no fewer than eight religious institutions, along with three seminaries, one independent chapel, and an office building nicknamed “The God Box” that headquarters dozens of national religious groups. Braving unusually crisp fall weather, we went out to see them all.

Our starting point is the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Approaching from the cathedral’s front on Amsterdam Avenue, we wonder why foreigners make the church an incontrovertible stop on the uptown tour bus circuit. The few tourists lingering on the sidewalk look cold and confused. Haven’t they seen enough cathedrals on their own continent? Isn’t this just another misguided American attempt at super-sizing?

At street level, calling the building “unfinished” is a compliment. It is dirty, crumbling, and certainly uneven. An official plaque outside the main doors doesn’t attempt to hide the fact that the cathedral was intended to be Romanesque in style before the second architects attempted to make it a Gothic revival.

These aesthetic inconsistencies are enhanced by the seemingly forgotten construction materials that scatter the site. Scaffolds block an entrance.

Caution tape surrounds a chipped alcove. Halfway up the façade, the keen eye can see a pulley system dangling dangerously, a vestige from some past restoration project.

And now, after selling the southeast portion of the property to developers building a modern glass apartment building, the cathedral is making room for more construction. The Episcopal Church has agreed to deal in more land in order to raise funds to finish the building. As more apartment towers rise, we’re trying not to think of the cathedral as an addict, selling pieces of itself in the futile quest for completion.

Yet as we attempt to flee the staccato pounding of jackhammers and walk into the garden on the

24

cathedral’s south side, we begin to reconsider. What if the famed Episcopalian inclusivity has found its structural parallel? Sure, it may have started as a cathedral, but now the grounds host a school, a sculpture garden, and various other religious buildings.

So what if a few luxury high-rises move in? Times change. God would understand.

We wrap around the block, and walk up the hill alongside Morningside Park. Only a few blocks north stands St. John the Divine’s aesthetic counterpoint, the Church of Notre Dame—or Église de Notre Dame, as is spelled out on the lintel. The church is Catholic; its design is not. The limestone is impeccably white, and imposing gates clearly demarcate where church ground ends and the world of heathens begins. There are even upturned spikes on all horizontal surfaces to keep out birds, whose shit would undoubtedly smear the sacred walls. All the holy water in the church comes from France. Despite our Catholic upbringing, we cannot detect the difference.

Sunday services at Notre Dame are offered in three languages. The French mass, once catered towards a continental elite transplanted to New York, now attracts Haitians and Africans, as Catholicism increasingly becomes the provenance of the Global South. Dressed in vibrant garb, parishioners exiting a morning sacrement seemed blissfully unfazed by the church’s austerity.

Ironically, it is the church closest to Columbia’s campus that is perhaps the least memorable.

Broadway Presbyterian Church, which sits at 114th Street and Broadway, undoubtedly upholds the charitable Protestant ethic, but at what cost? There is a cruel irony in worship, one that has bothered the pious for centuries, if not millennia. On the one hand, the vast majority of religions stress generosity as an act in tune with the wishes of God, or Yahweh, or Allah. On the other hand, we’re more likely to find God in the first place if we’re praying in the midst of opulence, or at least decoration.

So, may God bless the Broadway Presbyterian Church for its countless soup kitchens, its selfdescribed “quirky-beautiful crowd,” and for lending

The Blue and White

H O LY M O LY ! those without roof over their heads a perch on its steps, if only briefly. But there’s no denying that the church could use some work. Photographs from the early twentieth century depict a tidy chapel—a holy rejoinder to its secular cousin across Broadway. But now its façade is stained, and the church’s steeple only reaches the sixth floor of Nussbaum. Our conclusion? In matters celestial and sexual, size matters.

As we walk north, the composition of the neighborhood becomes downright theological.

Between the Barnard campus and the Manhattanville construction site, we see countless signs of outward adoration. Whether they are wearing turbans, frocks, or tallits, all passers-by can agree that the wind blustering off the Hudson is utterly hellish.

Though they are out in numbers on a Sunday afternoon, we wonder how much this crowd truly impacts our neighborhood’s vibe. It seems that Chipotle running out of carne asada would cause a bigger ripple among Morningside Heights residents than if all the aspiring seminarians were to take part in a neighborhood exodus.

Here, as elsewhere, it all depends on the context— any priest at a local watering hole in the wee hours of the morning would surely have some (non-scriptural) questions to ponder. But the area in the northwest corner of Morningside Heights is the most concentrated and most diverse religious zone in the city. Institutes for Jewish intellectuals adjoin institutes for their Muslim counterparts. But, only blocks south, religious and political debates show no sign of losing vigor, or even moving to new ground. Sharing a library is not the same as sharing a viewpoint.

As we walk into the wind towards Grant’s Tomb (the final resting place of a man who only went to church to please his wife) we begin to think that the religiosity of Morningside Heights may rest in the mind, not in the heart. Despite the proliferation

December 2014

of churches, we would be reluctant to call Columbia a “religious” school. Say what you will about a liberal arts education, but the intellectual outweighs the vocational around here.

So perhaps it is no surprise that the crown jewel of the neighborhood’s houses of God—Riverside Church—professes no denomination. The church, which towers over Riverside Drive at 120th Street, was a Rockefeller project, symbolic of the American industrialists’ utopian notion that capitalism could solve moral rifts of time immemorial.

Riverside Church is the tallest in the United States; addled crammers leaving Butler in the hazy predawn have been known to espy the Eye of Sauron atop the steeple. Like Tolkien’s Lidless Eye, the church seems to be from another time. It is also deceptively large: only after two perambulations did we come to terms with the fact that it’s as big as a conference center.

Riverside Church’s architectural merits are up for debate; its role in twentieth century American progressivism is not. From its start, the church has conceived of its role as equal parts justice and salvation.

It hosts various social justice projects, and served as the site for Martin Luther King’s famous speech protesting the Vietnam War in 1967. If the neighborhood could be embodied in one religious building, it would be this one.

As the sun sets over the Hudson, we are left only with paradoxes—an intellectual limbo. Our monumental cathedral is falling victim to the all-tootangible forces of the global economy. Our massive embodiment of religious acceptance is now a political symbol. And if the pews of the dozens of other churches are packed on Sundays, the congregants remain unknown to us. To paraphrase Sylvia Plath: we tried talking to God. As darkness spreads, the sky seems empty.w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

25

109 GOURMET DELI

The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of CrackDel An ode

By Torsten Odland

109

Gourmet Deli stands just south of Morningside Heights proper, across 109th street from Suite, the gay karaoke bar, and across Amsterdam from Lion’s Head, brightening the corner with white and red lights.

I heard about “CrackDel,” as students have referred to the bodega for years, within two nights of arriving at Columbia, three years ago. People like to say the store’s claim to fame is the “Spicy Special,” a warm turkey-cheese sandwich. But that just isn’t true. In 2011, CrackDel was famous among students because they reliably did not card. If you didn’t have a fake, that’s where you could buy beer.

When I returned to the bodega this week, it was the first time I’d been since they were busted for selling to minors in April of 2013. For a year and a half, the refrigerators contained only waters, sodas, chocolate milk, and a long row of juices.

The store is bright and empty when I enter, except for the cashier and deli guy who talk over the counter in what sounds like Arabic. Approaching the refrigerated cabinets on the right wall, which support a fifteen-foot-long tableau of Scott toilet paper rolls, I’m shocked to see the drink selection once again.

Eclectic is the word: three different sizes of canned Budweiser, wine coolers, ciders, no fewer than five varieties of Dogfish Head (as crafty as 109 gets) and row upon row of that strange mixture of the perverse

26

and the divine: the forty ounce bottle.

I’d never had a forty before going to CrackDel, but it quickly became the only thing I drank. Although my taste has definitely shifted, it’s unlikely that my admiration for the inner logic of the forty ever will.

Forty ounces is the perfect amount of beer to drink, and the bottle’s size and natural propensity to warm up dictates how fast you need to drink it. It’s hard to argue, forty in one hand, that the universe was not intelligently designed.

After ordering a Spicy Special and selecting an Olde English, I go up to pay.

My first time in CrackDel as a 21 year old and they card me. Only having received their new liquor license in October, I suppose they must be careful.

They card. I wonder if CrackDel is famous for anything now, if the first-years even know its racist nickname. There’s not a whole lot distinguishing it from the grocery stores lying closer to the campus’ main drag if they won’t sell an 18 year old beer.

As I wait for my sandwich, I chat with Omar Ali, the cashier, who’s been working at the deli for ten years, and scan the wall behind him. Plastic hookahs, do-rags. One has to leave Morningside Heights to find a real bodega. Though they’re a fixture of almost every neighborhood in the city, it doesn’t fit our major landlord’s brand. I ask Omar if he’s seen the store’s neighborhood change.

“Big change. There’s a lot of white people in here now. A lot. Lots of Columbia students.”

Walking home up Amsterdam, I stop in KSY Mini Market Deli, a bodega half a block closer to campus that cards irregularly, and that, for a year and a half, became “the New CrackDel.” The store is packed–a group of younger guys hang out in the front, old men in dark coats wait at the deli. It’s evident that this place, with its paltry beer selection, is the neighborhood corner store.

I remember what Omar said when I asked what makes his deli distinct. While he thought about it, I pointed out there was another place up the block.

“They don’t make it the same,” he smiled. w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

M easure

for

M easure

Turn Now to the Sister Turn now to the sister who follows the tritones of a train palming through Hokkaido. Loose her from the countryside at hot night.

You are so kind.

— Serena Solin

Composition for Leo F. and Dan G. This sentence has nine vowels.

This sentence has twenty-four consonants.

This sentence has thirty-one letters.

This sentence has thirty-three letters.

This sentence has twenty-one vowels aaaaaaaaaaa.

This sentence has thirty-four consonants bbbbbbbbbbb.

This sentence has fifty-five letters cccccccccccccccccccccccc.

This sentence has eighty-nine letters dddddddddddddddddddddddddd ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd.

— Joe Bucciero

December 2014

27

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N

No Second Guessin’ A conversation with Keith Gessen, founder of n+1

By Kunal Jasty Keith Gessen is a novelist, journalist, critic, and founding editor of the spirited and divisive literary journal n+1. Between reporting stints in Ukraine and Russia, he’s taken a hard look at this year’s bitter pricing war between Amazon and Hachette, one of the “Big Five” venerable, and perhaps outdated, publishing houses in the United States. He’s optimistic about the future of writing, though, and says that “ it’s probably better to be an author now than at any previous time in history.” Gessen met with Kunal Jasty, SEAS ’16, to discuss the state of writing in the digital age.

The Blue and White: You just wrote an article in Vanity Fair about the publishing war between Amazon and Hachette. Can you explain what’s going on?

Keith Gessen: Well, over the course of 20 years Amazon has become the biggest bookstore in America and the world. It’s actually very hard to figure out when exactly they passed Barnes & Noble because nobody can break out those numbers.

When they first came along they were welcomed by the publishing industry as a counterweight to Barnes & Noble and Borders. Then as they overtook Barnes & Noble, and Borders went out of business, they’ve begun making greater demands on the publishers.

And one of the biggest publishers, Hachette, has in the latest round of negotiations refused Amazon’s terms, and Amazon pulled some of Hachette’s books off their website.

28

B&W: In the beginning, Amazon was supposed to save the publishing industry. What happened?

KG: Yes, and I still remember when it started. Their catalogue was just much bigger. You could go to a Barnes & Noble and there were a lot of books, but they didn’t have old books or books that were out of print. Amazon collected all the books that existed, and it was amazing. It remains amazing. But now they’re squeezing their suppliers.

For me the really interesting thing about reporting this story was talking to all these interesting people who are doing technology startups related to reading, which was a very strange experience because these are basically technology people or entrepreneurial people. For example I met the founder of Scribd, which is a document sharing service that only recently got into subscription for books. And then there’s Goodreads, and another subscription service called Oyster, and then of course there’s Amazon, which is the giant version of this.

These are all kind of people who aren’t from publishing. They’re all readers, and they’re not dummies, but they’re interested in books as something you can sell, or as a kind of market opportunity.

So there’s a kind of collision between technology and technology thinking, and then more traditional publishing thinking. It’s interesting and has at

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N times become very contentious.

B&W: I can understand why the publishers are angry, but I would have imagined the authors would have welcomed the demise of these publishing gatekeepers.

KG: In what sense are they gatekeepers?

B&W: Well I guess there are writers who would feel that the books that get published are not necessarily the best books that are written. It can be more of an arbitrary, luck based process. I don’t know if you’d agree with that?

KG: I guess I don’t agree with that. If you look at literary history there are definitely numerous examples.

There’s a great book by David Markson, a kind of experimental writer who died a few years ago, and it’s just basically a series of anecdotes about the terrible lives of writers and the number of times they were rejected. A Confederacy of Dunces, famously, was rejected 45 times. Ulysses was rejected, so you do have lots of these stories. But eventually those books were published. And if you meet people who work in publishing, that’s what they do all day. They literally spend all day reading manuscripts that people send in. And yeah, I think there are books that fall through the cracks, but you do have this large machine that is trying to find books and publish them.

You also have these smaller publishers. I do n+1, and although we’re not really a publisher with people sending us manuscripts, we’re in that world of small publishers where people are also looking for stuff. So the stuff that isn’t published by Random House might find a smaller publisher. And some people would rather just publish themselves, or they literally will not find someone to publish them, and they do it themselves, and that’s fine.

The scary thing would be if you didn’t have publishers at all. If you’re self-publishing then you’re your own publicist, you’re your own marketer… and that’s not writing. You’re kind of better off letting other people do that.

B&W: There’s a great quote in the article from your agent, Andrew Wylie, who told you that if Amazon succeeds “you will not be able to afford to write a book... No one, unless they have inherited $50 million, will be able to afford to write a serious work of

December 2014

history, of poetry, of biography, a novel—anything.

The stakes are Western culture.” Do people in the industry really think the situation is that dire?

KG: That’s the kind of extreme statement of the case, and the Wylie Agency’s business model is working with the estates of high-end writers—Nobel prize winners—and those estates generate income. Most writers in America are also teaching, especially fiction writers, the kind of people who get nominated for the National Book Award, people who are doing “literary” writing. Ninety-five percent of them are also college professors. So it’s not actually the case that there are all these people whose only source of income is their literary novels that they publish every five years. But it is the case that they have some income from that, and I think in a world where Amazon has squeezed the publishers, the amount of money that’s available for the authors decreases.

It’s tricky because Amazon will say, “Well, publishers are being stupid. They’re being overly conservative ... they don’t understand.” Maybe the best distinction one agent explained to me was that publishers are really in the business of doing blockbusters. That’s where they really make a lot of money.

When you have a blockbuster book that’s going to sell a couple million copies, you’re going to want to sell it for as much as you can. Amazon is in the volume business, so they would rather sell as many copies as possible at whatever price point, whether that’s $6.99 or $3.99 or $2.99. Ultimately the authors are stuck in between these two, and neither of them is very attractive. For the moment, authors are better off with the publishers.

B&W: I was struck by this quote in your chapter of MFA vs NYC from George Saunders, who told you that he only knew two non-teaching writers in his generation, writers who could make a living from writing alone. Going back to what you said about how 95% of writers in this country have to teach, has writing alone ever been a way to make a livelihood?

KG: Historically, it’s probably better to be an author now than at any previous time in history, partly because of Amazon, but also because of Barnes & Noble. You simply have a lot of people buying a lot of books. So in that sense, you have a better chance to make a living from it than at any previous time.

What has happened in the last twenty to thirty years

29

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N is that you’ve had this explosion of MFA programs.

And what those writing programs do is that they’re an employment service for writers. If you have an MFA program you need people to teach at it, and a lot of those MFA programs make good money for the university. So now you have a lot more writers teaching. If you go back fifty years you have a lot of writers in the English departments, but they weren’t teaching creative writing necessarily. They’d be teaching a course on contemporary literature or on 19th century literature. So writers have been in the university for a long time, but now there’s just more of them.

B&W: You have a story in MFA vs NYC about when you decided to start teaching creative writing in an undergraduate program. You write, “It seems to violate some law of capitalism that someone should pay so much to attend a college and then be told that her work is no good.” I’m wondering about whether writing instructors are honest about that, or if they’re perpetuating a cycle?

KG: Yeah, but on the other hand, is it better to study economics? I guess that essay is about my ambivalence about the project of teaching writing.

Sometimes it can be a real waste of time, and other times it’s no worse than anything else you might be doing. In the end I thought it was interesting, and I had a good time. But education is so expensive, and it’s not clear that there are jobs for people coming out of school. So I think people teaching should be thinking about that. And they do: when you talk to other teachers they are very aware of how much it costs and how tough it is for young people ... a lot of them are burdened by debt, and that’s really terrible, but I wouldn’t say it’s the fault of a creative writing program.

B&W: No no, it’s obviously by choice, but...

KG: It’s part of this large system. Some of these creative writing programs are certainly cash cows for the university. A creative writing program is pretty low impact for the university. They don’t have to add a laboratory. They don’t have to subscribe to a lot of expensive medical journals. It’s pretty easy to create a creative writing program at your university and get people to pay $30,000 a year.

B&W: There’s also this argument throughout the

30

whole book about the split between MFA programs and the NYC publishing world.

KG: I think the insight of the book, which is my co-editor Chad Harbach’s, is that in terms of the writing world, there’s always been New York City and then there’s always been the rest of the country. The romantic image if you read stuff from the ’40s and ’50s is these writers who would travel the country and have experiences, and once a year they would come by, visit their publisher, and drop off a manuscript. Now you still have New York City, and I think if you transported someone from publishing in 1930 to contemporary publishing they would recognize it. But the real change is these hundreds of creative writing programs that did not exist. The first creative writing program was Iowa in the 1930s. So these things literally did not exist. Now they do, and there are so many writers working in them.

Chad’s insight was that the MFA programs are creating a separate universe. They have different ideas about what’s good, they have different books that they really revere, and they have a separate cannon. They are better at keeping those books alive, in a way. I remember when I was in college there was a class on 20th century American literature, and each year the professor would take you up to the present.

So you’d be reading Fitzgerald and Nabokov, and then there’d be a new Philip Roth or John Updike book. And you were like, “This is how the cannon is created. Some books get on the syllabus at a university.” What is curious about MFA programs is that the same sort of process takes place. So some book that isn’t hugely popular in New York publishing is revered in these MFA programs. You could also imagine a writer that has a life that is mostly confined to the MFA world because there are a lot of readers there, and those people are very serious. If you published a book and every MFA student in America bought it, it would be a successful book ... maybe [laughs]. So the existence of this separate universe is something new.

B&W: As a student coming from Columbia, I have to ask… what would you say to the young fiction writer at Columbia right now?

KG: Like an undergraduate?

B&W: Or a graduate student—someone who is in

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N their early 20s just trying to figure out how to make it with writing.

KG: Even if Amazon wins and the publishers have to close down, n+1 is still going to exist. Archipelago Books is going to exist, New Directions is going to exist. Writing has never been the sort of thing where you were going to make a very good living.

It’s still not. A young person who wants to become a writer needs to be aware of that. That’s why I’ve been writing these essays about money. They should be conscious that they’re not going to make a lot of money, and they’re going to live that way for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. And if they’re willing to do that, then it’s not that hard.

B&W: So what are you working on right now?

KG: I’m writing a novel. It’s taking a long time, and I keep getting pulled into this other reporting stuff, which is lots of fun but takes a lot of time.

B&W: It sounds like fiction writing is your primary interest then?

KG: Deep down inside, I’m a fiction writer. I’ve felt this way for a long time, and yet if I look at what I’ve actually spent my time doing, I’ve certainly spent a lot of time doing journalism, so I may be deceiving myself [laughs].

B&W: Is there anything else you’d want to say to a student at Columbia, thinking back to your own college experience?

KG: Hmm, what did I not know? You know we did a whole book of advice for college students at n+1, it’s called What We Should Have Known. We published it in 2007, and we slid it under the doors of students in the dorms at Columbia.

B&W: What was your piece of advice?

KG: I’m trying to remember ... in terms of journalism and writing, I think there was a period a few years ago when everybody was like, “there are no jobs in journalism, and it’s all falling apart.” Amazingly, just in the past couple of years, there are a lot of jobs in journalism. Some traditional media companies that are expanding their digital presence are hiring, and

December 2014

then there are these new places that didn’t exist that are hiring. So in a way there are a ton of jobs, and it’s not so bad. At the same time you do feel like it’s hard to keep one’s compass… it’s hard to orient yourself.

One of the boring things, but one of the reliable things, about the traditional media was that you knew what their politics were. If you were a writer who had leftist politics you wrote for The Nation, if you were a centrist you wrote for The New Republic, and if you were a right-wing loon you wrote for the National Review. I do think it’s harder as a young person to keep one’s moral compass when everything is in such flux. So I would spend some time if I were a young person thinking about that.

B&W: So who are the people you would recommend that we read, or who are the people you’re currently reading ... journalists, or novelists, or poets even?

KG: I’m reading a writer named Sergei Dovlatov, a Russian writer who emigrated to New York in 1979. He had a critique of Russian logocentrism, the Russian exaltation of its writers. He thought this was a problem. He spent his army service as a guard at a prison camp, and he wrote these letters home with descriptions about what was happening in the camp, but he was also thinking about how he wants to become a writer. And he’s like, “Well, I might not be a great writer, but why is it that an engineer can be a regular engineer, whereas if you’re a writer you have to be Tolstoy. That’s not fair!”

B&W: Why is that? Why do writers feel that way?

KG: Well perhaps all engineers feel that way too [laughs]. But actually I think that’s great advice. You have a particular kind of experience of the world, and people might find that interesting and useful and enlightening, even if you’re not Tolstoy. That was one of the best pieces of advice that I’ve received from an older writer. I remember there was this writer who I was coming up with at the same time, and he was so brilliant. He was doing such amazing things, and I kept talking about this other writer to my older friend, and he said “forget that guy. You got to write your stuff.” And I found that very helpful.

B&W: Thanks so much, it was a pleasure.

KG: Thank you.w

31

PAY I N G T H E B I L L S

Eden Salon and Spa

• Hair services = 20% off • Facial = $90 (Christine Valmy product) • Keratine Treatment = $250 • Pedicure + Manicure = $28 • Threading = $8 • Wax = 20% off • Japanese Straightener = $200

Sponsored in part by the Arts Initiative at Columbia University.

This funding is made possible through a generous gift from The Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

32

The Blue and White

PAY I N G T H E B I L L S

Book Culture 526 West 114th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Monday-Friday 9am-10pm Saturday 10am-8pm Sunday 11am-7pm 212-865-1588 Book Culture 2915 Broadway at 114th Street Monday-Friday 9am-11pm Saturday 10am-11pm Sunday 10am-10pm 646-403-300 bookculture.com

December 2014

33

DIGITALIA COLUMBIANA These excerpts were culled from documents left on Columbia’s lab computers. We encourage our readers to submit their own digitalia finds to us, via email, at bwgossip@columbia.edu.

My goal is to persuade that an infinite universe would preclude human uniqueness. I have studied many written works on the topic of infinity of space, and I have examined both sides of the argument. e It is time for the human race to return to the optimism of 1957 and once again begin looking into a future illuminated by nuclear light. The atom is, once again, our friend.

[Expand conclusion, cite info in last few paragraphs] e For clarification, I would like to share some of the personal experiences that students have shared with the administration. There have been instances of student residents being ridiculed and scorned for cooking and preparing their own ethnic dishes; the other students had labelled it “weird” or “disgusting”.

We realize that racism cannot be solved overnight, but with everyone’s help, we can set high goals and strive for a better tomorrow.

Thank you.

Madeline Lee, President of Columbia University e Sabor, Columbia University’s First Latin Dance Troupe • Created and participated in varying Latin-style choreographies for on-campus and off-campus spectacles • Refined teamwork skills and refined ability for creativity and dedication • Improved Time Management skills and learned how to work long hours and late-night practices

34

There are two types of people who do laundry: those who read the labels and those who don’t. Some of you will pick it up out of the hamper and automatically throw it in. Others of you will pick it up, read the label, interpret the label, and depending on the interpretation, throw it in or not. But, have you ever thought the bigger implications of the tiny label on the inside lining of your shirt that makes you itch? e anywhere, and i saw (those calfs) and that smooth ass skin smooth and shiny cocoa butter lotion lets be honest with ourselves honest about our community lets speak the truth that real language, fluently now through my childhood i must backtrack cuz they told me he was white but no doubt, santa's black e ALEX: If you’ll turn your attention to the screen to my left you will see a Corgi playing hide and seek with a baby. It’s adorable. e From a Lit Hum Final paper: By posing death as brutal and violent, Owen supports his belief that dying in battle is not as glorious as it is made out to be by those who have not experienced death firsthand...His claim, then, is that dying for your country seems like a sweet thing to do until you actually experience and understand what it really means to die a gruesome death in battle for the sake of some “glory.”w

The Blue and White

CAMPUS GOSSIP

TRUE TO FORM The night of Columbia Football’s defeat by Brown, a players was seen leaving International fumbling with and eventually dropping his wallet. e When the Spectator’s Park Avenue-bred Publisher discovered a fresh turd on the floor of the Spec’s office’s elevator, he got nervous. He feared that the esteemed weekly might face retribution from its landlord—Columbia University. (The financially independent publication gets the space for free.) His solution: offering $50 to anyone on the Spec staff who would clean up the shit. An editor who has openly written about his struggles with class and affordability at Columbia took up the challenge. e Head of Public Safety James McShane got angry at a meeting with Student Affairs administrators over Bacchanal. “Is it a concert or is it a party?” he exclaimed. e VOTE FOR ME From the Columbia University College Republicans’ new constitution: Voting shall be done by secret ballot. The SGB representative will count votes in each election while the candidates are absent from the room. In the event that no candidate receives a majority, a run-off election between candidates with the top two shares of the vote, inclusive of ties, will be held. In no situation will more than three candidates be involved in a run-off. In the case of a tie in the run-off, the Master of Ceremonies will ask for a second vote between the two candidates receiving the tie, and if necessary, further speeches by the candidates shall be given. In the case of a second tie in said election, the Master of Ceremonies will flip a coin to determine the winner; in the case of a second tie between more than two candidates, a random number generator will be used to select the winner.

December 2014

Upon noticing that South Field was closed during parents weekend, a senior level student affairs administrator exclaimed, “I can’t believe the lawn isn’t open. Normally we at least have it open when the parents are here.” e SLACKTIVISM Carmen Velasquez, supposedly a senior in SWS, is not a real person despite having authored an Eye article and being quoted in national press. She was meant to graduate last year, anyway, according to The Nation. She is, in fact, George Joseph. e A spokesperson for the university allegedly had some harsh words to say about the “Carry that Weight” protest. (paraphrasing) She told a reporter that activists have made the protest about themselves and that if they were really against sexual assault, they’d be protesting at Fordham or NYU, not Columbia, which according to her has one of the best policies in the country. e On the Day of Action, some of the mattresses which weren’t carried to PrezBo’s house were left on Low, for which Facilities charged Student Worker Solidarity— who booked the space—a cleanup fee. SWS hadn’t been told that this would happen: at the event review, it was agreed that the remaining mattresses would go back to the Barnard art studios, rather than make extra work for workers. e RUNNING THE NUMBERS On average, each member of Kappa Alpha Theta invited 1.29 guests to their recent semi-formal. e Sigma Chi has an average GPA of 3.11 e State violence...it’s inscrutable.w

35

E AT I N ’ G O O D I N T H E N E I G H B O R H O O D

36

The Blue and White