February 2019

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. XXV No. I

February 2019

The Spirit of General Studies The Blue and White remembers a Conversation from 2011 with Dean Awn

Decolonizing the University A conversation with Ananya Roy Also Inside: From Myanmar to Barnard

UFONOBONG UMANAH, CC '20, Editor-in-Chief ISAIAH BENNETT, CC '20, Managing Editor GABY EDWARDS, BC '21, Publisher GRACE ADEE, CC '22, Investigations Editor JACOB SNYDER, CC '20, Literary Editor ZOE METCALFE, CC '21, Online Editor EMILY WANG, CC '22, Online Editor SAHRA DENNER, CC '21, Senior Illustrator GIGI LEE, CC ' 22, Layout Editor ESMÉ ABLAZA, BC '20, Senior Editor JASMINE PARK, CC '20, Senior Editor RYAN MOHEN, CC '21, Senior Editor MALIA SIMON, CC '22, Senior Editor CASSIDY SATTLER, CC '20, Senior Editor MARY ELIZABETH DAWSON, BC '21, Senior Editor CAROLINE HURLEY, CC '19, Editor Emeritus Contributors NICOLE KOHUT, CC '22 ERIN LUNA, CC '21 MICHAEL YOUNG, GS '13

Staff Writers AMAD ROSS, CC '22 ANNIE ZAVITZ, BC '22 BANNON BEALL, BC '22 BILLIE FORESTER, CC '22 Staff Illustrators DRAZEN MEDINA, CC '20 AMANDA BA,CC '20 GABRIELLA FERRIGINE, CC '20 JENNIFER ALLEN, CC'20 HANNAH LIBERMAN, CC '20 HELEN BECKER, CC '22 IONA TAN, CC '22 JULIA COBB, CC '21 KATE IIDA, BC '19 MWANDEYI KAMWENDO, CC '22 KARA SCHECHTMAN, CC '19 KASSIA KARRAS, BC '22 MICHAEL GAO, CC '22 ROSE KUAN, CC'22 NORA MCSORLEY, CC'20 KATE STEINER, CC '22 LEA BROUDO, SEAS '21 SANTIAGO COSTA PEUSER, CC '21 TAMAR VIDRA, CC '22 REA RUSTAGI, SEAS '22 TILLIE LIGHTE, BC '20 SUSAN STEINFELD, BC '22 KELLIE ZHAO, CC'19 URSULA MURRAY-BOZEMAN, CC '22 SAM NEEDLEMAN, CC ' 22 YOTAM DEREE, GS '19

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXV

FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS

Columns

Features

No. I

4 Blue Book 6 Blue Notes 8 Campus Characters 10 M easure for Measure 16 Centerfold 22 M easure for Measure 30 Campus G ossip

Michael Young GS '13 and Kate Iida

Ufon Umanah

Jacob Snyder & Nicole Kohut Samuel Needleman

Amad Ross

12 The Spirit of General Studies

The Blue and White remembers a Conversation from 2011

with Dean Awn 18 We Don't H ave The Money

Columbia students reject a tuition increase to pay for text books 20 At Two Swords Length: Did you move my laundry?

Our monthly prose and cons 25 Decolonizing the University

A conversation with Ananya Roy 31 From Myanmar to Barnard

An international conversation on the accountability and

protection of the Rohingya

theblueandwhite.org

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Cover by Jennifer Allen

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR I didn’t mean for my first issue of the magazine to be depressing (p.11); it just came out that way. We’ve had such good weather (p.23) for a winter month, though maybe in itself had a depressing undertone (p.10). Maybe my resolve to hate anything associated with Valentine’s Day led to such a loveless issue. Most of it definitely comes from Dean Awn’s passing, which was both shocking and tragic, and so the magazine sends its condolences (p.12).

Look, part of the mission of the magazine from the very beginning has been to find the tone of the campus and, a lot of the time, that isn’t the straightforward cheeriness packaged in cheesy Valentine’s Day cards you’ve probably thrown away or eaten at this point. But never has it been boring and unengaging, at least for me. We listen to amazing academics between classes (p. 25) and fight over laundry over the weekend (p.20).

We know when to be competitive and know when to sit down for a meal (p.8). Tragedy strikes here and around the world (p.30) and sometimes we don’t know how to move forward (p.18). And yet, we have to push forward, and we always do.

After a long respite, The Blue and White made it to volume XXV. We missed a lot of the years our black alumni attended Columbia (p.16), but we don’t intend to miss anything else. We love this place too much, with its confusing messages, moral politics, and astral compositions (p.6). So enjoy the first issue of the year.

Too much has happened since school started this year (p.31).

— Ufon Umanah .

TRANSACTIONS ARRIVALS

CU Tonight Meningitis B ‘Feel The Bern’ Laptop Stickers (again) The Change-Up DEPARTURES The Last of Your Allowed PE Absences Senior Work Ethic Working EC Dryers One Set of Airpods Mario Badescu Glycolic Goaming Cleanser

Come Again?!

“It’s not just the monetarily wealthy among us in this University that are the problem and deserve to be eaten.

I’m talking about the students in class who carry with them academic wealth.

Students who bypass even the expected amounts of pretension and outfit themselves in haute literati personalities. ” — Lily Sickles, in a February 8th Columbia Spectator Op-ed

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The Blue and White

BLUE BOOK

For Northam’s Core...

This month, Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D) pledged to start reading about black culture as penance for wearing blackface in medical school. Here at The Blue and White, we would like to suggest readings that might fit into any Columbia Core Curriculum class.

Song of Solomon: Toni Morrison

Native Son: Richard Wright

Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe

Twelve Years a Slave: Solomon Northup

Between the World and Me: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Wretched of the Earth: Frantz Fanon

Americanah: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Souls of Black Folk: W. E. B. Du Bois

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance: Barack Obama

A Raisin in the Sun: Lorraine Hansberry

If Beale Street Could Talk: James Baldwin Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to Death, the Story of His Life, Burning Human Beings Alive, Other Lynching Statistics: Ida B. Wells Their Eyes Were Watching God: Zora Neale Hurston

My Bondage and My Freedom: Frederick Douglass Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral: Phillis Wheatley The Ways of White Folks: Langston Hughes Up from Slavery: Booker T. Washington

POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE

February 2019

Postcard by Helen Becker

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BLUE NOTES

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ampire Weekend’s hipster-preppiness has remained a dominant strain in the Northeast’s collegiate aesthetic for over a decade, but the band’s contemporary appeal among Columbians must also rest on the abiding thrill of parsing their Core-inspired lyrics and a sense of collective relief that at least some of our alumni aren’t football moguls or Gyllenhaals.

Last month, after six years of silence, Vampire Weekend released two singles, “Harmony Hall” and “2021,” to great fanfare on campus and beyond. Noticeably absent from the tracks are Rostam Botmanglij’s sinuous vocal solos and instrumental riffs. In 2016, he announced his departure from the band to pursue a solo career, and in 2017, he released Half-Light, which the

critic Hua Hsu called “surreal and mysterious.”

While Vampire Weekend’s new tunes blared on speakers from Riverside to Morningside, Rostam performed at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room for an intimate Thursday crowd that seemed to comprise bespectacled Brooklynites, boorish industry types, the artist’s mother, and two Columbia first-years craning their necks to catch a glimpse from their stools in the far-left mezzanine.

It was an evening of humble experimentation. Rostam’s accompanying string octet flirted with a classical piece the artist wrote over a decade ago, and they crescendoed on the remarkable “Gwan.” Rostam’s lyrics soared: “Wisdom comes to your heart / Down a shaft from afar/ Pulls you out of bed and into the noise.” The encore, a cover of Van Morrison’s kaleidoscopic classic “Astral Weeks,” felt perfect, or hauntingly close.

After an acoustic rendition of “Campus,” an ode to our Beaux-Arts environs that Rostam penned at age twenty-two, he determined aloud that the tempo had been unsatisfactory and asked the audience if it might let him attempt the number again. The teary-eyed Lions in the balcony were all too pleased to oblige.

— Sam Needleman

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or Dr. David Eisenbach CC’94, falling in love with New York City was easy. He spent his undergraduate years at Columbia racing between boroughs on the subway and embracing the “adventure of it all.” Eventually this love developed from passion into purpose as he saw the New York he knew and loved fall away before his eyes, culminating in a highly active and ardent campaign for New York City’s Public Advocate.

“I fell in love with the vibrancy of the

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Illustration by Kate Steiner

The Blue and White

BLUE NOTES streets, just being able to walk around and find something new new,” says Eisenbach.

Now, Eisenbach advises Columbia students to look around Morningsid Heights where local establishments are being replaced by empty storefronts or large chains. A pattern of repeated rezonings and luxury tower constructions have increased property rates throughout New York City, translating to an ever-increasing plight for small business owners and, accordingly, demarcating one of the key concerns of Eisenbach’s campaign.

Eisenbach sees the public advocate as the “voice of the city” to call out “waste, fraud, and corruption.”

Moreover, he feels his background in academia has prepared him for the particulars of the position. “I don’t have the skillset to be mayor,” Eisenbach says, “But I can lead a conversation, and there are a lot of conversations that New York City needs to have.”

As a Lit Hum student turned Lit Hum professor, Eisenbach has spent countless hours discussing the literary greats and, to the chagrin of current freshmen slaving over Dante’s Inferno, found that the issues of justice and morality unpacked within classroom walls often directly inform modern thought or, at the very least least, they’ve affected Eisenbach’s self-concept as he moves into the final weeks of his campaign. “There is a need to be and have a Socrates who’s going to call out the injustice around him,” Eisenbach states. “That’s a job I’ve embraced as a teacher. And I feel that this role of the public advocate is an extension of something I’ve been doing every day here in Morningside Heights.”

— Cassidy Sattler

on Schermerhorn that it “advances” something, rather than confusing everyone, and on a bench at Barnard that—surprise—eugenics are awesome.

I’ve seen the bench before, framed by scaffolding for most of my time here (thanks, Milstein), but have never put much thought to the slogans emblazoned on its front — “Stupid people shouldn’t breed,” right below “It’s crucial to have an active fantasy life” — chalking up its objectionability to some conceptual art piece.

And conceptual art it is, I learned recently, one of the only pieces of fine art displayed anywhere on Columbia or Barnard’s campus. The bench is from a series called Truisms

by Jenny Holzer, a feminist artist who created the series to make people aware of the “usual baloney they are fed” by making even-more ridiculous signage, according to the Tate museum.

Though no single person is likely to encounter more than one of Holzer’s pieces, the tongue-in-cheek nature of her artworks, nearly 253 in total, with different sayings—on benches, buildings, and billboards around the globe— becomes apparent when considering them as a collective. Many of the works contradict each other: Maybe stupid people shouldn’t breed, but there’s some neon sign by Holzer, somewhere out there in the world, telling us that “you can live on through your descendents,” no IQ test required.

After learning about Holzer, passing that bench is an exciting experience, and not just because the scaffolding’s gone. Now, I can’t help but hope that, like with the bench, there might be an alternate-universe Columbia campus where Schermerhorn has “DO NOT ENTER” proudly engraved on the front and Butler names really do range from Sappho to Woolf. I suppose Holzer is right on one count: it is crucial, at least during my treks to Milstein, to have an active fantasy life.”

— Kara Schechtman

T

ake everything to heart that you see etched in stone, and you might be misled by this campus, whose engravings on Butler imply that only men write books,

February 2019

Illustrations by Rea Rustagi and Helen Becker

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Campus Characters You might not know the following figures—but you should. In Campus Characters, The Blue & White introduces you to a handful of Columbians who are up to interesting and extraordinary things and whose stories beg to be shared. This issue, we bring you two people with interests in their Columbia class pages. If you’d like to suggest a Campus Character, send us an email at bweditors@columbia.edu..

Nia Quinones

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n a balmy evening back in December, I carved an interlude in my preparations for the Lit Hum exam and trekked to East Campus, leaving my Diet Coke and half-eaten bag of Goldfish behind in John Jay. Across Amsterdam Avenue, Nia Quinones, a senior in Columbia College who is making her name in the world of vegan Instagram influencers, was whipping up dinner for two. With over 1,500 followers, Quinones’s profile, @niaquinoa, is a gorgeous assemblage of dorm-prepped vegan meals arranged atop a faux-marble slab. Featured dishes have included zucchini noodle lo mein, pumpkin-oat pancakes, and General Tso’s cauliflower. The account, like its creator, is radiant. “I’m vegan because eating plant based makes me feel my absolute best,” Quinones captioned one post.

Aside from identifying the myriad vegetables—not to mention legumes, juices, and nut- based schmears—that Quinones poses and posts, a devoted follower might find a stimulating challenge in discerning where, exactly, she gets the good stuff.

Quinones swears she shops locally, but most Colum -bians would be hard-pressed to fashion delectable, photogenic meals like hers from the average Morton Williams haul.

Chalk it up to openmindedness. “One day, I went in there for kombucha, and was like, 'holy shit!

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They have Japanese sweet potatoes,' she said, identifying the source of the dense, smoky scent floating through her dorm. The potatoes, she explained, would serve as the meal’s main vegetable, a gesture perhaps meant to assuage my addiction to a carnivore-friendly centerpiece on the dinner plate. (I am the type to inform my friends that I am considering going vegan, invariably after ordering a burger “blood rare” or tossing an empty Dasani bottle into a trash can.)

While vegetables roasted in an appliance not suitable for Columbia dorms (and, thus, not suitable for print), Quinones sliced kale leaves with a pizza cutter. “Salad is only great if it’s chopped,” she declared. Asked about her embrace of cautious consumption, she rattled off the nation’s leading causes of death (heart disease, liver disease, and diabetes) and noted the detrimental impact of an animal-based diet on the environment. “It’s so part of our culture to not know what you’re eating,” she said.

She arranged the meal on a white shag rug next to her bed. Her dorm, with its minimal furniture, orange-Christmas-light glow, and low ceilings, evokes a Southwestern spa that somehow overlooks the International Affairs Building.

Nested Trader Joe’s bags litter her small kitchen, and her cabinets are stuffed with such essentials as tahini, which she used to dress the kale.

Quinones renounced animal products only two years ago. She grew up on her mom’s easy, meat-based meals. “I basically didn’t eat vegetables,” she remembered of her boarding school days in Massachusetts. “I don’t know how I was surviving.”

Back then, she knew she wanted to pursue science in college—perhaps medical school, eventually.

Now, she studies biology, and much of her coursework involves nutrition. Her embrace of culinary consciousness in the personal realm has enabled her to make the most of her science curriculum, which has included anatomy and organic chemistry. “Everything

Illustration by Kate Steiner

The Blue and White

sort of works together, except physics,” she joked.

Her commitment to a measured, curated diet was apparent. The meal tasted of salt and fat and merciless simplicity, some flawless fusion of home-rendered comfort and plant-based purity. I sampled each vegetable, clarifying the means of its preparation, then, with ketchup’s aid, devoured everything at once.

“It’s really easy to make the things that I make,” she said, in response to my praise. Back in my dorm, I studied until the wee hours, foregoing my routine late-night snack: cereal and milk.

— Sam Needleman

Melody Tai

F

oregoing her chair in order to sit on the floor, accumulating balls of carpet fuzz, Melody Tai tells me she has been “ultracompetitive from the start...a definitive ‘comp’ kid.” Competitions are a beast of their own. Categorized by mass amounts of sequins, glitter, and drama, the competition scene seems like the last place for Melody, who spends her free time playing with her dog and teaching young kids how to play the harp. But with an ex-acrobat for a father and a mother in the Royal Academy of Dance, it’s safe to say she has had good role models to keep her grounded despite all the chaos surrounding the dance world. After much trial and error throughout her dance career, from training in numerous genres to combatting challenging dance atmospheres, Melody made her way to choreograph the MaMa Project. A branch of Orchesis, Columbia’s largest dance group, this project takes six months to craft and culminates in one show.

As a freshman, Melody got involved in the arts through a traditional manner—she signed up for as many clubs as possible, attempting to find something that stuck. The stickiest of all? You guessed it, the MaMa Project.

When abruptly pulled aside by her former MaMa producer and told she must “be the MaMa,” Melody replied with a simple question-answer: “Okay?”

Although Melody was encouraged to choreograph the project as a sophomore, she didn’t actually take on the role until her senior year.

Unlike Orchesis, the MaMa Project lends full creative authority to its sole leader, thus allowing Melody to craft a show from scratch in whichever way she wants. While Melody says she views all styles of dance through a universal lens, her inspiration for this particular project was drawn mainly from contemporary styles and movements. Choosing dancers and

February 2019

creating choreography is just one layer of Melody’s job. She’s also in charge of logistical work such as contacting the MaMa board, liaison between multiple boards on campus, and dealing with administrative funding.

Even though it seems like balancing an Environmental Sustainability major with a full-time job as a choreographer is an impossible feat, Melody excels at it– but not without some serious pressure.

“School is school. It’s stressful for me–but everyone shares that. What I do in school only effects me, my parents at most. I can’t drag 12 people down with me. If I mess up my turn set, I’m fucking everyone over.”

Melody shared that, whenever overwhelmed about academia or MaMa, she reminded herself of the inspiration that brought her to take on this role in the first place. Although her project has been formally named “Terraform,” Melody originally named it after a Japanese resonant called “Kinsugi.”

“It means that you can break something and fix it, but with gold. You don’t fix something to make it exactly what it was...It’s recognition of the break being part of the life of this object. Fixing the cracks with gold is symbolic of being cognizant of that and not trying hide that.”

This kind of “aesthetic inspiration,” as Melody called it, perfectly symbolizes her transformative process as a person, not just a choreographer. In the classroom and dance studio, Melody’s determination charges on while her charisma never fades. She’s not afraid to risk it all in order to discover new paths. Whether she pre-choreographs three different versions to one song or creates effortless choreography on the spot, her work ethic is unmatchable and honestly indescribable. No matter what Melody chooses to do with her life come May, she’ll always take this experience with her. I’m lucky enough to have gotten to know her, but if you want to see an influx of Melody Tai in one night, I suggest you see the MaMa project this February.

— Nicole Kohut

Illustration by Rea Rustagi

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M easure

for

M easure

On the edge Let’s leave before dark, He said, But we found ourselves surrounded by something other than darkness For even the light beams of our car could not cut against the world Or reveal the mountain ridges On which our road is paved It was like the ones we drove on earlier that day That winded up to the top of the mountain Roads that looked like the ridges Concavities of swirled icing that reaches the summit of a cupcake And now, Surrounded in a paroxysm of nature Of night and snow that beat against the dashboard of our car Where streaks of ice formed on windows As if someone or something had clawed at this SUV We could not see anything but the void We were suspended in a stasis of terror There was no place where fear could not be found Not in the eerie hum of the radio, a duet of static and Hamilton Not in the sharp skidding of our tires against the thatched ground Not in my father’s tense hands, which gripped the steering wheel Not even in the red blinking lights of the car in front of us My mother’s wheezing breaths Became our metronome Each pant contained a yell within a whisper — Tamar Vidra

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The Blue and White

M easure

for

M easure

Poem on Home Silence slips through the slit under the doorway and fills the empty spaces of the home; piling up in the corners And sticking to our skin.

While thin strands of sunshine blend into cluttered walls— Glaring they come, warm they linger, and then, suddenly dull and all used up, they shrivel away coldly.

There is a man who walks slowly toward the house, Some days, he lurches and shrieks, hurtling forward with a rage too immense for its human vessel.

Others, his footsteps are hushed and hopeful—his sorrow waning, or wafting off his skin so pungent it threatens to swallow him up and eat each of us whole.

He is too tall and too thin, With slim ankles that creak, poised to splinter at any moment.

But trembling limbs will appear down the line.

Now, hands are not yet shaking and Brother’s eyes are not yet drooped, and Mama laughs.

On the front porch, we push cherry pits through oozing, pulpy flesh.

In an August sweet and swampy, the juice stains sticky palms and little teeth and Mama whispers there is nothing to fear— Because there isn’t, save for the heat and the drought.

February 2019

— Hannah Liberman

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IN MEMORIAM

The Spirit of General Studies The Blue and White remembers a Conversation from 2011 with Dean Awn

By Michael Young GS ‘13, and Kate Iida

In 2011, The Blue and White published a conversation with Peter J. Awn, who for 20 years was the Dean Emeritus of the School of General Studies. He also taught Islamic and Comparative Religion at Columbia University. On Sunday, February 17th, Dean Awn tragically passed away due to injuries sustained last month when he was hit by a car. To honor and celebrate Dean Awn, The Blue and White has decided to re-release his conversation.

Throughout his time as the Dean of GS, Dean Awn continually worked to improve, support and diversify the GS community. One of the most important initiatives that Dean Awn championed during his time as the Dean of GS was the creation of the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration. The Center helps bring service members retiring from duty to Columbia University and assists them during their transition to academic life.

Dean Awn also helped to diversify the GS student population through the creation of dual degree programs with Sciences Po, the City University of Hong Kong, and Trinity College Dublin. As part of these programs, students spend two years at one of those three schools and complete the final two years of their undergraduate degree at the School of General Studies. Students then graduate with degrees from both schools. Both initiatives demonstrate the emphasis Dean Awn placed on expanding and diversifying the GS community during his time as Dean. After retiring as Dean in 2017, Dean Awn returned to his previous position in the department of religion, where he placed an important emphasis on making personal connections with graduate school applicants. Throughout his time here, Dean Awn showed incredible energy, devotion, and commitment to bettering the Columbia community. He will be greatly missed.

The Blue & White: So, you were not quite 20 years here and you became Dean in ‘97?

Peter Awn: That’s right, in ‘97 I became Dean, absolutely. But I think what’s important is that very early on … I got hired and I started teaching my undergraduate courses, which is what I did for the most part (I had a few graduate course[s]) and I said “Who the hell are these people in my class?” I thought I was going to be teaching 18-year olds! Or you know 18to 21 year olds.

And so it was this much more diverse enviroment, which I thought was a kick. And I went to my department chair, and I asked her, I said, “Who are these people?” And she laughed and she said, “Go

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over to Lewisohn Hall and you’ll find out.”

So I came over here and in some was I was I was hooked. … I thought it was just a terrific, terrific model of education that I thought really complemented traditional education … The problem is, we’re so used to it, we don’t appreciate how incredibly cutting-edge it is in terms of undergraduate education and why.

The traditional model of quote: “adult education” was seen as an appendage on the “real” university structure, the real colleges at the university, and they were always embedded within a broad continuing education division that ran non-degree programs. Come take a course, do whatever you want kind of environment. So you [created] a kind of culture in which when people reached a certain age they were allowed in, kind of , but never taken seriously.

And so the culture creates this dichotomy between the real undergraduates and the older students who are here for self-enrichment, maybe self-advancement. But somehow age and experience have created a sort of mental deficiency that doesn’t allow you to compete. And that has become ingrained within the American private education structure…

Illustration by Sahra Denner

The Blue and White

IN MEMORIAM

If you don’t begin to take in and take seriously the fact that 75 percent of Americans interested in higher education fit more the non-traditional model than the traditional model, you are going to become completely on the fringe of how American society is evolving. Realize how the demographic changes have affected education, and how people’s choices about how they manage their education have changed dramatically since the 1950s.

B&W: You say that pretty early on in your career here you were hooked on GS because you saw it as a cutting edge model for education.

PA: Well, it was but it needed a lot of fixing. It really did. It still suffered from the fact that Columbia had for decades, if not centuries, been wildly decentralized so that each dean hired his or her own faculty.

The academic programs were determined by the faculty of the school, so that even [though] you might be in some of your classes with students from the other colleges, in fact the separation among the colleges was fairly pronounced .

So that, I knew, and my colleagues around the University knew, as a model that was well on its way to being buried. That what matters most is an academic model of full integration and the creation of a model of education that the faculty can manage easily without worrying about “What the hell are the GS requirements. What are the College requirements?”

A department should determine, “What do you think is critical for a student to know to engage in order to complete a major?” And if you determine that, why would you make a distinction between one population and another? … So the advantage that we’ve reached now is a Columbia graduate is a Columbia graduate no matter what school they’re from. And that’s how faculty see it and that’s the reality.

Now my ability to really push this forward as a model as Dean has been really [been based upon] the enormous support that one gets from faculty for GS students. And that’s in contrast to what you will find at other elite, private universities. We’ve had 60-some-odd years to be able to bring the faculty along. When you broach this with other Ivy League faculties, they’re horrified. They have no context in which to see this work. Now, I know some colleagues at Princeton and Harvard for whom this is a really interesting idea, but they’re never really sure how to engage their colleagues on this.

February 2019

Now… when I came in the ‘70s- and this is true, it isn’t in any way to put Columbia College down, it’s just the reality- in the late ‘70s… The City was in such dire financial straits that everybody was as surly as can be. The neighborhood was to put it mildly dangerous.

So in the late ‘70s Columbia College could not generate more than 3,500 to 3,7000 applications. We would take one of two applicants to try to build a class of 650. We’d sit at faculty meetings wringing our hands. The faculty was terrific, but why would anyone from outside the city send their child here when they read all of how terrible… And therefore it was hard to keep the level of quality that now seems so obvious.

For a whole variety of reasons, in the ‘80s the whole city turned around. The College went coed and it really began to come into its own, as it should. So it became then, for GS: this is the bar you have to reach to be credible. It’s not just integration, but the students you have to integrate have to be as competitive intellectually as everybody else.

And that’s been the fun of this for me.

Admissions here is really interesting because you have to evaluate people in a very different way from the way you have to evaluate seniors in high school.

It’s not less rigorous. It’s just more comprehensive, and in fact we try to prequalify applicants. When you contact us - and we try to make you contact us - we want to have at least one or two initial engagements to help you decide, is it really worth applying? The last thing we want is a pointless application. So we want to convince you not to apply if we don’t think you’ve got a good shot at getting in. So getting thousands and thousands of applications is not to our benefit, We want to be engaged with applications that are seriously viable.

B&W: So do you think that accounts for the much higher acceptance rate in comparison to the College?

PA: Oh absolutely.

That’s exactly why.

And we do that quite deliberately.

Everyone says, “How can that be,

Illustration by Yotam Deree

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IN MEMORIAM how can that be?” First of all, we’re a small operation and we spend an average of four hours per application. You show me a traditional college that does that.

Now we have to on some levels because you all come with very complex lives and there’re no two applications that are going to be the same.

Rarely is it a question of your intelligence, but it is always a question of, “Well, how have you managed your life?” For example, we get people from the military, I’d say, and dancers. I talk to them in the same breath and they all look at me, but in fact you’re very similar in terms of background. Why? Frequently people who enter the military do so right out of high school…

B&W: Typically, yeah.

PA: Yeah, but I can give you half a dozen other groups. For example, entrepreneurs. We’ve had a long tradition of incredibly successful entrepreneurs.

B&W: Well I think that the most common perception that I’ve head is that GS is the back door.

PA: Which is bologna. It can’t be the back door if you’re doing as well as the College students, which is really true. The graduating seniors- basically the GPAs… There’s a little bit to go to make them identical, but it’s so close as to be actually irrelevant. And I also think in a few days it will be better than the College. [Laughs] So give me a break, when you’re the best student in the a lot of the College students I’ve department as a graduating spoken to (but it seems to come senior, tell me why that’s a back door.

“

PA: If you just looked at their high school record, yeah, you’re going to get some sense of their poten- out naturally) say, “You know, I’ve tial. But you know, that’s really enjoyed being in classes with B&W: So… a long time ago, so what’s been going on now? Do GS students. That I really learned PA: The culture wars were they read, can they think, a lot from having GS students in ferocious. I find sadly now can they write? And do it’s the Barnard women my class. It really does make the who are taking the brunt they have the focus and the commitment to do this? educational process something a of a lot of the negative

And like the sort of press, or negative dancers who frequently little more complex than it might be kind of cultural push. But, do the same thing (in fact oh, no, they were vicious, were I at Princeton or Yale.” some of them don’t even absolutely vicious to the go to high school, they frepoint where GS students quently have to get a GEDcouldn’t join clubs. If you they haven’t been to school. They’re did, you couldn’t become an officer. mid-20s, late-20s. They’re like athletes: you get to a It was, I mean, all of these kinds of ways to make you point where your body’s going to give out. You have feel like a second-class citizen. to decide what you want to do with your life. The ones Now, more often than not, and I don’t know whether we take are voracious readers. They’re really intel- it’s to make me feel good, but a lot of the College lectually alive. So they’re auto-didacts, and I think in students I’ve spoken to (but it seems to come out some ways the people we get from the military are like naturally) say, “You know, I’ve really enjoyed being that. And so you transfer that focus to your work at in classes with GS students. That I really learned a Columbia in ways that students who haven’t had that lot from having GS students in my class. It really does rigorous environment don’t necessarily have or have make the educational process something a little more to self-generate. And it really is interesting how those complex than it might be were I at Princeton or Yale. kinds of parallels exist in the GS population.

B&W: Now that, at this point, it’s safe to say that GS B&W: So it seems like GS has flagged certain groups is definitely working in the Columbia community, has of people out there in society that you know from definitely been accepted… experience will likely do well.

PA: Where is the real problem?

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The Blue and White

IN MEMORIAM B&W: Well, my question was going to be: when are we going to change the name?

PA: Oh, no, it’s a horrible name. I could give you a lecture on the Studium Generale, which is the origin of this, but it means absolutely nothing now. There’s nothing “general” about it. The issue- it’s linked to the issue I was going to bring up: where have I, in a sense, failed.

Thought I’ve done a lot better, but it’s not even close to enough and will really … and has already begun to have a damaging effect, is financial aid. You’re paying the same tuition as Columbia College students… We get, percentage-wise, functionally half the financial aid dollars that are available to Columbia College students. That’s untenable.

B&W: Possible names?

PA: You know, I don’t have a serious list. If I did, I’d tell you.

B&W: Well, you covered all my questions without me having to even ask them.

PA: Well, I guess. But you can tell I really believe in this. And it does really disappoint me that colleagues around the other elite colleges and universities haven’t quite recognized this yet.

Now realize that I’m not saying that something terrible’s going to happen to Columbia College or Princeton or Harvard. There will always be a very strong constituency for the traditional colleges. The model I’m arguing for is really the marriage of both.

You’re paying the same tuition as Traditional applicants B&W: I almost didn’t come for that reason. I was this Columbia College students… We are very different from close to not [coming] for how you approach a get, percentage-wise, functionally non-traditional student. that reason. half the financial aid dollars that are Advising is different.

PA: You and 98 percent of And that’s why you need available to Columbia College stu- a separate division... your fellow students, and you would be depressed to And that’s a very interdents. That’s untenable.” hear how many people do esting model where you say no. Really, really, talhave this parallel proented people who say no, who would cess of separate divisions recruitthrive here, be an immense contribution to the com- ing different constituencies. But then they all end up munity. in the classroom together and it’s that that I espouse And as I’ve joked, you could rename it [the and elite traditional college as well as an elite noncollege] whatever you want for a couple hundred mil- traditional college. lion. But it has to be a name that is truly unique, that isn’t mirrored at other universities, and that therefore B&W: Does it seem to you like other (call them topembodies the uniqueness of this educational experi- tier) colleges are testing the waters right now? ment. Now, if the money doesn’t come, then the pressure that I feel- and rightly so- to change the name PA: Well I think they’re starting to catch on...The may lead us to make a move to pick a name. best story is [Provost] Claude Steele when he arrived

You know, you may go for a dead white from Stanford. He had literally been here a week and male from Columbia’s history. Frankly, I would love I invited him to speak at orientation for the fall class. to name it after a woman. I mean, what Ivy League And he didn’t know the campus well. I had to go pick college is named after a woman? I mean, other than him up at his office and bring him over to, you know. women’s colleges, zero. So now’s the time to say: And when I got there, he had to admit, “What’s GS?” the majority of undergraduates on this campus are And I gave him GS101 as we walked across campus women and we [GS] were the beacon of women’s and by the end he said, “Why doesn’t every private education, co-education anyway, and adult women’s university have one of these? This is amazing. This is education in the city and at Columbia. what I’ve been writing about my whole career.”w

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February 2019

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By Sahra Denner & Yotam Deree

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The Blue and White

February 2019

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T O O DA M N H I G H

We Don’t Have The Money Columbia students reject a tuition increase to pay for textbooks

By Ufon Umanah

S

omeone once asked me, “How do Columbia’s wealth demographics affect student life?” This month, the student councils have given a muddled but nuanced answer.

A proposal before Scott Wright, Vice President of Campus Services, to raise student tuition by a certain amount in order to pay for and distribute textbooks through a bulk deal with Barnes & Noble has faced mixed reactions from the Deans of the undergraduate schools and their respective student councils.

Certain details about the proposal are still up in the air. Based on an estimation of student book costs, the proposal suggests a tuition increase of $600 per semester. If Columbia committed the same amount of money in financial aid as it currently does after the tuition increase, the University could see up to $4,093,236 to pay for the textbooks. While in the Engineering Student Council (ESC), Bwog reported that the proposal would treat textbooks as a class resource to be returned at the end of the year, in the Columbia College Student Council (CCSC) a week later, this part of the proposal was unclear.

Many representatives made clear that they felt this policy was “a pretty extreme response” to address the high price of textbooks, as Disability Services Representative Aaron Liberman said. In CCSC, many remarked that they didn’t pay $600 in textbook costs per year since those costs depend on the major, and Vice President of Finance Adam Resheff noted that “there are students who aren’t necessarily on financial aid, that Columbia deems that they can afford to pay but in reality it’s a very hard strain on the family.” General Studies students, who don’t receive the same guarantee of financial aid as students from Columbia College or SEAS do, would also definitely feel an impact in their pocketbooks. So would international students, since, as International Students Representative Beom Joon Baek said, “the standard [for] getting financial aid is significantly more difficult.” Specifically, while admitted international students receive financial aid based on 100% demonstrated need, Columbia states that “the admis-

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sions committee takes into consideration how much financial aid a student requires when rendering an admissions decision.”

Part of the problem is that for Columbia, according to University Senator Alfredo Dominguez, money is tight. While Brown University and other schools have been able to pay for textbook vouchers, Columbia has a “large first-generation low-income population,” and doesn’t have the money to support those students through a voucher program. And according to Gender and Sexuality Representative Kwolanne Felix, vulnerable students are forced to drop classes over not being able to afford textbooks at all.

Other representatives presented additional concerns about the proposal. Some focused on the monopoly the bulk deal would give to Barnes and Noble, potentially hurting independent bookstores like Book Culture. However, most of the additional concern came from the University’s decision to address textbook costs in this particular way. 2021 Class Representative Skye Bork thought the proposal was not “the most efficient or effective way” to address the textbook problem. Representatives looked more favorably on expanding access to a PDF library, using second-hand textbooks, or using the Columbia Libraries system –– various ways in which Columbia could change the way it accesses textbooks rather than asking students to pay more for them.

However, there are significant problems with each of these suggested alternatives. Columbia cannot violate copyright law by distributing free PDFs, and many first-generation low-income students wouldn’t have access to the student networks that do distribute them. Second-hand libraries, like those of the the Columbia and Barnard First-Generation Low-Income Partnership (FLIP), are available, but both locations are small, and Barnard has resorted to throwing out their books as a result. And the Columbia Libraries already has the reserve system, and relies on books outside Columbia University.

There is already a patchwork of solutions in place, and while professors can shift to open-source textbooks

The Blue and White

T O O DA M N H I G H and not require textbooks they authored for their meeting were long-term projects in a bureaucratic own classes, as representatives from both CCSC and system. Dominguez warned that fellow representaESC suggested, one presumes that a formal system tives “need to do more work in thinking about how would erase uncertainty [they] function as reprefrom first-generation lowsentatives,” especially Dominguez warned that fellow rep- since many of them “ran income students who have to think about this instead resentattives " need to do more work on the idea of supportof studying. ing marginalized backin thinking about how [they] func- grounds.” Another repThat isn’t to say that the proposal is bereft of tion as representatives," especially resentative, 2022 Class logistical problems either.

Representative Leighlani With the shopping period since many of them "ran on the idea Sanchez found “it really and the amount of time of supporting marginaziled back- frustrating that it takes allotted to drop classes, this policy for me to hear ground." Another representative, the most productive conone wonders, as Liberman did, whether students who 2022 Class Representative Leighlani versation around cheaper dropped classes would and better methods for return the books bought Sanchez found "it really frustrating accessing books for firstfor them. It was unclear that it takes this policy for me to hear generation, low-income how Scott Wright and students.” the most productive conversation Columbia arrived at $600 It’s unclear where as the average, and wheth- around cheaper and better methods Scott Wright and Senator er, as both councils sugDominguez move forgested, a lower price point for accessing books for first-genera- ward from the student would be easier to swalcouncil meetings. While tion, low income students.".” low. In fact, Bwog reported the decision is up to the that ESC found that “the undergraduate Deans, tuition hike may be worthwhile for some students, if the Deans were also divided over whether to approve lowered.” The additional fees, as currently proposed, the plan, although no specific comments were given. would provide sufficiently robust funding that as As the proposal returns to the drawing board, one many as 60% of students could opt-out of paying for might reflect on Columbia demographics. Columbia and receiving textbooks while still covering the text- University admits 13.4% of its students from the top book costs for those with the greatest need. Were the 1%, making $630K a year, according to a New York tuition hike reduced, though, fewer students could Times study from 2017. For Barnard, it was 17.1%. opt-out of the program before it failed to meet the From people making below $65K a year, the bottom demonstrated need of the low-income students for 60%, the schools admit 21.1% and 22.4% respecwhom the program is designed. tively. Based on the opt-out numbers, it seems that For advocates of first-generation low-income a shared burden between the top 1% and the bottom students, frustration with the student councils was 60% would almost solve the problem. Never has the palpable. As Liberman recognized later into the divide between the haves and the have-nots spoken night, a lot of ideas advanced in the general body louder.w

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Interested in writing or illlustrating?

How about copyediting or publishing?

Attend SEAS or GS? We Want You! Come to our weekly meetings Mondays at 8PM or contact us at bweditors@columbia.edu

February 2019

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AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N GT H

Did you move Y

ou know what, Brandon/Dylan/Bryce/Lance/ So yes, I moved your laundry, and it was Trent? I did move your laundry. And I enjoyed it. definitely worth it. I’m sure you have no idea how it

I don’t mean touching your sopping wet feels to do something good for once, or to be hailed Vineyard Vines breaker shorts, Lacoste polo shirts, as the literal Christ Reborn, but it feels pretty nice. and (let’s be honest here) very tacky towel labeled And really, it’s all about the little things. Do ‘Groton.’ I couldn’t care less about handling your you notice how I set a timer on my phone alerting me clothes. What I enjoyed was doing something for the to the exact instant the spin cycle comes to its pensive community. conclusion? Do you notice how I leave the washer

Here we were in the Broadway laundry door open so that the stench of Gain doesn’t incubate room, waiting for you to retrieve your threads—me, horrifically in a machine I’m no longer using? Do you three tennis notice how I clear players, and that out the dryer-lint one girl who my clothes generalways insists ate so that someon inviting one else doesn’t me to join her have to?

Bible Study (for Can you guess the last time, what all this says Sophia: I’d seriabout the kind of ously rather person I am? It burn in Hell). says I’m a good All of us leanlover. A patient, ing against the attentive lover. walls, waiting Now let’s talk for what felt like about you. Let’s hours. When talk about how I looked upon you distributed the faces of this your ten articles motley crew, I of clothing across saw hopelessfour different ness and desperation. I knew I washers. I bet you fill the adjacent ffirmative needed to act. seat with your backpack in crowded

By Jacob Snyder

So I moved your soaked lecture halls when you’re not even clothes from all four of the washers saving it for anyone, you glutton. you’d annexed. And when I took You’re the kind of person who out that last sock to place it on the table nearby, I felt blasts Chainsmokers “songs” out of shitty thirty-dolan instant shift in the morale of this laundry room. lar speakers at four in the morning on a Wednesday. I The tennis players all executed Federer-style fist- know exactly who you are, and I hate you. pumps. Bible Study Girl fell to her knees to anoint We can leave it at this: I sure hope nobody my feet with perfume, praising me as the Messianic but me ever has to see those Perry Ellis boxer-briefs herald of some great reckoning. I thought she was you probably overpaid for, because anyone who does over-doing it somewhat, but accepted the compli- is guaranteed a disappointing night. Now, if you’ll ment. excuse me, I have a cult to start.w

A

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Illustration by Rea Rustagi

The Blue and White

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N GT H

my laundry?

D

id I move your laundry? You mean the pile of aiding you and thus supporting the destructive launwaste you so carelessly threw into a pit of tide dry industry. Doing so would not only exile me pods and five year old lint, creating a vortex of envi- from EcoReps, but damage my ADP clout as well. ronmentally unconscious turmoil? Oh, you jaded fool.

And, on another note, is it truly necessary First off, I would never set foot in the inferno for you to wash all those Formal dresses? You got that is the laundry rejected from Theta. room–the eighth cirYou’re basically a cle, if you will. The nobody on campus. temperature and wave Do you even need of stress from stuclothes? Wait, now I dents scrambling to think I’ve got it. Is finishreading before doing your laundry their next class is a medium, a vehicle enough to take me maybe, for seeing back to the horrors me? Do you propose of NSOP. And don’t such absurd queseven get me started tions in order to taunt on the pod fumes. me? You plan these Secondly, you rendezvous, make spread your loads me zeal with rage, between four laundry and hope that I will machines in fear that mistake my putrid various colors will leak hate for compassioninto your precious ate love. Do you want polos and linens. News to be like me? Oh no flash: the Columbia no... you must want machines aren’t me...roma ntica l ly. strong enough to get Either way, out a weak stain, let this could never alone make a Picasso work. I save the out of your designer environment, you threads. It is because of your ignocrush it.

You live on the fourth egative rance that it would be impossible floor, I live on the eighth. You

By Nicole Kohut for me to even target your laundry. wear short skirts, I wear Yes, target. We all know T-shirts. You also like Taylor that I refuse to participate in the social construct Swift. That was the first red f lag. that is laundry, making the thought of moving your Now that I have a better understandlaundry in order to wash mine an outright ridicu- ing of this relationship, let me make this clear: I lous one. So, I can only assume that you have asked did not “move” your laundry. I will never “move” me this delirious question on the suspicion that your laundry. I am sure you will find a nice man I have something against you. While that may be or woman one day who will “move” your laundry. partially true, if I were to remove your laundry due Until then, don’t separate your whites from your to your sluggish incompetence, I would only be colors and make sure to like EcoReps on Facebook!w

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February 2019

Illustration by Mwandeyi Kamwendo

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M easure

for

M easure

Bemoaning You A touch A soft caress Isn’t nearly as sexy as your face when you belted out rap lyrics in the car driving back at midnight A tease a bite of my lip isn’t nearly as fun as when we snuck out to the beach at 2 am to lay down playing with the strap of my bra your hand lingering around my shorts was not nearly as exciting as making fun of shitty 90s sitcoms together fuck Friends, that shit sucks youre so sweet and kind you get my shit and I don’t know why you bother to Interpret the meaningless nonsense I spout Or sit here and attempt to Resolve the tangles in my hair Youre so much and what you don’t understand is it (is it true?)

I am nothing (tell me im not) But a crude conniving lost child (please say im not) I do think youre sweet (too good) You make my anxiety laugh itself into a delirium (put me under) You put me in a delusion I don’t wanna wake up from (stay) But for all your love When your lips are on mine my love dies a little more.

— Erin Luna

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The Blue and White

M easure

for

M easure

Melt The swelling is gone Ice is no longer necessary.

It hasn’t been for weeks.

A yellow canary flutters its wings.

The sound is reminiscent of spring And so it is.

The first time felt foreign Moving that way was strange, A muscle long atrophied, They’re hesitant.

My eyes aren’t ready to see the yellow rays of the sun It’s been gray for so long, My skin forgot how to process warmth.

Left to thaw, I’m found struggling to fly.

An awkward flap, The bird takes off.

The beginning of spring During the dead of winter A sunflower blooms.

— Erin Luna

February 2019

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

Book Culture 536 West 112th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Monday-Friday 9am-10pm Saturday 10am-8pm Sunday 11am-7pm 212-865-1588 Book Culture 2915 Broadway at West 114th Street Monday-Friday 9am-11pm Saturday 10am-11pm Sunday 10am-10pm 646-403-3000 bookculture.com

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The Blue and White

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

Decolonizing the University A conversation with Ananya Roy

By Samuel Needleman On February 25, Ananya Roy, Professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare and Director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA, will deliver a lecture, “At the Threshold of Empire: Sanctuary Cities in the Age of Trumpism,” at GSAPP. Though Dr. Roy is, first and foremost, a student of cities, her work encompasses a broad array of fields, from international development and public policy to economics and education. She is known not only for her groundbreaking research and teaching, but also for her activism, which often centers on her own universities. In advance of her visit to Columbia, Dr. Roy spoke on the phone with Sam Needleman, a staff writer, about some of the myriad intersecting issues fueling her in 2019.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The Blue and White: I've been a fan of yours since I saw you in At Berkeley—you know, Frederick Wiseman's documentary about the university—and The New Yorker described you as one of Berkeley’s star teachers. But now you're at UCLA. Will you tell me a little bit about the transition and what you're working on now?

Ananya Roy: Yes. I think what’ll give you a sense of the work I've been doing at UCLA and the reason why I moved to UCLA is the institute that I direct.

It’s called the Institute on Inequality and Democracy, and it’s a new institute which I had the opportunity to establish. It’s based in the Luskin School of Public Affairs, but we see our work as encompassing many different disciplines, and that work has been the work of tackling some of the key displacements and dispossessions of our time, thinking about what we call the urban color lines that structure our cities. Quite a bit of our work is in global Los Angeles, but we also work in sync with cities in different parts of the world, especially in India, Brazil, South Africa, and Spain.

The name of the institute is rather ambitious; I did not give it its name, I inherited that name, but I had the opportunity to establish its research and public scholarship agenda. In many ways, our approach to the institute has been to think about the ways in which socio-spatial inequality is reproduced and persists within liberal democracy, and how we might imagine radical ways of being and knowing that challenge inequality. So that work is very much in solidarity with social movements. I think what makes us unusual as an institution on inequality is our global

February 2019

approach and the fact that we have a radical orientation to questions of inequality, as well as to those of justice, very much shaped by postcolonial thought, by black liberation struggle, by abolition democracy. So we see our work as that which is in keeping with longstanding freedom struggles. Also, as I’m sure you know, the collaborations between powerful universities and radical social movements and communitybased organizing is never an easy one, but it is work that we are committed to doing, and that has been our

Illustration bySahra Denner

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N methodology from our start. [...]

In all of the work of the institute, including in the housing justice work, we not only analyze inequality, but we also fund research and support research that builds powers to challenge inequality—be it for housing justice work, be it work that we do on debt and predatory financialization, be it work on incarceration. Each of these are very interested in how knowledge builds power, and how that terrain of creating knowledge is both at the university but also in social movements.

B & W: How does this embrace of radical theories and practices that you're describing manifest day to day in the projects that you're working on?

AR: Part of this has to do with our methodology.

You’ll see that a theme that structures all of our work is what we call decolonizing the university. You know, I was just working on my Columbia talk this morning, and I’m most likely going to start with some of these questions—that if we are located in these very powerful universities that are global universities, imperial universities, from that positionality, how then do we fight for social change and social justice?

So the task of decolonizing the university for us at UCLA has been partly turning the university inside out, by which we mean foregrounding experiences, voices, forms of knowledge that are often suppressed or subordinated at our universities. [...]

B & W: You mention the complicated relationship between the university as a center of knowledge and power and the activist. How are you reconciling that in the Trump era, given your history of activism?

AR: You know, there is no easy way around this, and you know, as I head to Columbia, this is very much on my mind. I mean, these are powerful universities that are powerful landlords that have a direct impact on communities around them, that have often had an extractive and exploitative relationship with those communities, be it through real estate exploitation or resource extraction. To think about the ethical grounds on which powerful universities are in solidarity with social movements or communities facing displacement requires tremendous work.

I don’t know if there’s resolution there, but for us there’s a commitment to make this work, and for us

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it means seeing community-based organizations and movements as a sort of partners in research but also as those who hold us accountable. And that question of accountability is really crucial. […]

B & W: Will you tell me a little bit about accountability structures in the UC system as you've encountered them?

AR: What might make us different from universities like Columbia, but maybe not so, is that we are, of course, a public university system. But, you know, I have been very interested, both at Berkeley—you know, this came up in Wiseman’s documentary—but also now at UCLA, by what that means, and what that “public” in the public university therefore mandates.

And some of that has to do with, I think, the extraordinary student body we have, many of whom come from the experiences of displacement and dispossession that, say, the Institute on Inequality in Democracy tackles. So our students carry these experiences with them, and we really hope that we can turn the public university into a space where these students get to act from that place of experience and build power and make change. That, I think, remains somewhat distinction about public universities, though, of course, the question of access, of equity, inclusion, I think remains still very problematic. But what I've been very interested in, along with many others from the UC system, is what is our relationship, as I noted earlier, to communities that are our neighbors, be it spatially proximate communities or communities that are at a distance, and to whom we should have accountability but often don’t.

And there are some other straightforward questions. At UCLA, we often start our events and our classes with an acknowledgement that we are on occupied, stolen, colonized land, from the land of the Tongva people, who are not even recognized as the keepers of the land. And that acknowledgement is fine, but we need much more than that acknowledgement. In universities around the country, as you know, there's been a reckoning with some of these histories, and the histories of settler colonialism and slavery. I don’t believe we’ve done a particularly good job of that in the UC system—the reckoning with whose land we are on, for example, and what that means today for the knowledge we produce and the work we do. But I take my cues here from universities in South Africa and Brazil. At the launch of the

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N institute, we had this big thing on decolonizing the university, and we brought in student leaders of the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa. We had colleagues from Brazil who really had turned public universities into key spaces of the democratization in Brazil during the long struggle against military dictatorship. So I think there are other parts of the world that are very instructive here, and we continue to therefore try to build towards this more expansive public university, and part of that is accountability to communities that are neighbors, but part of that is accountability to critical thinking and political dissent, and that, for me, is what academic freedom is about in difficult times, including what I'm calling the age of Trump. [...]

practice of the university, in which we are all then inevitably implicated.

B & W: Now the subject of your lecture is sanctuary cities. Could you define “sanctuary city” in urban planning terms?

AR: I’m going to sort of talk broadly about sanctuary cities. Part of the argument, you will see, is that urban planning really has been on the sidelines of many of these freedom struggles. I’m interested in thinking about the ways in which, with the election of Trump, the city per se was reactivated as a terrain or a space of resistance, and some of that effort took the form of sanctuary cities. Of course, sanctuary cities predate Trumpism, but there is sort of a new round of B & W: Your discussion of spatial accountabili- legal battles and social struggle between various citty is, I think, particularly potent at Columbia. As ies—progressive cities, be it San Francisco, Chicago, I’m sure you know, the Boston—and the Trump University just expanded administration. And that into Harlem with the struggle tells us quite a Inevitably, this raises this question of bit about what I call libManhattanville campus. what is the role of our universities, and eral inclusion: the terms AR: I know, yes. on which liberal democthat is always on my mind.” racies include and inteB & W: I wonder if this grate and protect racial at all is going to be a others and racial outsidcomponent of your visit here. ers. So I'm going to talk about sanctuary cities, but I'm also going to talk about how AR: It’s not going to be a component of my visit. limited they are, and I'm then going to move across I’m just going to talk broadly about disciplines like the Atlantic to think about European traditions of urban planning and a bit about architecture in the cities of refuge and in what ways cities can become age of Trumpism. And I’m going to take my cues spaces of refuge for the outsider, the foreigner, the from work that our students did on what they’re call- other. And all of that, I think, will set the stage ing abolitionist planning, and what it means for us for thinking about abolition democracy. I’m very to be in the citizens’ struggle for freedom and in the interested in how we might return to a longstanding struggles against white power and white supremacy. tradition of abolitionist practice in the United States, But I think, inevitably, this raises this question of how we might return to what has been called “Black what is the role of our universities, and that is always Reconstruction,” and how we might find in those on my mind. As I said, if I were giving that talk at templates, if you will, for reconstructing democracy UCLA, I would start with rooting myself in that today. history of stolen, occupied, colonized land. But if I were a faculty member at Columbia University, I B & W: You mention the progressive resistance takwould give an honest thought to Columbia's role as ing form through cities, but as I understand it, approa very powerful real estate developer in New York. I priating—sort of ironically—the right-wing, local-, don’t think there's any way around that. I don't think state-based political resistance to policies at the we can talk about socially just urban planning and national level. architecture and what it means to teach about social justice or abolition democracy in the departments AR: Yes, absolutely, Sam—very perceptive. So, this of Columbia without thinking about the very real is the spoiler alert, right? I'm going to argue that

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N the problem with the sanctuary city strategy is that Francisco, and the focus there was on asylum seekit rests on an assertion of local sovereignty, which in ers from Central America—was in fact a much more turn rests on an assertion of local police power. But expansive and, I would say, a much more radical there are moments in the history of the United States understanding of sanctuary. A great deal of it was where that has been key, and partly what I’ve been about recognizing the role of American imperialism studying, but I don’t think I’m going to talk about it introducing violence in Central America, particularin the Columbia lecture—there just won’t be enough ly Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, which then time, but I have an article coming up in a few months was leading to large numbers of people fleeing those on this—is the legal battles around sanctuary city countries and seeking asylum in the United States. status, and the threats by the Trump Administration So, again, this goes back to questions of responsibilto withhold funds, and the lawsuits by cities like San ity and accountability. That sanctuary movement Francisco and Chicago, rest on states’ rights. And was about Americans taking responsibility for the much of that legal battle mirrors a set of struggles in actions of their own government, which is a different the Antebellum period over the fugitive slave laws, approach to sanctuary than what, for the most part, which, again, was a struggle between local power—in we have in the mainstream sanctuary approach today. this case, between states—and federal government.

So there are several hisB & W: Now, zooming out torical precedents for this beyond the immediacy of sort of struggle, and the the lecture coming up, I What matters here is why certain know your name is sort ways in which cities or states seek to articulate kinds of spatial uses get illegalized of inextricably linked, as I a different legal frameunderstand it, to this conand often criminalized, and others cept of urban informality. work, or argue, in fact, that their legal frame- get folded into the plan and are vali- Will you define that term works are in keeping with for me and tell me if it's dated and formalized.” constitutional provisions changed, or if its applicarather than those of the tions have changed at all, federal government. since you originally wrote that paper on it back in 2005?

B & W: And I know you referenced the fact that sanctuary cities existed, of course, before the age AR: I’m smiling because it’s a concept that I still work of Trump. But I wonder, given the potency that the with, but as you can imagine, I have just decided I will topic has taken on after Trump's election, and given not write any more pieces on urban informality! your lecture on the subject and your new interest in the subject, how much or to what extent is Trump B & W: I’m sorry to beat a dead horse! influencing your research and that of your colleagues at the Institute?

AR: No, no, no, it’s a good question, Sam. I just think it’s work that other scholars have to do. My interest in AR: After Trump got elected, I think the institute urban informality is actually very linked to my intersort of made a commitment to think about the insti- est in sanctuary, abolition, white supremacy—and tutionalization of white supremacy—and, of course, the connection is that I’m interested in the role of Trumpism is not the first substantiation of that in the state. I’m interested in what I would call state the United States—but to think about this present violence. So a lot of the current work I'm doing in Los moment and the sort of work that that then requires. Angeles is to shift understandings of urban displaceFor me personally, as a scholar, what it meant was ment from our theories of gentrification to what I call to immerse myself into things as thinking about a racial banishment—in other words, that we’re seeing sanctuary and abolition. I will also argue in the processes of resegregation. And I argue that these talk that the older moment of sanctuary cities in the can't just be understood as market-driven displaceUnited States—or the sanctuary movement, I should ment; they really take instituted processes of violence say, in the 1980s, as it starts up in Tucson and San against targeted bodies and communities, and that

“

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The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N others. So, you know, I’ve argued repeatedly in my work that we’ve got to pay attention to elite informalities and elite illegalities that are often not just tolerated by the state but even produced by planning and regularized and legalized by planning, while the illegalities of the poor or of the racialized other continue to be illegalized. So what matters here is why certain kinds of spatial uses get illegalized and often criminalized, and others get folded into the plan and are validated and formalized. And that is a process that’s played out not just in India, but it’s played out in so many ways in the United States as well. And that illegalization of certain bodies and communities continues to be of great interest to me, and, of course, that is what we’re seeing in the age of Trumpism—be it with the Muslim ban, or be it with the targeting of particular immigrant groups, or the targeting of LGBTQ communities. It’s the constant criminalization, illegalization, and othering of particular social groups and spaces.

B & W: Will you explain the stakes of the phrase "racial banishment" as opposed to gentrification?

AR: Yes, so the racial banishment work is something that was first on my mind when I was doing research on the South Side of Chicago with a movement called the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign and then that work, I think, has continued and expanded in Los Angeles as I work with movements here in downtown Los Angeles, particularly in Skid Row and South Central LA—movements like the LA Community Action Network. Many of these movements also use the language of banishment, or they’ll use the language of racial or ethnic cleansing to talk about displacement, and I think key to that is understanding, as I said, that these processes of displacement are not just market-driven displacement. So if you think about evictions, yes, of course, you have landlords raising rent and people unable to pay and therefore getting evicted. But a lot of what I'm studying is the role of public policy in producing these forms of displacement—currently, with some of my graduate students at UCLA, but also with community lawyers and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. We are looking at nuisance ordinances, and the ways in which those ordinances are used by the municipal government to criminalize what would otherwise be innocent behavior—for example, be it living in your car or playing your music too loudly in your

February 2019

apartment—and how those forms of criminalization that are often very targeted and therefore seemingly arbitrary, meaning they are mapped onto the bodies of the houseless or mapped onto the bodies of those living in Section 8 housing, how those produce systematic forms of displacement and really transform entire neighborhoods.

B & W: Now, before I let you go, a lighter question.

You're such a California urbanist, first in the Bay Area and now in Los Angeles. What part of New York are you most looking forward to seeing when you get here—or, if you are not a fan of New York, what are you least looking forward to?

AR: Well, of course, one is always a fan of New York. [...] We just did a very interesting experiment at the institute—and for me, as a teacher, such an interesting experiment. One of our activists and residents is someone called Micah White, who was key in Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, and Micah and I co-taught a class as part of a national endeavor he has called Activist Graduate School, which is a fascinating online school. But the class was taught at UCLA and then recorded and will be turned into Activist Graduate School. And we taught a class on housing justice activism. We started with the struggles of rent control and the various rent strikes and tenants’ unions that have formed in California recently. But to think about what is happening in California today, we really started with readings that had to do with New York in the early twentieth century, and that incredible history of tenant activism and organizing and rent strikes and rent control. So, you know, New York has an astounding history of organizing around housing justice issues and around many other issues. At the same time, Manhattan in particular, but other parts of New York, today manifest some of the most extreme forms of socio-spatial inequality we can imagine. So for me, visiting New York, and particularly visiting Manhattan nowadays, I feel that Manhattan’s sort of become a theme park. It is truly the playground now of the wealthy, and the wealthy who might not even reside in Man fbrhattan anymore.

So it's not that I show up in New York and I'm looking for the real city, but I'm very interested, then, in learning from my colleagues in New York about what the current moment of struggle might be in an urban setting that has been so dramatically transformed by global finance and by global real estate.w

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A MOMENT OF SILENCE

From Myanmar to Barnard A international conversation on the accountability and protection of the Rohingya

By Amad Ross

O

ne of the most affecting moments of the International Conference on Protection and Accountability in Burma was not a particular statement made by one of many esteemed panelists, but rather the moment of silence—accompanied by sobbing—that came at the end of the first panel of the first day, when Ahmed Ullah gave us a momentary glimpse into the pain of being Rohingya in today’s Myanmar.

The two-day conference was hosted by Barnard College on February 8th in collaboration with Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and a slew of international human rights groups.

The college’s purpose for holding it, according to Professor Yvette Christiansë, the interim chair of Barnard’s Council for Diversity & Inclusion, was to “recognize the horrible consequences of refusing to embrace ethnic differences.”

The Rohingya people are an ethnic and religious minority in Myanmar who have been severely persecuted in recent years. Since August of 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar in response to the bulldozing of villages, burning down of houses and indiscriminate killings carried out by Myanmar's military in what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

That silent moment came at the end of a panel called “Rohingya Voices,” one of several panels to address the direct consequences of genocide, when a Rohingya refugee named Ahmed Ullah described the terrible conditions suffered by the hundreds of thousands Rohingya forced into refugee camps abroad. The panel would soon come to a decisive conclusion: the genocide’s perpetrators need to be held accountable.

But the conference was full of debate, including between speakers. After the panel, Professor Elazar Barkan, Director of SIPA’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, presented a starkly different picture of the way forward: “There may be a time for accountability,” Professor Barkan said, “but it is not now. It is not that I do not believe in justice; it is that I do not believe in miracles.”

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Professor Barkan’s comments were soon challenged by audience members, including one who charged him with a form of “neocolonial intervention.” “You frame accountability in the language of ‘miracles,’” he said. “Every Rohingya I’ve known wants justice. You do not have the moral or intellectual authority to tell the Rohingya what they should want.”

The specter of Professor Barkan’s comments seemed to loom over the next panel, “How Genocides and Other Atrocities End,” when Professor Gregory Stanton of George Mason University said that the first step of combating genocide is making those responsible “international pariahs, having their assets seized and putting them on trial.”

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conference was this ongoing debate on whether the international community should focus its efforts on helping Rohingya people now or laying the groundwork to hold those responsible accountable as soon as possible. The question of what the international community ought to do was especially important in that room, where the vast majority of audience members were not students but activists, some in New York for work at various NGOs or the UN, others specifically for this conference.

Much was said on both sides, but the silence during Ullah’s testimony spoke loudly. When Ullah broke that silence, he addressed the audience with tears in his eyes: “I don’t believe in government, I don’t believe in systems, but I believe in you. You can make this genocide stop.”w

The Blue and White

CAMPUS GOSSIP On the 14th of February, the Columbia Daily Spectator’s Twitter presence took a hard hit after all of the 11562 Tweets under @CUSpecSports were deleted. Reportedly, the password for Spec’s Twitter account rarely changes, including after the controversy that occurred in December, which allowed someone with access to that account to commit the deed, most likely any alumnus from the Sports section. After the tweets were deleted, representatives from The Change-Up, the new news publication founded by the Spec Sports staff who quit in December, seized the account and rebranded it into their Twitter account. They even live-tweeted the Yale game over the following weekend. In a statement, Spec said that “Twitter Support was made aware of the issue and...returned possession of the account to Spectator” after which, they cleared it of any The Change-Up content, leaving the account a near barren wasteland. The Editor-in-Chief of The Change-Up and the last Spec Sports editor both personally deny deleting the tweets. e Columbia has changed how they do flights after a bus trip with Global Brigades went horribly wrong. Students now have to go through Student Transportation of America (STA) to purchase tickets, an organization which reportedly adds significant fees on top the standard costs of travel. e The first-years want to try out “Freshman Feelz” in contrast from Senior Scramble. The z, we feel, puts a nice touch to the inherent awkwardness of the plan. e East Campus residents have been forced to find alternative methods of drying their clothing, like clogging up the dryers in other dorms, using drying racks, and the old reliable hair-dryer. In other news, residents are now thinking about reimbursement for their time in sub-par housing.

February 2019

A recent petition to find a resident's Mario Badescu glycolic foaming cleanser has raised $16 at press time. The petition writers seem more frustrated with the resident's efforts to reclaim the skincare product than the importance of the lost object, which costs $16 on Amazon. e The Venetian Wellhead that sits between Avery and Fayerweather Hall is not a trash bin. It is a work of art whose concrete base has been broken beyond repair by the carelessness of Columbia’s constituents. As a result, the piece of artwork will be moved to the walled off lawn in front of Earl Hall e At a fireside chat with Professor Bernard Harcourt, Professor Jason Stanley of NYU remarks that the term dehumanizing has probably lost a lot of the power it should have. e The Editors of The Chicago Maroon faced a staff revolt after publishing the picture of a potential minor arrested for armed robbery. In a statement, the leading Editors of the Maroon stated that did not know “whether the individual in the photo is a minor—such information can sometimes take up to several days to confirm—but we would have arrived at the same decision even if he is,” since there is no law against doing so, and the community had the right to know. Almost everyone outside the comment section disagreed, including the photographer credited with the photograph, writing that “By publishing this photo we failed to show compassion to a vulnerable person—likely a minor, arrested in a community with a long and storied history of racialized policing. The fact that his status as a minor is unclear is a reason to hold off on such a photo, not to publish it.”w

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