May 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. III

Extracurricular Activities Politics professors outside the gates

Comparing Notes The differences between Lit Hum and Yale’s Directed Studies Also Inside

: A correspondence from The Travel Desk

May 2014

TORSTEN ODLAND, CC ’15, Editor in Chief SOMER OMAR, 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 DANIEL STONE, CC ’16, Senior Editor HALLIE NELL SWANSON, CC ’16, 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 CHANNING PREND, CC ’17 TAMSIN PARGITER, BC ’16 ALEXANDRA SVOKOS, CC ’14 Contributors NIA BROWN, CC ’17 ALEXANDRA EYNON, CC ’15 SCOTT FISCHBEIN, CC ’16 JOSEPH MILHOLLAND, CC ’17 KATHERINE NEVITT, CC ’16 MADELINE PAGES, BC ’17 DAN SINGER, CC ’17 JENNIFER SLUKA, CC ’17 IRINA TEVELEVA CC ’17 ALEXANDRA WARRICK, BC ’17 KAT WHATLEY BC ’17 Artists RACHEL AGINS, BC ’17 ZANE BHANSALI, CC ’17 JULIA JARRETT, CC ’15 LEILA MGALOBLISHVILI, CC ’16 ALEXANDER PINES, CC ’16 ALEXANDRA WARRICK, BC ’17 Editors Emeriti ANNA BAHR, BC ’14 CONOR SKELDING, CC ’14

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XX

FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS

Columns Alexandra Svokos & 4 Bluebook Virginia Fu 6 Blue Notes 8 C ampus Characters Jennifer Sluka 16 Verily Veritas 20 The Travel Desk 26 M easure for M easure 34 Digitalia Columbiana Channing Prend 35 C ampus G ossip

Torsten Odland

Will Holt

Channing Prend

Somer Omar

Anna Bahr

Michelle Cheripka

Somer Omar

theblueandwhite.org

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cover :

No. III

Features 10 At Two Swords’ L ength: A re You Looking for Something? Our monthly prose and cons 12 Gimme Shelter Checking out Hotel Ellington 13 Flight of the P hoenix A review of Xu Bing’s installation at St. John the Divine 14 G od’s Honest Truth A reflection on the Veritas Forum 17 The Museum A round the Corner A Blue and White reporter visits the Roerich museum 18 Comparing Notes The differences between Lit Hum and Yale’s Directed Studies 24 E xtracurricular Activities Politics professors outside the gates 27 From A ncient Grudge Editor Emeritus Anna Bahr considers the supposed friction between Barnard and Columbia 28 Tunnel Vision The art beneath Riverside park 29 Rugged Individual A conversation with Mike Murphy

“Something Ain’t The Same” by Leila Mgaloblishvili

BLUE BOOK

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

TRANSACTIONS

Here it is. That special time of year when the campus is full of obstacles. Exciting isn’t it? Each of us walking around w, perplexed: Which side of Low Plaza will be blockaded today? Why is this gate here? Fuck. I mutter to myself, walking along Kent, turning towards Philosophy. Already late and thinking it would be a mistake to take the steps (“the steps”), I choose a route on the right that turned out to be stupidly circuitous. Oh, but detours are what make life incalculable and wonderful, yeah? All of a sudden things aren’t the way you thought and you need to make a spontaneous choice. You stumble into an old friend. You see something you would have otherwise passed by. You loosen your grip on the world and see where it takes you. Good. Very good. An obstacle to an intended direction is the essence of drama. Is there anything more stupefyingly symbolic than a wall? What are the Columbia event managers but insightful plot-builders and daring Pucks with their gates and fences and poles! In my experience, when the quest and the barrier are nonsymbolic—when you’re really trying to get from your house to somewhere else—the charm and intrigue wear off. This is because, along with its symbolic resonance, the practice of travel unlocks unimaginable depths of anger in human beings. Some of the most furious, hopeless moments I’ve had in this last year have been subway experiences: the train stopping in a tunnel; the train that stays “2 min” away for 10 minutes. It’s stupid and trivial. But the symbolism is…not. This is what I think I as I walk toward St. Paul’s clenching my teeth. Why me? Why today? What the FUCK. — Torsten Odland

ARRIVALS

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Pita Grill Senior Wisdoms Spring, genuinely New Law Dean Your twitch DEPARTURES A “Daily” Spectator Conor Skelding The Card-O-Mat sign Institutional memory Student Affairs Joffrey Baratheon

Come Again!?

“‘CHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUCK.’ It was loud and obnoxious and brutal and uncomfortable. It grated on my fucking soul. And I reveled in it.” – Daniel Garisto in The Eye

The Blue and White

BLUE BOOK

Themes and Variations On the second Sunday of May, Americans and the citizens of dozens of foreign countries will celebrate Mother’s Day. The editors at The Blue and White, momma’s boys and girls up and down, express maternal love from northwest England in the nineteenth century, to modern-day Virginia Beach. Mama I’m so sorry, I’m so obnoxious I don’t fear Tubbs and Crockett Mama I’m so sorry, I’m so obnoxious Got two hot rocks in my pocket Mama I’m so sorry, I’m so obnoxious Big home palm trees and watches Mama I’m so sorry, I’m so obnoxious My only accomplice is my conscious —Malice, from Clipse’s “Momma I’m So Sorry” (2006)

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a mother’s mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known And that imperial palace whence he came. —William Wordsworth, from Ode: Intimations of Immortality (1807)

POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE

May 2014

Postcard by Angel Jiang and Scott Fischbein

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BLUE NOTES

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or all its history, the Metro Theater on 99th Street and Broadway strikes me as little more than an eyesore beside the slick glass facade of the skyscraper condo next door. The formerly grand 1930s cinema is decaying. Ads cover the old ticket booth window, while its marquee rusts. Local sentiments towards the vacant property range from sour to almost protective. Tenants in neighboring apartments complain of rats and loiterers and would be amenable to a revamp, while others worry about losing a tiny piece of history if the building were to be replaced. Although the theater is a registered New York City landmark, only its art-deco exterior is protected by law, allowing developers to potentially repurpose the interior. The original Landmarks Commission report advocating the designation of the Metro as a landmark defends the theater’s historical value. With the rise of Hollywood, the 1920s saw the construction of lavish movie palaces capable of seating thousands

of people. During the Great Depression these theaters continued to operate, but economic conditions meant new projects were smaller in size. Architects turned to the art-deco style not only because it was fashionable, but also because its modern, simplistic design made construction more affordable. Before long, tiny cinemas were ubiquitous in Manhattan. “If one were to have strolled this section of Broadway between 59th and 110 th Street in 1934, one would have had a choice of eighteen theaters in which to see movies,” writes one researcher for New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. The Metro is the only one still standing. City Councilman Mark Levine hopes to preserve the building’s legacy, and has proposed to convert it into a community arts space. If approved, the project would bring a lesser-known but classic Upper West Side monument back to life. — Dan Singer

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n our world of interchangeable parts and industrial everything, it’s a surprise to come across a place where craftspeople sit on their benches all day creating functional works of art. From a small foundry in the West Village, the employees of P.E. Guerin produce brass objects of all descriptions—from lamps to door handles to taps—using nineteenth century techniques. Every mold is made by hand, and smiths still pour every fixture and chisel every accessory. Founded in 1857, P.E. Guerin is the oldest foundry continuously running in New York, and the only remaining one in Manhattan. P.E. Guerin was one of the key players in the foundry business at the turn of the century—the go-to firm for the fixture needs of many architec-

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Illustration by Alexandra Warrick

The Blue and White

BLUE NOTES ture firms. Among them was McKim, Mead & White, the illustrious group that designed some of New York’s most famous landmarks, including the main branch of the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Museum. They also designed Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus and all of its original buildings. Like the institution that its accessories once furnished, P.E. Guerin has moved upmarket to compete. The company’s headquarters on Jane Street is as much a showroom as it is a workshop with some production moved overseas to Spain and Portugal. Door knockers that once were once made on a large scale now cost the bronze connoisseur $4,000. After a century of renovations to Columbia, most (if not all) of the original fixtures have been replaced or removed without any regard for historical accuracy. Without the originals or records of when they were replaced it is all but impossible to ascertain who manufactured the University’s original fixtures, though it is likely that P.E. Guerin created at least some of them. Now it may be too late to find their beginning. — Kat Whatley

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ontrary to popular belief, there is a world that exists outside Columbia University–or the “Columbia Bubble.” This world is called the Upper West Side. We, and the other people of the Upper West Side, have deeply-rooted needs and desires. Everyday, we struggle with questions like “When will I learn how to play the marimba?” or “Why IS being a dad so scary?” When we find ourselves plagued by these questions, clawing for solace and aid in the empty stage of existence, and our hearts burn lustily to expand the boundaries of our minds, we usually turn

May 2014

to the community pillar in the back of the Hungarian Pastry Shop. It’s a surefire solution for any problem. Trust me. Your boyfriend broke up with you? Come look at this flyer that has no contact information on it and just the word “Aleinu.” What comfort! It’s hard to pick the most useful service listed on the pillar, but one of the most practical is surely Dunkirk’s private miming lessons. This one is a DO NOT MISS! Trained by Russian masters, Matt Dunkirk could mime his way out of a locked room! If you ever have a lull in your studies, just give him a ring and he will come to your dorm room to teach you all the essential miming skills you need to wow your friends and loved ones. If miming isn’t your cup of tea, call Linda, who will teach you the ancient art of quilting. Although her lessons aren’t cheap (about $150 an hour), they’re worth every penny, as you’ll soon find your dorm full of wonderful quilts that can be used as tapestries, bedding, towels, drapes, carpeting, shelving for your textbooks, comfortable seating for guests, places to secure your valuables, and containers for transporting food to and from dining halls. Or you can even make a fashion statement going to class after wrapping your body in 20 quilts! But don’t just take my word for it—give it a try yourself! Walk into the Hungarian, strut over to that pillar and go wild on that thing. Trust me, you’ll find yourself so happy with your newfound skills that you’ll come to absolutely loathe the person you were before you started playing the marimba. And isn’t that what we all want? — Scott Fischbein

Illustrations by Anne Scotti

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

Ram Narayan

M

y first encounter with Ram Narayan, CC ’14, was in an American political science discussion section. He took over the classroom with an analysis of Huntington that made my TA beam with pride and ask, “You’re a poli-sci major, right?” Ram scoffed. It was his first, and last, political science class, he said. One of only seven graduating financial engineers this year, Ram is headed to Goldman Sachs to work as an analyst in the securities division at the interest rate products trading desk. When I asked for details about his time there, he flatly responded “I’m not allowed to talk about that.” According to a friend, Ram receives research papers that only Goldman Sachs employees have access to, and trades equities in his room for fun. His classmate Kyungmin Song, SEAS ’14, expects that he’ll be the CEO of Goldman Sachs before he’s 35. Everyone I talk to about Ram speaks most emphatically about his intelligence. Anthony Clay,

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CC ’14, insisted, “the kid’s a fucking genius.” His friend, Pirapong Jitngamplang, SEAS ’14, who worked in Goldman Sachs’ Hong Kong office last summer, said that Ram’s success was a topic of discussion in the office. However, there’s a lot more to Ram than the stereotype of the “smart Indian kid who studies finance at an Ivy,” Clay points out, and Ram works hard to show that. Clay, who befriended him while they were rushing for Pike during the 2010 drug bust, believes that Ram prioritizes his social life over academics, describing him as a “charismatic sweetheart.” Clay doesn’t envision Ram staying in finance, saying, “well, he’ll do whatever he wants. I see him in a small Columbia [bro] tank sailing his yacht around Nantucket and sipping lemonade.” His girlfriend of four years, Nim Gumaste, CC ‘14, describes Ram as relaxed and loving. She sees something similar to Clay, if less radical, imagining that Ram will be working in a hedge fund that gives him flexibility and time off. His classmates, who don’t see him leaving Wall Street anytime soon, tried really hard to convince me that Ram is not as harsh and cutthroat as he may seem; Jitngamplang insists that, “he really does mean well.” They emphasized Ram’s genuine interest in what he studies, with Song describing him as “passionate about the intersection of finance and technology” and “actively engaged in his classes.” Because the financial engineering major is so small and the requirements are so stringent, classes are competitive, and students learn quickly who their friends are. Ram works quickly and efficiently, with immense focus. When there’s a problem, he’ll design a solution. Last summer at Goldman, Ram noticed that the derivative traders, who work with multiple monitors and have to make decisions very quickly, were wasting time locating their mouse across screens. So Ram typed up a code that centered the mouse, making it easy to locate. The team loved it.

The Blue and White

He describes working at Goldman as an adrenaline rush, with his heart beating in his head all day. However, he isn’t concerned that the addictive allure of Wall Street will turn him into a “wolf.” He believes wholeheartedly in Wall Street and finance as good things, and thinks that the crisis of 2008 should incentivize us to train financial engineers better, rather than imposing restrictions on their careers. He is inspired by initiatives that he believes connect the abstract world of finance to individuals’ lives, and argues that the direct impact of finance on the individual is why he chose financial engineering rather than just economics. Ram will end up somewhere with a mission that he can get behind. Whether that’s clawing up the Wall Street ladder or figuring out how to luxuriate in Nantucket full time, we’ll have to wait and see. — Tamsin Partiger

Kate Christensen

K

ate Christensen, BC ’14, once gave up suffering for Lent. She resolved to expel negativity from her life, and that was rather apparent as she, smiling and effusively upbeat, sits down with me in the cafe of the New York Historical Society. We begin with her childhood. Kate recalls that she was always much taller than her classmates—closer in stature to her teachers, which she believes partly explains her tendency to speak up. From standing up to her grade school teachers for “every little injustice” to being the first to raise her hand and secure a take home final for her current American Congress course to spearheading the Columbia University Republicans as president, Kate has always seized opportunities for leadership. Guiding CUCR, Kate has strove to “increase the palatability” of the organization to those on campus and focus on “embracing the plurality of conservative thought.” To a large extent she has succeeded: CUCR has increased its membership and sought to establish a more cordial relationship with other campus groups and students, though Kate makes it clear she is not solely responsible. But what Kate has enjoyed most in her Barnard years is her WBAR radio show, Superiority Complex. She often invites guests—including her parents, campus celebrities, and friends—making them do karaoke and discussing their taste in music. The playlists she crafts manage to meld the musical stylings of seemingly disparate artists, from Bruce Springsteen to Johnny Cash to Radiohead to 2 Chainz, for instance,

May 2014

all in the same set titled “Songs They Should Really Play at the RNC.” Her show has also featured an AntiPatriarchy playlist, a mix titled “Playlist,” and tribute to Nate Dogg titled “All Doggs Go to Heaven.” Kate is also almost zealously committed to showy displays of affection towards her friends. She once learned the chords for and performed a song by friend Nellie Gayle’s, BC ’15, favorite boy band, One Direction, as a surprise when Gayle was a guest on her radio show. On a Habitat for Humanity trip that she attended with Christensen, Gayle noted that her friend wielded the power tools rather impressively for a DJ who goes by WBARbie. In true Christensen fashion, Kate kept spirits up during even the most mundane and difficult tasks. She once made it rain glitter over the door of a friend on the eve of her birthday. The friend, Ellen Watkins, BC ’14, called it a “feat of engineering” and “the best birthday surprise ever.” Watkins went on to describe the “office hours” of sorts that Kate has at the end of each day. “She will take the time to hear about every part of my day,” Watkins remarks. I asked Kate to use just a few words to describe her four years at Columbia. She quipped that it was “resilience inflicting.” When school or life at large took its toll, what kept her sane were visits to a midtown 24-hour nail salon with karaoke in the basement. She takes respite in the quiet and calm of sitting and simply getting a manicure. — Nia Brown

Illustrations by Leila Mgaloblishvili

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AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

Are you looking O

h thank heavens you’re here, I’ve been praying candle for you too. No, I absolutely do not “play the and praying for someone to show up and help field”–whatever you call it. I’ve got one steady who’s me. You’ll help me, right? Yeah? They keep it so dark been with me for years and will be with me until the in this bar I can’t see a thing. Do you have a flashlight rest of eternity. I’m not looking for anyone else to “fill on your phone? Watch your dress, the floor down me up” or whatever they say. Wesley and I were built here is sticky. for each other by God. Do you ever feel like there’s darkness, darkI can’t believe we’ve been looking this long ness all around you that you just can’t shake off? Like and still haven’t found it! Sometimes, when you’re some shadow got sewn really looking for onto you and you’ll something, it takes never see the sun? I a lot of patience. It used to feel like that all takes piety. There will the time. I’m so dirty be trials and tribulawith … darkness. But tions, and sometimes then something shone it might seem like it’s down which helped not worth it, but the me to dust the dirt off reward you get—my my body and become God!—you could not clean. Like a loofah of even imagine what hope and happiness and awaits you when you beauty. And then, I was get there, up high. Up all lightness, and I felt high high high high. good and protected. Looking is such Milan Kundera wrote a spiritual experiabout this, I think. ence, don’t you think? If they’d only You’re just there, install the floor lights focused, sharp, on a I asked about! With those babies real search for something so imporgoing you could put whatever you tant to you. Sometimes you don’t ffirmative want and the floor, and come pick it even know what you’re looking for, By Alexandra Svokos up when you need it. Ew, look at my but when you find it, it’s exactly hand, haha! what you need. My guru always tells I forgot that the floor gets me if you take the effort to search, covered in brown slime. something will find you. And when it does you greet While we’re under this table looking around, it by kissing every inch of its body. tell me about yourself. Well, I assume you’re over 21. Are you looking for that experience? Do you Otherwise you wouldn’t be in here. You’re here for want me to help find it? You seem to really be in need your friend’s birthday? Ooooh, what’s her name? I’ll of spiritual guidance—your aura feels troubled. It’s light a candle for her to have another prosperous year. looking a little green today, like a pale, pale green. And I’ll release a dove for her. Who else is here? Do You should get it looked at. If you let me, I’ll lead you you have a steady? out of the marsh and hold your hair as you ride the Oh, you don’t! You’re “playing the field.” I do wave. I’ll give you a sponge massage. Wait, there it hope you know the repercussions of that; I’ll light a is next to that chair leg! Twenty-five grams of molly.w

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The Blue and White

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

for something? N

o, I’m all set, thanks. I’m not looking for any- there is is drugs. We learned that in FroSci; it’s called thing. In fact, I’ve got everything I need. The the “astonishing hypothesis.” trick, you see, is to be happy with what you have and I know that some people think drugs make to keep it close to you. you dumb. Numb the synapses. But of course this Take molly, for example. Now it would be is wrong because synapses not only don’t feel; they hard for me to lose my molly since I keep it securely make feel. They make this feel, the feel I’m feeling strapped on my person. Now, I won’t say where, but right now as I look into your eyes. Like they’re swallet’s just say it’s all there, for whenever I need it: lowing me with their brightness. Like I’m dissolving my molly, my opium, my lysergic acid diethylamide and slowly rising as I’m reconstituted in a new place. (more than three days Oh, I see I have worth), my barbitufallen. But I can tell rates, my shrooms, you understand what my salts. When I wake I’m saying. It’s all up in the mornings I about stimulation and unsecure my Adderall release. Transport and from my calf, where uptake. Voltage gated it is firmly taped, and sodium channels givdown a few milligrams ing way to sudden with my breakfast f loods. Dendritecereal. My forearms curling shocks! We’re are made of pure ketlike entangled paramine and you’re free ticles! to rip a few hits of the That’s how salvia growing out of close I feel to you right my ears. now as you try to help That’s how me up but you can’t. come I say I’m not Like I’m one of those looking for anything. teeny tiny specifically See, you don’t even have to give me shaped particle crossing the bloodegative back my iPhone, which I see is still brain barrier to adhere to another By Virginia Fu clutched in your gently undulating teeny tiny specifically shaped parhand. The only address saved in ticle because of our corresponding there is Molly’s, my dealer, and I’ve got that number shapes. Like there are no proxies mediating our memorized, carved into a brick, and tattooed all over understandings of each other. my ass. Not that I’m looking for anything more. But, Some people spend their lives looking for as I said, you’re welcome to come celebrate Molly’s things they never find. They think they need love, or birthday with us! There might still be some of that fame or money. But really, it’s all about the primary Oreo-flavored cake left over—or was it heroin cake? action on ionotropic glutamate receptors. It’s about Anyway, it’ll be fun as long as you’re not scared of the drugs. After all, what are love or fame or money vomit. All I know is that you’re walking away as I’m but ideas? And what are ideas, what are all your expe- unbuttoning my shirt to retrieve the rolling papers riences, your thoughts and feelings, memories and ozoned over my heart, that I’m finding all that I perceptions, but the firing of neurons? So really, all need.w

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May 2014

Illustrations by Angel Jiang

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SLUMLORD MILLIONAIRE

Gimme Shelter Checking out Hotel Ellington By Jen Sluka

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otel Ellington does not take reservations. Standing at 610 West 111th Street with a fading awning where the words Hotel Ellington are barely visible is not a hotel but a women’s shelter. Its name was not always so deceiving. As it turns out, the Hotel Ellington was once an expensive boutique hotel frequented by Columbia parents visiting their children. On March 4, 2002, Morningside Heights residents were surprised to see a large collection of furniture lingering outside the hotel instead of the usual assembly of wealthy patrons. They soon learned the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) would be using the building to house women and children in need. Hotel Ellington is not public property, and its ownership and management have a complicated history. In 1987, Jay Podolsky purchased the building for $925,000, and used it to house clients of New York City’s newly formed Division of AIDS Services and Income Support. In 1996, the city withdrew its contract with Podolsky when it discovered that he had been illegally subdividing studio apartments. It was at this point that Jay’s brother, Stuart

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Podolsky, took over the management of the building with his Amsterdam Hospitality Group, and his wife, Sharon Olson, took over the ownership of the building under her company California Suites. The Amsterdam Hospitality Group spruced up the building, and turned it into a tourist hotel that only lasted for six years. When tourism dropped after 9/11, the Hotel Ellington closed. California Suites then leased the building to Alan Lapes, who contacted the DHS with a proposal for the building to become a homeless shelter. The connection between the Podolskys and Lapes goes far beyond the Ellington. Lapes leases buildings from the Podolskys, and manages them as homeless shelters for the DHS. A 2013 exposé on the Podolsky shelter empire in New York magazine lists 38 shelter properties in all boroughs of the city owned or controlled by the Podolskys, with many of them operated by Alan Lapes. New York magazine estimates that the Podolsky shelters house 11 percent of the city’s homeless population, and have generated $90 million in rent from 2010 to 2013, including $7.4 million from the Ellington alone, with most of that money coming from the city itself. While the Podolskys run a service for the city’s homeless population with their shelters, their business methods call their altruism into question, and Jay Podolsky’s citation at the Ellington is only one of many of the Podolskys’ run-ins with the law. In 1983, Jay, Stuart, and their father Zenek purchased three buildings on West 77th Street, and then hired “professional vacators” who received $600 per apartment to make the building unlivable. When this was discovered, the Podolskys pleaded guilty to 37 felonies, but they cut a deal, with Zenek receiving a 90-day sentence and Jay and Stuart only receiving probation. When I visited the Hotel Ellington, the staff seemed to know nothing of the building’s history or ownership. By all accounts the shelter is safe above board these days. Hopefully that’s where the story ends.w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

BIG BIRD

Flight of the Phoenix A review of Xu Bing’s installation at St. John the Divine By Alexandra Eynon

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ithin the cozy confines of our classically-constructed campus, we often take the neo-gothic record-breaker just south of us for granted. At best, we feel its presence from behind the windows of the Hungarian Pastry Shop, or while blearily stumbling back from 1020. Thankfully, a January snowstorm saw the arrival of a couple of good reasons to finally venture inside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine: two phoenixes weighing nearly twelve tons each, the project of conceptual artist Xu Bing. After the phoenixes had been trucked over to the church from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMoCA), workers from the artist’s studio and church staff pried open the cathedrals’ great bronze doors for the first time in a decade to place them inside. To set up the exhibition, an elaborate scaffolding was constructed in the nave, where the birds now hang suspended by a system of chains and pulleys. The industrial aspect of the installation is fitting, both to the history of the phoenix project and its resonant presence in St. John the Divine—the Anglican cathedral that, while billing itself as the world’s largest, is also poignantly, perpetually incomplete. Xu Bing, whose oeuvre deals primarily with the interplay between the literary and cultural traditions of China’s past and the transformative forces of globalization, conceived of the phoenixes in 2008. As part of a permanent installation for a new building in Beijing’s Central Business District, Xu was nominated to fill the proposed cage-shaped space with a pair of feathered figures from Chinese mythology: a male and a female phoenix, crafted meticulously from construction debris, the castaways of labor and capital. In a moment of poetic justice fitting to the work’s allegorical richness, work on the project stalled during a construction ban on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. Then the developers ultimately rejected the project, both for its political implications and rough-around-the-edges appearance. After a wealthy collector resurrected them, the phoenixes found their way to St. John the Divine, following a

May 2014

stint at an art fair outside of Beijing and their lengthy installation at MassMoCA. While the phoenixes are rooted in Chinese tradition, their ready-made appearance speaks to international contemporary art practices. At St. John the Divine, the industrial figures—whose exuberant plumage includes architectural girders, metal canisters, and bright plastic tubing—engage in a manylayered conversation with the ecclesiastical space. Examining these enigmatic accretions of carefully assembled materials, one is prompted to reflect on how we build our monuments in a hyper-industrialized age. These phoenixes that rose from rubble remind us of the wealth of potential in things so often left behind and casually disregarded. In the context of St. John the Divine, the cultural multiplicity of this work, enmeshed literally and figuratively in the traditions of east and west, reminds us of other kinds of accretion—for example, the construction of New York’s municipal narrative. Today, the looming borrowed figure of the gothic cathedral sits down the street from a neo-Renaissance Italian Academy, a stone’s throw from a reasonable impression of the Pantheon.w Phoenix: Xu Bing at the Cathedral runs until Spring 2015

Illustration by Angel Jiang

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IN LUMINE TUO VIDEBIMUS LUMEN

God’s Honest Truth A Blue and White reporter reflects on the Veritas Forum By Torsten Odland

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first encountered the Veritas Forum at Columbia during my freshman orientation in John Jay. While I was filling up a mug at the kitchenette two women in matching light blue t-shirts approached me asking something like, What do you believe is most important in this world? They both had black hair, one held a clipboard, and though my room was only a few feet away they’d cheerfully boxed me out, so I thought about it for a while. And I tried to come up with something that wasn’t a joke. (I have no idea what I said.) After the leader of the pair recorded my answer on her clipboard, she paused for a second, considering me. “You wouldn’t be a huge fan of David Foster Wallace, would you?” I gaped. At the time that’s what I was, first and foremost. We chatted about Infinite Jest and how beautifully therapeutic it is. Before they ran off looking for another unexpecting friend, they gave me the details regarding their weekly meetings. The whole exchange was fun in an abstract way, few people had ever asked me a “philosophy” question with such candor before. As you may have surmised, I like candor and philosophy. Veritas Forum hosts weekly discussions in the freshman dorms. It’s not, as I had thought, a philosophy club. The first hint came at our first meeting, when the two blue-shirted men leading things on my floor started by calling on everyone to introduce themselves and their “worldview.” The worldview of the discussion leaders: Christian. In the next two meetings I developed the eerie sense I was being manipulated. The topics for each session weren’t things I found terribly important: the compatibility of science and religion; debates about the existence of God. One night I went to the group’s national website and, in the “About” section, there it was: “We host university events that engage students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life.” Secret…evangelism? I reeled, probably whispering to myself. This whole time we’d been circling around Jesus? I never went to another discussion,

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until I began research for this article. Luke Foster, CC ’15, current president of Veritas, tells me that he’s heard similar stories before. I was being closed-minded, prejudicial maybe, but not without principle. The quote above marks an important ambivalence in Veritas’ project: searching for answers to our fundamental questions on the one hand, and discussing the certainty of Christ’s relevance to human existence on the other. It struck me as either wrongheaded or insincere to maintain that a discussion group can accomplish both in the same way. For Veritas Forum the unifying thread is a belief that, in both endeavors, the goal is to uncover true answers to what Foster calls the “perennial questions”. “Part of why we do what we do,” Luke explains, “is to invite people into rigorous, authentic dialogue with the real hope of finding truth…[Our approach starts with the assumption that] the truth is worth seeking after, because there really might be an answer.” Veritas means truth in Latin. The reasoning behind my indignance was this: in a debate (or investigative discussion, what-haveyou) where the truth of the matter is supposed to be a basis for agreement, truth needs to be something to which each party is willing to yield. That’s if the idea is supposed to have any significance. If we say that there’s no objective fact of the matter, or that we each can be beholden to contrary truths, this amounts to saying that “truth” is not what really we’re getting at. The truth that Veritas pursues is incontrovertibly truth in Christ, and they couldn’t change that without changing their purpose. No Veritas Forum will ever end with a mass conversion to naturalistic hedonism. So the grounds of the conversation we’d been having in our meetings struck me as a little unfair. My experience figuring out what’s good and what’s bad, trying to understand other people, had (and has) been entirely godless, and though I liked pursuing the questions Veritas posed, I felt it wouldn’t get me any further to talk with someone who can’t but insist that I’ll find the answer in the Gospels. It’s not a conversation I was interested in having. (Even if I

The Blue and White

IN LUMINE TUO VIDEBIMUS LUMEN was thick-headed, the problem of communication here goes deep; in a basic way this is the issue I still have with all religions.) I wondered how they’d tricked me into it. In the years since, I’ve realized I blinded myself to two things about Veritas. First of all, there’s no guile in anything they do. Every member I’ve ever sustained a conversation with has been perfectly frank about their faith and its importance to all aspects of their life. And Foster sees this as one of the strengths of Veritas’ approach. In our conversation, Luke suggests to me that the view-from-nowhere model of discussion, something like what I sketched above, “can stifle dialogue rather than promote it.” “The fact is, everyone comes from some perspective, everyone has a worldview or, at least, deeply rooted assumptions.” Luke supposes, “In having this kind of dialogue we think it’s most honest and authentic to say, ‘Ok, we’re coming from where we’re coming from…But we think these are things everyone can care about, from their different perspectives.’” Secondly: at Columbia, Veritas Forum emphasizes the “discussion” aspect of their mission more than the Jesus side. Their events in the past semester included a panel on how to sustain meaningful friendships in the professional world. And an open discussion about romantic relationships at Columbia. At its best, Veritas focuses on topics that have a universal point of entry. And though Foster isn’t shy about the group’s commitment to a Christian concept of truth, this doesn’t stop them from being perfectly pluralist in the conversations they arrange. “We have a long track-record of working with the Humanist Society, the Muslim Students Association, Columbia-Barnard Hillel, other groups.” Secret evangelism it is not. At one of the discussions I attended, a group of twelve or so sat around in the lounge of John Jay 10 nibbling on cake. After two Veritas members gave a small exposition, we stumbled into a conversation about what Islam means. Unfortunately none of us were Muslim. There was some wonkiness—for one, Christianity was (apologetically) used as the standard of comparison, and the discussion often took the form: “My impression of Islamic practice is: ____.”

May 2014

Still, all sorts of philosophies popped up, including a seminar-room atheist who detained us for quite a while: “Why would an omnipotent being demand worship? You’d think it wouldn’t have those insecurities!” I was surprised to see so many students there this close to the end of the year. Though the proceedings weren’t exactly scholarly, the group had come together to discuss world religions for the fun of it. While others of us were playing guitar or writing cover letters, they were plumbing, as best they could, some spiritual depths. Who are they? I wondered. The conversation I ended when I stopped going to Veritas is not something most of my friends are interested in having. At Columbia, I’ve encountered, broadly, two approaches to the “perennial” questions: those who believe that moral questions are ultimately social theoretical, and those who prefer to see the ridiculous in everything and laugh. Neither approach lends itself to inclusive, productive dialogue. When I closed the door on Veritas it was because I thought I couldn’t have a real conversation with them. I didn’t realize it would be harder with almost anyone. In our talk, Foster describes “the assumption of irrelevance” as perhaps the biggest barrier to understanding between those with and those without faith. I think this assumption, more than any philosophical reason, is why I stopped going to Veritas. When I discovered their Christian affiliation, I decided I couldn’t learn anything from them, which is far more vile than any trickery I suspected on their part. Before I leave his suite, Luke invites me to call on him again. “You know this is the sort of thing I love to talk about.”w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

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V E R I LY V E R I TA S

TOLD BETWEEN PUFFS

V

In which our hero wakes up

erily Veritas long ago vowed allegiance to his editors at The Blue and White, and he hopes that they understand the sincerity of his pledge. He hopes they would not frown too much upon his reading latest and last issue of The Eye. Its theme is “morning.” VV thinks the morning most important. It is VV’s wont to hum while he takes his morning constitutional. He fancies himself a musician of the nose. That is, he enjoys demonstrating his Apollonian role as the source of song–pinch the nostrils and nothing comes out. He picked up the habit back in his grammar school days when he trotted about in itchy little Lord Fauntleroy suits. For an hour each day, the schoolmaster led exercises in elocution. Stand, breathe, enunciate. The art has long been lost to VV who now only rasps, but he still recalls the mustachioed short man’s exhortations to hum—to draw the air in through the nose. In these May months, the warmer weather compels VV to rise early and the morning’s step step commences before the sun rises. Verily no longer considers where he boards information that concerns his dear readers (as last time he supplied a his address, his mailbox flooded with requests to support the American Malacological Association) or else he should readily direct them to the fine breakfast carriage that arrives in front of his home. There he partakes of tea, and heads towards Broadway. VV never plans his morning route. That would be sacrilege. To constrain the legs at such an early hour is to fetter the mind as well. He laments the tendency that prevails among his fellow undergraduates to tack all activity to a design. Today, no one simply visits the Metropolitan Museum to take in

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the art. They must go to see the special exhibition of lost photos of Translichtenstein before the bombings or see a Vermeer. It is the same with the walk. One cannot simply walk, one must walk to. VV supposes that they forget that time waits for man. He for one remains on the pre-medical track, although he has not stepped foot in Havemeyer Hall since ’98. VV presently finds himself at the Broadway gates. He shuff les along College Walk, across Amsterdam. Eastward ho! He strolls past the President’s Mansion and he composes a personal memorandum to remind himself to enquire later about vacancies—he hears the big man now retires to a townhouse in the ritzier quarters, leaving the big house presumably open to the discrete squatter. Now VV espies and approaches the bronze likeness of Carl Schurz. A portrait of the statesman hangs somewhere in VV’s apartments, although he cannot discern him from the rest of the bearded and pince-nezed gentlemen whose visages he collects for inspiration. VV has been humming his scales, but now he attempts a refrain from Götterdämmerung. He is well aware that Schurz, as any good student of nineteenth century politicians would know, took a liking to Wagner in his later years. But now he must resume his puffings and take in the view. For he has come in time to see the sun rise over the Morningside. VV is quick to remind anyone who will listen to remember that the Columbian quarter receives its name not from some long gone Indian nation but from nature herself, which at the morn illuminates the eastern aspect of the acropolis. The morning-side! He delights in the kick—the euphoria of the “aha!” Alas, he is late for his 8:40 soccer class.w

The Blue and White

THE MESSENGER

The Museum Around the Corner A Blue and White reporter visits the Roerich Museum By Will Holt

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espite its proximity to Columbia, the University acts as though Nicholas Roerich Museum doesn’t exist. The museum—housed in an elegant brownstone on West 107th Street—is not mentioned on the University website’s list of neighborhood attractions. Nor does it appear on Professor Andrew Dolkart’s self-guided walking tour of Morningside Heights. Nevertheless, the ten-minute stroll down Riverside Drive is well worth taking. (Moreover, admission to the Roerich Museum is free.) The museum’s director, Daniel Entin, contacted Columbia several years ago in an attempt to raise awareness among students, only to be rebuffed. “They told me, ‘Oh, no, you’re too far south,’” Entin said. “We don’t promote anything below 110th.’” The museum holds approximately 200 works of art, nearly every one of them by Roerich, a Russianborn painter who worked in the first half of the twentieth century and cultivated the reputation of a sage. The number of careers he adopted and continents he traversed would seem astounding for any single person. Known primarily as an artist, Roerich’s contributions range from archaeology to literature to peacemaking among other far-flung fields of interest. He designed the stage and costumes for the debut production of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Roerich was born in late-19th century St. Petersburg, though his travels brought him to landscapes as disparate as New York City and the Himalayas. It was in the latter destination that he was able to realize his vision most completely. Having moved his family to India’s Kullu Valley in 1928, the mountains became his muse.

May 2014

Entin, who has spent about 30 years with the museum, insists that the collection holds a peculiar sort of magic. “I walked in the front door one day and got ensnared,” he told me. “It’s about the interrelatedness of things, the interdependence of things. So you might say this is a place for idealists.” Entin’s initial astonishment is understandable given the breadth and diversity of the collection, which includes a number of icons and literary texts. The common thread running through all of Roerich’s work appears to be a kind of universalist spirituality, a fundamental belief in the unity of all faiths—”New Age” before New Age. “He promoted the unity of all religions,” said Entin. “The fundamental concepts of all religions are the same [for Roerich]—it’s just the words that are different.” Many of the paintings contained within the Roerich museum are done in luminous tempera on textured canvas. Even his landscapes appear to humming with an ethereal energy. “Everything is alive in Roerich’s work,” Entin observed. “He tried to show that in his paintings. In his mountains, the rocks are alive.” Other works portray the founding moments of the world’s great religions. One painting shows Moses bent over flat rock, rather suggestively carving out the Ten Commandments. Another depicts the prophet Muhammad being visited by the angel Gabriel. “I’m worried that someday somebody’s going to walk in here and drive a knife through it,” said Entin, only half joking. The museum also holds regular poetry readings and musical performances. “We hold these concerts in furtherance of Roerich’s idea to help the creative poet,” said Entin. “There’s this notion that’s hard to understand for people these days that beauty can save the world.” When I asked Entin what effect he hoped the museum would have on its visitors, he paused for a moment and smiled. “That every once in a while someone will walk in the front door and burst into tears,” he said. “That’s what I want.”w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

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REQUIRED READING

Comparing Notes The differences between Lit Hum and Yale’s Directed Studies By Channing Prend

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liad, Odyssey, Oresteia, Medea, Aeneid. Sound familiar? These are some of the texts taught in the Literature class in Yale’s Directed Studies program (DS). Founded in 1946, DS is a selective humanities program that enlists freshman in three yearlong courses: Literature, Philosophy, and Historical and Political Thought. This “broad-ranging basis in classical works” is not so different from the intellectual foundation promised by Columbia Admissions’ literature. Unsurprisingly, Yale’s program and Columbia’s Core have a lot in common. In particular, the Literature class has a nearly identical reading list to Literature Humanities. “There can only be so much variance to the Western Canon,” Yale professor Joshua Billings noted. Given the parallel syllabi, there would seem to be a natural affinity between the two programs. “I have a feeling things aren’t that different in Morningside Heights and New Haven,” Yale professor Timothy Robinson remarked. Robinson may be giving too much credit to the Columbia student body, however. Although the curricula may be similar, entirely separate student

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cultures surround the two courses. For the 125 students in DS, taking the class is a privilege. For most at Columbia, it’s just a requirement. The application for Yale’s program requires students to submit an essay and personal statement. According to Howard Bloch, the Director of DS, about 50 percent of applicants are accepted. He cited commitment to the program as one of the primary traits they look for among their strongest candidates. Emma Clarkson, Yale ’17, said that most students in the program are motivated to apply by a genuine desire to engage with the texts. “I decided to do DS because I looked at the syllabus and I wanted to read all of the books,” she added. Columbia’s Core is the opposite of exclusive; people come to Columbia with all sorts of goals and academic interests, and for many Lit Hum amounts to merely a stipulation of their acceptance. Jonathan Sun, CC ’17, a prospective Physics and Computer Science major, admitted that he wasn’t even aware of Lit Hum while applying. “When I saw the list of books after being accepted, my first thought was that it looked like a lot of reading.” There is a disparity in the level of enthusiasm for Lit Hum harbored by incoming students. Lit Hum preceptor Olivia Moy put it politely, calling the spread of students “a mixed bag.” Some, like Jennifer Yu, CC ’17, said they were “really excited to take the class.” While others such as Richard*, CC ’17, complained, “I’m just trying to make it through.” Whereas in my Lit Hum class, only three students said they would have independently chosen to take the course, everyone opts in to DS. This key difference has a major effect on the classroom environment. Because the program is self-selecting, it seems that our Yale counterparts are more motivated to read the texts. “How much you can get out of DS is really limited by how much you put in,” Joyce Guo, Yale ’17, said. “I think most people do the readings, or at least as much of them as they can.” Some Columbians even pride themselves on reading as little of the texts as possible. Lit Hum Chair Christia Mercer noted that a culture has devel-

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REQUIRED READING oped around evading the readings. “There’s a tradition of older students telling freshman that they don’t have to read anything,” she said. This “tradition” is exemplified by Benjamin, CC ’17, who boasted that he hasn’t touched a single book for the whole year. “How much money can you get if you sell them back to the bookstore?” he asked. “They’re basically brand new, and I haven’t written in them or anything.” Teachers also noticed the discrepancy in class preparation between students at the two institutions. Bloch, who is currently teaching a section of the Literature course at Yale, said his impression is that most students do all the readings. Lit Hum professors are either more jaded, or more pragmatic. “You’d have to been an idiot to assume everybody’s doing all of them,” Columbia professor Michael Rosenthal said. So should Lit Hum be voluntary? Billings said that because of the intensity of DS classes, it makes sense for them to be optional. “There are obviously benefits of having a range of perspectives,” he mentioned, “but I think the quality of discussions would suffer.” And Billings is right; the quality of the discussions does suffer. “I’m very aware that people aren’t doing the readings,” Jennifer Yu, CC ’17, lamented. “It just seems like they don’t care at all, which is sad.” Or, as Benjamin said more bluntly, “A few people are laying shit down and the rest of us are just sitting by like, ‘Fuck this.’” The reality is that out of 22 students in a Lit Hum class, you’re never going to get 22 people who do all readings and are passionate about the texts. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. No one ever claimed that Lit Hum was a high-level literature class. Moy called it a “crash course to run and bump into as many moral universes as you can.” The purpose of Lit Hum is precisely to expose these texts to the people who aren’t thrilled to be reading them. The problem with a self-selecting curriculum like DS is that people choose what they know, when really—at the risk of sounding like a Columbia brochure—everyone can benefit from taking a class like Lit Hum. As Moy pointed out, “There’s a moral undercurrent to the course that doesn’t just apply to the bookish student.” Lit Hum classes benefit from a range of perspectives precisely because of the fact that many students aren’t thrilled to be taking it. Mercer noted that there’s a lot to learn from the students who aren’t

May 2014

necessarily the “eager beavers.” She pointed out that one of the biggest challenges about teaching Lit Hum is figuring out how to engage people who don’t like literature. “But even if the science nerd only reads half of the assigned books, that’s still more than they would be introduced to at other institutions of this sort.” The value of our educational model doesn’t necessarily change the fact that DS students seem more satisfied than Columbians. Guo said she was happy with her decision to do DS. “It was very challenging but it’s been intellectually rewarding and I’ve discovered some interests that I want to pursue next year,” she stated. Columbia freshmen are decidedly less enthusiastic about their Lit Hum experience. “I’m just relieved that its almost over,” Richard sighed. Perhaps that’s because it takes time to realize the benefits of the course. “Obviously you can’t deeply grasp everything from Homer up to Virginia Woolf in one year,” Luke Foster, CC ’15, said. “But what you can internalize is the knowledge that there’s so much more out there than you ever realized.” Rosenthal noted that alumni are some of the staunchest defenders of Lit Hum. “I think if you left it up to the faculty it very well might be gone,” he mused. “Who knows, maybe if President Bollinger could wave his magic wand, it would all go away and we’d have a global something or other.” Lit Hum is no doubt a universally shared, if oft-maligned, experience at Columbia. As Rosenthal noted, “The nice thing about talking to Columbia alumni is that they’ve all forgotten the same books.” But maybe we can try to do a few more of the readings.w *The person quoted sought to remain anonymous and the name has been changed

Illustrations by Rachel Agins

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T H E T R AV E L D E S K

Many of us Columbians are Morningside shut-ins. For too long have we heard the gripe, “I haven’t left the neighborhood in a month.” Fortunately The Blue and White’s crack team at The Travel Desk is not afraid to get on the subway. Here are our most recent adventures.

She Has a Great Personality By Luca Marzorati

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oughly 1.6 miles southwest of Battery Park stands Liberty Enlightening the World, a colossal French sculpture of a Roman goddess that has come to symbolize America, or freedom, or something. I had always viewed Lady Liberty (and the legions of tourists who visit her) with the condescension of a New Yorker. Go to the Met if you want to look at things, I’d tell out-oftown friends, and go to Jackson Heights if you want a New York experience. You’ll get a better view of the statue from a postcard. Putting aside my misgivings, I reserved a ticket at the behest of my editors. My first glimpse of Lady Liberty is from Bowling Green. It is a cool April day. The narrow streets and stone buildings open up to the water, and the relentless wind reminds locals and tourists alike that New York is a port city. Flooding from Hurricane Sandy had closed Liberty Island for eight months. As I walk towards the water, hawkers pushing impossibly cheap all-access New York passes seem to take my quick walk and lack of New York paraphernalia to be the mark of a local and let me go by unmolested. Having already purchased a ferry ticket, I avoid the long line that stretches around Castle Clinton. A

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thick woman with a Midwestern accent chastises her companion: “We’re going to have to stand around in the cold for three hours no matter what we do.” Brown signs boldly advertise the “airport-style security.” A dreadlocked man with a ukulele comes up with a ditty customized to the hometown of each waiting tourist. (“Folks came from Berlin/ The sights, they’re taking them in…”) I tell him that I’m from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. He scowls and continues down the line. I board the boat to Liberty Island just before noon. Below decks, the boat smells like hot dogs. Passengers swarm around the concession stand, which sells everything from pewter spoons to two-gigabyte memory cards. The biting wind keeps most travelers inside. On the 15-minute trip over, a voice on the public address system proclaims that the Statue of Liberty stands for “freedom, opportunity, security, and our future.” The first two seem to be the most common justifications, the last two perhaps holdovers from the Bush administration. I soon realize the main reason people come to the Statue of Liberty: photo-ops. From the time the boat leaves Lower Manhattan, to its arrival at Liberty Island, passengers photograph everything. It is as if, one day, someone would dispute that they had

Illustration by Zane Bhansali

The Blue and White

T H E T R AV E L D E S K coughed up $20 and taken a boat to visit a massive copper statue. Tourists take photos of everything in sight: the Manhattan skyline, the Jersey City skyline, Staten Island, each other, each other taking photos, seagulls, other boats, other islands, and, most of all, the statue itself. The advent of the selfie has only exacerbated the problem. European teenagers jostle with one another to mug at the camera with the Lady Liberty’s face seemingly next to theirs. On the island, there is a pervasive sense of numbness and disappointment. It is surprisingly quiet. Overhead, helicopters speck the sky, looking like perforations in a giant blue balloon. I soon stand in front of the statue itself, alarmed by its bulging

arms. Even the details learned in middle-school history class are hard to discern: the broken chain is cut off from my sight lines, and the inscription on the tablet faces away from me. I overhear a man with a German accent intone, “Shall we go inside? There’s nothing left to look at—it’s a big statue.” I was under the impression that the statue looked out over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the entrance to New York Harbor, where thousands of immigrants first glimpsed a new land. I follow her gaze: in fact, Lady Liberty’s gaze is pointed toward a wastewater treatment plant in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The wind picks up, and I join the huddled masses heading home.w

Nightrider

T

By Alexander Pines

here’s barely room on the Q train as I slip through the closing doors and into the crush of people at Times Square. A woman’s oversized fanny pack presses into the small of my back and there is what seems to be a very large and very confused family shouting about the “fackin’ line” to get into their hotel. A few stops later, as the train gasps out of the tunnel and over the Manhattan Bridge, my car has mostly cleared out. I slide onto one of the benches and stare out the window because no one’s there to see me touristing. When I get off around midnight at the last stop, Coney Island, I am the only passenger left. The air is noticeably cooler this close to the ocean, although the groaning clank of the subway obscures the sound of any waves. I step out of the D/F/N/Q station onto the breezily named Surf Avenue. Coney Island does not just greet its visitors; it assaults them with neon. The biggest welcome sign is courtesy of Thor Equities, a global real estate firm that owns much of the surrounding property. They reportedly wanted to build a Vegas-style hotel on the site back in 2005. Thus far, they’ve built a sign—an aggressively tacky sign, branded with logos and too many fonts, leering over a violently cheerful

May 2014

candy store. They’ve also hung an “Arcade” sign over a vacant building that is not, in fact, an arcade. So much for glamor. At night, touristy New York is predictably empty, and Coney Island is no exception. While locals still staff Nathan’s Famous, McDonald’s, Subway, and Dunkin’ Donuts, the rows of fluorescent-lit tables look bloated and unnecessary at this hour. I’m so unnerved by the absence of human voices that I pull out my phone and key up Beyoncé’s “XO” to drown out the silence. There are no gated fences between me and the amusement park itself, so I wander toward the ocean, quickly realizing that the darkened silhouettes of rides that look cheerful by day are absolutely fucking terrifying without the smell of cotton candy as a distraction. What’s worse is that most of them feature

Illustration by Alexander Pines

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T H E T R AV E L D E S K the same Joker-esque face, grinning with bugged-out eyes ten feet above the ground. I turn my music up. The park is dismally industrial at this hour, like a post-apocalyptic art house film about the importance of valuing the physical, the tangible, over the digital. The light pollution casts everything in a dull sepia. I consider Instagramming the Ferris Wheel and realize that no one would really care. I step onto the boardwalk, which feels laminated and artificial under my Docs. Beyond the boardwalk and a short fence is a thin strip of beach. I’ve only been to the ocean once before, when I was a kid visiting relatives in California. The Pacific felt terrifyingly vast - I found myself afraid to go beyond the thick ropes of seaweed, and ended up drawing in the wet sand with a stick. This is not the case at Coney Island. Like everything else in the city, the Atlantic feels constrained, its edges lapping at Jersey and the

other parts of Brooklyn visible in the distance. I wonder if I should be having a Big Philosophical Moment and existentially ponder emptiness and the state of modern culture or something, Camus-style, but mostly all this water makes me feel like I need to pee. Most of the fences and gates I pass are locked. I see a parked ambulance with its lights on and “Drunk In Love” coming from a speaker inside and decide not to get too close. Maybe someone will be having breastases for breakfast in the morning. There’s a slightly obscured Port-A-Potty, but as soon as I get my zipper down I hear something move and I run away. More than a little cold and with a dying phone, I walk back to the train and head back to campus. I’m a little slow crossing 114th and a cabbie pauses long enough to scream, “Move your fucking ass!” as he nearly clips my bag. It’s good to be home.w

SHUFFLEBOARDT

“H

By Hallie Nell Swanson

ey guys! Who wants to come to a shuffleboard bar in Brooklyn tonight?” I was vaguely offended by how hard a sell this was, but ended up mustering a group of friends for two excursions to the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club in Carroll Gardens. The first time, I got there on a Friday 20 minutes before close; the second time, around 11:30pm on a Thursday. The best nights are apparently Thursdays, and Wednesdays for bingo. Mondays and Tuesdays are “club nights” for the shuffleboard league, whose leaderboard adorns one of the walls. I logged my first shuffleboard experience in a series of iPhone notes. “Literally a Wes Anderson movie,” says the first. The space is huge and reminiscent of a bowling alley, with 10 shuffleboard courts and two bars. The color scheme is a pleasing turquoise, the bathroom has flamingo wallpaper, there are a bunch of records going and they’re all playing groovy music. It’s very fun, very Instagrammable.

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You can sit at the bar without getting a court, and plenty do: they all seem to know the bartenders. “Surly Hawaiian-shirted bearded man,” says my iPhone note of one. The cocktails come in Mason jars, are vaguely shuffleboard themed, and are very good. “Ordered Earl Ball...its like earl hall get it” says one note. There is a note of heady escapism in being so far from Columbia, apparently in technicolor 1950s Florida. This is only enhanced after drinking several Shuffleboard Bobs and leaving the bar. The nearest buildings to Royal Palms are a bar, something my phone calls a “legitimate non-ironic Super 8 motel” (where we talk to a character the notes identify as “very mildly attractive Buster from Vancouver who went to 10 bars tonight”) and a dog hotel. The last note reads: “Let’s never go back to CU let’s stay forever there’s a doggy day care they take humans?” Royal Palms had its “grand opening” two months ago. Most of the staff, who all seem to have

The Blue and White

T H E T R AV E L D E S K developed a keen appreciation of the game, have been here since then. “WOAH,” says one bearded, Hawaiian shirt-clad employee upon witnessing my shot when I visit a second time. “The way that biscuit just kissed off the other one and landed in the zone...keep that up.” “It was an accident!” I splutter for some reason. Shuffleboard is perhaps the only sport—game?—where physical strength is a disadvantage. Hit the biscuit with a reasonable amount of force, and you’ll find yourself with no points, or a pathetically comic negative 10. “You want to glide it,” our appointed shuffleboard tutor advised us, with a sort of graceful Olympic curling motion. Fast-paced and adrenaline fueled it is not. One can see how this is a fun activity for senior citizens, and drunk people. But even if its languid pace is thus suited to the cruise ship deck and the old people’s home, shuffleboard can also turn you into a monster. In this respect, it is arguably also suited to the old and inebriated. “FUCK YOU,” you will find yourself shouting as the biscuit you artfully slotted in to the 8-point zone is violently displaced by your adversary. My opponent developed something of a signature move, sending biscuits flying off the court—including

his own—in a sort of kamikaze attack. The obscenityridden victory cries reverberated over the ambient jazz. One of the more mystifying things about Royal Palms (and there are several) is its attempt to infuse its appropriation of the retirement-home lifestyle with a nostalgic glamor. Everything looks like those Mad Men episodes that are set somewhere sunny. There’s an entire huge back wall of beach canopies turned bar booths, and every word is spelled out in a font you might find on an old postcard from the Sunshine State. It’s suggestive of some parallel universe where the ancient, white-sneaker clad shuffleboard patrons of today were once Miami groovers, shufflin’ some board with a cocktail in one hand and a flamingo bobbing in the background. Could it be true? At any rate, it’s a sunnier vision than the bleak irony I might have expected from the phrase “shuffleboard bar in Brooklyn,” ironic youngsters of today dancing to Shake Your Tail Feather on the shuffleboarders’ impending graves. “What was this space before it was a shuffleboard club?” I ask the hostess. “I think it was a part of the casket company next door,” she says.w

Sponsored in part by the Arts Initiative at Columbia University. This funding is made possible through a generous gift from The Gatsby Charitable Foundation. May 2014

Illustration by Angel Jiang

23

COOL NERDS

Extracurricular Activities Politics professors outside the gates By Somer Omar

I

n the middle of our conversation, Peter Clement’s phone rang and he asked if I could wait outside. As I sat just two and a half feet away from his shut office door, I could essentially hear the entire conversation that he perhaps tried to prevent me from hearing. Something about the Russians telling the Americans to bring it on. In that moment, I wondered who was the better intelligence gatherer. Peter Clement is a Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs at SIPA. He is on what can best be described as a “sabbatical” from his eight year position as Deputy Director for Intelligence for Analytic Programs at the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. Launched in 1985, the Officer in Residence (OIR) program at the CIA pays an officer, like Clement, to take up a research or teaching post at an academic institution to strengthen ties between the academic and policymaking communities. A page on the CIA website devoted to outlining the history of the OIR program, under the subheading of “The Importance of Not Being ‘Spooky,’” emphasizes that the most valuable exchanges between an officer and the resident institution are when the officer’s position is openly acknowledged. And in fact, Clement seemed genial and decidedly un-spooky. I first met Clement while speaking with Professor Austin Long, another SIPA professor with roots in the policy jungle. Long previously worked at the RAND Corporation, and, according to the SIPA website “served in Iraq as an analyst and advisor to the Multinational Force Iraq and the U.S. military.” Long and Clement are two policy denizens tak-

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ing up residence in an academic institution, and I couldn’t help but wonder if an opposite trajectory was possible, where a professor involves him or herself in the policymaking community. Long seemed hesitant to fully commit to that idea. I asked why he thought Political Science professors didn’t more actively involve themselves in policymaking decisions. He plainly stated that, rather than devote themselves to policymaking, “the goal of every professor is to get tenure.” And after tenure, a professor’s standing depends, almost exclusively, on their academic publications. My back was to his office door and I saw his eyes dart right before he spiritedly pointed at someone behind me, seeking affirmation. He grinned: “Right?” The stern faced, rather beefy, former military advisor relaxed into a more playful disposition. I turned to meet Peter Clement, bespectacled and smiling. He had wandered into Long’s office to ask about an administrative task and ended up speaking with us more extensively about why professors weren’t always best suited to contribute to policy making. He and Long insisted, “there’s just not enough time.” Their point was that academics seem to prefer to gestate and mull over a topic while policymakers have to respond to more time sensitive tasks. And while the policy wonk duo may be right in assessing how Political Science professors generally work, Columbia professors are something of an anomaly. Just within the surrounding office space of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, there were several Political Science department professors with ties to the policymaking community. A 1951 New York Times article noted that “In a lecture in March, 1950, the general [Eisenhower] expressed hope of founding the institute ‘to study war as a tragic social phenomenon.’” Former President of Columbia and the U.S., Eisenhower established the institute intending to promote research that would help the world avoid war. This seems more tenable if and when professors are engaged in policymaking. Professor Robert Jervis, a prolific academic writer and very well known political scientist with

Illustration by Julia Jarrett

The Blue and White

COOL NERDS experience working in the security policy community, claims that “Research at Saltzman and other institutes has contributed to both the public dialogue and to the ways in which many policy-makers see the world [...] I think we have helped.” Jervis is not alone in this belief. Professor Jack Snyder’s office is directly across from Clement’s at the Saltzman Institute. When I approached Snyder for a meeting, he said that we’d have to postpone it until after he returned from Washington D.C. ; he was invited to advise a group of policymakers on security policy. And while I didn’t cull much detail about the provisions of the meeting, Snyder noted that it is fairly common for Columbia professors to be invited to advise on issues in the capitol. I asked him what he thought of Nicholas Kristof’s then recent NYT op-ed titled “Professors, We Need You!” where he laments that “Some of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don’t matter in today’s great debates.” Snyder insisted that, in the fact, the opposite is true. Academic writing is easily accessible, but people “just don’t read it.” Professor Richard Betts is the current director of the Saltzman Institute and throughout our exchange, he seemed at the very least tickled by the fact that I was asking why more professors don’t shape policy. With a slight smile, and referring to policymakers, he noted, “you just hope they read your stuff,” a somewhat deceiving statement given that Betts is fairly well known in the security committee and has previously served on advisory panels. Betts clarifies that he doesn’t think there’s “active hostility” between academic political science and the policymaking community but that the academic “discipline has become more indifferent.” There is little academic glory for a professor who is involved in policymaking. To compare, he quips: “[Now,] Kissinger and Brzezinski would not get much credit.” In 2003, more than two dozen professors signed a petition that was placed as an advertisement in the NYT titled “War With Iraq is Not in America’s National Interest.” The ad stipulated that the Middle East foray was not sufficiently supported

by evidence and would be an ill-advised move. Of the thirty three professors, four were from Columbia, the most professors from a single university on a roster that included those from Stanford, Harvard and the University of Chicago. All four Columbia professors are housed in the Saltzman Institute. Snyder pointed to that effort as evidence of how publically engaged Columbia Political Science professors are but tartly noted that, clearly, “no one listened.” Addressing the curious relationship between academic political science professors and their policymaking counterparts, Professor Page Fortna, Chair of the Political Science department and also a member of the Saltzman Institute, observed that “There’s always been a bit of a divide in policy work and academic work in political science and a little bit of kind of mutual snobbery [...] that’s been less true here than at other institutions I’ve been at. Of the other top ten political science departments, I don’t know of one that has as close a connection with the policy school. [Partly] because were all just here in the same building.” But what specifically compels Columbia professors to be more inclined towards policy related work? Surely physical proximity was not the whole story. Fortna claimed that “there’s no material incentive, there’s not a professional incentive to do it but there is a, I don’t know what the, some sort of non material….” I tested the ideological waters. “Do you mean a kind of moral imperative?” “Yeah. Sometimes there’s a little bit more ego tied into that. It’s wanting to change the world both to make the world better but also to be somebody who changed the world.” Fortna herself was drafted to meet with a Colombian negotiator who sought her advice about peacekeeping, the focus of much of her research. She advised them to consider the role that peacekeepers might play in safeguarding the country during its civil war. “They haven’t reached a peace deal yet […] If they end up with a peacekeeping mission will that be because I told them that? Who knows.”w

He plainly stated that rather than devote themselves to policymaking, “the goal of every professor is to get tenure.”

May 2014

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M easure

for

M easure

I. Revolution I begin to escape it— The turn of time no, But the compulsive counting of spokes January, February, March cease to order my mind like tire treads marking mud I begin to turn like the wheel I tentatively touch the axle Which is still In transit, even quiet transit Even so it moves— maybe forward

II. Motion A different feeling stirring I hear the planks creaking, adjusting to the humidity, Settling in for the long voyage My breath comes slow and lapping and every hour I sigh once Like the bell that means the watch is changing And it is hard to believe my life is twisting into knots At the magnetism of some foreign body — Hannah Gorman

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The Blue and White

DUBOIS VERSUS DA GIRLS

From Ancient Grudge Editor Emeritus Anna Bahr considers the supposed friction between Barnard and Columbia.

By Anna Bahr

A

Columbia College student originally asked me to write this piece. He wanted someone across the street to explain what “Barnard double-consciousness” feels like. When pressed, he couldn’t exactly define it—neither could I—but we agreed there was something to be said about this perceived hostility toward those of us who carry a Barnard ID and graduate with two diplomas. A few notable stories recur in reference to “tension” between the schools. There was, of course, the dramatic online outrage following the announcement that President Obama chose to deliver a commencement address at the women’s college next door to his alma mater; Bwog commenters were, memorably, peeved at the undeserving “cum dumpsters” with their “home economics” degrees. There’s the widespread anxiety that Barnard students actively conceal their, assumedly embarrassing, identities, passing through a back door into the hallowed Ivy League: “She doesn’t even go here.” Pre-freshmen post nervous messages across the College Confidential message board dedicated exclusively to “The BarnardColumbia Relationship.” Let’s cool our jets: Barnard students are not treated as second class citizens. There are no West Side Story vibes. If there is a Barnard-particular “double consciousness,” I haven’t experienced it. Sure, when a friend asked if I’d like to join his table for senior dinner, forgetting that Barnard students are asked to enjoy a separate event, I felt a little deprived. I’ve had Columbia women in Barnard classes who made a point of emphasizing their college affiliation every week in seminar, which was tiresome: “Ohhhh right you guys haven’t read the Aeneid.” And when someone recently insinuated that my GPA benefits from the inherent inflation that accompanies a supposedly less rigorous Barnard curriculum, yeah, it ruffled my feathers.

May 2014

But, worst case, my Barnard ID actually serves as a convenient filter. It helps to sift out the rare, arrogant, self-conscious kid still intent on defining himself by his college acceptance letters. I’m thankful to have avoided people who use high school transcripts to calculate a person’s projected net worth. That sounds boring. Still, I must beg everyone to relax. I’d rather not fuel this mythic, unanimous hostility toward the Barnard student body. Why does CUMB (Columbia University Marching Band) open each Orgo Night with a joke about GS turning up their hearing aids and Barnard switching off their vibrators? Because those exaggerated caricatures are cutely pertinent to our community—not because they hold true some Barnard dialectic (women are sex-crazed or sex-less). That one-liner is funnier than generic Breakfast Club stereotypes of jocks and art freaks and nerds. People whine about our community lacking the “rah rah” togetherness Facebook tells us people feel at the Harvard-Yale game. What builds strong camaraderie better than rallying against a common opponent? And what Yalie genuinely carries a burning bitterness toward his Harvard counterpart after the game ends? Probably only that 50-something alum who wears navy blue every day, has the Yale “Y” tatted to his ankle, and only ever keeps bulldogs as pets. That is to say, if the theatrical Barnard-Columbia “animosity” serves some purpose in helping kids unite over sharing a college name, only the rare nut takes it seriously. If I could promise this to be the last article ever written about this tired, self-perpetuating, alleged antagonism, I would probably add a couple of sentences plainly stating that I don’t feel the need to validate my work or friendships by their proximity to the Ivy League. But I’m sure someone will do that for me next semester.w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

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NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND

Tunnel Vision The art beneath Riverside park By Michelle Cheripka

G

etting into the Freedom Tunnel isn’t exactly straightforward (or legal). Prospective visitors must first walk up the 125th Street off-ramp of the West Side Highway and duck through a hole in the chain link fence along the roadside. As I walked along the tracks, a train barreled by and I realized that the people on board were entirely unaware of me. The tunnel is a passage on their daily commute and not much else. The Amtrak rail lines that go through the Freedom Tunnel originate at Penn Station and run north under Riverside Park. The tunnel gets it name from prominent graffiti artist Freedom, the street name of Chris Pape. During the eighties, Pape established himself there, creating an impressive collection of artwork on the tunnels’ walls. Controversial New York “master builder” Robert Moses built the tunnel as part of his overall plan to expand freeways through the city in the 1930s. Freight trains traversed the tracks until 1980 when the tunnel slipped into disuse and the city’s homeless population moved in. They were expelled when Amtrak bought it in 1991. In 2000, British filmmaker Marc Singer released the documentary Dark Days, which follows the lives of the tunnel’s residents during the eighties and early nineties. There was no running water, but the Freedom Tunnel was a place where men played with their dogs, where pirated electricity meant being able to watch television without any bills, and a dartboard graced the wall next to a doorway. The tunnel is now mostly empty—a discarded plush chair here, a hard hat there. The painted walls,

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relics of the tunnel’s long history, are covered by ever-present and ever-changing art. Layers of graffiti lie on top of each other, old words peeking behind the edges of new images. Other artists aside, many of Freedom’s sketches remain untouched. A notable piece is “There’s No Way Like the American Way,” a satirized Coca-Cola advertisement that shows a series of archetypally American portraits on the rough walls of the tunnel. Many regard this as a tribute to the homeless that were evicted en masse by Amtrak. Pape attributes the respect for his work to its age rather than to the powerful images themselves. His understatement aside, his recreation of Goya’s “The Third of May.” “[It] was an important work that transcended my [other] graffiti. I’m proud of that one,” Pape told me. “Oddly enough, once you take away the homeless people the painting falls flat and is no longer art. It sort of hangs on the wall like a tapestry. But when the homeless lived there and tended a fire, it lit the entire thing up beautifully. Add to that the smells of the tunnel—diesel fumes, urine, smoke...it made the painting come to life.” Sometimes ambiance makes the art—remove the rats and acrid smell of urine and a piece becomes less resonant. That being said, people still come back. History in the tunnels nests on top of itself, decades of accumulated layers made of sketches and spray paint. In a city that typically re-paves its past to put up a highrise, it’s refreshing to see history made visible. Paradoxically, it’s in the dark of the Freedom Tunnel that this is brought to light.w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

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

Rugged Individual A conversation with Mike Murphy By Somer Omar Mike Murphy is currently a student in GS. He began his political career in 2004, when he ran for Texas’s 4th congressional district. Murphy received local media attention during the race when he recorded threatening phone calls from the National Republican Congressional Committee. Party leaders who sought to secure the seat for the incumbent, a friend of then President Bush, and deter Murphy from continuing his campaign. Murphy met with Managing Editor Somer Omar, CC ’16, to discuss his past and future political interests. The Blue and White: How many campaigns have you run? Mike Murphy: I ran for state representative for Texas legislature in 2010 primary and I had the closest election in the state of Texas. And the first one was in 2004. B&W: Can you explain how the shenanigans started in 2004? MM: Congressman Hall has been a Congressman [in Texas’s 4th district] since 1980, and he’d been a Democrat his entire life. He was 84 years old and we had just finished doing the redistricting in Texas where the lines were redrawn based on the census, and a bunch of gerrymandering took place, as it always does. So when he was reviewing his run for reelection in 2004, he saw that the voters and the district shifted from being a moderately Democratic district to being a pretty much Republican district. So then he made an announcement to the Dallas Morning News and said that he was going to switch parties and the reason he gave, he says, I would rather switch than fight, I promise I will not change any position or any ideas I’ve had in the past, I’m just switching to get reelected. He actually said these words.

May 2014

B&W: What did you do? MM: So my friend and I looked at some of the voting records and he was right that by the voting records he was the most conservative Democrat in the state of Texas. Taking that same voting record and flipping it over, you then become the most liberal Republican of the state of Texas. So we decided that I should run for the office. When I went to Austin to file to run, I received a phone call from the NRCC and they were encouraging me to get out of the race. I told them no. They called back, they tried to strong arm me. They brought in President Bush to campaign for [Hall] and got negative on me. B&W: Was this what you expected to happen during a political campaign? MM: I expected politics to be hardball. I was offered incentives to get out of the race. But that’s not who I am. I have strong convictions, strong beliefs. B&W: The NRCC mounted a huge fundraising campaign against you, and Citizens United and McCutcheon probably just made that easier to do in the future. What do you think of political fundraising? MM: If the founders were here today and they saw that they’re asking for millions and millions of dollars from citizens and corporations to fund campaigns, I think they would be aghast. Can you imagine George

Illustration by Zane Bhansali

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N Washington going to citizens and asking for money? B&W: I can’t. The central argument in those rulings was that money equals speech. Do you agree? MM: I don’t know how you separate that. It’s the way it is. [It has been suggested] that government pay for campaigns. I’m for less government in every facet. I’m more libertarian than anything. B&W: So if you run again, would you consider running as an independent? MM: God, no. From Texas, we had Ross Perot in 1992 that gave the election to Bill Clinton. B&W: And Nader to Bush in 2000. MM: You do a disservice to your party of interest. We’re a two-party system and always will be. B&W: Would you return to Texas to pursue your political career?

B&W: The 2004 run didn’t deter you from politics at all?

“I’m not your typical conservative or your typical Republican. I don’t see the party platform as a suicide pact.”

MM: I’m a fifth-generation Texan. I belong there. My family’s from there. I’m going to die there. I hope to re-engage Texas politics and one day I hope I can be Governor of Texas or somewhere in the executive leadership of Texas. B&W: Would you approach it differently from when you first ran for Congress? MM: My first foray into politics was a little bit naïve, and blinded by a little passion. There wasn’t a lot of inside knowledge on how things really worked and I’ve learned [from that for] when I run again. We had 10,000 votes cast in the primary. I lost by 300 votes against the most wealthy, longest serving state legislator. He spent $350,000; I spent $29,000, I think. I know how to run a grassroots organization, I went out and knocked on doors with my team. My opponent went to negative campaigning. I’ve never done it. I’ve never negative campaigned. B&W: Not even in the first race?

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MM: I won’t do it. I won’t negative campaign. I have a spotless record, I amazingly have no skeletons in my closet. I moved my house from one part of town to another and they painted me as a carpetbagger. I said I moved a mile across town. I’m a fifth generation Texan - really good chance I’m not a carpetbagger. That’s what you have against me? I moved across town. The second time I ran, [the opponent] who is from New York, he ran the carpetbagger thing on me. I said the definition of a carpetbagger is a Northerner who moves down to the South to campaign for office. I just said I’m going to state the facts here. He’s from New York. My mother, her father, his father are all from Texas. I think he should look up the word carpetbagger in the dictionary.

MM: No. The reality is Congress has an 11 percent approval rating in general and a 91 percent incumbency rate. Why would you work so hard to elect the people you don’t want in office? I’m working on a paper right now for another class that looks into that. B&W: What have you found so far? MM: I have some ideas in mind on how to fix them and fix those problems. B&W: Could you divulge a few of them? MM: Sure. These are ambitious but, the salary of Congress should be the median income of the United States. You want to increase the pay? Feel free to go out and find some way for the median income to go up for everybody. Second is health care. You either get on Medicare, Obamacare, or VA. That strips away some of the perks of being in Congress and makes them feel the pain of being in the United States. Those who understand and want to fix things will take those hits and say Wow, I need to stay here and fix these things. B&W: Have your views clashed with those of people

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N on campus in debates or class discussion? MM: This semester I’ve come out to my professors. I’ve come out as a conservative just to test the waters and see where it goes, and I’ve found that even the most liberal professors have been very welcoming. I’m not antagonistic about it. I’m not a name caller. I have these views here - they’re thought-out. It’s not because I’m from the South or I’m a fifth-generation Texan. There was one liberal student, and we got into a back-and-forth about how to solve the poverty problem. B&W: What were some of your ideas about how to solve it? MM: Well, it was a very high-level kind of thing. According to demographics, there’s still around 46 million people in the United States living under the poverty line. They’re saying should we spend more money on it? I threw out a proverb which—I don’t base things on the Bible, it makes sense—which is: if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, you teach a man to fish you feed him for life. My point is that education is clearly the silver bullet to every issue, including poverty. I find it odd that the politicians who want to extend the benefits are the same ones who want to allow twelve million undocumented workers into the country as citizens. We have a job shortage with 46 million people living in poverty who can’t find work. I’m not advocating we do this but if somehow we were able to say twelve million illegals were no longer in the equation, would that not be twelve million jobs available? That’s basic logic to me. I’ve got an idea to create 12 million more jobs in five minutes. B&W: You mentioned an interest in education before. What ideas do you have on that? MM: Education is a silver bullet. We have trouble teaching basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. In Texas they passed a law offering a religion elective. I had concerns about that. I said, okay, you want to teach, say, Christianity for example. Who’s going to teach it? Is it going to be a Catholic, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness? And won’t that be a problem for you? It has no business being there. B&W: What made you come to Columbia? It’s much more liberal and left-leaning than Texas.

May 2014

MM: [chuckles] Is it? I was in state politics for ten years in the reddest of red counties. There’s no place that’s more conservative. However, I’m not your typical conservative or your typical Republican. I don’t see the party platform as a suicide pact. I had been a successful corporate manager but kept running into the problem of not having a degree. I was tapped out at middle management. Then my wife said, why don’t you not try to find a job, why don’t you go to school? So I enrolled in a community college and in the course of a year got my associate degree. So then she said, why don’t you try applying to a real university now? So I was applying to universities and I was also reading The Audacity of Hope or Dreams of My Father, one of the two presidential biographies. And I was following, Obama went to this college, Occidental, then he transferred to Columbia, then he transferred to Harvard. So I started to thinking about it - why don’t I do that? Why don’t I follow the president’s footsteps and learn what he’s learned? B&W: What do you plan on doing after Columbia? MM: My plan is to get into Harvard Law just like the president to pursue his career path. Not the president’s, but to learn everything he’s learned. My dream would be to be Governor of Texas one day. B&W: What do you think of the current Governor of Texas? MM: I have campaigned for Governor Perry in 2010. The last senator before Obama to be president was Kennedy. I think people give senators too much credit for their experience. They’re not executive, they’re legislative. Everybody between Kennedy and Obama has been in the executive branch of government. I would argue with good evidence that [Obama] doesn’t lead in the classical executive sense of the word. Perry is arguably the most qualified person on paper to be president. He’s the longest sitting governor of a state in the United States right now. Texas is arguably the best economy in the nation right now. So you could say the governor of Texas is presiding over the best economy in the nation at a time of great recession, slow recovery. Texas politicians are not always known for being the most wordy or best conversationalists, but they are known for being effective and doing good jobs.w

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SKETCHBOOK

• • • • • • •

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

THE HUNGARIAN PASTRY SHOP 1030 Amsterdam Avenue

Monday-Friday 7:30am-11:30pm Saturday 8:30am-11:30pm Sunday 8:30-10:30pm 32

Sketchbook by Alexandra Warrick

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

May 2014

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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. Ode to Capitalism I raise my glass in praise to you Men of Industry, you Capricorns of division of labor you taskmasters of 9 to 5 banality you, who hold the Lockes to our chains forcing us into steel-machine manufactured matchboxes lined up like tinned sardines crooning for a Western dream a dream turned nightmare in agony for Fuck and Fulfillment I walk through the Center of the World and rather than seeing Lords of Nature I see Man and Woman bent over in supplication to false paper Gods with green leering faces teasing our Cock-Minds but never bringing us to Orgasm forever in a state of desire wasted on greed and reification Where’s the Supply for my philosophic Demand? Wasted potential drowned at the bottom of 4 dollar pints Cocaine Insufflation to keep momentum in a world mired in the Dark Ages of Commodity. Is not ignorance superior to this falsified lower-case existence? If so, I choose Romantic bliss.

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They were people who were suffering. We cannot condemn people who were living their lives in poverty. The victims’ professions or their acts cannot justify sexual harassment because the act itself is one that never should happen. Therefore, I support the chemical castration for sex offenders. e What did they want. They. These health advisors sweeping up from America and Europe telling everyone that meat, meat, was maybe not good for them. Now--pork, they could understand. But pork was also the kid’s favorite meat and Coop said once, in front of the whole damn family that if he ate meat again, boy, wouldn’t he like some hot roasted pork. e I think that Jared has superbly exemplified all the makings of an indelible mark awardee. Much like my Sheep Dog Herman, Jared leaves a long lasting impression wherever and on whomever he meets. I can still remember the day we met. What cologne! What personality! It was a bitingly cold January day. We both sat alongside one another in a poorly heated Lerner computer lab. I looked at Jared. Jared looked at me. Then I just knew. Call it an epiphany. Jared deserved the indelible mark award. It was as if the stars has aligned. You see, many of the values listed as qualifications are commonplace. But to embody them all and so superbly defies nature. Jared is not some dime a dozen Jewish kid from an upper middle class New Jersey suburb. He is a special Jewish kid from an upper middle class New Jersey suburb.w

The Blue and White

CAMPUS GOSSIP FALLS FROM GRACE There is a man living in the Columbia tunnels. Bwog found him sleeping while tunnel touring in the basement. e The water polo team is absurdly in debt. To break even, they are starring as extras in a graduate film student’s project about a young man discovering his sexuality through water polo. A meeting to discuss this was scheduled at Dig Inn. “That’s gay,” said one team member. e Wallach RA drank wine on a school night, was scolded by her freshman ward. e ELECTIONEERING CUCR recently held their annual party called “Ahmedineshots.” Members vying for spots on the club e-board spent most of the party campaigning. e The two outgoing undergraduate University Senators actively campaigned to prevent the remaining undergraduate Senators from replacing them as chairs of the Student Affairs Committee—the primary perk being access to president Bollinger. A trustee’s daughter at the Law School ultimately got the spot. e EXCLUSIVITY The Heights came back with an “invitation only” party. How did they know whom to invite? e PROFESSOR GOSSIP One cosmopolitan comparative literature professor has tried to seduce quite a few female undergrads and is also responsible for the breakup of at least one marriage.

May 2014

Many Spectator Managing Board members, and the staff of the Eye, are upset about the decision to reduce print production, especially after the Editorin-Chief, Managing Editor, and Publisher had already made up their minds about the shift before they told them. e Spec claims financial independence, but under a longstanding agreement between Spec and the University, Columbia provides the paper with large offices on 112th street for free in return for daily university-wide circulation. Whether or not the suite deal will hold up when the paper ceases to be daily remains uncertain. e The Columbia Daily Spectator was never a daily. e One hyper-christian roommate reportedly threw out all her roommate’s sex toys. That shit is expensive. e Three of the DG girls have Calvin Klein underwear models as their dates to their formal. e Budget talks overheard in SGO: “Unless we give them a good cut they’re not going to change.” e BACCHANAL “thebwog” gets a lot of dirty Snapchats. And pictures of cats. Some #selfies. e One greek organization rang in Bacchanal with over $500 worth of molly. e 40 bacchanal CAVAs? Staffers were paid around $150 for the day. Not worth it. e Summer...it’s short.w

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The Blue and White