October 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. V

October 2014

In Passing Reflections on visibility as a transgender man

Bollinger Appoints Lupe Fiasco as Artist-in-Residence Former Bacchanal guest will assume position on Tuesday Also Ins

ide:

Sage advice from

andist

Columbia’s Manhattanville propag

TORSTEN ODLAND, CC ’15, Editor in Chief DANIEL STONE, CC ’16, Managing Editor WILL HOLT, CC ’15, Features Editor LUCA MARZORATI, CC ’15, Senior Editor ALEXANDER PINES, CC ’16, Senior Editor NAOMI SHARP, CC ’15, Senior Editor HALLIE NELL SWANSON, CC ’16, Senior Editor CHANNING PREND, CC ’17, Senior Editor JESSIE CHASAN-TABER, CC ’16, Layout Editor ANGEL JIANG, CC ’15, Senior Illustrator MATTHEW SEIFE, CC ’16, Publisher Staff Writers NAOMI COHEN, CC ’15 MICHELLE CHERIPKA, CC ’16 VIRGINIA FU, CC ’17 TAMSIN PARGITER, BC ’16 JENNIFER SLUKA, CC ’17 Contributors SEAN AUGUSTINE-OBI, CC ’16 ZANE BHANSALI, CC ’17 SOPHIE BRIDGES, CC ’18 NIA BROWN, CC ’17 SCOTT FISCHBEIN, CC ’16 ALEX EYNON, CC ’15 JOSEPH MILHOLLAND, CC ’17 JORDANA NARIN, CC ’17 DAVID NEWTOWN, CC ’18 MADELINE PAGES, BC ’17 P.J. SAUERTEIG, CC ’15 BEN SCHNEIDER, CC ’17 DAN SINGER, CC ’17 BRIAN THORN, CC ’15

Artists ZANE BHANSALI, CC ’17 RACHEL CHIN, CC ’18 WALLACE KALKIN, BC ’18 WENDI LU, CC ’18 LEILA MGALOBLISHVILI, CC ’16 ALEXANDER PINES, CC ’16 ANNE SCOTTI, CC ’16 JOANNA ZOU, CC’18 Layout Staff HANA BEACH, BC ’18 TAYLOR SMITH, CC ’17 JOANNA ZOU, CC’18

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XX

FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS

No. V

Columns

4 Bluebook 6 Blue Notes 8 Campus Characters 13 Curio Columbiana 16 Verily Veritas 18 M easure for Measure 30 Digitalia Columbiana 31 Campus G ossip

Virginia Fu & Naomi Sharp Scott Fischbein

Features 10 At Two Swords’ Length: Do you abbrev? Our monthly prose and cons 12 Bollinger A ppoints Lupe Fiasco as A rtist-in-R esidence Former Bacchanal guest will assume position on Tuesday

Alexander Pines

14 In Passing Reflections on visibility as a transgender man

Luca Marzorati

17 The Guide to Living Sage advice from Columbia’s Manhattanville propagandist

Michelle Cheripka

Sean Augustine-Obi

Brian Thorn

Alexander Pines

theblueandwhite.org

20 The Orations of Pericles The two lives of EC security guard Pericles Almanzar 22 The Fops We Forgot The rise and fall of Delta Phi 23 Bean Boy #1 The funny pages 24 Talking Back A conversation with Saskia Sassen

f

cover :

“Take A Stand ” by Angel Jiang

BLUE BOOK

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR School is so periodic and demanding that it’s hard sometimes to remember where exactly you stand in the progress of things. I, for instance, am a senior in Columbia College, 21 years old. In seven months I will be 22, a recent graduate. A “writer.” Who would have thought? It’s clearer to me that tonight is a Monday. What else? It’s chilly and octobery in the evening now. Classes are ripening. By the time this issue is on campus we’ll be significantly past midterm technically. In my experience, though, semesters start and start and start and end without leaving any time at all for a middle ground. This amounts to saying that time flies. But that’s what time does. It flies away from you. The undergrad years might be a particularly extreme case of this, but maybe not. I have no idea what being a 35-year-old for a year is like (not to mention all kinds of socioeconomic things—35 though, can you imagine?). An aspect of the cliché that’s rarely mentioned is how closely related that feeling, of blazing through time, is to the sense of your life disappearing in front of you. And graduation will be a little bit like death, I think. It’s always annoyed me when students refer to the life after school as “the real world.” Maybe “afterlife” is more appropriate. Anyway, here we are. It’s not as if things don’t change, I guess, and this issue is meant to be a record of the last few months in particular. For instance, the illustration on our cover is a tribute to all of the groups and people who have protested on campus recently in the name of social and institutional reform: No Red Tape, Columbia Prison Divest, and SJP, to name only a few. You’re making us all stronger. — Torsten Odland, Editor-in-Chief

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TRANSACTIONS ARRIVALS Bernheim & Schwartz Sweater weather CrackDel’s liquor license Salt & vinegar chips in ButCaf Creepy Halloween decorations all over the neighborhood DEPARTURES Barnard’s access to JJ’s Havana Computers in the lobby of Lerner The sandwich bar from Café 212 Bwog’s institutional memory Possibilities @ Columbia

Come Again?!

“I’ve got that Cuisinart on my desk and a produce section in my goddamn fridge. If you want to be healthy like me, come to my place, asshole, and I’ll let you try some juice for free.” – Evan Siegal in Spectrum

The Blue and White

BLUE BOOK

New Opportunities for Leadership! Many have sounded off at the Office of Student Engagement’s new “Columbia Leads” program, which awards students who collect enough leadership “points” with a graduation cord. But the astute voices in the undergraduate public sphere have fallen silent on OSE’s other spectacular programs. For in fact, there is more than one way to earn an extra tassel on your motorboard! Be ambitious and you could collect them all: The Pink Cord: for accruing more than $800 in library fines

The Purple Cord: for switching your major more than once or majoring in American Studies

The White Cord: for abstaining from penetrative sex

The Green Cord: for founding another a cappella group

The Silver Cord: for knowing what every CU abbreviation and acronym means

The Gold Cord: for drinking urine

The Black Cord: for not pursuing a career in consulting The Orange Cord: for problematizing race and gender

The Platinum Cord: for pursuing a career in consulting The Pantone 292 Cord: for attending any Columbia Athletics Event

POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE

October 2014

Postcard by Angel Jiang

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BLUE NOTES

H

aving a conversation in the smallest room on campus is awkwardly cozy. Bed, dresser, and desk almost completely cover the room’s 79 square feet, leaving a small patch of open floor in the middle. It was in this diminutive space that I met Ian Davies, the room’s unimpressed occupant. Soon after getting there, I painfully nicked my knuckles on the edge of the desk mid hand gesture. Evidently, Ian’s room was not the best place to talk about Ian’s room. So we left. In the cramped but infinitely more comfortable environs of the Hungarian Pastry Shop, our conversation flowed more freely. When the room is at its best, Ian observes, “it sometimes feels like the walls are hugging me.” But aside from these occasional spatial embraces, Ian’s relationship with his room tends to be polite and professional. He does what he can to make his room work for him, reminding me that “it’s not the size that counts, it’s what you do with it.” Ian is somewhat intrigued by how much room size and location seem to matter to people here at Columbia—and by extension the premise for this article. As an exchange student from the highly urban

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University College London, he has had his fair share of experiences with tiny, decrepit living quarters. Back at UCL, people’s room size mattered much less because all socializing, including the alcoholic variety, took place in common rooms. The rules and regulations that dictate life at Columbia are far more constrictive than the size of one’s dorm. But students’ lack of privacy and autonomy anywhere but their room is only part of the story. From a European’s perspective, Americans simply seem to care more about their material possessions. Of course, the English are materialistic too, says Ian. “But we’re more aware of it.” — Ben Schneider

M

orningside Heights’ fire house is a tiny, onetruck operation on West 113th Street. Aside from the red garage door, the building looks more like a well-maintained apartment than a fire station. Only a plaque dated 1889 hints at the building’s history. Back in 1860, when Morningside Heights was still farmland, politician William “Boss” Tweed ran the city’s notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall political machine. Tweed had gotten his start in the fire department, which was deeply linked to Tammany. The organization’s leaders depended on support from Tammany Hall, which in turn utilized the fire department to raise money and secure votes. In Tweed’s days at the Fire Department, competition for Tammany’s favor gave rise to violent rivalries among companies. In 1850, the department fired him for leading firefighters in an assault on a rival company. Exiled from work within the Fire Department, Tweed moved on to govern it. In 1859, he was

Illustration by Joanna Zou

The Blue and White

BLUE NOTES

elected to the Board of Fire Commissioners and became a key liaison between Tammany Hall and the city’s fire system. But the machine’s days of influence on fire fighting were numbered. In 1865, the state moved to supplant the volunteer system with the state-run professionalized Metropolitan Fire Department. Along with the creation of the Metropolitan Fire Department, New York prohibited the construction of new firehouses for the next fourteen years. The ban coincided with a period of unprecedented population growth in New York; so when it was lifted in 1879 the city scrambled to catch up, building forty-two firehouses in the next fifteen years. Ours, completed in 1890, is one of them. Our firehouse went up on the eve of Morningside’s development into our modern neighborhood. Two years after its construction, The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum sold off its land to Columbia, and workers broke ground on the site of St. John the Divine. Four horses and a steam engine sat at the fire department in 1891. Today, a fire truck, with “Pride of Morningside” written in script across the windshield, is parked in the garage. — Dan Singer

H

time reportedly said that ‘he didn’t want any black faces on the walls’. But Charles ‘Spinky’ Alston, CC ’29 TC ’31, who supervised the mural project, led a successful campaign to reverse the decision. The murals fell into decline over the years. The rooms where the works were housed were repurposed: one ended up lining a room used for bathroom supplies; another, “Recreation in Harlem” by Georgette Seabrooke, originally in the nurses’ recreation room, was buried under plaster. In 2004, when the building was going to be demolished, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation launched a drive to restore and rehouse the murals, which ultimately raised $325 million. The result: the Mural Pavilion at 135th and Lenox Avenue, whose block-long exterior is decorated with a digital reproduction of the murals, printed on the building in ceramic ink. The restoration has deformed some of the faces, but the more preserved ones are original and even touching–they’re not tokenistic archetypes, as you might expect of a federally-funded mural. With its church and school and mailman and construction worker, it’s a bit of a civic altarpiece. But there’s also life and humor: in the school scene, two boys exchange raised eyebrows over their books. Giving the murals the place they deserve has meant rehabilitating them as high art, matching them with classical panelling and moulding that mimics the original rooms they occupied. Right now, however, the pavilion is still sterile and unfinished. Seabrooke’s Recreation mural is in a corner of a huge empty room, bathed in a cold white light that contrasts sharply with reimagined nurses’ rec room which housed it in the ’30s. Seabrooke said she wanted the painting to be something to ‘partake in’– hardly signalled by the red velvet rope. Of course, there was a time when the only thing surrounding these life-filled visions of civic optimism was in fact plaster. — Hallie Nell Swanson

arlem Hospital has just opened a new building with a gallery to house its Depression-era murals. But the murals, which were painted by black artists and prominently depicted AfricanAmericans, almost never were. Back when the murals were commissioned by the WPA, hospital administrators attempted to prevent their installation. The hospital’s director at the

October 2014

Illustrations by Joanna Zou and 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.

Emma Sulkowicz

E

mma Sulkowicz, CC ’15, is a synesthete. She sees some people’s personalities as colors, like greenish yellow, teal. Some people are even gray, but she’s quick to point out that there’s no implied value system in her chromatic perceptions. “Gray is perfect for them!” she assured me. “It doesn’t mean that they’re boring, they’re just gray.” There’s a sweetness to her—mid interview, she excitedly asked if she could Facebook stalk my boyfriend because his name is the same as her favorite food, kale. When I asked about her classes at Columbia, she couldn’t decide on a single favorite

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or specify any she didn’t like, for fear of offending any professor that she didn’t name. Throughout our conversations, her gratitude and appreciation for her friends and fellow activists was palpable. She laughed, often. As Gabriela Pelsinger, CC ’15, who met Emma during their first year, told me, “Emma’s happiness can make everyone in the room smile. She has a contagious effect.” But Emma can also be relentlessly determined, as she has proven to a national audience over the past year. “The reason people make art is out of necessity,” she told me of her work, “Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight).” The piece, in a certain respect, represents a process of self-actualization. She’s growing into her identity as an artist. Unlike her previous work from high school and here at Columbia (a school that she applied to because her college advisor suggested it, and first visited only after she’d been accepted—despite growing up on 74th Street), “Carry That Weight” is entirely and uniquely hers. “This is the first artwork that I’ve made from an idea that I had. I wanted to execute it. No one assigned it to me.” Regarding the media avalanche in the wake of “Carry That Weight,” Emma resists being objectified. “There’s a certain type of journalism that humanizes people […], rather than what I mostly see, which is, ‘Oh look, little rape girl wants to share her story, let’s jump on that and victimize her again […] to sell newspapers.’” She’s also acquired an astute understanding of media itself. “As soon as I cried, I knew that was the clip they were going to use […] to show me as the victim,” she said, frustrated. More than an activist, Emma sees herself as an artist. When she came to Columbia, she quickly abandoned her original intention to major in physics to pursue a degree in visual arts. Her friends were happy to tell me about her immense knowledge of the Met, that she’s never missed a Whitney Biennial. Emma thinks about art and artists so much that she

Illustration by Wendi Lu

The Blue and White

told me she’d be hard-pressed to name a favorite. Gabriela is excited to see where Emma will end up: she’s proud of her friend, although she’s also nervous about the continuation of “Carry That Weight” in the snow and rain. “I want her to know she’s not any less brave if she stops. She has nothing to prove to me.” I asked Emma where she saw herself after graduation—where she would be, what she’d be doing. She couldn’t tell me specifics: she’d miss her friends and the community that she’s found on campus here in New York, but doesn’t seem daunted by the prospect of moving elsewhere. One thing will remain constant, she says: “I’m going to make art at all costs.” — Tamsin Pargiter

Ridge Montes

“I

literally don’t matter and that is the most validating thing. I feel more special for how unexceptional I am,” Ridge Montes, SEAS ’15, tells me as we wrap up our interview. We had been talking philosophy, as Ridge often does. “On a deep, deep, deep fundamental level, we are all the same,” he’d said earlier, before clarifying. “Not all our attributes are the same, not even our habits are the same, but the praxis that we use for retaining or changing habits over the course of a lifetime has a very strong similarity one person to the next, so much so that we can talk about life, or talk about love.” Our three hour conversation ended up in the EC townhouse where he has lived as an RA for three years. Ridge has been in dorms for a long time, from boarding school to the 3-2 combined plan at Columbia, with a pit stop at the University of Chicago in between. In addition to his RA job, Ridge works in the Classics department and at Vino Fino, a wine shop close to Columbia. He has been financially independent throughout his time at Columbia. “All the clothes I wear, all the knick knacks in my room, I can think about them in terms of life I spent,” Ridge tells me. “So one hour at the office will buy me maybe three bottles of beer, maybe a T-shirt, and you populate your life, you make it the fingerprint of your activities.” When we arrived at his townhouse, Ridge put on the overture to The Magic Flute, his favorite opera, and we continued our conversation over a meal of shakshuka, which Ridge prepared on the spot. He likes to cook for people—it’s how he met his best friend, Patrick Aloia, CC ’15. Near the end of the first semester of their CC class, Ridge invited Patrick and a few other classmates over for dinner. “We went over

October 2014

to his home, he got us wine, he made us roast chicken, rice, everything tasted great, and we just talked about philosophy and our lives,” says Patrick. “It was totally natural and he made us feel welcome.” Ridge studies classics in CC and applied mathematics in SEAS. He started teaching himself Latin at 14, and learned Greek soon after that. “I can’t even say that it enriched my life because my life would be literally inconceivable without this stuff,” he observes. Supplementing his studies, Ridge has spent the past four years acting with the Barnard Columbia Ancient Drama Group, which stages performances in their original languages. “People don’t acknowledge the strangeness of Shakespeare, of Dante, of the Romans, the Greeks,” Ridge says of his studies. “You know, the Romans used to eat something called garum, which is basically pickled fish in vinegar, and they thought it was the most delicious thing in the world. It sounds to me like it sucks. They also killed people because they thought it was funny.” Ridge converses socratically. He will tell you what he believes, but he will also push you to articulate your beliefs as completely as possible. Ridge reads and talks to people so that he can figure out his own thoughts, and he is not afraid to make bold declarations. “The world is literally flowing through us. And that’s not just when something pushes you. Everything you learn and everything that you relate is life coursing through you like a river and you’re just a riverbed, and all the things that you learn add flavor to what’s coursing through you. That is how life works.” — Jennifer Sluka

Illustration by Rachel Chin

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AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

Do you Y

es, I abbreviate! So wut? tures that make language? Not only is abbreviating something I do So I don’t understand why you act like someand something I think I am totally definitely allowed thing gets lost or hurt when I abbreve. Abbreving is 2 do, it is something that people already always do abt getting to the <3 of things. It’s abt knowing what anyway and should do, everybody, in this modern to keep. Like, the first letters of words are important. age, the age in which we live, which is the second Most consonants. Amper-sands. The red properties decade of the twenty-first century. Because some in Monopoly. Your well-worn copy of the Iliad. Your words are long, with many letters, some or most or all grandmother’s last words to the Starbucks barista. of which are usually redundant or un-ness. I’m talk- Your belief in the Omicron. Nothing gets lost if you ing about words like “prescriptivist,” “fascist,” and know when to stop. “oppression.” In the robot future “Judgment” our thought paths will “Vegetable.” mrge instantaneously, Or else they like a microwave that sound like or have parts comes from nowhere that sound like the and everywhere and names of letters or #s. xplodes the quantum Odd words, like “are” or popcorn in our heads “tulip.” but not the quantum In the modern popcorn in other ppl’s age, the twenty-first cenheads. Except in the tury, “ily” is a goddamn robot future we won’t perfectly acceptable way have heads because we 2 convey 2 u the feelwon’t need them anying i got walking down more. There will also be Broadway that morning no bodies or language when the blinking red but everything will be light made me think of slghtly magnetized. that red scarf u always wear, and the And I don’t understand ffirmative smell of the *bcks made me think what you mean when you tell me I By Virgina Fu of ur disdain for effcnt systems of shouldn’t abbreviate things because allocating desirable goods, and the i am destroying the English lanregular occurrence of lines on the guage as if the language were fragsidewalk made me think of the biweekly emails u send ile and liable 2 be damaged when its consonants me, and, stopping 2 fumble out my phone, i tripped were all mushed together, like when the veggies all over my shoes, abbreviating the feeling, like my text exploded in the microwave. But words are more like was an abbreviation of that feeling, which needed to animals, the kind that can’t be squished, things that be abbreviated because it was like a word 2 weird and grow and blink and change into other, better things, impossible 2 spell, like “axolotl.” like how food turns into compact, concise poop. And aren’t we always abbreviating something The quick way isn’t always the wrong way! The when we try 2 say the things in our heads 2 people? words get shortr as the feeling gets bigger! Isn’t all communication a distillation of amorphous Abbreviation is progress. It’s educational, infinitudes into this patter of sounds, shapes, ges- moral, necessary, and gr8.w

A

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Illustration by Wallace Kalkin

The Blue and White

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

abbrev? F

uck you. If you’re ily-ing me after a year and a half Notice how I used two words there. It’s to together, how will you communicate your affection show that I’m thinking of you. in three years? Grunts? Sporadic eye contact? It’s a You know—really thinking of you. Not sort slippery slope. of thinking of you while also thinking about my One thing is certain: Nothing says the romance Starbucks order, which I know is what you were doing has died quite like being ily-ed. when you texted me “ily” this morning. So cut your bullshit pseudo-philosophy. ily. Language is an imperfect form of communication. I’m now trying to think of a nonviolent way to It’s tragic, when you think about it (which is why I’m convey to you the feeling I got walking up Amsterdam, tearing up a little—that and the smoke coming from when I saw that text and realized with blinding rage the oven). You’ll never be able to communicate to that your attention someone exactly what span had reached its you mean to tell them. maximum five-secBut the point is to ond capacity, and that show someone you’re your feelings for me trying. The point is were now on par with to get as close as you your interest in a gincan, because you can gerbread latte. fail more or you can When I realfail less—and you’re ized that you have the failing miserably, to emotional capacity of be totally clear, unless a hamster. your goal was to comWhen I realmunicate complaized that eight letcency and ignorance ters and a mutually of capitalization rules respectful relationfor acronyms. ship are too much for Just tell me, you. what is this perverted compulsion to egative My phone buzzed again. find shortcuts? Why do you microBy Naomi Sharp ;) wave potatoes instead of baking You were only making things them? Why do you insist we play worse. You couldn’t even give it a nose? That’s sick. the shortened version of Monopoly? Why do you say You’re sick. “veggies”? Why are you scrolling through your iPad When I got home, I started thinking. As I set while I’m talking to you? Why do you still wear velcro the oven to 450 degrees and placed your phone inside shoes? What could you possibly be doing that is so it, I thought of all the things I detest about you (please important, to the point where every wasted second find an alphabetized list in section 8.1 of the note is so crucial? I left on your pillow). And I concluded, as an acrid But you like cutting things short? I’ll raise you burning smell began to fill the house, that what I one. I can abbreviate things, too, and I’ll start with detest most isn’t your atrocious spelling or even your our relationship: abbreviations or your general laziness. It’s that you’re ILY. completely blind to what you’re doing wrong. I’m leaving you.w

N

October 2014

Illustration by Angel Jiang

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FICTION

Bollinger Appoints Lupe Fiasco as Artist-in-Residence Former Bacchanal guest will assume position on Tuesday By Scott Fischbein

O

n Friday, the Office of the President announced that the artist-in-residence position would be filled by none other than the Bacchanal headliner Lupe Fiasco. When meeting together earlier last week, Mr. Fiasco reportedly responded to President Bollinger’s offer by saying, “Ok.” When reached for further comment Mr. Fiasco claimed, “It’s not like I have much else going on right now.” “An artist as prolific as Mr. Fiasco is bound to bring a creative spark to the campus,” Bollinger stated Friday evening in an email to the undergraduate student body. “He’ll bring a socially conscious attitude that our students need in order to thrive and which has been otherwise lacking.” Bollinger claimed that he is probably Mr. Fiasco’s biggest fan in the whole world: “This will be great for the Columbia University community and also I have four Lupe posters in my bedroom and three of them were signed by the man himself.” When we asked about what sort of events and programs we would be able to expect from Mr. Fiasco and the Visual Arts department on campus, President Bollinger said, “Seriously, you guys don’t understand how next-level Lupe’s rhymes are. He goes in harder than anyone else in the game these days. YG. You name it.” Since Spring Bacchanal, Mr. Fiasco has been reportedly spotted on campus a number of times. A number of undergraduates claim to have seen him playing Farmville on the computers in Butler and reading the newspaper at Uni Café. These sightings have generated rumors as to whether or not Mr. Fiasco would be a permanent resident on our campus following his Spring 2014 performance. “It’d be awesome to see him as the acting head of The Center for Biomedical Communications!” Greg Winslope, CC ’13, said.

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We sat down with Mr. Fiasco, who was eating a Sabra at Café 212 in Lerner Hall. “I haven’t really been doing much since the show last spring to be honest,” he said after taking a sip of bubble tea. “I’ve mostly just been hanging out around Columbia, hoping some sort of employment might branch out here. Things just honestly haven’t been going too well for me recently.” We asked him about what he had been doing around Columbia since his performance. “I started to draw out some blueprints for a building I wanted to design here, but nothing really panned out. Then someone here told me that I should go talk to President Bollinger, because he was a huge fan of mine. Which turned out to be true.” Mr. Fiasco stated that one of his intended artist-in-residence projects is to create a large mural. “I was thinking maybe a huge canvas and every Columbia student could come and draw a heart on it. I think this is the kind of thing the world needs now to help everyone love each other and stop wars.” Mr. Fiasco hinted at a possible conflict between his ideas and the administration: “Bollinger keeps shooting down my, like, harebrained ideals and pushing me to work on a new mixtape. He’s offered to turn the whole Manhattanville Project into one huge recording studio for me. I’m conflicted though.” Some Columbia affiliates, however, are conflicted about Mr. Fiasco’s very presence at the school. A group of students gathered at Low Plaza on Friday to protest Mr. Fiasco’s appointment. Jo Schwartzman, CC ’15, claimed, “I for one am horrified and appalled. How can our university implicitly sanction a man who has been caught smuggling weapons-grade plutonium over international borders? A known Holocaust denier and propagandist for the military state in North Korea?” Columbia’s administration has yet to respond to these accusations.w

Illustration by Leila Mgaloblishvili

The Blue and White

CURIO COLUMBIANA

I

n Curio Columbiana, the sallow-faced editors call forth written artifacts from our beloved institution’s past. See the Columbia that was! Reconsider her as she is! The following excerpts were taken from The Black Book, or Book of Misdemeanors in King’s College, NewYork, 1771-1775, a record of disciplinary actions taken by the college in those years. Jan. &. Feb. 1771. Shreeve, Abrahams, Bogert confined to College for taking Tea-cups out of another student’s room, and denying that they knew anything of them.—N.B. Shreeve [deemed] the most culpable. June. 29. Robinson suspended by the President for being indebted in two Gr. Themes, and one Gr. Translation, after having had Time much more than sufficient for the performance of them; it not appearing that he had any Intention of doing them at all. April. 28. 1772. Robinson spit in the Cook’s Face, kicked, him & otherwise abused him; of which he the Cook complained to the Governors as they came out of Chapel June. 17. Davan to be represented to the Committee, [at the] next Visitation, for refusing to open his Door when repeatedly called upon by the President, (being sent for also from home, where he had not been for some days) and causing four Doors to be broke open before he could be laid hold of—N.B. found, at last in the Room opposite to his own, where he had hid himsel}f, having opened the Door with a false key, and hid himself in one of the Studies. July. 9. Remsen, for beating Nicholls, the preceding Week, & absenting himself from College under Pretence of Sickness, for several Days, tho it was proved he had been fishing on some of those Days; Was ordered to ask Nicholls's Pardon before the Students, which he accordingly did; —Was also confined to College till the following Saturday Evening, & injoined to translate into English the 21, 22, 23 & 24 Chap, of the Book of Selectae e Profanis besides his usual Collegiate Exercises each Day. June. 17. 1774. Davan to be represented to the Committee, ye next Visitation, for refusing to open his Door when repeatedly called upon by the President, (being sent for also from home, where he had not been for some days) and causing four Doors to be broke open before he could be laid hold of — N.B. found, at last in the Room opposite to his own, where he had hid himself, having opened the Door with a false key, and hid himself in one of the Studies. September. 27. At a Quarterly Visitation Rapalje, for stealing Moncrieft’s Stockings, ordered to be confined within the walls of ye College for one Month after next Vacation, subject to such daily Exercises as the President shall assign him; and in Case of Deficiency in the performance of either Order, that he be recommended to the next Board of Governors for Expulsion, and that he also make a public Acknowledgement, in the Hall, for his offence.w

October 2014

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O N E Y E A R L AT E R

In Passing Reflections on visibility as a transgender man By Alexander Pines

“D

o you have blood in your semen?” This question, the last in a long line posed by my doctor at Columbia Health Services, was what made me realize why no one believed me about my UTI symptoms; everyone from the lady at the reception desk to the two dubious nurses to the doctor assumed that I had a penis. I don’t. Awkward. “I’m trans,” I said. He blinked. So this is what passing really means, I thought. “I still have a vagina,” I said. “Oh! Then you could definitely have a UTI! You just looked, well, like someone…” he said, trailing off and muttering about getting a urine sample. Who ought to pee standing up? I finished for him, wishing at that moment that I could, in fact, pee standing up. It would’ve made taking that urine sample a lot easier. Most of the time, I pass as a cisgender (nontrans) man and my transness is something I am not forced to think about. Moments like this remind me

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that for most people, trans identities—and, by extension, experiences—don’t exist. In this case, by the time I received treatment for the UTI, it had already progressed into a full-blown kidney infection. Passing, in the trans sense of the word, is being constantly read as the gender I identify with— in clothing stores, restaurants, airports, bathrooms (always vital in bathrooms), and so on. Most don’t see the needles, the pools of blood that form on my thigh when I mess up a shot, the oily residue I later wash off my hands in the bathroom, the vial of amber liquid— hormones—I keep next to my birth certificate and the social security card on my desk. Before I came out as trans, I used to jokingly call myself a “hundred footer”—you could clock my queerness from across a room. Short hair, Ani Difranco tee shirt, the works. In other words, I was used to being visible. Once my gender presentation became more intentionally male, this visibility became an anxiety that twisted in my stomach throughout my day—cashiers, security guards, and professors all fumbled for pronouns and stared. Now, I look like any other white guy on line at Starbucks. Passing makes me a little uncomfortable. There’s something about the word that implies some dishonesty, like I’m lying whenever I let the guy at the counter call me “sir,” like I’m not a “real” man. It makes my life easier, sure, but passing can be monolithic and reductive: it erases my invisible selves into a palatable whole that allows for the kind of small talk and quick transactions I couldn’t have before—no

Illustration by Alexander Pines

The Blue and White

O N E Y E A R L AT E R more fumbling. Sometimes, though, I push back. I exist, I want to say, often. I am a trans man and I exist. But other times, I don’t push back. I want to be who I often look like: a man, no modifier. Back home, surrounded by guys who use the word “faggot” with the ease that I say “problematic,” I am crass, aggressive. I play video games and sports with my friends, and don’t say anything when they call me a pussy for leaving my shirt on at the beach. To be constantly thinking about my transness is exhausting—it’s easier to laugh it off when I’m told to grow a pair than to lecture about the politics of equating genitals to gender. Passing can let me pretend to be effortless—a way of just being without having to deal with being trans. The summer before my junior year of high school, in 2010, I wrote in my journal: “Am I trans? I don’t think so. […] Perhaps this will pass with time. I hope that it does.” This isn’t who you’re supposed to be, I thought, often. The more I ignored it, though, the more my body howled in the mirror, the figure too soft and voice too high and squeaky. Throughout high school I tried as hard as I could not to be trans, hoping I could someday bend “woman” into a shape I could live in. Whenever people did the math of short hair + baggy jeans = boy, I got angry—they saw something in me that I didn’t want to be true. When I came out as trans at nineteen and everyone did the same math of high voice + soft face = girl, I hated them all the more and wondered if, perhaps, they saw through me. Eventually, I wrote a story of myself and told it until it came true. During the four-month period between coming out and starting hormones, I felt like I was constantly in the process of reshaping myself, rewriting and reimagining the former selves into some sort of consistent whole because these are the sorts of things I do in order to feel genuine, in order to feel real. I found myself spending hours every night rereading old journals and flipping through pictures to find a kind of textual evidence for the Alexander that I would create in the morning. One year and six months on testosterone later, I want to tell you that I’m the same as I ever was, that I can look at pictures of “my sister” and still see myself. Pre-testosterone, I was afraid that at some point hormones would render me inauthentic. I didn’t

want to have to inject myself biweekly with something developed in a lab in order to be myself. I would pass, sure, but as who? This is what passing looks like: women cross the street late at night to avoid me. I am a “buddy” now, a “bro.” The man who cuts my hair tells me about his girlfriend, the security guard when I sign in asks me if I’m keeping up with football this season. I’m not used to being a threat, to being the reason for anyone’s quickened pace on the walk home from the train or bar. But there’s also a tenderness to the way I interact with men that I never expected. I sometimes feel as though I’ve been let into a world I wasn’t supposed to see. I have mixed feelings about my invisibility. I miss the solidarity of the “queer head nod” I used to get when I walked by on the street, the community I could visually align myself with. But there are also days when I do not want to be seen, when the reality of inhabiting my body—scars, synthetics and all—is terrifying, when it is easier for me to pretend to be the person you think I am in passing than it is to be myself. And yet. For all the years I spent trying not to be in my body, to make it invisible even to myself, there are days when I wake up in a body that feels like, for the first time, it’s mine. When people ask if I feel any different now—a neckbeard I keep forgetting to shave and shots and shots and shots later—I can almost always tell them that I’m growing into the person I always thought I should be. I still carry around my first driver’s license in my pocket, from a few months before my seventeenth birthday. Sometimes I pull it out like a party trick and laugh when my friends tell me what a lesbian I used to look like. A coworker from over the summer said that without the matching signatures, the girl in the picture could pass as my twin. I like having a reminder of where I’m from, to keep “my sister” with me, even if it’s just an expired ID. There’s something reassuring about having a physical, visible object to prove that Alexandra Catherine Pines existed at some point, that she was just as real as Alexander. It’s nice to know that there’s a place where they can both be at once, even if it’s just a wallet.w

I would pass, sure, but as who?

October 2014

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V E R I LY V E R I TA S

TOLD BETWEEN PUFFS

V.V.

In which our hero explodes

picked out a strand of tobacco hanging off the end of his cigarette and flicked it into the street. A crumpled styrofoam cup stamped with a Pepsi label caught his eye as he scanned the gutter–profound. How long had it lain there? This cup, ground into the the asphalt, might endure longer than the shops, the pavement, the other supposed “fixtures” of Morningside Heights— longer than Morning 2 Midnight certainly. More or less explicitly, all of it was trash. “The refuse machine,” V.V. uttered wryly, gesturing at the scene around him: the intersection of 115th and Broadway, gray and parched in the October sun. It shone coldly and revolted our hero, who pulled his wool collar snugly to his cheek. “Damn filthy century!” he shrieked, “Trinket worshiping hogs!” He was in a rare state. Over his many years at Columbia College, V had seen the neighborhood change a great deal. He’d cultivated a sort of detachment toward the inevitable turn-overs, hardly shedding a tear when Card-o-Mat and Il Cibreo closed their doors. Never, though, did he think he would witness a transformation so titanic as the construction of a high rise apartment in the northern yard of St. John the Divine. A glass box, perfect for all sleek, quotidian purposes; a gleaming iPhone hulking over the cathedral. V had always considered St. John a kindred soul in architectural form, which is why our hero was undertaking to build a series of pipe bombs. One night in the coming week he would plant them rakishly in the construction site, strewing them without concern for his own safety, and send their “project”

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to the pit of hell. Should he survive, he would spend his years in prison writing a poem cycle about nobility and leading a ring of rag-tag urchins. So much had been decided. But V.V. had yet to master the mechanics of bomb construction. He dragged romantically on his cigarette as he descended into Riverside and took a seat on a hillock, pulling Basics of Bombs and Ex-plosive Contrapsions, a prim handbook published by an anarchist in 1868 that Verily found in Butler, out of his satchel. Our hero was so captivated by the thought of his life in jail, however, that he could hardly read for ten seconds without sighing. “Why is it,” V.V. wondered aloud, “that even in my darkest hour, when vulgarity surges around me, I cannot give up on the strength of my own story. Is this life? Art? The will to power?” A blue jay popped over from the other side of the bench. “Verily,” it chirped, “the world is simpler than you realize.” “What do you mean, little bird?” “You can be a hero without a bomb in your hand, without a band of idealistic thieves behind you.” “You’re a wise thing, jaybird. But how can I suffer to live in a world of ready-made trash?” “By surrendering your body to nature! Nature is ancient and unchanging–it is never exchanged or improved. What you need is the wind at your back and rain in your eyes. Run with me, Verily, and live as my bride!” V.V. considered it. “But what about the cathedral?” “That building I defecate on every day?” The bird and the boy exchanged dry looks.w

The Blue and White

F O U N TA I N O F K N O W L E D G E

The Guide to Living Sage advice from Columbia’s Manhattanville propagandist By Luca Marzorati The Alphabets of Life: A Simple Guide to Living Simply by La-Verna J. Fountain Travers Pr, 241 pages $9.96

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he late comedian George Carlin was no fan of self-help books. “There’s no such thing as selfhelp,” he said. “If you did it yourself, you didn’t need help. You did it yourself!” Carlin would have undoubtedly dropped at least one of his seven dirty words when reading The Alphabets of Life: A Simple Guide to Living Simply by La-Verna J. Fountain. The book, published in 1999, is a collection of 26 alphabetized advice essays, from “Accept What You Cannot Change” to “Zealously Pursue Your Life.” In her day job, Fountain is Vice President for Construction Business Services and Communications at Columbia, which has made her a de facto press secretary for the Manhattanville expansion. When not defending the university in the press, Fountain is a motivational speaker, part of a $10 billion industry dedicated to telling people how to better their lives. The Alphabets of Life demonstrates Fountain’s ability to simplify complex problems into pithy statements, a skill conducive to success in both motivational speaking and defending a university accused of ripping off the neighborhood it is taking over. Hearing Fountain tell the Columbia Spectator that “Columbia, as a landlord, is doing exactly as tenants expect” sounds slightly less bizarre coming from someone who repeatedly insists that “facts change” throughout her book. Fountain’s aphorisms range in quality from charming to cringe-worthy: in a single chapter, her prose ranges from “Emotions are like a spice” to “The mind. Wow.” Like most in the motivation industry, Fountain does not operate in life’s grey areas. Her book begins, “What can you change? Then, change it! What can’t you change? Then, move on!” This Nieburhian adaptation is simple enough; the reader cannot be judged for wondering how Fountain will fill the other 25

October 2014

alphabetized chapters. Yet fill them she does, with anecdotes from family and friends, religious proclamations, and a page of exercises and questions at the end of each section. The interactive element of The Alphabets of Life—the “self” in “self-help”—was the book’s most puzzling aspect. After the first chapter, Fountain introduces an exercise that involves writing a worry on a piece of paper (its size should be “comparable to how you feel about the situation”). Fountain then instructs her reader to “Take the paper, and throw it away, burn it or flush it down the toilet.” (Does she recommend the same to high level Columbia administrators? Can we expect to see ash heaps outside of Low, with charred paper reading “Sexual assault” or “Football”?) In the ‘I’ chapter, Fountain gives her reader specific instructions: “On Wednesday, ask a child what peace looks like. Think about it.” Later, she switches from a conversation about the “impending love revolution” to instructing her readers to begin their day by looking into a mirror and hugging themselves. Fountain goes for the personal touch: nearly every copy of The Alphabets of Life is signed by the author. In the final chapter—titled “Zealously Pursue Your Life”—the author instructs her readers to send her a self-addressed postcard with their dreams. She vows to return it “when you least expect it,” cementing a possibly eternal bond between writer and reader. Perhaps the only test of a self-help book is if it actually helps. I tried keeping Fountain’s mantras in mind for a brief period of time, practicing not only the Golden Rule but the Platinum Rule: “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.” But it was a challenge: attempting to complete the activities at the end of chapters, I found myself wandering through libraries and creating meditation diaries. I quickly scrapped the project. I think Carlin was right about self-help books. If you can figure out the secret, think big, or develop the seven healthy habits, you probably didn’t need the book in the first place.w

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M easure

for

M easure

Bhajan in Rag Bageshri

A irport in Early Morning I have ovaries for heads; I am of two minds. I am leaving the children in a burning bus. Let me eat my mouth If it will make me forget The drowning horse that is wading through my chest. Here a red locust Hangs from our dog, Poco. It is a popped, red tomato boiling in my throat. Losing the weight, Arranging a marriage, My herds of goats trudge through lowly, tangled power lines. Rubbing the cumin, The coconut jewelry, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m stringing the laundry; the little birds will peck it till itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dry. The silence and breast, The shirt and the dress, I live in a star, the stroking lotion promise and its death. Flogging my mother, My master, my father, A cherry Life Saver, melting in the heat of my mouth. Beating my grandson With handfuls of sweet corn, My uncle, my asthma, melting in the shoddy yellow house.

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The Blue and White

M easure

for

M easure

The Shower When I was in India, My favorite part of the day Was my shower, at sunset; Not because it was so hot, And the water so cold, But because I would look up At the lizard on the ceiling And the spiders on the ceiling And think to myself: “What words will I use?”

I K eep My Greatness A s My Secret Late comes my greatest hour The midnight hour, where I can look in the mirror And turn the lamp on and off. I am, I am not, I am. And each night I create myself And suffer my dissolution, only For the great pleasure of my Resurrection in the lamplight. My fingers tremble with power And my own beauty astounds me. Is rebirth at your fingertips? Sometimes the lights flicker For hours on end; I cannot decide How the world deserves me. Is death in your hands? I am, I am not, I am. In each house, lights flicker. The world wakes, tired and smiling. — P.J. Sauerteig

October 2014

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PREACH

The Orations of Pericles The two lives of EC security guard Pericles Almanzar By Michelle Cheripka

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f you’ve stumbled into and out of EC late on a Saturday night, chances are that you’ve met Pericles Almanzar, one of the security guards. Perhaps he’s told you you should be a doctor when you graduate and proceeded to refer to you as “The Doctor” during every encounter thereafter. Five days of every week, he wakes up at 8 a.m., prays for two hours, and then rests again before taking the subway to Columbia. On one of the other two days, he gets off at Times Square to preach to commuters. His two professions seem unrelated at first, but as we talk a bit about his past, their affinities become apparent. When he was young, Pericles had difficulties with his parents, which made him shy and insecure. He felt unimportant, but he remained adamant that God would heal his soul. In retrospect, he is sure that God had put certain people in his path—his wife, for instance—to develop the love that had been missing during his childhood, a type of love that made him bold enough to begin preaching in the first place.

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“You can’t give what you don’t have,” he says. Without love and without a healthy relationship with his family and with God, he would be unable to promote those things in his preaching. He goes on to talk about how important it is for him to spend time with his wife in the hours that he doesn’t work. “You want to do what you can with the time you have. Balance is the key.” Despite his old doubts about himself and the people closest to him, Pericles has never once had any doubts about his faith. He says that he used to be a rude and angry person, but God helped him mature through preaching and through giving him the opportunity to work at Columbia. This self-characterization is a bit surprising, because it’s difficult to imagine Pericles being mean to anyone; on the job, he tells couples how happy he is that they’re together and talks with ease to residents and administrators alike. But he reminds me, more than once: “I’m always improving.” He wants others to do the same too. At one point during our conversation, Pericles stops a resident as he swipes into the building. “Listen, whenever you want to quit smoking, just ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Believe me.” “The who?” “The Holy Spirit of God … this body was created for God to breathe into it, not smoke. That’s man’s idea and Satan’s idea to destroy the temple of the Holy Spirit.” The student listens politely, if impatiently, to the unwanted moral judgment, thanking Pericles before walking away the first chance he gets. Whether or not this is overbearing or preachy, Pericles means well. He only aims to help the people around him. “The reason why I love to do this job is because of the students and the people. I love interacting with people and I love to make their life easier and to give them good service and to make it simple for them without breaking the rules,” he says. “I try not to preach here because that’s not the goal. I give words of encouragement to people.” The impact of his words is instantaneous: the smile that comes to one person’s face as he calls her

Illustration by Zane Bhansali

The Blue and White

PREACH dynamite; the gratitude a somewhat dishevelled student shows when he stops her to ask how she’s doing. Another security guard tells me, “He thinks I’m a special guy and I don’t understand-” Pericles cuts him off. “No he’s special,” he says, before launching into a list of the different characteristics that make this man different from any other man he’s met. On a Monday, I find him on the ramp connecting the 1/2/3 to the A/C/E. Pericles has been preaching in subways for fourteen years now. He had his start in Jackson Heights, near his church, where he would preach two days a week with a couple from his church. Now, he preaches at Times Square. There are eleven train connections here, multitudes of people to whom it would be possible to relay God’s message. He greets me with a broad smile, sweating profusely. “Five people have come to Jesus today.” If this is true, it’s easy to see why: trading his security badge for a stack of pamphlets titled “Life’s Greatest Decision,” and his navy blue suit for a black polo and slacks, the man behind the desk becomes magnified in the tunnel. His words, rapidly undulating between Spanish and English, seem to cascade from his mouth to the end of every limb, animating his whole figure. Pericles tells me, “I feel like a giant when I preach. I get full of the presence of God.” After a few moments watching him, I realize that I’ve passed by Pericles before. On a different Monday, during a different rush hour, I was one of the people

who give him a wide berth, refusing the pamphlets he hands out. I can see myself brushing past him, doing anything I could to get out of Port Authority (a place I consider to be Hell on Earth), drowning out his words with the endless to-do list I was probably reviewing in my mind. The thought embarrasses me. As crowds of people shuffle with their heads down towards their next connection, Pericles tries to actually speak with them, to get them to listen. They glance at their watches and the signs counting down the minutes until they miss the next uptown train, perhaps not even fully noticing the preacher. But Pericles stands here every Monday for four hours because he truly believes that people will listen to his message. As if on cue, it’s at this moment that Pericles singles a man out and asks, “What is your excuse?” “I’m tired.” It’s an exchange that could have been overheard at the EC security desk. Pericles follows the man down the ramp a ways, speaking to him about the path of life that will wake him up. If I hadn’t met Pericles, I might have thought that this approach was aggressive, but knowing him, you can tell these are words of encouragement. Pericles is realistic about his jobs. He probably won’t meet every resident who passes through the EC gates. He will not convert every person who passes through Times Square. But he believes in the value of trying to do so. He says it’s easy: “You fall in love with people. There are a lot of beautiful people.”w

“I feel like a giant when I preach. I get full of the presence of God.”

Interested in writing or illustrating for The Blue and White? WE WANT YOU! Drop by our weekly meeting Tuesdays at 9 p.m. in the Dodge Room of Earl Hall. Or, email editors@theblueandwhite.org. October 2014

21

ELMO’S WORLD

The Fops We Forgot The rise and fall of Delta Phi By Sean Augustine-Obi

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early every Columbia student knows about St. A’s. St. Anthony Hall, the fraternity-cum-literary society supposedly filled with Columbia’s 1%, serves as our own pseudo Skull and Bones. But fewer have heard of St. A’s former counterpart, St. Elmo’s, also known as Delta Phi. Founded in 1842, the organization was at its peak at the turn of the century. Their name—the “Elmo’s” cannibalized in typical Columbia fashion from St. Erasmus of Formia, a third-century Christian martyr known as the patron saint of sailors—fits well for a society a stone’s throw away from the Hudson. By 1906, Delta Phi had grown enough to warrant the construction of a brownstone at 612 W. 116th Street, between Broadway and Riverside—and around the corner from its younger rival St. A’s, which had been founded in 1847. The two fraternities chose brothers from the same pool: Columbia students from New York’s upper crust. In a speech written by the president of Penn’s Delta Phi chapter around 1917, he described Columbia’s chapter as having “maintained an unbroken line of succession since its establishment.” It drew its members “principally from the old Knickerbocker families, and its rolls contain men distinguished in the ministry, law, medicine, and engineering professions.” Among its members were sons of such prestigious families as the Fairchilds and Havemeyers, according to an 1881 directory. Only two decades later, the once-proud fraternity was reduced to a shadow of its former self. The Depression took a toll on the organization’s finances, and Delta Phi fell deep into debt. Further, the outbreak of World War II led to a general decline in fraternity membership. Many of the men who would have filled Delta Phi’s ranks fought in the war. By 1945, Delta Phi, thousands of dollars in arrears, foreclosed on the house and sold it to the university for the paltry sum of $100. Students now know the building as Casa Hispanica, where professors of the Latin American and Iberian Cultures department hold office hours.

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The chapter survived for another half-century in a university-owned space on 113th Street. According to a 1996 feature in the Spectator, this relocation also signified a shift in Delta Phi’s culture. In the ’70s and ’80s, the chapter began accepting more artists and musicians, evolving into a literary society better known for their weekly coffeehouses than their members’ upbringings. It also adopted a progressive stance on membership, going against their national organization’s rules to become the first Columbia fraternity to accept women. Yet the following decades proved difficult for the fraternity. The same Spectator article describes Delta Phi as “an endangered species,” partly because of their quarrels with the administration. RealityFest, Delta Phi’s annual art festival held in Ferris Booth Hall, was shut down for logistical reasons and alleged drug use. With the loss of its biggest event as a recruitment tool, chapter membership fell to the point that the fraternity failed to fill its house. The Delta chapter was deemed inactive in 2001, and Sig Ep eventually took over the brownstone. Although the story of Delta Phi may have been lost to the annals of Columbia history, vestiges of its legacy are scattered throughout campus. Other fraternities hold coffeehouses meant to showcase artistic talent as Delta Phi once did. Fragments of RealityFest can be seen in Glass House Rocks and Bacchanal. And its Greek letters are still carved into the cornerstone of Casa Hispanica.w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

F U N N Y PA G E S

Bean Boy #1 A cartoon by Brian Thorn

October 2014

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

Talking Back A conversation with Saskia Sassen

By Alexander Pines Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia, where she teaches Global Urbanism, a look into the development of cities in an increasingly globalized economy. She is best known for coining the term “global city” in the late 1990s. Her most recent book, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy, is an attempt to understand today’s dislocations beyond the usual framework of poverty and injustice. Eager to prove that he had actually remembered what he learned in her class last fall, Senior Editor Alexander Pines, CC ’16, sat down with Professor Sassen, who good-naturedly agreed to an interview despite her nasty cold. The Blue and White: I sat in on your lecture this evening and it was interesting to hear you talk about the different ecologies of cities and ways in which the city can fight back in certain respects. Saskia Sassen: The city talking back, right! B&W: Thinking of this, I was curious, what are your thoughts on the recent Climate March? SS: I think it’s fantastic. This is what I was getting at today—how do we mobilize? I really think that the march by itself is just one element. It’s a step, a step in a trajectory. But we need to mobilize people at every level, from great events and everyday practice, those are the two extremes. We need to begin to work more and more with the knowledge from scientists and technology, engineering—this is all part of the story. It’s a bit sad for me to hear from more conventional planners and your typical urban resident that environmentalism is all about recycling garbage and all that—that’s all great, that’s very important, but there is so much more. One image that I have is that the space, the action space, that gets enabled by policy is really one small part of it. Many people think that that is the project. To me, it seems like there is this whole other zone where scientific and engineering knowledge—to think, what you can do with nano-

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technology in the city!—come together to create a new project that more and more people are wrapping their brain around. B&W: Something that’s been on my mind lately is this book by Michael Sorkin, an architect. You’ve probably heard of it. Twenty Minutes in Manhattan? SS: I know Michael Sorkin, he’s a friend, but I confess that I haven’t read that particular work. I’m a bit of a geek, so I’m reading more of the biologies and ecologies. B&W: Gotcha. The basic gist of the book is that he’s describing his walk to work—the first sixty or so pages are him talking about the stairs, for example. He goes on to point out all of the different little things that he notices about the city as he moves through the Village toward his office in TriBeCa. So, I was curious, what do you see on your walk to work? What stands out? SS: Well, I also live downtown, in the Village. And, especially downtown, it is always worthwhile to look carefully at the street because there are all these artists, you know, who do these street interventions—often very modest. I know this one artist who, when there was a strike by the garbage collector, made these little sculptures of rats and put them by the garbage.

Illustration by Irina Teveleva

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N B&W: Rats? SS: Yes, rats [laughs]. They weren’t big rats; this isn’t Hollywood, it’s New York. Rats are a part of the city that is often invisible (although we’re seeing more and more now). Downtown, you know, the street is a very important space for artists because it forces you to really look, really notice. I don’t so much look at façades—I like them, too, but I’m more interested in these little objects, and it’s like a wave­­—once you see a few, you begin to notice them in other places. I must tell you that when I’m walking in the street I very often am looking. Most people when they’re walking on the street, I think, are not looking, but I am actually taking it in and trying to understand these material formations, you know, and what works and what doesn’t work. There are all these things that work in a way that sort of gives you pleasure just to see it. I also now find myself, more and more, looking at all of the spaces that we could use for green purposes.

to be huge—fourteen towers of apartments. Is that going to be urban? Or is that just built density? Another thing that I’m interested in is the notion of public space—there’s a mode in which one conducts oneself differently in, say, the piazza than in the boulevard. Right now I’m especially interested in indeterminate spaces. The street, the generic notion of the street—the square, an empty lot that has been abandoned for a year, whatever—is not a fully defined, fully determined space. These fourteen apartment buildings over-determine that space in a city that needs indeterminacy. B&W: So, you’re looking for the incomplete. SS: Yes, but also what is not totally over-determined. The ideal form is that a space is totally mixed-use. I love the way in which a city enables those who want to play with it, those who want to make it talk a different language. That’s what these artists with the rats are doing, in a way. I think we should have a lot of that in the city, and the system, if you will, does something like that when they put in a very interesting sculpture, for example. Chicago’s done amazing stuff—so many great sculptures. Or the beautiful park near the museum downtown. There’s a lot of play there. It’s an explosion of energy and we need so much of that—not everything must be functional. Not being functional sort of comes with this indeterminacy, though we may call it something else, call it playfulness. You following me?

“I would also say that a good city is a complex, but incomplete system.”

B&W: Another thing that you brought up in class was this idea of making certain mechanisms of the city visible and ways in which the city could be changed. For you, what’s the ideal, Saskia Sassen city? SS: Something that’s important to me is the fact that all cities are different and, especially if you’re talking about a very complex, older city, these deep histories of cities keep surfacing in different modes. And different parts of that city, in different epochs. So for me there is no ideal city. I also like the specificities of old cities, or just cities with a history that aren’t necessarily old. Whereas with brand new, plopped down suburbs, there is a lot of the generic as opposed to the specific, and there isn’t the particularity of these histories—which begin with the place where they were built. Port cities, of course, are the classic examples of this. Having said that, I would also say that a good city is a complex, but incomplete system. An office park can be very dense, but it is closed. The same is true with a lot of high rise residences, you know, one big tower, like those fourteen apartments that they’re going to do in Atlantic Yard [laughs]. They’re going

October 2014

B&W: Yeah, this idea that it’s got a sort of freedom to it, right? SS: Yes, and that one can be a maker—you can make

Illustration by Angel Jiang

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N something. B&W: You can engage with the city, yeah. SS: Yes, you can make urban farming, you can make the sorts of sculpture that go beyond pure function, et cetera. It all requires a lot of diversity, that’s why I love downtown. I find the Columbia University a bit corporate, you know? B&W: [laughing quietly] Yes. SS: It exudes a certain kind of … I think it’s also very nice. B&W: Yeah, the architecture has a sort of “home” recognition to it whenever I get back uptown, which can be nice. But then we can’t really go on the lawns—

“An economy, you know, is much more than just making money—it’s pride in your work, especially craftspeople.”

SS: You can’t go on the lawns? B&W: If there isn’t a green flag, technically no. They’re gated off, too. There’s no real space for us to make the campus ours in any real way. SS: You know, Harvard University’s main yard has these walls too, but it’s usable. The grass is totally run down, but it looks used, which is sort of nice. It doesn’t look perfect. B&W: So, considering Columbia and the campus, what are your thoughts on Manhattanville, especially with respect to all of the work you’ve done with expulsion and displacement? SS: I am always troubled when a community that had very few means and had to work very hard to make their neighborhood—and not just a neighborhood, but a neighborhood sub-economy—is rendered invisible in the discussion. It seems as though the issue on Columbia’s end was, we’ll just give them new housing, and it’s just much more than that. This was an area where these people made a culture, they

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made an economy—everything partial and modest— but they made it. And not to recognize that is, to me, very problematic. The question of evicting them in general, solely because there’s a more powerful actor, is problematic. But it’s also true that this is the history of cities—they keep destroying and reinventing. Look at a city like London, which has a lot of very old buildings. All of these structures have been redone, you know, it’s not a museum. The city is a pretty brutal space. And I can understand that Columbia needed that space. What I profoundly object to is the lack of recognition, that it’s not just about the little buildings in that neighborhood, it was a space of collective making. Of course, this is the story of a lot of places, like the famous Dharavi Slum in India. They destroyed a whole part of it and put all of the people in these high rise buildings with very narrow spaces in-between, which meant that they couldn’t keep on doing their weaving, which had been a critical source of income. The spaces that they were moved to just couldn’t provide what they needed, and the economy ended up being destroyed. An economy, you know, is much more than just making money—it’s pride in your work, especially for craftspeople. What I find most objectionable (since practically speaking we know in cities that you’re continually destroying stuff and you have to expand) is the lack of recognition of the making that those people have done, that this is not just about housing. I have a little project that I’m doing, sort of off on the side, about the cosmopolitanism of the city. We tend to think of cosmopolitanism as being in the center—downtown, Manhattan. I argue that it is partly made in all these little communities that we see as being non-cosmopolitan, we see them as being “fake” somehow, but they have produced elements that then travel. I have this image of a trade route. They travel from the neighborhood and eventually are cleansed, in a sense, and made more abstract. The

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N “pure” cosmopolitan center is a bit of a fiction, which gets me back to what I objected to so much, this lack of understanding on the part of the people in power, who think, “They are not like we are. We make this, we do that.” They do, too. Pushing this argument more, and this notion that the cosmopolitan is of the center, the urbanity is partly fed by all of these different communities. That in this route, this trade route of sorts, these bits of culture get lost and made more abstract. You know Bach, the great Bach? That was dance music! That came from the people. He just translated it into something else, something more abstract that can then circulate in a certain group. Our cities wouldn’t be nearly as exciting and as cosmopolitan as they are if they didn’t have these different communities.

interviews with financiers. I gather that you’re all writing about this,” and they laughed me away. I was very young—and looked younger than I was—and perhaps I looked more foreign then, or stupid to them. Then, and I’ll never forget this, one of them said, “You can go at night.” Of course, at that time, Wall Street was not a 24-hour operation. At night what you had were the cleaners, the janitors. Most of these people were Dominicans and I had already made contact with them—I grew up in Latin America—and so I decided, okay, I’ll go at night.

“The “pure” cosmopolitan center is a bit of fiction, which gets me back to what I objected to so much, this lack of understanding on the part of the people in power, who think, “they are not like we are. We make this, we do that.” They do too.”

B&W: Coming back to the sort of ways in which the city has reshaped itself, I remember you talking about your, well, I guess they might be called odd [Sassen laughs] research methods from when you first started out? Hanging out in weird places in the 80s [Sassen laughs even louder], things like that. Could you talk about what you used to do and maybe how that’s changed? SS: In New York, when I was working on The Global City [the book Sassen is best known for], I was trying to get help from the professional planners and the urbanists. They were a certain kind of crowd—in the system, they were maybe also professors. I remember going up to a group of them and saying, “I would really like to gain access to Wall Street and do some

October 2014

B&W: I was sort of a janitor in high school, actually.

SS: You were a janitor? Ha! Well, then as you’d know, these janitors inhabit the whole space throughout their work—the suite of the CEO, everywhere. So I came at night, and I asked if I could have lunch with them, which would have been at midnight. During this time I was wondering, for whom are these people cleaning? In this period, all of the big insurance companies, the banks, the corporate offices, they were all leaving. Fortyone thousand jobs were lost in corporate sectors in Manhattan. So these janitors, they said, “Come, we’ll show you!” What I saw was a lot of small, beautiful, elegant, boutique-style companies, foreign and American. They looked like very specialized advising consultants, finance, all these small little organizations. I began to understand that a whole new economy was installing itself within this older built environment, and if you were on the outside, all you could see was the old, the crumbling, but the inside was building itself back up—it was alive.w

Illustrations by Angel Jiang

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October 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.

‘At Pilates Style, I write health and lifestyle articles. My most recent article was evaluating a study that proved that more sleep=less motivation to work out! ‘I have always been a huge fan of books that choose specific historical moments to capture as their main subjects and I recently read The Love Affairs of Nathaniel and thought wow! This is the quintessential satire of today’s hipster culture. Waldman’s voice is witty and fresh and she somehow manages to give even the most pretentious—not to mention misogynist—character a sympathetic edge, which I respect. As someone who is particularly drawn to sweeping romance novels, this book was a wake-up call to today’s detached dating scene.’ e ‘The relationship between this man and this woman calls out to something primal in a viewer. It is the most important focus in the photo. It is the only focus, really. The kind of physical intimacy they exhibit is something to be envied...They are very clearly lovers, as that kind of comfort only won through physical intimacy. Further, they seem to be alone together at the beach, which given the time period and their age, probably means they are in a serious relationship...If these two are so clearly in love to a casual observer, are you? When you go out with your lover, do people stop and stare at the beauty of your casual interactions? ...Is the way a viewer sees this couple’s relationship dependent on the weather of the day? e ‘Prior to the age of printing, bookz and manuscripts were extremely prone to human error.’

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‘Interesting Thoughts: Lecture 1 Throughout the lecture, I found multiple things very interesting. First, the idea that prosopagnosia exists seemed very interesting...Also, the connection of the different cortexes to psychological functions made a connection in my head.’ e By a freshman linebacker: A controversial topic that has been discussed in the readings is the reason for student-athletes to be admitted into these prestigious colleges. I believe student-athletes contribute enough to the respected universities they attend, which should grant them the required qualifications to earn admissions. Student-athletes should be allowed entrance into these famous institutions because they contribute the same amount, if not more to these colleges they attend. They are practically treated like indentured servants because they go work for a company/ college by doing well in sports and in return they receive a skill/education. Student-athletes have practices, meetings, and games they participate in and receive no monetary compensation for these actions. Also, they are required to maintain a certain GPA to be able to partake in athletic events. On top of all this, each student-athlete is held to a higher standard than other students that attend college. These athletes also contribute a different perspective on a topic discussed in classes because they have unique experiences. Student-athlete by definition puts their academics before their athletics.w

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CAMPUS GOSSIP

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE The following conversation took place between two women walking down Broadway: “So my friend stole a bicycle. There was this bike chained to a fence with a really bad lock for a very long and he just broke the lock one day and took the bike. “The thing is that it turned out that the bike was actually his friend ’s. So there was this long time when he knew that he had his friend ’s bike but he couldn’t figure out a good way to let his friend know. But eventually he did let his friend know, and the friend was okay with it actually. It turned out it was good because they ended up throwing out all the bikes in the area because it was an illegal spot. “Funnily enough, he didn’t give the bike back to his friend. So when they went on the huge ride for the history of New York class, he was still riding the bike he stole.” e Overheard in the SGO: “Don’t tell me you’re not using this to pad your resume. Cause I totally am. I’m just using this to pad my resume. Having skills in finance— you’re good pads for that.” e ON THE FIELD Pete Mangurian, coach of the illustrious Columbia Football team, is just as unpopular with his players as he is with the fans. When he fired a popular coach recently, the players reportedly threw chairs at him. e In other Mangurian news, the dedicated coach had set practice times so that players had to wake up at 4 a.m. to go to practice. Players’ parents had to bring in a Stanford University sleep expert to substantiate complaints that this wasn’t healthy for student athletes. e In an email to the African Diaspora Literary Society informing them of their possible de-recognition, the ABC e-board referred to the group as “BSO.”

October 2014

CHANGES IN STATE From one freshman clutching a copy of the Iliad in the Hamilton stairwell to another: “I want to wait until I have things figured out and know my major before I commit to a relationship.” e Overheard in a creative writing class: “This is a piece I wrote about my Grandmother and her...transition from the...life state to the death state.” e There is a room in McBain with a cardboard structure called “Narnia.” It is routinely hotboxed. e For the Campus Left party at Potluck House in early September, “leftists” assembled a guillotine for capitalists. In response a student, a ‘self identifying capitalist,’ filed it as a bias incident. The administration ruled in his favor; Potluck is now on probation. An anonymous B&W editor recalls having inebriatedly stolen aforesaid guillotine and secreted it behind the EC 2nd floor lounge piano, but could not locate it the next day. e ON THE QUAD The Vice President of CU Dems recently chided a B&W senior editor for behavior that was “very unprofessional for a rising journalist.” e An enigmatic figure who has been described as everything from a “Columbia senior” to “male” is reportedly selling fake CUIDs to Barnard students. For a fee, interested buyers can enter EC with ease. However, Public Safety says they’ll confiscate CUIDs from any “non-affiliates” caught using them. e Twins sharing a Barnard quad room were apparently sharing it with their mother, who showed up for movein day and did not leave. However, she has reportedly now been replaced by a guy. e Rules...they change!w

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E AT I N â&#x20AC;&#x2122; G O O D I N T H E N E I G H B O R H O O D

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