Orientation 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. IV

Orientation 2014

The Kids Aren’t All Right, They’re Dead A conversation with Daniel Handler, the author behind Lemony Snicket

The Situation Rooms ResLife’s Secret Hazing Ritual Also Insid

e:

The Manhattanville and Grant houses’ turf war

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 ZANE BHANSALI, CC ’17 JULI BRANDANO, BC ’16 NIA BROWN, CC ’17 ALEX EYNON, CC ’15 JOSEPH MILHOLLAND, CC ’17 ANGELICA MODABBER, BC ’16 KATHERINE NEVITT, CC ’16 MADELINE PAGES, BC ’17 ALEXANDRA WARRICK, BC ’17 ETHAN WU, CC ’17 Artists RACHEL AGINS, BC ’17 ZANE BHANSALI, CC ’17 LEILA MGALOBLISHVILI, CC ’16 ALEXANDRA WARRICK, BC ’17

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XX

FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS

4 6 8 13 23 30 31

Dan Singer & Luca Marzorati Alex Eynon

Hallie Nell Swanson

Luca Marzorati

No. IV

Columns

Bluebook Blue Notes Campus Characters Verily Veritas Curio Columbiana Digitalia Columbiana Campus G ossip

Features 10 At Two Swords’ Length: A re you from New York?

Our monthly prose and cons 12 P ropagandize This

Subversive orientation materials from Columbia in the thirties 14 The Situation Rooms

ResLife’s Secret Hazing Ritual 16 Two Houses

The turf war between Columbia’s soon to be neighbors, the

Manhattanville and Grant houses

B&W Staff

19 We K now What You Did L ast Summer B&W Staffers bring back tales from the real world

B&W Staff

20 The Immortals

Nine people you should know in Morningside Heights

Jennifer Sluka

Naomi Sharp

theblueandwhite.org

f

22 Once on this Island

An expedition to the Dark Borough 24 The K ids A ren’t A ll R ight, They’re Dead

A conversation with Daniel Handler, the author behind

Lemony Snicket

cover :

“Let the Magic Begin” by Angel Jiang

BLUE BOOK

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

I’m going to risk exposing myself as a philosophical fart so that I might tell you something important. (In general, First Years, I would advise you, during your time at Columbia, to keep an ear open for farts of all kinds.)

There’s a wonderful moment in one of Plato’s dialogues when Socrates asks his companions about the nature of courage—a virtue universally praised in Greek ethics—and demonstrates to them that much of what we’re apt to consider courage is really cowardice, selectively described.

A person risks their life, say, without a tremor. Is that courage?

Maybe. The real question is why they’re doing it.

Often we put ourselves at the risk of harm or humiliation because the alternative would involve more harm, more humiliation. You strike up a conversation to end the awkward silence, you call someone out on their bullshit because it’s insulting. However, facing the undesirable to avoid the even less desirable might include acts of outright murder, so “courage” understood this way loses whatever internal connection it had to virtue. More importantly, this kind of thing isn’t courage, it’s fear. Expressed in a prudent, rational way, surely, but fear nonetheless.

Fear of whatever might happen if you don’t act.

The treatment this idea gets in Plato (who, of course, reserves true courage only for philosophers) may ultimately be incoherent. But, at least psychologically, he’s onto something. On the surface, fear doesn’t always look like fear. Sometimes it looks like mind-melting dedication to your work. Sometimes like resolute ambition. Sometimes like an exhilarating night of drinking, smoking, snorting something.

It’s relatively easy to live those ways because they’re all better than what seems like the alternative, and you can keep it up for a long time. Many of you will without realizing it.

Don’t let your passion be fear in disguise. Seriously: it’s easy, after a while here, for dread to be your only motivation. But dread will turn you into something so empty you might as well be dead. So try to be honest about why you’re doing whatever you do. Act on what seems important because it’s important. Stay positive. Talk to strangers.

Read. Make time for dancing. Start smoking cigarettes. Quit maybe.

Graduate. We’re all working on it.

— Torsten Odland

4

TRANSACTIONS ARRIVALS Halal Guys on 95th Street Class of 2018 Drugs from around the world Fall Bacchanal Columbia Weekly Spectator DEPARTURES Conference rooms on the 5th floor of Lerner Ding Dong Lounge Chad Washington from the football team “Black Box” filming around Lerner Fall Bacchanal Spring Bacchanal?

Come Again?!

“Spectator changed my life.”

– Miriam Datskovsky, in her Spec Op-Ed

The Blue and White

BLUE BOOK

Where Are All the Hotties At? We know you can’t stop thinking about it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of! In the spirit of sex positivity and body liberation, The Blue and White presents you this primer on where the hotties can be found.

1. You can find hotties on “the steps” (you know the ones), tanning or chilling, but always exposing their hot flesh.

2. Check out Brad’s Toasted Subs. The hotties here know how to use their tongues and teeth. Good shit!

3. The Men’s Sauna in Dodge. No better place to meet a sweaty hottie with his dong out.

4. The hotties at Columbia like to read and that’s why Butler 210 is teaming with some of the hottest flashes of round skin on campus.

5. Chipotle—can’t beat the smell on these hotties.

6. Ferris Booth Dining Hall. You can scope out all the hot shit from the balcony above. That’s sexy!

7. Hungarian Pastry Shop is where all the hotties like to talk. Put on a nice shirt and get ready to move your mouth if you want a chance with these sexy animals.

8. The Barnard Quad is a good spot. All the Barnard women are hot as fuck.

9. 1020 is a bar where pretty much all the hotties go. It’s like a sex paradise.

10. Hotties just love to congregate on the balcony behind Mudd. What’s that smell? It’s not just weed, it’s your crotch too.

POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE

Orientation 2014

Postcard by Alexander Pines

5

BLUE NOTES

“H

alal” is an Arabic word that means “permissible.” Permissible according to Islamic law that is, not necessarily New York City health codes.

But stumbling out of the Heights at 1 a.m. on a lonely summer night, a lamb over rice sounded pretty darn permissible. I decided to put my grumbling stomach before my bowels and stopped at Hooda’s.

You may have also enjoyed halal during your late-night Morningside exploits. And perhaps, like me, the extent of your conversation with the halal guy is begging for free fries. But this Blue and White writer, emboldened by several raspberry margaritas and a tyrannical editor’s threats, sought answers about the history of this neighborhood fixture.

Hooda’s first arrived on 115th Street 9 years ago, Kareem the nighttime proprietor informed me.

“It’s not like you just show up one day,” he said.

“There are regulations.”

More complex than city laws, however, are the unspoken rules between vendors. City agencies do not dictate locations for carts, so vendors settle questions of location amongst themselves. “Spots are like private property,” Kareem told me. “People even try

to sell them.”

Some vendors resort to intimidation to scare off newcomers. On arriving in Morningside, Hooda’s unknowingly encroached upon the turf of another longtime cart, Amir’s. “A few weeks after moving here, the tires on my cousin’s truck were slashed,” Kareem stated. “We think it was this guy Amir who had a cart up the block.”

When I asked what happened, Kareem paused.

“We stayed, of course,” he said. “We don’t play dirty,” he added nervously. As for Amir now? “He left a few years ago,” Kareem told me with a hint of a smile.

The landscape of halal food on the Upper West Side is set to change even more this fall with the opening of the “Halal Guys” shop on 95th and Amsterdam. The wildly popular food cart from 53rd and 6th Avenue drew huge crowds last year when they came to College Walk. Kareem said he wasn’t worried, however.

“Yes this guy is famous, but people come here because it’s convenient and cheap,” he said. “No one’s going to walk 20 blocks for a gyro.”

As I stood there, the smell of urine and cumin wafted to my nose. Right you are Kareem, I thought, right you are.

— Channing Prend

F

or Columbians who appreciate the peculiarities of our campus aesthetic, one recurring image provides a perplexing Easter egg for the observant.

In Butler Library, in Ferris Dining Hall, on lamp posts around the campus, the same image is stamped onto flat surfaces: Pineapple Man, known for his sunglasses, his cool attitude, and the spiky leaves that identify him as an anthropomorphic fruit. While his

6

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

BLUE NOTES image also appears around the world, the co-creator of Pineapple Man is an undergraduate student at Columbia University.

“It’s a good litmus test for people’s character,” she says enigmatically of the stickers, which feature the fruit standing assertively atop text reading “THEY CALL ME PINEAPPLE MAN.” “Some people look at it and they’re like, ‘It’s Pineapple Man.’”

The anonymous creator originally came up with Pineapple Man in China with her friend Calvin.

One day, while joking around, they conceived of the character and started to incorporate him into their lingo. “It’d be like ‘Pineapple Man—he makes his own ravioli,’” she says of these early commentaries.

She and Calvin began to make drawings and graffitis of the fictional fruit.

From these humble beginnings, Pineapple Man went on to become a global phenomenon.

“Calvin’s cousin owned a sticker factory in Indonesia, so we were able to have thousands of stickers made.” His image has appeared all over the US and as far overseas as Singapore (“that was really scary because in Singapore they’ll kick you out of the country if you’re caught graffitiing”) and has found many supporters at Columbia. “I declared my absolute fanhood of them,” one devotee told me about his first encounter with the Pineapple Man stickers. This dedicated fan once stood on the shoulders of his friend to place a Pineapple Man sticker in the Woodbridge stairwell.

The co-creator doesn’t see Pineapple Man as a critical part of her identity. “It’s not as if me and Calvin are Pineapple Man,” she told me. “We’re more sort of midwives to his birth.”

— Joe Milholland

Matthew Levine, CC ’15, was hit at the base of his neck. “I heard the shot and felt it at the same time... when I reached back I could feel metal, but no blood,” he said.

Levine considered his options, and decided that the hospital was the reasonable place to go.

He thus continued to wait for the shuttle bus to the Columbia Medical Center, where he fortuitously works above the emergency room.

Another victim was an elderly woman on the upper level of a double decker bus. And the third victim was a commuter, shot at the same shuttle stop where Levine had been. No one seemed very alarmed by the sequence of events, though surrounding events heightened the drama. According to police officials, there had been a gang bust in the wee hours of that morning, in the same building that the shots were fired from.

Police officers speculated to Levine that the events could have been connected. The following day, a fourth victim came forward with a BB pellet injury. Since then, no one has been apprehended as a suspect.

The Center for Disease Control states there are some 25,000 air gun injuries each year. The majority are unintentional injuries between adolescents playing a game, not assaults, which make up only 10% of reported cases. In New York, the air gun injury is especially uncommon, as the city mandates that even BB guns and pellet guns must be licensed and cannot be carried in public.

Though none of the victims were seriously injured, Levine says it has made him more paranoid on the street. Even with an air rifle, it’s disconcerting to be shot at for fun. Then again, if what the officers speculated to Levine holds any water, fun may not have been the motivation. Which leaves us with something more disconcerting.

— Tamsin Partiger

O

n a breezy Wednesday morning in June, two commuters and a curious tourist had their morning routines rudely interrupted when they were hit by BB gun pellets on the corner of Tiemann and Broadway.

Orientation 2014

Illustrations by Rachel Agins

7

Campus Characters You might not know the following figures—but you should. In Campus Characters, The Blue & White introduces you to a handful of Columbians who are up to interesting and extraordinary things and whose stories beg to be shared. If you’d like to suggest a Campus Character, send us an email at editors@theblueandwhite.org.

Hari Nef

B

efore I met Hari Nef, CC ’15, in real life I met her on the internet, where she is famous.

Googling Hari Nef yields the following: numerous interviews and profiles; a Tumblr page where her 6,800 followers anonymously and daily ask exacting questions of her (anon: lol where r ur eyebrows? Hari: in a swiss bank bitch!! hA); a 2000word close reading of one of her performances (“I am reminded of Spiral Dance, a foundational text of contemporary goddess worship by feminist-pagan activist and organizer Starhawk”); and a short film entitled She Told Me She Was Dead, in which Hari plays a celebrity who attempts to escape the adoring, improbably hip paparazzi on her tail. The film ends with a close up of Hari’s blood and glitter-splattered face as she convulses and dies in a darkened stairwell.

In short, it was an intimidating interview.

I spoke to Hari in June, over Skype. During the interview I asked if Hari is pronounced “Hah-ri” or “Hayr-ri,” (Hari paused a moment, as if in deliberation, before answering, “The first one,”) and what

8

pronouns she uses—Hari previously identified as non-binary but has since come out as a trans woman and is undergoing hormone replacement therapy.

The answers to these questions can also be found on Tumblr, along with answers to key questions such as how tall she is and what love has taught her.

When Hari arrived at Columbia, she initially thought she was “just going to focus on school.” This changed, however, when she followed her friend out one night and encountered the “amazing environment,” of New York City queer nightlife. “It was something that I didn’t feel or get at Columbia,” she says.

Hari’s off campus exploits are wide-ranging.

Hari’s sex column routinely causes her editor at Adult Magazine to cry. Last August, Hari donned football shoulder pads, earrings, a long black skirt and red gloves to perform her now legendary first solo piece “i am your girlfriend,” an ethereal and intricately conceived “transfeminine odyssey” of voices ranging from Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Rings, to Margaret Cho, in the car, (“I have to shit…

RIGHT NOW!”) to Lady Macbeth.

“Hari really brings a singular aesthetic and talent to the table,” reports Alexis Penney, who cofounded and performs with Hari in Chez Deep (pronounced Che Deep), a performance collective whose provenance is drag but whose performers, two of whom have come out as trans since the group’s inception, have never let the drag form restrict them. Their performances, deemed “hyper-intellectual” by New York Magazine, reportedly include ritual exorcisms to Nine Inch Nails and (repeated) group interpretive dance to Kate Bush.

Uptown, Hari can be seen on the stage in more traditional roles (she is a drama and performing arts major) and in Ferris, where she frequents the salad bar.

Alison Herman, CC ’15, recalls meeting Hari

The Blue and White

in Ferris during their freshman year. They ended up talking for an hour and a half and have been close friends ever since. “It’s one of the things I admire most about Hari,” says Alison, “she’s open and inviting and friendly in a way that makes connecting with her remarkably easy.”

Hari appreciates the resources, challenges and especially the people she’s encountered at Columbia, where she’s found that “Everyone’s a rockstar, either secretly or like not secretly…”

“I gained a lot of confidence at that school,” she says, “Because it’s really hard and traumatizing but then you survive it, and do really well. Sometimes.

And when you do you feel really good.”

— Virginia Fu

Conrad Tao

“I

’m very much a Gemini,” Conrad Tao, CC ’15 says with a laugh when I ask him about his hobbies. “I get bored quickly and move on – I have a lot of ephemeral and mercurial interests.”

Based on his schedule, you wouldn’t think Conrad would have time for anything on the side. He’s a concert pianist, hailed as “a promising star” by The New York Times and a “master of the keyboard” by Classical Review (when he was seventeen). Conrad spends most of his time jet-setting to different performances; when we meet at Joe’s, he’s just returned from Missouri for a rare three week lull before heading to Mexico.

Conrad’s been submerged in the world of classical music since he was born – he started playing at 18 months, made his concert debut at the age of 8, and began studying with the Juilliard Pre-College Division when he was 9. He’s been awarded the Avery Fisher Career grant in 2012 and won eight consecutive ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer awards. He’s also a Presidential Scholar of the Arts, a Davidson Fellow Laureate, and was named one of Forbes’s “30 Under 30” in 2011. But despite his seemingly orthodox accolades, Conrad is concerned with actively acting against what he describes as the “aggressively traditional concert context.”

When I ask him about his issues with the concert scene, Conrad suddenly grows serious. “I feel like it can represent a type of view of culture I disagree with,” he explains. “It’s this kind of rectilinear masterpiece culture that I want to get away from. You either become a tool or you’re stuck.”

In an attempt to express his discontent with the staid and conservative classical sensibility,

Orientation 2014

Conrad opened the UNPLAY music festival in 2013.

UNPLAY was an attempt to challenge the myopia of the current classical scene, with tripartite concerts that examined topics such as the ephemerality of the internet, a new 21st century canon for classical music, and social activism.

“I used to like the personal and professional as separate,” Conrad admits. “But now I’ve tried to make them less dichotomous. Creating the way I do, presenting the way I do, is deliberate.” He has an active blog on Tumblr, under his own name, and makes no attempt to distance it from his professional persona.

Much of what Tao posts are curated statements about various forms of injustice: commentary on Michael Brown’s murder, the disposability of the Black Body, refutations of the “intentionalist” approach to discrimination.

“I think gaining terms and learning language related to social justice has been one of the most positive parts of being at Columbia,” Conrad remarks.

“It’s great that more people are coming in with the vocabulary to talk about that stuff.”

In addition, his musical polymathy is on full display in his online presence. He frequently posts his musical experiments in genres that are a far cry from the usual perception of the classical, such as drone, synthpop, rap, and otherworldly mashups that draw on the Sailor Moon theme song and Chance the Rapper.

When I question whether his interest in such different areas of music is a conscious reaction to his classical upbringing, he pauses before answering. “I still love classical music,” he insists. “I don’t think my liking of those things is a conscious rejection of classical music. But continuing to produce like that is rather trying to destabilize and reject the responsibility politics of the classical musician.”

— Zane Bhansali

Illustrations by Zane Bhansali

9

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

Are you from Y

eah, you got it. Born and raised. Actually just But can you really blame them? The Jets and thirty minutes from Columbia. No, not by sub- the Giants share the same stadium located in the midway—there’s no subway by me. I’m talking about the dle of a swamp and flanked by a regional airport and West Side. I mean the real West Side. So West Side the New Jersey Turnpike. The official logic is that the you’re, like, on the other side of the river.

Jets and Giants represent the New York metropolitan Is that still New York? Sure it is. It’s not like area. They may be headquartered on the west side of we have the same governor but...aren’t we getting the Hudson, but the concept of the team is broader into semantics? Sure, some might call it “across state than that. Broad enough for them to call themselves lines.” I’m not much of a geographer. Anyway that’s New Yorkers ignoring the conI feel like I cept of the Trifall into the same State. category.

My Call it what mailing address you will, you may say NJ, but know? I guess my T-shirt says if you want the NY. And if you technical term, don’t like it, you you’d call it “New can straight up Jersey.” get fucked.

Your aunt So my roots and uncle are are in the Garden from a town in State–does that New Jersey? No, mean I need to I’ve never heard shout it out for of it. “Jersey” all the world to can mean a lot hear? Spare me of things. Maybe the romanticism. they live in a charming beach town I may not be from New York, but... where every ice cream shop is named Jersey? I don’t want to be from New ew ersey after a different Springsteen lyric.

Jersey. What I’m saying is, in the

By Dan Singer Maybe they live in a less charmbroader, more interesting sense, I’m ing beach town where MTV films from New York. a reality show. Do they speak with Pretentious–maybe, maybe an accent? They might be from the backcountry—I’ve not–but what can I say? I’ve had my fair share of never been. Not everyone from New Jersey knows experiences in this city. I got my tonsils taken out your Grandparents. Some of us have class and cul- at St. Luke’s, clipped a biker with my car turning off ture. In the north some of us do, anyway.

Broadway. The last time I really thought about my Jersey may be my birth state, but it’s not my geography was on a Lit Hum trip to the Metropolitan home. No one with a sense of their own worth would Museum of Art. I bought my ticket and waited for call it that. For instance, New Jersey is home to three my professor in the lobby. Man, I thought to myself, major sports teams; can you name them all? You can’t I’ve been on this same field trip five times since and here’s why: their names are the New York Jets, kindergarten.w New York Giants, and the New York Red Bulls.

N

10

J

The Blue and White

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

New York?

I

’m from New York. Well, just north of it—and I of Westchester County, and, from what I can tell, mean just north, like, within walking distance. The there is not a statistically significant difference in the Bronx, if you’re rounding down. Sure, Westchester is number of likes. technically north of the city, but I prefer “up-uptown” Even before I came to school in the city, I knew or even “extended Bronx.”

New York like the back of my hand. The subway— People tell me that Westchester County is “the that’s right by Grand Central. The Met? Somewhere suburbs,” or even worse, “upstate”—bullshit, I say. around Grand Central. Madison Square Garden?

Take a drive through Yonkers, and then tell me you’re That’s kinda close to Grand Central. Brooklyn? Not in the sticks. Entering Mount Vernon from Wakefield, near Grand Central. And, like many Westchester resyou won’t even know the difference. I think we’ve idents, I’ve spent a lot of time in the Bronx. Granted, got more apartment buildings than Staten Island, most of this time is on the train as we whizz by the judging from the pictures (no, I’ve never been). projects, but I’ve been buying cheap cases of beer at Westchester County Airport has even been used as Imperial on East 233rd Street since I was 13—thanks a stand-in for LaGuardia and JFK in a bunch of mov- Maureen! ies: I bet you saw some As I get older, of them, and couldn’t my Westchester pals even tell the difference. and I continue to And the Bee-Line bus explore the city, like system even runs into the true urban citithe Bronx! zens that we are. All Plus, Westchester our summer internis just as tied to the ships are really close city as wherever you’re to Grand Central, in from. Practically everyMidtown, which is a one commutes in for neighborhood with a work, and we’re just as ton of character. We close to Manhattan as all meet up for lunch at whatever cool new neighborhood this cheap French bistro called Au of Brooklyn that you just “discovBon Pain. estchester ered.” And the commute is just as After work, the fun really

By Luca Marzorati rugged: Metro-North passengers begins: happy hour in the East 30s may have cushioned seats and elecis the place to be. I finally undertrical outlets, but we have to figure out whether we stand what people are talking about when they say should buy a peak or off-peak ticket, or if we’re com- “downtown.” It’s best when the bridge-and-tunnel fortable sitting backwards, or if we should strike up a crowd has to head for the exits (little do they know the conversation with that guy we kind of know. pleasure of being from a place with an overland conThe noble natives of Westchester even com- nection to the Big Apple). After a night on the town, mute to the historic and magnificent Grand Central we’ll congregate in Times Square—right by Grand Terminal. All those businessmen in your pictur- Central–looking up and admiring the lights, realesque Instagram shot are not, in fact, Manhattanites, izing we’re at the beating heart of the greatest city on but Westchester residents, going about their daily Earth. We can’t stay too long, though. The last train business. Even the discerning photographer behind back to Westchester leaves at 1 a.m.w Humans of New York occasionally features a denizen

W

Orientation 2014

Illustrations by Angel Jiang

11

FOOTBALL SUCKS

Propagandize This Subversive orientation materials from Columbia in the thirties

By Alex Eynon

A

t institutions like Columbia, which—as we are gleefully reminded by a relentless parade of sweatshirts and admissions pamphlets—was founded in 1754, the vaguely sanctifying aura of an illustrious past floats around campus. One dimension of this school history is a particularly Columbian brand of liberalism and student activism.

Most assume this is the legacy of the famous protests of the spring of 1968, when students reacted to the discovery of a link between the administration and defense research for the Vietnam war, among other issues, by occupying campus buildings until they were forcibly removed by the NYPD. In fact, though campus activists may struggle to carry on the proud, if sometimes ill-fitting mantle of ’68, a 1933 orientation handbook sent out to the incoming class of 1937 in defiance of the administration reveals that at this date Columbia had already “flaunted its liberal reputation for decades.” The then-radical Spectator produced the book in response to a series of controversies, including the dismissal of faculty and staff with communist sympathies, and the expulsion of Spectator editor in chief Reed Harris after a series of columns virulently criticizing university dining services and the football program.

In response to these events, the handbook’s editors assert, students “have shown marked unwillingness, in many instances, to accept dictatorial measures.” They encourage new students to continue to become strong advocates of academic freedom in the broadest sense, combating an administrative culture in which while “Polite radicalism in the classroom is looked on understandingly, vigorous action on the public rostrum is the subject of chastisement.”

The handbook also dispenses insights about Depression-era Columbia. Some of these, like the

12

wry observation that, when King’s College was founded, “there were but thirteen college-bred people on Manhattan island, all of them employed, we presume,” are surprisingly good anticipations of contemporary liberal arts anxieties about life after the ivory tower. Another revelation is that, judging from the 1933 commentary, no one (or at least no student publication) has ever cared much for Columbia football. Sections of the book imply, however, that even at this relatively early date a shadowy committee of wealthy and conservative alumni could only be placated by keeping football alive.

In contrast, expelled former Spectator editor Reed Harris claimed that the sport “produc[es] lead soldiers of mediocrity.” The handbook also predicts the imminent elimination of the fraternity system, which it derides as the thoroughly debunked product of a “myth of collegiateness,” increasingly abandoned for more intellectually stimulating society. Nevertheless, a peek at the editions of succeeding years divulges series of neatly recorded football scores and directories of Greek letters.

Does this orientation guide have anything to say to activists today, or is it just a relic? It could be of interest to the organizations currently pushing for administrative reforms on issues like fossil fuel divestment and sexual assault policy, though perhaps only cynically. In the context of the four year cycle of the undergraduate experience, however, choosing not to dwell on this legacy may have an upside—it allows each generation of students to set out afresh to transform the social and intellectual landscape, possibly, as never before. And many of them do, in ways great or small. But inevitably, they cede their place to the next round, who undertake the task all over again–hopefully with new problems.w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

V E R I LY V E R I TA S

TOLD BETWEEN PUFFS

V

In which our hero tries something new

erily Veritas returned to campus with a new attitude. And as he lead his valet from the cab to his rather too monkish room in Furnald Hall his heart hummed like a plucked string, full of rude generosity and strong Nietzschean feelings. As his man papered the drab walls with V’s preferred William Morris print, our bachelor reclined and loosened his necktie. “Oh fate,” he mused aloud, “Oh funny fate.” This sunny transformation in his affect was the upshot of a hoary Blake-like vision that had assailed him in his bedchamber at his family’s summer home in Narragansett.

While V reclined in bed one night with a translation of Pushkin, as he mixed another spoon of laudanum into his brandy, the ceiling above him split open with a terrible green light and the whole room shook. Out of the light descended a long-robed angel who floated above Verily’s bed with red hair that hung in a cloud about her narrow head, a rakish, sultry mane. Verily strained to remember his decorum.

“Spirit, welcome. Might I say you look perfectly divine this evening and offer you a brandylaudanum?”

“Open your eyes, child! Verily,” she said, “I ask you: who will take care of you when your suits have gone to rot? Who will entertain you when your books flake away? Who will dress you when your valet dies?

“A companion, Verily! A right and loyal friend.

You need at least one. At least one. At least one. At least...” And the apparition ascended back to into the green ether–leaving our hero, by turns, clammy, indignant, suicidal, repentant, and, finally, enraptured: if the Gods willed it, a companion he would have.

But where does one meet a friend? Butler Library, V.V. decided.

Orientation 2014

After his first day of class he sought out a room where he might carry on a luxuriously long, loud, and impertinent conversation. The only appropriate venue seemed to be the “cafe” on the ground floor, which V presumed had been named ironically. He sat at a thin, dreadfully plastic table and set out a hand of tarot for himself and his friend, whoever it might be. He unbuttoned his shirt revealingly and so it began.

The hours passed more slowly and combatively than he would have thought. Half the men who entered were dressed in rags so dark and unseemly they surely thought themselves members of some puerile avant garde; the other half carried themselves like human cows; whenever V lit a cigarette some hag ran over to scold him.

He was beginning to despair and fantasize about his collection of skulls, when a bachelor of rare form and rarer raiment walked through the door, a lean and aristocratic figure with respectably brown hair.

“Shall we?” Verily offered as the man walked by, motioning to the hand of tarot.

“Sorry?” the man asked, in light Australian accent that practically stopped our hero’s heart.

V.V. did not want to seem to stiff, so he brought the brandy decanter out of his bag. Standing it on the table with a smirk, he asked devilishly, “Shall we?”

The man did not respond–merely glancing from decanter to Verily in quick succession. To prove his liberality, V.V fished through his bag and added a bottle of laudanum to the offerings. Now in the dangerous voice of a Spaniard, he asked: “Shall we?”

“What the fuck is this?”

“See now!”w

13

THE DOORS

The Situation Rooms ResLife’s Secret Hazing Ritual

By Hallie Nell Swanson

Y

ou know how it is: you walk into a Carman room and weird shit is going down. Maybe some kid has bought a bar on Craigslist and is having a paint party. Maybe your Speedo-clad gay floormate has emerged from the room’s (proverbial?) closet and is arguing with his Bible-clutching roommate about whether he’s going to hell.

While the first did happen last year, the second is a scenario from the final part of RA training, an event called ‘Behind Closed Doors.’ A room on each of Carman’s empty floors is taken over by current RAs, who act out worst-case scenarios that the new RAs-in-training must deal with. There are thirteen scenarios, one for each floor. Some are funny—there’s a crazy party and a heated sorority-girl roommate dispute. There’s also drug use (Adderall, marijuana), a stressed-out student, a negligent fellow RA, a case of sexual assault, a suicidal resident, and a ‘bias incident’ (a “performed negative opinion or attitude toward a group of persons based on their race, religion, ethnicity/ national origin, or sexual orientation”). It’s more taxing than a single day as an RA could possibly be: “The general idea behind it all is, you are the worst resident you’ve ever encountered,” says one RA of the role play. “You embody that asshole and you try to make them your reality.”

On each floor of Carman in Behind Closed Doors, RAs emerge from the elevator and are told to identify the incident.

Once they do, the RA-in-training enters the room, along with some others who observe. Also there are the Graduate Hall Director (the RA’s immediate boss), and relevant administration personnel: representatives from Columbia Psychological Services for the suicidal resident; from the

14

Office of Multicultural Affairs for the bias incident.

They are there to “de-traumatize you after dealing with it ‘cause it’s pretty real,” according to one RA. After the scenario finishes, everyone has a discussion about how it went.

Sometimes the situations are hard to identify: a Wien RA, entering a room which was meant to convey a dispute with a fellow RA, thought the situation was a suicide one: “She was giving me one-word answers and was just generally depressed about life, her room was really messy. Apparently the messy room was just meant to convey that she was a mess...I was just like, time, I give up.” There is, however, no criticism: “They never tell you what you do is wrong; there’s no blame,” said one Broadway RA. Of course, the set-ups don’t make room for some of an RA’s real life considerations. “There are certain fights you should take on and certain fights you shouldn’t, and that line is different in EC and

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

THE DOORS Carman,” says the Wien RA. In his Behind Closed Doors, he was confronted with a party scenario where the party was a surprise party for another RA–something he wouldn’t have shut down in real life.

According to him, Behind Closed Doors is the most “hyped” part of RA training, rivaled only by an “absurd” fire safety video from the Eighties, which begins with a discarded lit cigarette and has a variety of alternate endings, including death. Last year the RAs asked to have the video played twice—since initially it couldn’t be heard over the laughter—and plan to ‘Rocky Horror’ it in 80s gear for this year. RA training lasts the entirety of the week before NSOP (there’s also a 3-day refresher in January), filled with required events from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.

“It’s the most politically correct week of your life,” says the Broadway RA. Given the training program’s focus on everything being “so PC and above board,” he says Behind Closed Doors is a little out of place. One wonders about the Speedo and Bible as props for the gay and Christian student, and one version of the scenario, enacted by a bored actor towards the end of the day, included a fake exorcism. The Broadway RA points out that according to the University’s “extremely vague” definition of hazing, the Behind Closed Doors process could conceivably qualify. Part of the day also involves trying to “catch out” a novice RA by taking photos of them making the mistake of touching residents or their property and publishing them on an independently run Facebook group for the RA training week. The exercise, says the Wien RA, is extremely helpful—a photo of an RA picking up a resident’s drugs shows how the resident could counter-claim that they belonged to the RA. There is still, though, “an element of public shaming.”

It’s for this reason that, according to a Wien RA who’s informed about the national ResLife scene (there are apparently “magazines about Residential Life”), there’s a growing tendency for colleges to abandon Behind Closed Doors-type programs.

“You’re putting people in situations that they aren’t comfortable in for the sake of bonding and com-

munity spirit,” he says. “You need to pull together.

But the fact that you’re struggling inherently makes it hazing in a lot of policies, including the Columbia one, regardless of if you consented to it.”

“For returners,” says the Wien RA, “it’s kind of a day-long party.” In its broader strokes, the end of RA training does resemble the end of a fraternity pledge process. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this tough week is finished with the “RA bash” (which last year was held on a boat, reportedly because it is cheaper than renting out Low Library, and because nobody can leave).

But there is value, according to the Wien RA, in making the handbook situations real. “Trial by fire is, in my opinion, one of the best ways for people to actually grasp a concept. You can read the book, but you won’t absorb it until you do it yourself, or see someone else mess up doing it,” he says. Residential Life likes to use the example of an RA who disciplined a resident for hanging a Nazi flag in his room. It was only after the matter had gone much higher that he had a chance to explain himself: the flag had been taken from Auschwitz by his grandmother, a survivor, on D-Day, and remains in the family to remind them. This incident is simulated in Behind Closed Doors with a student who “reclaims” a slur by writing it on his whiteboard. Having an incident enacted in real life, he says, can force you to “realize that your first assumption isn’t always right and you need to be a thousand times nicer than you think you should be.”

Behind Closed Doors also serves as a “shared dialogue and way of understanding things,” says the Wien RA. The program’s “bonding” elements serve some purpose: “I can talk about any experience with any RA,” he says, recalling chatting to another RA about the difficulties of avoiding personal opinions in the gay vs. religious roommate scenario, for example.

The handbook can tell you the rules, but making the right call is something you have to work on yourself with experience. As the handbook says, “We hired you for your judgment; use it accordingly.”w

“According to the University’s ‘extremely vague’ definition of hazing, the Behind Closed Doors process could conceivably qualify. ”

Orientation 2014

15

M A N H AT TA N V I L L E

Two Houses The turf war between Columbia’s soon to be neighbors, the Manhattanville and Grant houses

By Luca Marzorati

I

n the early hours of June 4, just five blocks north of campus, more than 400 uniformed New York Police Department officers stormed two public housing complexes—the Grant Houses and the neighboring Manhattanville Houses—as part of the largest gang bust in New York’s history. Forty young men were arrested in a coordinated effort between the NYPD and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which unveiled two indictments spanning 145 counts later that afternoon.

The June raid marked a precise culmination of an investigation that lasted over four years. Most of the suspects were arrested in bed and then paraded in front of the television crews, which had been notified in advance of the bust.

The accused gang members looked, quite understandably, as if they dressed in the midst of a police raid: sweatshirts were thrown on haphazardly, with handcuffs slapped on wrists before arms could tunnel through sleeves.

Soon after the raid, New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton tweeted a picture of himself surrounded by flak-jacketed officers. Yet the precision of the raid belies the tenuous situation in West Harlem, a rare Manhattan neighborhood that changed less in the last few decades than adjacent areas.

This stasis is likely to end in 2016, when

16

Columbia plans to open the first building of its Manhattanville campus. As a whole, the Manhattanville project will cost $7 billion and span 17 acres, bringing an Ivy League research institution and all its trappings north past 125th Street.

The debate over whether the campus should be built (over the objection of some local landowners and community groups) on a large contiguous plot is, for better or worse, over.

However, the verdict is still out on whether Columbia can accomplish its more ambitious goal of integrating the Manhattanville campus into West Harlem.

The university will take over the neighborhood, but will it do so as a landlord or a partner? Whereas Morningside Heights was built up around Columbia’s campus, the Manhattanville buildings rise in the midst of a long developed neighborhood.

Manhattanville sits in the valley between Columbia and City College, with 125th Street serving as its major east-west thoroughfare. For the past two decades, the street has also served as a territorial border between gangs from the two largest housing complexes in West Harlem: the General Ulysses S. Grant Houses (from 123rd Street to 125th Street between Broadway and Morningside Avenue) and the Manhattanville Houses (north of 129th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue).

In recent years, gang members from Manhattanville, including the Make it Happen Boys (MHB), have been assisted by auxiliary members from Money Ave (slang for Manhattan Avenue), located across Morningside Park from Morningside Heights. Together, Money Ave and MHB have clashed with 3 Staccs, a gang that controls the Grant Houses.

These three groups make an arc surrounding the Columbia campus on the north and east fronts.

Illustration by Leila Mgaloblishvili

The Blue and White

M A N H AT TA N V I L L E While the gang violence has barely touched the university community, and crime rates across Manhattan have fallen rapidly over the past two decades, mapping the conflict underscores the tricky geography of West Harlem. Whereas the geography of Morningside Heights contains “buffer zones” between the Columbia campus and the areas where this turf war has been fought, the Manhattanville campus does not. The Manhattanville projects flank the entire east side of Columbia’s Manhattanville campus, perhaps complicating any notion of the university seamlessly integrating into a new neighborhood.

The two indictments released in the wake of the June raid uncover the nature of the gang war and the changing nature of crime in our area. Money Ave, 3 Staccs, and MHB have a loose organizational structure with a largely teenage membership. There’s no evidence that the gangs were involved in what would be considered typical gang activities, such as drug dealing and extortion. Instead, Money Ave, 3 Staccs, and MHB are not professional organizations with a business model, but a collection of fluid “crews” who are primarily interested in protecting their own turf from potentially humiliating incursions by rivals (the proof of which—snapshots of street signs in rival territory—remains common on Twitter).

The rivalry between Grant and Manhattanville, which had mainly taken the form of online threats, fights (some of which were filmed and uploaded to the website World Star Hip Hop), and the occasional shooting, escalated in the fall of 2011. Early on the morning of September 11, Tayshana “Chicken” Murphy, an 18 year-old who was one of the best female basketball players in New York, was murdered in a stairwell of the Grant Houses. Two Manhattanville residents were later convicted of the killing. Tayshana was the sister of Taylonn Murphy, a member of 3 Staccs who had shot at members of Money Ave in March 2011, yet the highly-publicized murder, seen as a cold-blooded execution of an innocent bystander, took the conflict to the next level.

Also fueling the fire was the growth of social media, which gave gang members on both sides a platform to taunt rivals and boast of criminal exploits, while also giving law enforcement officials a trove of actionable data. Three months after Murphy’s murder, a Money Ave member named Walter “Recc” Sumter posted a video on YouTube insulting 3 Staccs members and mocking the murder.

Orientation 2014

Two weeks later, Sumter was shot and killed leaving a party in East Harlem. Hours later, Eric “Bullet” Pierce, one of the accused shooters, sent a Facebook message indicating that he “threw bitches in the graveyard for real” and set his status to “Niggas die every day.”

Some gang members appeared to be aware that these social media postings would come back to haunt gang members on both sides. One 3 Staccs member posted, “For all you lil dum ass Grant niggas the cobs [sic] is on FB…so why the fuck are yall putting shit up about beef on FB!!!” One gang member instructed another to take down a Facebook post out of fear that it would signal their gang ties to the police. Nonetheless, the retaliation, and the online record, only grew.

The lengthy indictment provides insight into how the gangs would function and the nature of the project rivalries. The first major hurdle was obtaining a firearm, which are increasingly hard to find in New York. Multiple gang members would often have to pool their money to get a working gun with ammunition.

Large groups of gang members, usually with more people than weapons, would congregate and enter the rival project complex, walking around until a confrontation broke out or the police arrived. For instance, on August 4, 2012, Money Ave members gathered to honor Recc Sumter in Morningside Park.

After commemorating their fallen comrade, a group of thirty walked north to the Grant Houses with a loaded gun and shot the first male individual they encountered. A member later explained that “It Was Recc Day…Its Only Right…We Was Sauced And Smacked.” Two members changed shirts after the shooting to avoid being picked up by police officers.

Premeditation was rare, and the plans there were often seemed more spurred by boredom than material gain. West Harlem was engulfed by a culture of revenge, as Tephanie Holston, the mother of the slain Tayshana Murphy, told her son Taylonn that “them two niggas from the ‘ville have got to go.” Police crackdowns were only counterproductive in this respect: a Money Ave member believed that a loss of guns in a recent bust left the gang vulnerable, meaning they needed to strike 3 Staccs quickly before they were themselves attacked.

The frequent arrests of high-ranking members of both gangs created two related problems. First, as older members spent more and more time locked up

17

M A N H AT TA N V I L L E

on Rikers Island, younger members—more confident yet more inexperienced—took on greater responsibilities, generating more risk for both sides. Because of this, the leaders in jail called their lieutenants over the recorded lines of the New York City Department of Correction, inadvertently handing more information to prosecutors. As in the case of social media, the indictment indicates that some members knew the phone calls were taped, but still admitted to, or ordered, crimes via telephone.

Fears about younger members stepping in to fill the roles of older ones were more pronounced after the June arrests, which took a large portion of the young men out of the neighborhood. In an attempt to slow down the succession, Police Service Area 6 (which is responsible for policing housing projects in Upper Manhattan) organized a pickup basketball game for children from the Grant and Manhattanville projects. “When you have 103 young men that have been arrested and removed from the community, it causes a void,” PSA 6 deputy inspector Luis Despaigne told the Daily News.

18

e Columbia, the neighboring institution with an $8.2 billion endowment, has effectively stayed out of the fray. Though, the day after the raids on the Grant and Manhattanville houses, Vice President for Public Safety James F. McShane sent an email to all Columbia students, faculty, and staff, touting the arrests as a move to “make our city and community safer.”

McShane’s email made it clear that Columbia, like the NYPD, would be addressing the crime wave with a show of increased visibility—more officers on the streets, more fixed posts (like the “Sky Watch” booth outside the Grant Houses), and more patrol cars through Manhattanville.

Currently, Columbia functions as a self-contained system: 110th Street to 123rd Street in Morningside Heights is clearly dominated by the university, and while some students do reside in West Harlem or in other parts of New York, the university’s “sphere of influence” does not extend outside of the neighborhood. Part of the reason why Manhattanville was chosen as the location of expansion (as opposed to the Donald Trump plan of a new campus west of Lincoln Center) was because Manhattanville could be contiguously connected to Morningside Heights. In fact though, any connection between the campuses will have to be made on a small strip of Broadway that runs adjacent to the Grant and Manhattanville houses.

Columbia, at least in the last twenty years, has not had to assert much force to maintain their image as a “safe urban university.” This may change once its students are taking classes a block away from some of the hottest crime zones in West Harlem. And to the extent that Columbia shows a tougher face, the hope that the Manhattanville campus could be an “urban academic environment...woven into the fabric of the surrounding community,” as the Columbiaadministered Manhattanville website states, will be a fantasy. So long as Columbia takes seriously its role as a kind of safety zone, it’s hard to see how its relationship with the neighborhood could be anything but managerial.w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

SUMMER INTERNMENT

We Know What You Did Last Summer B&W Staffers bring back tales from the real world

By Staff

W

hile I was studying abroad last semester, I tutored English so that I could earn enough to travel during the summer. It had been a goal of mine to travel alone—a New Year’s resolution, in fact. And I did: Five weeks farming in rural France, three weeks backpacking in Crete.

With no obligation to work, study, or please anyone at all, I got to constantly ask myself what I wanted to do. What did it mean to me to make valuable use of my time?

It’s a complicated question and I don’t give it the thought it deserves during the semester, when I’m ricocheting from one commitment to the next.

But traveling alone pushed me to think about that question. Answering it over and over not only made me more independent, but taught me to respect my own judgement. (That made it much easier to decide it was okay to wear one pair of shorts for three weeks and wash them with shampoo.)

I don’t think making valuable use of your time necessarily means having an amazing time. The way we idealize travel is unrealistic, and social media makes it easy. You don’t step directly from the plane into a Lonely Planet slideshow. It’s not all waterfalls/ beaches/mountains at sunrise/sunset/midnight.

Traveling alone can be thrilling, depressing, and much more often on the spectrum in between. It’s just that no one Instagrams the last two.

— NS

O

n a sunny day in July, I spent eight hours at JFK Airport holding up a 2 by 3 foot sign that read in big block letters: COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL. I had first heard about the job a few days ear-

Orientation 2014

lier. A good friend had texted me saying “need some money? I know someone who needs people .” In want of some extra dough and perhaps an adventure, I bit.

The mystery employer turned out to be a man running a special high school program for Chinese students at Columbia. They bring them in by the lots and charge them ghastly sums for the privilege of sitting in on classes at our esteemed Ivy League Institution. It’s a craze among the affluent chinese.

My employer tasked me with a fairly simple job.

He gave me a list of flights and the students who’d be on them. I was to go to the airport, locate the students as they got off their flights and shepherd them to chartered cars. He also gave me the big sign.

With or without big sign, it was no mean task.

My job was to locate someone who I’d never seen and who’d never seen me in a very crowded room without being able to text them. I positioned myself in front of each flight’s respective gate and desperately made eye contact with each unaccompanied high school aged East Asian who passed.

Often, more than an hour would pass between the time a plane landed and the time the person I was picking up got out of customs. It was then that the job became utterly stressful. I imagined that some poor little girl had gotten past me and was now wandering JFK confused and lost.

Most of the students had never been to America before. I, a short bespectacled scrawny boy hired for the day, was their first experience of this country.

Somehow, everyone came and ended up in the right cars. I spent a lot of time on campus the two weeks the program was on, but never ran into any of them again.

— DS

Illustration by Leila Mgaloblishvili

19

T H E I M M O RTA L S

Nine People You Should Know in Morningside Heights by the Staff of The B&W BOBBY The New York Times has declared Bobby Fibel unofficial Mayor of Morningside Heights. And what goes for the Grey Lady goes for us, though we might skip the qualification. Mr. Fibel is the only person we can count on seeing every day on Broadway, smile on face.

SIR MIKE The gatekeeper of Hell (a.k.a. Carman Hall), Sir Mike is probably the only security guard whose name you’ll ever know.

He hasn’t missed a day of work in 13 years, so you’ll quickly become accustomed to his fist bumps, profound one-liners, and $5 cover CDs. BUTLER DOG Butler Lounge: bright lighting, a vending machine full of off-brand energy drinks, Doritos on tap from Blue Java in the other room; there’s also a large dog on the floor. Jedda holds court here. Sometimes she goes for walks on Southfield. Sometimes she is left to the care of students eager for some love, or an opportunity to shirk work. Occasionally, late at night, the lounge is beset by a strange howling though it could be mistaken for an expression of the collective Butcaf consciousness, the sound is in fact only Jedda.

20

The Blue and White

T H E I M M O RTA L S

SYMPOSIUM GUY Tasos Sakkas is either the owner, manager, or head waiter of Symposium, a Greek restaurant located in the basement of a brownstone on 113th. Whenever you walk in you’ ll find the white haired man standing at the back of the dining room with a wizened smile.

Debonair in his white collared shirt, twenty years older than every other employee, he’s graceful with a plate of flaming cheese and remembers, or cooly feigns to remember, everyone he meets.

BARNARD SECURITY Benny is the guy at the Diana Cafe who calls you beautiful, scolds you for drinking Red Bull before noon, and will remember your extra slice of cheddar without fail. The breakfast line down the stairs stirs with whispers if someone else is behind the grill, and shortens considerably—that bacon-egg-cheese-sandwich is as much about Benny as it is about deliciousness. Get on his good side, and he might even sneak you to the front of the line.

1020 ALEX Alex is a bartender and bouncer at local watering hole 1020, of which he is rumored to have been a popular habitué during his years as a Columbia student before joining its staff.

Alex claims that his favorite movie ever screened by 1020 is Paul Verhoeven’s The Fourth Man. He is also an avid kayaker and open water swimmer.

Orientation 2014

PREZBO’S BODYGUARD Every Don Quixote needs a Sancho Panza, and Lee Bollinger, Columbia’s silver-maned president, is no exception. Enter Danny J. Rodriguez, a figure who may be as enigmatic as the man he serves.

Rodriguez’s official title at the Office of the President is chauffeur, but he is more akin to the political “body man,” holding sundry papers, umbrellas, and providing security with his wide shoulders and dark sunglasses. Yet any notion that Rodriguez has earned PrezBo’s confidence in the privacy of his Audi will remain a mystery; through Columbia, he declined comment.

SCOTT HELFRICH Pause in front of Butler or the Van Am quad and you might notice the lightly bearded visage of Scott Helfrich. As Associate Director of South Field, he’s your RA’s boss’s boss; in other words—King of Freshmen. Don’t step on the toes of this laird, should you ever want a chance of living in the LLC sophomore year.

BAGEL LADY After waking up at noon on Sunday with a hangover, you might want to know what someone with a semblance of a real life looks like. So go down to Absolute Bagels, wait ten minutes on line, and observe our neighborhood’s finest establishment’s matron. Know your order and be quick.

Illustrations by Leila Mgalobvishvili

21

STRAIGHT FROM THE SLUMS OF SHAOLIN

Once on this Island An expedition to the Dark Borough

By Jennifer Sluka

I O

n the spirit of taking our urban experience “to new heights,” we dispatched crack travel cataloguer Jennifer Sluka to the New York City Borough you’ve probably never heard of.

n a warm day in May, a friend and I boarded the free ferry to Staten Island at Manhattan’s southern tip. As the vessel made its way, the buildings of Manhattan and the sprawl of Brooklyn grew small in the distance.

We hopped on a bus at the ferry terminal to visit the first item on our agenda, the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, recommended to us by a friend. On this ten minute bus ride, we rode past countless gas stations and auto repair shops. We were in a very different place, evidently.

The bus stopped directly in front of the archway that marks the entrance Cultural Center, a complex of 19th-century buildings and manicured lawns.

We seemed to be the only people there. Entering the visitor’s center, a columned, courthouse-like building, we found a young woman sitting at a desk with what appeared to be an igloo behind her. The igloo, made of plastic bins, was part of that day’s featured exhibition: “Fluid–Essential For Life.” Art about water. The highlight was a magnificent hydropowered Rube Goldberg-like sculpture.

The art gallery is but a part of the Snug Harbor complex, which also boasts large and diverse botanical gardens. We pranced across lawns, strolled through greenhouses, found a farm, and wound through a hedge maze before arriving at the Chinese Scholar’s Garden. Within the confines of this bamboo forest, you’ll find everything from opulent meeting rooms to glittering koi ponds and rocks sculpted to resemble mountain ranges.

During our visit the Snug Harbor Cultural Center was almost completely deserted. Perhaps May isn’t high tourist season. Or maybe Staten Island is too far for most people. Or maybe no one thinks to go unless they already live there. After staring, in peace, at some waterfalls, we decided it was time to move on.

It turns out Staten Island is huge. We had to take an hour and a half bus ride to get to our next destination, Historic Richmond Town, located in the

22

middle of the borough. Again the bus ride passed through habitats foreign to Manhattan: houses with yards, forests.

Historic Richmond Town is a living history village, where houses and shops from the 17th and 18th centuries have been preserved, and men and women in colonial dress reenact life in colonial times, showcasing crafts like basket making and tinsmithing.

Unfortunately, the buildings were all closed by the time we got there, and, like Snug Harbor, the town was deserted. We were again taken aback by being alone with a tourist attraction.

After our brief visit to Historic Richmond Town, we decided it was time to head back to the noise and structure of Manhattan. We stopped at a pizza restaurant in a strip mall for some not so great pizza before heading to the Staten Island Railway.

It was dark by the time we got back on the ferry, and we were able to see Manhattan and Brooklyn all lit up ahead. We looked back at the much darker Staten Island, wondering whether we would ever return to this strange, quiet place, only an hour and a half away, but so, so far.w

Illustration by Angel Jiang

The Blue and White

B

CURIO COLUMBIANA

ack in the 1890s, when Columbia’s campus was still at 49th Street and Madison Avenue, the role of bulletin boards on campus vastly exceeded that of today. In the absence of a widely read daily paper (Spec was fortnightly then), tacking notices up was the primary means of centrally and quickly disseminating information. Memos, class information, and lecture announcements were published chiefly in centrally located boards. And so it appears, much unlike today, students felt compelled to regularly check the bulletin boards.

Student publications in particular relied upon bulletin boards to advertise the arrival of new issues on campus. There was no free distribution back then, and issues had to be sold. Our nineteenth century forbearers, who carried on the original iteration of The Blue and White, seem to have particularly avidly pursued publicity. Sometimes, alleged the editors of the April 1891 edition of the Columbia Law Times, they took it too far.

The concentrated essence of gall with which the gentlemen connected with The Blue and White are blessed is very apt we find to show its existence under very annoying circumstances The gentlemen who are delegated to post notices of the time of the issuing of the different numbers of The Blue and White seem to have no thought of the rights of others Surely their courtesy must be hid under something When these gentlemen find a notice of another paper on the board it would be well for them to put themselves to the small inconvenience of finding another place for their own.

But not content with monopolizing the blackboards these gentlemen even go to the extent of tearing down the notices of other papers posted upon boards made especially for these papers and displaying their own notices in glaring colors thereon If the gentlemen of The Blue and White would consult these papers they might perhaps for a consideration be induced to loan the use of their private boards Until that time we think it would be well for The Blue and White to keep on its own side of the fence

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 basement of St. Paul’s Chapel.

Or, email editors@theblueandwhite.org.

Orientation 2014

23

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

The Kids Aren’t All Right, They’re Dead A conversation with Daniel Handler, the author behind Lemony Snicket

By Naomi Sharp Most people know Daniel Handler as Lemony Snicket, his gloomy alter-ego who claims authorship of the thirteen books in the bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events. The latest Snicket book for young audiences, Shouldn’t You Be In School?, is the third in the four-part series All the Wrong Questions.

Handler’s work under his own name includes Watch Your Mouth, described by HarperCollins as an “ incest opera”; Why We Broke Up, a novel in letter form; and We Are Pirates, scheduled for publication next year. Handler also recently edited The Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2014. Even more recently, he sat good-naturedly through a long phone call with Senior Editor Naomi Sharp. (They both are alums of the Bronfman Youth Fellowships, a program most succinctly described as “a Jewish thing.”)

The Blue and White: Is there a story behind the name Lemony Snicket?

Daniel Handler: I was researching my first novel The Basic Eight, and I was with a right-wing organization because I wanted them to send me some materials that I could mock in my novel. But I didn’t want to be on their mailing list, and so they asked me my name and I said Lemony Snicket. And then years later when I started writing A Series of Unfortunate Events, I had this name that was gathering dust.

B&W: So it wasn’t because he’s so sour.

DH: No—I mean, it seems appropriate. If I’d called him Bernie Schnikelvitz, I don’t think that would have had the same effect. It seems kind of bitter and it seems ridiculous, but maybe believable. And slightly Edwardian or Victorian or something.

B&W: How did you originally pitch A Series of Unfortunate Events?

DH: I pitched it unprofessionally. I called the editor and I said “Look, I have a really terrible idea for children’s books. So don’t make me write it down—I can’t behave professionally about it because it’s such a

24

terrible idea—but I’ll meet you at a bar and then I’ll tell you the idea and then you’ll say yes, that’s terrible, and then at least we’ll be at a bar and we’ll have another drink and it won’t be a complete waste for everyone. And so she met me at a bar. And then she said that she liked it.

I’ve never been good at pitching. To this day, sometimes a magazine will write me and they’ll say, “We like your writing and you should write something for us—why don’t you pitch it?” And I’ll always write back and say, “If I pitch it, the pitch will take longer than the article. So if you want me to write something I’ll write it, but I won’t pitch.” And then usually they say “Yeah, never mind.”

B&W: What you have for A Series of Unfortunate Events is kind of the antipitch.

DH: I guess so, yeah. It’s like when

you’re in a store with a friend and you’re trying to get them to buy a book that you like.

It’s hard to pitch that.

And the summary of just about any classic work of literature sounds ridiculous. If you say, “They’re on a boat, and one guy’s really obsessed with a white whale,” you think—I don’t want to read that, that’s terrible. And

Illustration by Alexandra Warrick

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N so the whole idea of pitching is kind of difficult for me. When they were publishing the first volumes of A Series of Unfortunate Events, they said “Do you want to write something on the back to get people to read it?” And I thought, “Why would anyone want to read this?” So I was at a drugstore buying something and I saw poison warning labels. I thought, that’s what they should put on the back of the book. And then I wrote something like that.

B&W: In All The Wrong Questions, Lemony Snicket sheds some light on his mysterious childhood. What does the persona of Lemony Snicket allow you to do that Daniel Handler couldn’t?

DH: Hm. I don’t know.

That might be the wrong question too. I thought it would be interesting when I started A Series of Unfortunate Events to publish the books under the name of a narrator rather than under the name of the author, so that the world of the books would feel like it had very loose boundaries. So that when you finished the book, you’d feel like it still existed in the world in which you lived. I don’t know it’s something I couldn’t have done had it been published under the name Daniel Handler, it’s just that Lemony Snicket is the character.

DH: That’s how I thought of it when I was writing, certainly. I thought, Well, most books are cheerful and I’m writing miserable books. But the truth of the matter is that children’s literature in particular is rife with really terrible things. You know, the orphaned hero is pretty standard in children’s literature because if you kill off the parents then the kid can go off and do something by themselves. They become a kind of self-actuated hero. The Grimm’s fairy tales are unrelentingly dark, and those are the first stories that most kids are really aware of. So I think there’s a long tradition of darkness.

B&W: Why do you think miserable things are often so funny?

DH: I think what’s funny about them is how overwrought it is. When I say, “And then the worst thing in the world happened, and then something terrible happened after that,” that’s automatically giggly.

I mean, it’s the same when you’re talking to children.

If you say, “You can’t have another piece of cake because if you do, you’ll turn blue and your arms will fall off,” they’re already laughing. Even though of course if that actually happened it would be horrifying.

“The truth of the matter is that children’s literature in particular is rife with really terrible things.”

I was really struck by gothic literature and I thought that would be interesting to bring into the world of children’s books. So I was studying a lot of gothic literature, and one of the ways that it works is that it often has a very overwrought narrator. And so I thought that in order for the books to not seem like a carnival of horrors that they should have some kind of narrator wringing his hands over every moment that happens. I think that’s why the books don’t depress and upset too many people.

B&W: There are books marketed to children that have this darker tone—yours, obviously, but then books like The Book Thief, even Harry Potter—that have become incredibly popular. So do you think publishers have just historically underestimated what children can handle?

Orientation 2014

It’s the hysteria that is funny, I don’t think it’s the events. I think you could rewrite A Series of Unfortunate Events in a different kind of tone and then it would be horrifying.

B&W: Your books also subvert the idea that people get what they deserve—the stories take place generally in a world where that isn’t true. Why? DH: I think that that’s the world that young people are beginning to figure out when they’re of the age that they’re reading their own books. And I don’t mean the great injustices of the world, although certainly plenty of people have exposure to that. I just think in the way that when you’re in first grade and there’s an argument on the playground, and the teacher comes and says “I don’t care who started it!

You’re both in trouble!” —that you think, But I didn’t start it, this is injustice that’s happening. I think that

25

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N you start to be aware of that when you’re young. And the books reflect this, so in some ways seem less fantastic than books that say, “And if you work hard you’ll be rewarded.” You begin to think Oh, it’s actually this chaotic world, and you can take delight in hiding from it or you can take delight in facing it. I don’t know what made me interested in thinking that it was true rather than convincing myself it wasn’t.

B&W: Do you think it has anything to do with your Jewish background?

DH: Definitely. From what I can tell, Judaism is the religion that most embraces that idea. And certainly the history of Jewish suffering is not laced with salvation. No one thinks, Oh, it’s going to be so good for Jews in the future because there’s been so much suffering. My father left Germany in 1939 when he was a child, so the stories I grew up hearing were of my family leaving Germany. Some of them made it and some of them didn’t. And certainly the ones who made it weren’t better than the ones who didn’t. They weren’t braver or smarter or better-looking or more successful. It was just luck. I think if that’s your family story, your own tiny sufferings—in my case—made sense to me.

Things happen, you don’t have very much control over them. And for me Judaism embodies that.

DH: Oh gosh. There are books that mean a lot to me, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I think that everyone should read them. The poetry of Elizabeth Bishop is really important to me. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler is a novel that I like a lot. The writings of William Maxwell, he’s really important to me. I think Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret are both really beautiful novels by Louise Fitzhugh.

But I would be a bad person to make up a canon. I like to think of literature as being so vast that it’s a matter of hooking up people with the right book in the right moment. And if you’ve ever loved a book and then you reread it a few years later and it doesn’t mean anything to you—or vice versa, you didn’t like a book and for some reason you open it again and you find it fascinating—it’s just proof that literature is a breathing creature and so are you.

“The word ‘wrong’ automatically makes a story. If you say ‘He opened the wrong window,’ that’s already interesting.”

B&W: Do you think you have a particularly Jewish sense of humor?

DH: Huh. I think so. I mean, I think humor is part of looking askance at the world. A joke is something that ruptures a typical story line—something funny happens instead of something expected. That’s why I think humor is part of admitting the chaos of life, and why humor is such a huge part of Judaism.

B&W: At Columbia, we have this core curriculum that includes a canon of literature that theoretically an educated person should read. If you were to make your own canon, what are some books that would be on it?

26

B&W: You have a pretty distinctive writing style that seems like it would be difficult to divorce from the original English version. Have you ever wondered how your books turn out in translations?

DH: I’ve been curious about that before. And then every so often a translator will ask me a question, will say “Oh, do you think I should do this?” and I always think Wow, I wonder why no other translator has asked me that. And it kind of panics me. Years ago we had a question from the Italian translator who was asking about—I would make a joke about ranch dressing versus ranch, like being on a ranch, and obviously it’s an untranslatable joke. And as soon as the publisher mentioned it, I thought, Okay, these books have been published in about 40 other languages and no one else has asked me that. I wonder what people did. So I think about it.

And I think about it when I read literature in translation a lot. I think, I believe I love this novel, but actually I have no idea. I was reading a review of this Italian novel and the reviewer said that it was an elegant translation. And I thought, how does she know?

Does she speak Italian? Or does she just mean, “I read it and I liked it.”

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N B&W: She could have rewritten a very awkwardlyworded book very elegantly.

DH: Right, there’s no way to know. It’s one of those threads where once you tug at it, the entire sweater can come unraveled. So I try not think about it.

B&W: All right, I have a series of quicker questions for you. What advice would you give writers?

DH: When people want to be a writer for a career and they ask me for advice, I always say don’t do it.

If you’re asking, you shouldn’t do it because your chances of anything happening are really slim. And then as you think to yourself, “I’m not gonna listen to that guy, because all I want to do is write,” then you’ve already figured out something about what you want to do. So that’s a good litmus test, is to listen to someone tell you not to do it. And if you think, “Oh okay, it probably is too much,” then writing probably isn’t for you.

DH: My favorite drink is a Delmonico, which is basically a gin martini but with a little cognac and a little bitters in it. I like that a lot. My favorite basic drink would be a Manhattan or a martini. If I’m having a cocktail party, I’ll make Sidecars. Everybody likes those because they’re sweet, so then everybody gets knackered right away. That’s the best drink to know, a Sidecar. It might not always be the best drink to have.

B&W: What does Lemony Snicket drink, incidentally? A Dark and Stormy?

DH: Well, a Dark and Stormy has a charming name but the drink itself is kind of rum-soaked and tropical, which I don’t think is what Mr. Snicket would like. I think he would probably like a gimlet, because it’s citrus so it kind of matches his name a little bit.

It’s also what Marlowe drinks in The Long Goodbye, and The Long Goodbye was a big inspiration for the series.

DH: This week? I was stung by a jellyfish this week.

B&W: And then the last thing that I’m going to ask you: In one of the stories from your book Adverbs, you write “It’s always dawnest before dark.” I thought maybe you’d agree to provide new endings for some platitudes that you might find painfully optimistic.

B&W: Really? That is unfortunate.

DH: Okay, I’m ready.

DH: And it was on my face, I kind of swam right into it. That wasn’t fun.

B&W: What doesn’t kill you…

B&W: What’s the most unfortunate thing that’s happened to you this week?

B&W: What’s a word you overuse?

DH: I feel slightly addicted to the word “wrong.”

I like that a lot. The word “wrong” automatically makes a story, I think. If you say “He opened the wrong window,” that’s already interesting.

B&W: I’ve read that you like to give cocktail parties.

What’s your favorite drink?

Orientation 2014

DH: Might kill you later.

B&W: Good things come to those…

DH: You probably don’t know personally.

B&W: And finally, if life gives you lemons…

DH: Mix them with bitters and sugar and a little bourbon.w

27

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

Eden Salon and Spa

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

Sponsored in part by the Arts Initiative at Columbia University.

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

28

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

Orientation 2014

29

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.

From SEAS Class of 2013 Class President Daniel O’Leary’s Commencement Speech: Thanks Dean Martinez. For those of you who don’t know, this is as much her graduation as it is ours; she will be leaving us next year and will definitely be missed by the students! [pause; take it all in] It’s crazy to see all these tents and bleachers up. Over the last couple of months, whenever they added a new structure, it reminded us that graduation was coming up—faster, maybe, than we were ready for.

Anyways…

Since we first walked through the gates, through the tunnel of NSOP leaders some number of years ago, we’ve done around 280 psets—90% of those at the last minute—taken 100 midterms and finals, and spent 1700 hours in classes. In this time, we learned a lot about chemistry, physics, and math, and if you think about it, just getting through that intense course load was a great accomplishment. But we’ve also been able to balance that. This year the School of Engineering had the highest proportional participation in Lerner Pub and arguably at senior night as well. Whoever said engineers couldn’t have fun hasn’t met this graduating class. [pause] The truth is that over the past four years or so, we have had some incredible times.

30

All my life I lived in urban surroundings. I wish to reflect here on my experience of the city and of urban life in Israel through the different role that buses have played in four periods of my life. e Albert Heap first discovered his psychic abilities in the kitchen. It was a gloomy March evening, and the overcast sky seemed to have seeped into the room around him. As he pushed the potatoes on his plate around, watching them slip through the plastic prongs of his fork, the thought occurred to him that they could use a little salt. As soon as the salt had waltzed into his mind and settled there, he looked up and locked eyes with his mother. She grinned at him e The artichoke pizza had arrived steaming and it smelled like it had several cheese toppings or a fondue. The pizza wedge consisted of three slices that was cut in half, making six slices. We each took a segment and dug in. We had to eat it with cutlery because it was too hot for our hands and there was no way of eating the runny cheese without making a huge mess.

The cheese was thick, creamy and rich and was practically chunky soup atop the nine-inch long slice. I experienced different flavours with each bite.

First, it was savoury, smooth and thick, the second bite, I tasted hints of onion and spinach, and the artichoke heart was smoky. By the third, I felt like I was eating a melting cheese pot with bread. I had to eat slowly because the cheese overpowered my stomach that made me sick. My friend’s calzone arrived a few minutes later on a pizza pan with two miniature skillets of tomato sauce on the side. It was huge. “That’s a huge empanada,” was the only comment I gave while my friend laughed nervously at its size.w

The Blue and White

CAMPUS GOSSIP From the Chinese Students Club’s summer newsletter: SEEKING CHINESE FORAGERS I am writing on behalf of our research team from The University of Vermont. We launched a new project about Chinese people foraging in New York City.

The Chinese Students Club contains a great deal of Chinese Americans, which can include Chinese foragers, whom we are looking for.

We are looking for people who: 1) identifies themselves as Chinese or Chinese Americans 2) is engaged in foraging in NY, an example may be picking gingko nuts and 3) might be interested in taking part in this study this summer e A national fraternity convention in Baltimore coincided with BronyCon 2014, “the largest convention for and by fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” Adult fraternity leaders seemed perplexed as to why grown men would spend a weekend taking a childish pastime extremely seriously. e Two septuagenarian men walking through the 8th floor of the stacks, shouting to one another.

1: Do you like it? Living downtown?

2: Oh, sure I like it. But it’s so expensive, you know?

1: I’ll bet! It’s not like when we were kids.

2: It’s those fucking banker pigs! e OUR BLEEDING, STUPID HEARTS A GS student was seen showing his two young children around Columbia’s campus on a sunny July Day. His daughter ran up to a group of pigeons in attempt to scare them into the skies. They didn’t flinch.

“Daddy,” she exclaimed, “the pigeons here aren’t afraid.”

“Yep,” he sighed. “I’m sure they feed them all day long.”

Orientation 2014

TEMPERANCE MOTION In an effort to block “Tara Hill aka Cannon’s and O’Connell’s” application to have sidewalk seating, a concerned neighbor sent a rallying missive to the the 110th Street Block Association’s Listserv in anticipation of a community board meeting.

He wrote: “The bar is fine, but it’s a nightmare of a neighbor. From 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. or later, rowdy, drunk, smoking, loud, urinating crowds gather outside its doors and shout for hours. Police called many times. Owner doesn’t care about neighborhood and community. Responds with F-word when neighbors ask her to keep order. Or pretends she isn’t the owner.

“CB 7 favors outdoor cafes but in this case, Tara Hill is NOT a good neighbor and should clean up its [sic] before it gets ‘rewarded’ with outdoor cafe license.” e BUREAUCRATIC LICENSE During this year’s May alumni weekend, the newly formed Columbia Alumni Allied Against Sexual Assault held an information session in the Teacher’s College library. Before the event, organizers handed out an informational packet. When a 2011 alumnus complimented the color printing, the chief organizer proudly exclaimed, “all printed on the taxpayer’s dime!”

When the organizer was asked what she meant, she explained that she worked in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office as a speechwriter. “We have a nice fast color printer, why not?” e The floor on the second story of high class literary frat Delta Psi (also known as St. Anthony’s Hall), reeks of beer. “It smells like a frat house,”complained one member. e Humanism… it’s mandatory!w

31

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

32

The Blue and White