Orientation 2018

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. XXIV No. IV

Orientation 2018

Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

Getting elected is tough; getting re-elected is not

A Million Dollars of Red Tape Columbia's legal troubles keep piling up Also Inside: H

ow

The Blue and White Came to Be

CAROLINE HURLEY, CC '19, Editor-in-Chief ESMÉ ABLAZA, BC '20, Managing Editor ISAIAH BENNETT, CC '20, Publisher VIRGINIA AMBELIOTIS, BC '19, Senior Editor JASMINE PARK, CC '20, Senior Editor RYAN MOHEN, CC '21, Senior Editor HUGH CECIL, CC '19, Senior Editor SOPHIE LEVY, BC '21, Senior Editor UFON UMANAH, CC '20, Investigations Editor AARON SU, CC '19, Layout Editor SHULIE WEINBERG, BC '20, Online Editor JENNIFER BI, CC '19, Senior Illustrator CAROLINE JOBSON, CC '20, Tech Deputy PAULINA FEIN, CC '20, Staff Photographer Staff Writers MARY DAWSON, BC '21 GABY EDWARDS, BC '21 CASEY DAVIS, BC '20 OTTILIE LIGHTE, BC '20 MAX GUPTA, CC'21 Contributors ZOE DANSDILL, BC '21 FRANK BARING, CC '21 CLAIRE WOOTON, BC '21 JENNY ZHU, CC '21

Staff Illustrators YOTAM DEREE, GS '19 SAHRA DENNER, CC '21 Artists KELLIE ZHAO, CC '19 JEN ALLEN, CC '20

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXIV

FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS

No. IV

Columns

4 Blue Book 6 Blue Notes 8 Campus Characters 16 Centerfold 25 M easure for Measure

Frank Baring & Zoe Dandsill Gaby Edwards

Features 10 At Two Swords Length: Is This Friendship?

Our monthly prose and cons 12 The M agazine of Old

How The Blue and White came to be

Jasmine Park

13 The Columbia Blue Guide

Eight recommendations you actually should do

Isaiah Bennett

14 Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

Getting elected is hard, getting re-elected is not

Ufon Umanah

18 A Million Dollars of R ed Tape

Columbia’s legal troubles keep piling up

Jenny Zhu

Casey Davis

Ufon Umanah

22 Behind McBain's Facade

Bwog: Columbia pays thousands to not repair McBain 24 The House on the Hill

The case of the mysterious Riverside house, and why

someone built it 26 Gradual Learning

A conversation with Stephen Sullivan

theblueandwhite.org

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Cover by Jennifer Bi

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR The first picture of me as a student on campus was taken unsurprisingly on move-in day, unsurprisingly by my mom. It’s a series of photos, actually, of me tumbling out of a cardboard moving box in my Carman hallway, right onto a handful of the 2015 Orientation issue of The Blue and White.

I’ve since fallen into a lot of things at Columbia, fallen out of some, gotten back together with others. But the experiences I tumbled into unexpectedly have been my most rewarding.

Three hundred words to wax-poetic at this time of year is a dangerous thing for a nostalgic magazine editor, and I’m not even sure I heeded any advice given to me when I was you. But I’m in different shoes now, so Class of 2022, I offer but one nugget of wisdom: Get comfortable with the idea of falling at Columbia. I have fallen quite a lot since that first, fateful tumble out of the cardboard cousin of a blue bin.

I’ve fallen into traps (Joe Coffee, my friends, is a trap, as is Blue Java, but at least they take dining dollars—never shun halal cart coffee). I’ve fallen for bad advice (live in McBain, they said!). I’ve fallen onto my face (metaphorically, staking out absurd points in Core classes, but I’m not the first, and certainly won’t be the last). I’ve fallen asleep in many, many a lecture. I’ve fallen short of some goals. Fallen over, fallen behind, fallen apart.

Most importantly, I have fallen in and out of love with Columbia, over and over again. For every time I curse this place (and you will, many times), there is an unseasonably warm afternoon on the steps, a stimulating lecture, a satisfying assignment, a late night not in a library but in conversation with thoughtful friends, a warm bacon-egg-and-cheese on an everything bagel.

Nothing I say here will capture what Columbia will be for you—but I will say that it will probably turn out nothing like you imagined. And I hope you fall for it.

— Caroline Hurley

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TRANSACTIONS ARRIVALS Class of 2022 Jôhn Jáy as Jean-Georges E’s Bar and another Joe Men searching for their kleos Surprise under-door mail A clean slate DEPARTURES Nussbaum and Wu A professor’s $1.25 million Basketball-court-as-library Lerner 4th floor computer lab Rats in Hewitt Malls

Come Again?!

“If you’re not slightly erect after watching this, you’re not a #FootballGuy” — @BarstoolCU on Twitter, in reference to a Columbia Football video. And you thought you skipped out on state school!

The Blue and White

BLUE BOOK

Columbia Dictionary Whether you’re new to campus or have been around for a few years but feel like you live under a rock, our handy guide will introduce you to some terms that every informed Barnumbia student should know.

Art Hoe: The Birkenstock-footed, FjallravenKanken-toting person in your Intro to Art History section, who “shops exclusively at thrift stores” but drinks $5 Oren’s coffees every day.

BCSN: Barnard Columbia Solidarity Network is a coalition of activist groups on campus, which includes the fossil fuel divest and apartheid divest campaigns, sexual violence advocacy groups, labor organizations, and groups organizing against gentrification.

BDS: The acronym that inspires more Spec op-eds than any other on campus, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions is the centerpiece of Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s campaign to end university investments in certain Israeli companies.

Cannons: Only 90’s kids will remember this pub on the corner of 108th and Broadway. Once brimming with bathroom sex, tabletop dancing and other amazing and disgusting sights, it is now an overpriced Chinese Hot Pot restaurant.

CPS and Furman: Counseling and Psychological Services and Rosemary Furman Counseling Center offer support for a variety of mental health needs to Columbia and Barnard students, respectively. Schedule an appointment or come in during

walk-in hours. Additional resources and emergency hotline information are available on their websites.

Manhattanville: The section of West Harlem from roughly W 122nd St. to W 134th St., and the site of Columbia’s ongoing construction of new buildings for graduate programs and some SEAS departments. The Columbia expansion has brought anti-gentrification tensions to a head in the neighborhood.

Mo’ Will: Underwhelming, overpriced, bad fruit selection, good burrata, Morton Williams (Mo’ Wills, Mo’ Willy), is a startlingly apt metaphor for The Columbia ExperienceTM. Westside Market is cheaper.

No Red Tape: No Red Tape emerged in 2014 in response to mounting criticism of Columbia’s gender-based misconduct policies. Their current goals include creating a 24/7 Rape Crisis Center on campus and increasing transparency in adjudicating sexual assault cases.

Scabby the Rat: Large inflatable rat with skin problems deployed by labor organizers when a construction project taking place in the neighborhood isn’t using union workers.

POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE

“Hide your wristband, we don’t want them to know we’re pigeons!”

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Postcard by Julia Flasphaler

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BLUE NOTES

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uring daylight hours, I don’t look at the statues around campus much. Warmer bodies rush past me, off to class, to meetings, to whatever must be done today to graduate later, reminding me of my own duty to be scholarly.

Only when night falls do I truly stare. Each statue then seems to embody a temporal moment, a snapshot, of the form infinitely suspended in an act between movements. I have all the time in the world to parse the depths of their expressions. I t takes darkness to appreciate the quietness of these things. e On the grassy area outside of Philosophy Hall, the figure leans forward, elbow on opposite knee, hand supporting chin. The face reflects neither happiness nor sadness, but is clearly contemplating something, and is perhaps tired.

Casts of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker are scattered throughout the sculptor’s native France and the rest of the world. The original model appeared in Rodin’s Gates of Hell, a set of doors covered in dozens of miniature, painstakingly rendered figures,

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each frozen in some grotesque display of suffering.

Presiding over the scene, which is culled from The Divine Comedy, is Dante, known in this piece as “The Poet”. Rodin’s poet is not in Hell, but he is looking down into it and sits just above its uppermost reaches.

After being exhibited as a separate piece from the Gates, a much larger casting of The Thinker debuted in 1904. Enlarged a few times over, he makes a powerfully built figure. Without the chaos of Inferno below him though, The Thinker almost looks more vulnerable, as if the hell he is mulling over in his mind is a more pressing reality than the physical place with the fire and the demons. e On a block outside the entrance to Seeley Mudd Hall stands another bronze cast of a man, gleaming from a recent restoration job. A hip is cocked to the side and one hand rests on the hip, the other holds a pair of pincers. He dons a heavy apron, spats and thick boots. A shield to protect the face rests on top of the head.

A creation of Belgian sculptor Constantin Meunier, Le Marteleur (“hammer man”) was first exhibited at a Parisian salon in 1886, in plaster form.

A bronze cast arrived at Columbia in 1914 as a gift from an earlier class of School of Mines graduates.

The heaviness of the clothing and the pincers suggest the metal worker’s industrial habitat—molten alloys, overpowering fumes, profound heat—conditions likely observed by the sculptor during his visit to a steel foundry. Meunier would have also have known of the 1886 strikes led by Walloons (an ethnic minority in Belgium) and the brutal response they received. e

Illustration by Julia Flasphaler

The Blue and White

BLUE NOTES Maybe the statues compliment each other in a way. Or not. But the force of their dignity strikes me during my midnight strolls around campus, while rain slicks the pavement, cheap beer sours my breath, and loneliness nibbles at my heart.

— Virginia Ambeliotis

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teps away from landmarks like Grant’s Tomb, Riverside Park, The Manhattan School of Music, The Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University’s campus, the guestrooms at Union Theological Seminary at 120th and Broadway are year-round the perfect place for a visiting family member of a CU student to stay a night or two.

Union Theological Seminary’s Landmark Guest Rooms began as a convenience for visiting professors, lecturers and theologians around 25 years ago—a modest setup of a warm bed and clean bath for those that needed it. Five years later, during a time when Columbia had its own guest house, Union opened to the public. Complete with the necessities—a private bath, irons and hair-dryers, housekeeping, mini-fridges, cable and wifi— Landmark prides itself on straightforward quality service. Guests can retreat into a courtyard reminiscent of a cloister, so removed from New York that it could even be the subject of a 19th century British watercolour. At $135 to $165 per night, the Landmark Guest Rooms provide a beyond-quiet and pleasantly simple environment that their director Steve Bie can only describe as “a secure and pleasant environment.”

The Guest Rooms are fully incorporated into UTS’s National Register of Historic Places listed 1910 gothic revival style quad. The centerpiece of Union’s campus, nestled between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, spans the distance of two city blocks. In a legendarily sleepless NYC where streets are busy space is scarce, Union has managed to create an idyll of lawn space carved out of almost no space at all. The campus’ current façade of dense scaffolding only further conceals its bigger-onthe-inside magic that encompasses regally titled academic halls: The Burke Library, James Memorial Chapel and Morningside Castle.

In a place like Morningside Heights, simultaneously neighborhood-like and bustling, there is another even more anomalous place hidden in its unassuming grandeur.

— Ottilie Lighte

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he NeoRena issa nce palazzo that lines Amsterdam Avenue greets students as they pass over Amsterdam Avenue towards East Campus has a murky history— one that goes beyond its role as Casa Italiana, the home of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies. Though known to some for its appearance on the FX series The Americans (styled as the Soviet Embassy) and to others as a site of student protests, Casa Italiana’s real claim to fame is much more ominous: that the funding for its construction was allegedly sourced in part from Italian fascists, including Benito Mussolini himself.

A New York Times article reported that Columbia University President Nicholas Butler received a telegram from Mussolini the night before the opening of the building in 1927. The message offered the “auspicious and grateful greetings of the Government of Italy.” Mussolini continued, “The Casa Italiana of Columbia University means to be and will be a new and stronger tie of mutual comprehension and friendship between the people of Italy.”

Prominent fascist Guglielmo Marconi gave the opening address the following day.

The faculty of the Casa has continuously addressed the debate over fascist ties, with early directors declaring the institution to be politically neutral and subsequent directors continuing to do so. A current exhibition in the Casa Italiana outlines the history of the building and its funding. The exhibition outright addresses the controversy, stating, “Once the project was launched, there was interest from the Italian government. For example, the Casa’s architects wrote in 1926 that some furniture was ‘to be obtained in Italy through the help of Mussolini.’

Mussolini’s donation never materialized, however, and the furnishings and artwork came instead from domestic patrons.”

— Claire Wootton

Illustration by Yotam Deree

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

Judy Liu

“I

’m trying to find that sweet spot between the humanities and sciences.” Judy Liu, BC ‘19, tells me over the phone from India. Liu, who grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, spent her summer doing research in India for an organization called the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP), in addition to taking a course on practicing cultural sensitivity while administering global healthcare to rural populations. Her independent research focused on village health workers, who are oftentimes lower caste women trained by CRHP to be the primary physicians and health workers of their village. Liu is drawing on her interviews of these women to write the script to a documentary on the CRHP that is being produced by a Dartmouth student. The key aspect of the research, she says, is “figuring out how to communicate medical narratives in a more personal way.”

An English major on the pre-med track, Liu arrived at Barnard with plans to major in Biology, but decided to switch to English after taking Fiction and

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Personal Narrative, a creative writing course taught

by Professor Stacy DeRasmo.

Though she strongly identifies with Barnard’s predominately female environment, Liu is also a cocaptain and coxswain of the Columbia men’s lightweight rowing team.

Being on the team has provided balance for Liu. “You kinda get the masculinity from being in that environment, just like in the real world,” Liu says. “For a lot of women who are going into certain industries, they will be primarily surrounded by men, and it’s taught me how to communicate and be comfortable in that environment.”

Much of Liu’s life outside of the classroom is devoted to her sport. Training begins in September, and the competitive season spans from March to June. “I have so much respect for the commitment [my teammates] put into the sport in terms of time, and emotionally,” Liu says. “Thirty hours of training per week plus academics plus trying to have a social life is very taxing sometimes, and during those small moments when you’re in the van or at practice, or just sitting down at John Jay with a meal, that’s when you get to know them the best.”

Liu praises her teammates but also does not shy away from addressing her sport’s reputation of being dominated by white, wealthy students. The majority of the team attended elite private schools before college, which was an adjustment for Liu coming from public high school.

As coxswain, Liu has always played a key organizational and leadership role in the operations of the team, but as a co-captain, she hopes to open up more avenues for communication about difficult topics.

“I think we oftentimes fail to realize that we are a very mature bunch and we can handle these difficult conversations [on race, gender, and class], we just want to make them available to have. We ended in a really good spot, we won championships, and

Illustration by Julia Flasphaler

The Blue and White

I think that was the closest the team has ever been, partly because we had these moments and instances of difficulty that helped us build and become stronger.”

Liu’s primary piece of advice for the Class of 2022 is to “not be super pinned down to a certain group … I met so many people along the way who I didn’t follow up with because I was just like, it’s too many people to juggle, but if your instinct tells you, text that person back, definitely do it.”

— Esme Ablaza

Alfredo Dominguez

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lfredo Dominguez, CC ‘19, does not see what the big fuss is about–he wouldn’t have picked himself as a Campus Character, and does not see why we did. But he is also a newly elected University Senator, an intern with the New York City Department of Education, and an intern at a second job with Congressman Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y. 13th district, so we magazine editors were still confident with our pick.

Dominguez is thoughtful in the way that anyone with his deep immersion in politics would be–he pauses and thinks carefully before answering any questions. His responses, though, are disarmingly casual, peppered with “whatever” and “bro” and the occasional curse word. His style is instantly likeable.

He majors in ethnicity and race studies, but most people do not know that he came to Columbia as a chemical engineering student in SEAS. Growing up in Texas just outside of Houston, chemical engineering was a solid career choice. But after taking “Philosophy of Education,” he began to think differently about his path. Engineering classes, though, he quickly realized were “fucking boring” and “super monotonous.”

Coming to Columbia from a high school where 91 percent of the students were Mexican, his early experience on campus was shaped by “having conversations in my freshmen hall, and things being ‘problematic’ and what that meant and the use of that word, thinking of nuances to it. It was the first time in my life having to deal with what being a person of color in a really white space was.” That’s when he made the “big switch” to ethnicity and race studies.

Since then, he has used his involvement with student government to focus on first generation low income students, and campus mental health. He is a co-chair of the Mental Health Task Force, and points

Orientation 2018

to the issue as his biggest concern as he begins his term as senator.

Used to shaping policy in his work on campus, Dominguez tasted another side of politics over the summer. As a congressional intern, he learned “what executing someone else’s mission is like, and how to deal with disagreeing with that, or dealing with differences, and what it means when you’re very much a worker and a part of a larger system, how do you still influence change in that way?”

For him, the answer came in influencing at a hyper-local level: “The people who actually impact people a lot more are your congressman or your city Department of Education,” he says. The experience left him considering pursuing education policy as a career, but not before spending some more time in a classroom as a teacher.

His best quality, in his own opinion?

He suspects his friends would say it is being caring, but that they might call it “badgering and annoying.”

When he isn’t wound up in politics, he’s watching anime, writing short stories or playing video games. Asked what games, he replies, “men of color bro games.”

Dominguez ends neatly with a bit of advice: “Push yourself to critically think about yourself and where you are in the world. So many people at Columbia are bright and smart and surround themselves with people exactly like them, or with the exact same opinions as them. I wish people would push their boundaries more in terms of who they hang out with.

That’s something that I think about a lot.”

— Caroline Hurley

Illustration by Jennifer Bi

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AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

Is this “I

don’t need a friend who changes when I change nose (ironic) tends to whistle with every out breath. and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that No. He’s surprised by the joke. much better.”

OK, fine. Maybe you shouldn’t have made it, The joke was made. but come on, Jamiroquai needs to loosen up a little.

And before its riskiness could be fully considAnd yet it seems, as you make your way back to ered, the particles in the air between us had carried it campus with the two of them, you can’t help but fixate from my mouth to their receiving ears. I guess we’re on Jamiroquai’s dissonant disapproval. speaking before thinking today.

Why is it that this time you’re struggling to The ball keeps rolling and new jokes bury mine. suppress any authentic emotion like you are supIt’s great. This could turn out to be a successful amble posed to, on account of being a male above the age of through Riverside with two friends and enough snow 10? Ah of course, stupid question: because you actuon the ground to keep the ally care about what he number of electric delivery thinks. (Walked right into bikes on the footpath at a reathat one.) See, Voldemort sonable level. They will be the is a good friend but it’d death of me, I’ve never been be wrong to compare him so sure of something —I hope to Jamiroquai. He hasn’t it happens during graduation. been there on the Milano's God that would be beautiH 17 - f o r - l u n c h - a n d ful. I can picture the headdinner days—Jamiroquai lines: ‘Undergraduate wise was always there. You guy killed on his big day by haven’t imagined ditchmotorised fast food’... ‘Shake ing everything and movShack delivery customer gets ing with Voldemort to the their fries in record breaking hills of Tuscany where time’... Fair trade. you’d both sleep 17 hours But I’m not dead yet, a day, waking only to make and as the three of us walked I fresh pasta and lie in hammocks ffirmative noticed in the briefest instant that complaining about corporate conJamiroquai (fake name for his protrol over consumer data until your

By Frank Baring tection of course. Let’s call them old age—Jamiroquai is always the Jamiroquai and Voldemort), on one rocking slowly next to you in hearing my unfortunate joke, shook his head slowly that make-believe hammock. Caring what he thinks with a surprised grin, wide eyes and a steady exhala- of you is a given at this point ... admit it. tion of condensing breath.

The Riverside walk comes to a close. Jamiroquai Wait a sec. Since when did you care this much? lets Voldemort leave, pauses, and then says, “You You’re lame but not THAT lame. So you made a know that joke you made back there wasn’t cool man. dodgy joke. “Who cares?!” (Intended to be read in I think you already know that though.” voice of Joey Tribbiani.) That joke isn’t who you are!

You don’t know what to say. For some reason No no no, that was someone else—you don’t have to all you can think about is pasta and consumer data. worry about him.

“If I wasn’t honest with you, I wouldn’t be a Jamiroquai isn’t shaking his head at your friend would I? Even if it sucks to hear it.” schizophrenic dress sense or the way Voldemort’s Yeah, that’s about right.w

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Illustration by Jennifer Bi

The Blue and White

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

friendship?

O

kay, so I’ve been trying out this whole ‘honesty’ get a dope suite. Sorry!) Anyway, the point is that it’s thing since getting to college. Like trying to be kind of unfair of you to tie me to all of these one-off super straight up with people? And, um, I guess this promises and stuff we made back then … things have is where it’s actually important. Like, we definitely really changed. started out as friends, after that first NSOP day when I don’t want you to think that this means I hate we were the only ones not wearing our ID’s around you or we can’t ever hang out or anything. We’ve just our necks and stuff; we really bonded, but it’s kind of kind of grown apart. Honestly, I think that this could fallen apart since then. I think the real problem here actually be a good thing for you too. I know how much is that, you’re not my friend anymore, but I’m still you hate going out downtown with my dance friends yours. and me, and now you I know that don’t have to come sounds harsh, but I anymore! Like, I think there’s somegenuinely don’t think thing to it. Like, you would have had I’m always trying to any fun on our girls’ make you happy, like trip to Mexico—it just going to Ferris with wasn’t really your you so you can maybe scene so that’s why see that swimmer guy we didn’t invite you. you’re so obsessed I just want us with, even when you to have more space, know that all I want more time to figure is a Diana smoothie. out what we really It’s not like you ever want out of college. go to Hewitt with me Let’s not start actwhen the wrestling ing like some old team is there. married couple that College is supposed to be a slowly grows to hate each other. time for exploration and change, Isn’t that what you said happened egative right? We’re supposed to be growwith your parents?

By Zoe Dansdill ing as people and making lifeI mean, I think now really long connections. So why do you is the best time to tell you all this.

ALWAYS have to do the same stuff as me? I don’t If I waited any longer it would have been just cruel, come to your a capella practices, so why did you have right? We’ve just become very different people, and to sign up for the Pilates class I was in?

I don’t want either of us to hold the other back. Like I know at the beginning of the year we talked that time you wanted to go to that art opening and so much about our futures in New York and living I wanted to go to the D Sig darty? Apparently they together and being the “Serena and Blair of the were serving drinks out of a watermelon.

Upper West Side,” but everyone talks like that during I’m not trying to be mean at all! Honestly, I’m first semester. (Oh, and this is probably a good time just trying to make sure we both have the best college to mention that I got asked to room with some girls experiences possible. Oh, by the way, you can still get from my yoga class next year and I think I’m going to me on the list for St. A’s this weekend, right?w do it. Two of them are rising juniors so we’ll probably

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Illustration by Jennifer Bi

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WHO IS SHE?

The Magazine of Old How The Blue and White came to be

By Gaby Edwards

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he very first issue of The Blue and White dates back to 1890 when it was founded as a weekly journal to compete with the then biweekly Columbia Spectator. The first 14 issues of the magazine appeared much like a newspaper; it was not until the 15th issue that The Blue and White adopted its signature journal size and Columbia blue ink. But after three years of publication, The Blue and White disappeared. Not until 1997—when Ilan S. Salzberg, CC ‘99, discovered a stack of old Blue & White copies in the Columbiana Collection, the University archive located in Low Library—would The Blue and White’s presence be resurrected. The first publication, 105 years after its disappearance, in 1998, was issued with the help of Editor Noam M. Elcott, CC ‘00.

Editor Sydney Treat, CC ‘1893, stated in an issue dated March 4, 1891, that the mission of The Blue and White was: “to give bright and newsy items, which are of interest to all of us, combined with truthful comments on the same, in order to show clearly the exact tone of the College each week. We thought that, if by concerted effort and a spirited display of College feeling we could extend the influence of Columbia in any way or raise her to the position which

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she owns by right of the associations clustered around her name, our work would be accomplished.”

The 19th century magazine featured sections such as “Blue J,” which was devoted to complaining about Columbia University; “Curio Columbiana,” which reproduced a primary document from around the campus; “Told Between Puffs,” a witty column always written by the elusive Verily Veritas, “Measure for Measure,” which presented occasionally humorous poems; and the always-popular Campus Gossip.

The 21st century publication still includes many of the original sections from 1891: Measure For Measure, Verily Veritas, Campus Gossip, and Curio Columbiana. The magazine to this day continues to intersperse its written content with hand-drawn illustrations, some of which come from the original 1890 issue.

When the magazine was resurrected in the late 1990s, its editors sought to capture, much like the earliest editions did, “an intangible Columbia spirit … a slice of Columbia always present but rarely seen by all.” We continue to pursue this lofty ambition set before us, and we hope to do so for generations of Columbians to come.w

The Blue and White

TA K E Y O U R T I M E

The Columbia Blue Guide Eight recommendations you actually should do

By Jasmine Park Welcome to the Greatest University in the Greatest City in the World™! If your head is not spinning already, it will be soon, and if you are like some of us editors at The Blue and White, you’ ll be an upperclassman before you realize that four years isn’t a very long time, and while you were busy “finding your niche,” you missed a huge portion of what this university and this city has to offer. All that said, here’s what we think you should check out before it’s too late.

Columbia M akerspace While engineering students might find themselves here more often, the Makerspace has all sorts of equipment, from 3D printers to embroidery machines, available to all students. If you ever decide your New Yorker tote bag (look up their deal to get one!) needs extra pizzazz, check out the Makerspace!

All users have to take a mandatory safety training session before utilizing the workshop.

Athena Film Festival Each year Barnard hosts the Athena Film Festival to celebrate stories told by or about women. Student passes are equivalent to all-access passes but are approximately a fourth of the price. The ninth annual Athena Film Festival will be held Feb. 28 to March 3, 2019.

TIC/Show Ticket Discounts The Ticket and Information Center is the on-campus box office of Columbia’s Arts Initiative, offering discount tickets to performances around the city and tickets to campus performances. Beyond the TIC, many performing arts groups in the city have discount tickets for students or the broader 18-24 age demographic. @columbia/barnard.edu Shallow or pragmatic, Columbia is very much a brand, and association with the university can open doors.

Whether you’re looking for research opportunities or trying to network, tasteful cold emails with your school address can have surprising returns.

Museums in New York Noted, this isn’t novel. You’ve seen pictures of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Guggenheim, the Museum of

Orientation 2018

Modern Art, etc. But check if a museum offers free or discount tickets for students.

Free admission to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art (with your student ID) is fairly well known, but even the Frick has deals for Art Hum students.

Ba r na r d C l ay Collective Located in the basement of Plimpton Hall, the Barnard Clay Collective offers pottery classes for a fee to students each semester. After taking a class, you become a member and can make pottery whenever your want!

R andom Lectures Most academic departments, and many student groups, host lectures, panel discussions, movie screenings and more throughout the semester. Pay attention to all of the random flyers pinned up in the Hamilton stairwells or around Lerner, because these events are hidden gems.

Faculty House R estaurant In between Wien and East Campus is a place called Faculty House, and you’ll probably never have to go there. But there is a restaurant on the top floor that is a nice campus spot to take visiting parents or grandparents, and if your professor ever hosts a luncheon there, don’t miss it. The food is decent, but the views are spectacular.w

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I ALREADY WON

Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

Getting elected is tough; getting re-elected is not

By Isaiah Bennett

E

ach September brings a sea of new (shining, hopeful, motivated, etc.) faces to Morningside Heights as the youngest classes of each college join their respective communities. This army of newly anointed adults, brimming with academic, social, and political potential, sets old Columbia clichés into motion, too: overcrowded East Campus hallways, furiously recruiting clubs, lanyards galore, and the birth of first-year politicos. As the early weeks of the semester slip by, party crowds thin, clubs relax, and lanyards slowly disappear. First-year student council elections, however, have a more lasting impact on campus.

This is not to say that first-year council members reliably bring much change to campus.

Each year first-year candidates seem to trot out the same hopeful, yet ultimately unfeasible, campaign promises: subway subsidies, meal plan reform, air conditioning in every dorm. With elections taking place a mere three weeks into the school year, it’s

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hard to blame candidates for lacking an achievable vision for a campus they hardly yet know.

While first-year council members’ promises often amount to little, history shows that first-years who get elected tend to win big in subsequent campaigns. As a 2016 Columbia Spectator article pointed out, between 2006 and 2016, 37 of 50 first-year Columbia College Student Council (CCSC) members went on to be re-elected. Following the article’s publication, 20 of the 22 council members across CCSC, Barnard Student Government Association (SGA) Representative Council, and Engineering Student Council (ESC) who were elected as firstyears in the Fall semesters of 2016 and 2017, won races the subsequent Spring.

Incumbents win in part because of the name recognition they enjoy; between countless email announcements and Facebook posts, it becomes difficult to forget the names of one’s class representatives.

Equally at fault, though, is a general disinterest across campus in the work of the various student councils. By the time first-years reach their second semester, it seems all excitement for student government has drained away. This phenomenon was demonstrated last academic year by a sharp decline in political parties between the first and second semesters. Between the Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 elections, the number of parties with candidates vying for Columbia College Class of 2021 President and Vice-President dropped from seven to one. Similarly, over the same period, the ESC Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections for Class of 2021 dropped from a five party field to an uncontested race.

In the Spring 2018 election cycle, only five of 22 CCSC and three of 22 ESC races were contested. Though numerous at-large and executive board

Illustration by Sahra Denner

The Blue and White

I ALREADY WON positions were filled by new faces, every election in which an incumbent ran was won by that incumbent, and every single class level race in both schools was won by the incumbent party, though some parties made changes to their ticket. SGA elections, while arguably more competitive, still saw 10 of 21 races go uncontested. The General Studies Student Council bans uncontested races in its bylaws and saw six of its 11 races nullified during the Spring 2018 election cycle for lack of candidates.

Furthermore, even with contentious proposals like last Spring’s CCSC renewable energy and climate change referendum, voter turnout has struggled to reach even 30 percent, which happens to be the required threshold of votes for a referendum to even be valid, according to the CCSC constitution. Thirty percent of Columbia College amounted to 1,400 students in Spring 2018; exactly 1,414 students voted in the referendum. Fourteen fewer votes and what was touted as a wildly popular initiative that earned 84 percent student support would have been technically dead on arrival.

Of course, one may reasonably respond to this information: “so what?” Students who have taken a political science class may have heard the term “rational ignorance” in reference to a voter’s decision not to educate themselves about an issue if the cost of doing so outweighs the benefits. The concept seems applicable here. Regardless of who it is that wins a student council election, each council will continue to operate in largely the same way, with no drastic impact on the day to day life of Columbia undergraduates.

The hard work that student council members put in aside, no single council member, or even coalition of members, seems capable of affecting large scale change on the university level. For example, the administration would not entertain any severe sanction on the College Republicans last Fall as called for by the Black Students’ Organization, despite a request for an official investigation by CCSC. On a smaller scale, a CCSC initiative aimed at providing free tampons university-wide has resulted in little more than the placement of empty plastic bins in campus bathrooms. Even historic votes such as this past Spring’s SGA referendum on divestment from Israel and the CCSC referendum on a renewable energy initiative merely reflect recommendations of the student body and have no actual influence on university operations without further action from the

Orientation 2018

administration.

Some might argue that indulging this apathy towards the student council is reflective of a privilege not to care about the role of the University in the world. On the contrary, students have long made their voices heard independently of student government. While university administrators are more apt to view student councils as legitimate bodies for promoting institutional change, decades of activism on Columbia’s campus have proven that students don’t need that legitimacy. April of 2015 saw a five hour sit-in in Low Library by student activist group Columbia Prison Divest—in June, Columbia announced that it would be the first U.S. university to divest its endowment from the private prison industry. In March of 2016, the university announced that it would raise the minimum wage for student workers to $15 per hour following a lengthy activist campaign

by Student Worker Solidarity. In April of that same year, another occupation of Low Library, this time for eight days by Columbia Divest for Climate Justice, eventually forced Columbia to move on thermal coal divestment.

The question of how future change will be affected, though, remains to be seen. And, as the Class of 2022 picks their first representatives in the coming weeks, they will take the initial steps towards answering it.w

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First Name, Last Name, School, Illustrations by Sahra Denner

The Undergraduate Student Life Activities Fair exists if not for joining email lists, than only to make your head spin with the amount of options for campus engagement. On Sept. 7, 2018, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., campus will be overrun by enthusiastic upperclassmen pitching their passions to potential new members. Our illustrators present here a guide to what you can expect on one of College Walk’s busiest afternoons. And if you love digging up scoops but are turned off by toxic newsroom culture, come join our own infamous email list, and see what The Blue and White is all about.

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The Blue and White

Class Year, Uni, Email With endless possibilities, all these clubs need is your contact info

If you enjoy creating art like this, please email us at bweditors@columbia.edu.

Orientation 2018

17

BUT HIS EMAILS

A Million Dollars of Red Tape Columbia's legal troubles keep piling up

By Ufon Umanah In the February 2014 issue of this magazine, Anna Bahr, BC ‘14, unveiled the realities of Columbia’s process for investigating gender-based misconduct complaints. The following December, The Blue and White’s Hallie Nell Swanson, CC ‘16, followed up with a look at the fallout from Bahr’s piece, and the activism surrounding sexual assault on campus. Four years after the issue exploded on campus in 2014, students continue to bring sexual misconduct cases to court, and gender-based discrimination cases against Columbia University. This April, we shed light on the particular difficulties graduate students can face in bringing these cases to court. Investigations Editor Ufon Umanah followed one case, from opening statements to final verdict. Here, he breaks down what the verdict means for the University, and for the students Columbia is responsible for protecting.

I

t would have been the perfect crime, but … his emails.

That seems to be the takeaway from the Ravina vs. Columbia University verdict, reached by a jury in the Southern District Court of New York in July.

For those of you who have not been following along at home: Enrichetta Ravina, a former junior professor, was the plaintiff in a lawsuit against Columbia Business School Professor Geert Bekaert and the University — she sued both parties on the basis of gender discrimination and retaliation, alleging that after rejecting Bekaert’s sexual advances, he derailed her up-and-coming career in academia.

The jury didn’t find Professor Geert Bekaert responsible for gender discrimination. The jury didn’t find Columbia University responsible for malfisience during its investigation into Bekaert, in which Bekaert was cleared for misconduct and Dean Glenn Hubbard described the situation as a “soap opera” of both sides. The jury didn’t even find Columbia responsible for disrupting Ravina’s tenure process as retaliation against her complaints.

And yet, for emailing colleagues all over the globe calling Ravina “insane,” “evil,” “the evil bitch,”

“crazy,” and “sick,” the jury found Bekaert responsible for retaliation, to the tune of $1.25 million, and as an agent of Columbia, the University came away with vicarious responsibility.

Despite the clarity of the verdict, it’s easy to wonder what exactly this means for Columbia. The prosecution, led by David Sanford of Sanford Heisler Sharp, said “The $1.25 million in damages ... should send a clear message to Columbia University and the world of higher education that workplace retaliation and abuse of power in academia will not be tolerated.” This would be the third message that the Sanford Heisler Sharp law firm has sent to Columbia, having also taken on two former professors, William Harris and Thomas Jessel, in similar court proceedings.

Furthermore, the context in which the behavior occurred, both alleged and confirmed, gives us a fuller picture of Columbia’s culture in 2014 and beyond. When Ravina initially reported Bekaert to the Business School in 2014, it was after a graduate student became acquainted with former professor Harris, who she would later sue for sexual harassment.

It was also after undergraduate students had filed a report against Columbia and Barnard over their mis-

“This would be the third message that the Sanford Heisler Sharp law firm has sent to Columbia, having also taken on two former professors, William Harris and Thomas Jessel, in similar court proceedings.”

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The Blue and White

BUT HIS EMAILS handling of sexual assault investigations, and also the summer before the famous “Carry That Weight” mattress protest that garnered national headlines. The discovery process for Ravina vs. Columbia University demonstrated that the University failed its non-tenured academic constituencies, from undergraduates to graduates to non-tenured faculty. Unfortunately, timing is not the only thing these cases share.

Time Wasted in the Sun A February 2014 feature in The Blue and White

by Anna Bahr, BC ‘14, detailed the experiences of survivors and examined the process of how Columbia investigates claims of gender-based misconduct.

(Editor’s Note: You can find the article in the archives on our website, www.theblueandwhite.org, in the February 2014 issue). One critical detail from Bahr’s feature was the length of investigations for gender based misconduct. Under Columbia regulation, 2014 and now, from the time Columbia starts an inquiry, an investigation is supposed to take 60 days. This was in response to the Obama administration strongly recommending that universities address allegations promptly, as to reduce the burden on the victim and preserve as much evidence as possible before memories started to fade.

The problem was that Columbia was anything but timely by 2014. In the feature, we learned that the investigation into one accuser’s respondent lasted seven months. Before Ravina, however, one could only speculate as to why cases took so long to complete. This changed after the seventh day of proceedings in the Ravina trial with the testimony of Michael Dunn.

Michael Dunn used to be the Director of Investigations for the Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Office for Columbia until 2015.

During the Ravina case, the public learned about four cases that Dunn investigated personally at the Business School, but that was only maybe a fifth of his workload. Since the staff of his office in 2014 consisted of two to four people for a student population of over 40,000, one might imagine that the

EOAA office was overworked. Dunn had around 15 to 20 cases on his plate when he was investigating the Ravina in 2014.

In court, however, instead of inspiring sympathy, Poets and Quants writer John Byrne reported that Dunn “left the unmistakable impression that his investigations were superficial, highly limited, and incomplete.”

In the course of the Ravina investigation, Dunn interviewed Ravina twice, once with no prepared questions, and focused exclusively on sexual harassment, instead of including gender based discrimination or, the charge for which Bekaert would eventually be held responsible, retaliation. Outside of her and Bekaert, who Dunn interviewed three times, he interviewed one student assistant who had a clear bias for Bekaert. Dunn’s Ravina investigation started in July 2014. He would not finish within the policy-mandated two months, but instead

by November. He concluded that what happened between Ravina and Bekaert was a ‘mutually flirtatious relationship,’ borrowing Bekaert’s language.

Sanford Heisler Sharp during the trial made a point of the fact that Dunn had no experience in discrimination or retaliation law. He had, at most, two years of general legal experience. Despite this, he received no formal training on Columbia's policies against discrimination harassment or retaliation, nor New York City’s Human Rights Law, nor Title VII. And it showed. Not one of his investigations resolved after 60 days, and he managed to miss various opportunities to investigate. Of Dunn’s four investigations of Business School professors, introduced in separate court proceedings, two were against Bekaert, one was against an allegedly sexist professor, and one was against a professor who had sex in his office with a student he had recently finished teaching. Dunn found in favor of the male professor in each case.

Even though Columbia hired more staff in the Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Office between 2014 and 2018, lack of training has seemed to remain a persistent problem. According to Bahr’s article, while students were offered Title IX training, the people tasked with conveying what counted

“Student respondents, unlike tenured faculty, aren’t offered the opportunity to choose a easier justice system to be judged before.”

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BUT HIS EMAILS as sexual assault were given cheesy examples, and those at the Rape Crisis Center were not given access to precedent involving gender-based misconduct. Common law, which the American system is based on, is based on precedent, so restricting access to it seems a strange act of anti-transparency.

According to one dismissed lawsuit against Columbia University, staff that took initial calls at the Sexual Violence Response Office also didn’t receive training in what rights complainants have under Title IX. There is a silver lining here. Columbia can easily hire more staff to investigate gender-based misconduct complaints and afford to actually train them. If they do, Columbia might be able to begin the process of restoring their credibility in investigating cases. The bigger problem that looms over Columbia is more structural, more procedural, and very hard to repeal.

A dditional Procedures A lot has been made about the underlying power dynamics between tenured professors and everyone else, but at no time was that dynamic clearer than when Dean of the Business School Glenn Hubbard testified during Ravina’s trial that he, as a procedural matter, could not “fire a tenured faculty member.” If he wanted to, he “would have to go to the president of the university and trustees. They would make that decision.” In his time at Columbia, he said, going back to 1988, he had never seen it happen.

That is a very simplified version of what would happen, though not in spirit. Say Dunn instead found Bekaert responsible for retaliation, as the jury did in the legal case. That can be done under the same standard used in the civil case—preponderance, in which responsibility is determined by whether it is more likely than not that the alleged incident occurred.

Unfortunately, “University policies or contracts may require the University to use additional processes before taking certain employment-related actions with respect to faculty and certain other employees … the Disciplinary Officer will not impose any discipline that would require the use of additional processes.”

That means, if Columbia wanted to fire a tenured professor, even after violation of the Rules of University Conduct, the professor in question has the option to reject judgement by a Hearing

20

Officer under the Charter and Statutes of Columbia University.

If the professor takes that option, the president has to call a hearing which mimics somewhat closely a legal proceeding, except unlike the civil case Bekaert just lost, he would be judged by clear and convincing evidence. This in a space where evidence is hard to come by, especially when your investigators don’t know how to investigate.

Student respondents, however, unlike tenured faculty, aren’t offered the opportunity to choose a easier justice system to be judged before, nor are various officers of instruction under the administration. This might explain why Columbia is so willing to turn a blind eye to accused tenured faculty, as alleged in the Professor William Harris case, while talking a big game on addressing sexual harassment.

Beyond Dean Hubbard’s assertion of his “moral suasion,” there isn’t much he can do to manage disputes like Ravina’s. It makes it that much easier to avoid confrontation than actually threaten the career of a wrongdoer.

Open Questions When news of Ravina’s lawsuit hit the press in 2016, Dean Hubbard felt that his millennial students were “looking for a lot of communication from the top,” and sent an email throughout the Business School to announce his dedication to a zero-tolerance policy. Throughout the university, however, there may be exhaustion over learning about sexual misconduct in case, after case, after case.

There are small steps that the University can take to minimize the potential for repeated cases of Harrises and Bekaerts. When the Commission on the Status of Women released its Pipeline Study on the Advancement of Women Faculty at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, one of their policy suggestions amounted to diversifying the types of support systems people can lean on, and adding academic sponsorship as well as mentorship, with the hope that reforms like this will eventually diversify the upper ranks of academia.

Columbia could make it easier to threaten professors not for academic conduct, but over violations of policy. But until then, despite a charge of over a million dollars, it still does not feel like Columbia has paid enough.w

The Blue and White

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

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

Orientation 2018

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#FUCKSPEC

Behind McBain's Facade Bwog: Columbia pays thousands to not repair McBain

By Jenny Zhu In January 2006, Bwog launched as the online incarnation of us, The Blue and White. Though years have passed and we have since gone our separate ways, we maintain a close friendship with Bwog, which has become the preeminent campus blog and news source. Here we present for you an investigation, conducted by Bwog, into every sophomore’s favorite building. For supporting documents and a statement from the university, or to leave a comment, please visit this story on www.bwog.com.

I

n early June, The New York Times published an article about McBain Hall’s safety violations. After citing historical failures in its building maintenance, the piece depicted Columbia as ignoring a “façade so decrepit that city inspectors have issued several violations for the risk it posed to the public.”

While this incident might initially seem aligned with Columbia’s well-publicized record of facility issues—particularly in regards to response times to residents’ most urgent needs—the situation, in reality, proves more complex. Rather than willful ignorance on Columbia’s part, McBain’s current number of high-penalty violations ultimately derived from fundamental disagreements between New York City’s Department of Buildings (DOB) and Columbia Facilities.

The DOB’s Façade Inspection Safety Program (FISP) is divided into five-year cycles, with each building inspected once every cycle. Cycle 7 ran from 2010-2015, while the current cycle, Cycle 8, began in 2015. During an inspection, a third-party engineer, hired by the building owner and licensed by the NYC government, classifies the building as either Safe, Safe With Repairs and Maintenance (SWARM), or Unsafe.

In Columbia’s case, the third-party engineer who inspected McBain was from FacadeMD Architects and Engineers, a firm with a number of projects including the Newark Museum to the 14th Street W and Ritz Carlton Hotels. During Cycle 7, the FacadeMD engineer deemed McBain as SWARM, meaning that the façade had a few repairs that needed to be completed before Cycle 7 ended, but was otherwise safe.

These repairs began in 2014, and consisted of “exterior masonry façade repairs including, front stone patching and rear brick replacement, pointing, still and lintel replacement,” according to per-

22

mits filed for the project. After the job was finished in November 2014, Columbia received a Letter of Completion from the DOB that ultimately certified that the repairs were completed.

While the Times article implied that the root of current-day violations was that “Columbia failed to certify that the façade was made safe after it completed a repair job in 2014, according to department records,” this seems unlikely to be true, seeing as the 2014 repairs were fully completed and certified with a Letter of Completion, as previously mentioned.

In addition, the piece also mentioned that the “architect the university hired to inspect the building in 2014 determined that there was no immediate need for repairs.” While it is true that the repairs recommended by the engineer were not “immediate,” it is important to note that the engineer did indeed acknowledge ongoing issues, rather than blatantly disregard them.

After inspecting McBain again in 2015 to file the report for Cycle 8, the Columbia-hired FacadeMD engineer reported the building as SWARM again, but for different, unrelated problems, said a Columbia Facilities representative.

According to Columbia Facilities, the DOB then rejected Columbia’s Cycle 8 report, because it disagreed with the engineer’s timeline for finishing the repairs—or how urgent McBain’s façade issues truly were. Rather than amend and refile a report that followed the city’s suggestions, however, Columbia attempted to appeal this decision.

This seems corroborated by DOB records, which have so far displayed McBain as NR (No Report) filed for Cycle 8, despite the fact that the building belongs in sub-cycle 8A—meaning it was one of the very first buildings ordered to be inspected in Cycle 8.

Columbia Facilities then said that while

The Blue and White

#FUCKSPEC undergoing the Cycle 8 report appeals process, a city inspector from the DOB itself came, inspected McBain, and issued violations in the summer of 2017.

According to The Cooperator, this is not uncommon: “Often times, the DOB […] sends its own inspectors to re-inspect the façades. ‘Recently, I saw a man standing across the street from the building with a clipboard and looking the building up and down,’ says one exterior contractor. ‘I asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I’m a buildings inspector.” He was taking pictures and writing down all the conditions that the original inspector had missed.’”

Columbia Facilities emphasized that the city inspector’s inspection was less thorough and more assumption-based than that of the third-party, FacadeMD inspector. More specifically, the representative described the city inspector as merely analyzing the façade from the street, while the FacadeMD inspector conducted an up-close, in-depth inspection utilizing scaffolding, sounding, and other tools.

Regardless, McBain was issued two violations of the highest severity from the Environmental Control Board (ECB) of DOB—Immediately Hazardous (Class 1) violations. The first violation, with a penalty of $1,000, addressed eroded keystones and cracks in the façade; a second violation, also citing a general failure “to secure public safety,” held a penalty of $2,400.

Rather than correcting the façade issues with the more urgent, immediate timeline pushed by the DOB, Columbia instead chose to stick to the longer timeline originally put forth in its Cycle 8 Report and to wait for the result of the appeal. In early summer 2018, Columbia then found out that the city had rejected its appeal.

In the process, Columbia paid a heavy penalty: McBain accrued two more minor DOB civil penalties for failing to address its two ECB-DOB Class 1 Violations, each costing the school $1,000 each. In May 2018, the DOB issued McBain another ECB-DOB Class 1 Violation—again for the cracked keystones, along with damaged terracotta stones— costing Columbia another $2,500. Rather than just the $3,400 previously cited by other media reports,

Columbia thus paid a grand total of $7,900 in fines in order to adhere to the timeframe for repairs it originally set forth in its Cycle 8 report.

As to why Columbia did not comply with the DOB’s more immediate timeline, as the façade repairs were going to be completed anyway, the Facilities representative referenced the extremely extensive portfolio of approximately 150 buildings that Columbia owns, manages, inspects, and repairs.

Indeed, Columbia maintains that resources needed to be allocated to the more high-priority, highdanger construction issues rather than repairs that the engineer it hired deemed not urgent. Facilities, however, has also stressed that this situation is an uncommon one and that the department has not forgotten about the sophomore dorm’s facade, but rather simply remains steadfast in its original opinion.

If this incident truly is an unusual one, it raises the question of why the city’s obvious disapproval of McBain’s maintenance didn’t seem to make it a highpriority issue, even among the vast portfolio of buildings that Columbia maintains. In addition, in light of the negative publicity that Columbia received and the thousands of dollars that the school paid in fines, it is questionable whether adhering to the original report from the school-hired engineer instead of complying with the city’s suggestions is a wise allocation of its monetary resources.

In regards to its stance on McBain’s facade, the university has released an official statement: “McBain Hall has been safe for residents and passersby before and throughout the current process and poses no safety risks today. A protective sidewalk bridge is in place, and the University has commenced design to address identified repairs on an expedited basis. The regulatory process established by the City’s Department of Buildings is complex, and it is common for there to be differences of opinion about prevailing timeframes. With respect to McBain, at every step of the process the University followed the guidance of a highly regarded consulting engineer who is recognized citywide as a strong advocate for safe building practices and maintenance.”w

“...it raises the question of why the city’s obvious disapproval of McBain’s maintenance didn’t seem to make it a high-priority issue.”

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RADLEY'S HOUSE

The House on the Hill The case of the mysterious Riverside house, and why someone built it

By Casey Davis

P

eople go to Riverside Park for three reasons: to feel like they’re in “nature,” to jog, or to smoke weed. The nature revelers, speedy joggers, or high Columbia students might not notice the finer details of one of Manhattan’s few expansive green spaces on their jaunts down the hill from campus, but I am of a more observant type.

The first time I went into Riverside Park, I too enjoyed the grass, trees, and lovely view of the Hudson. On my way back to my dorm, though, I noticed a house sitting inconspicuously off to the side near 108th street. Off-white and just a couple stories high, it practically blended in with the tall wall behind it. In my first two years of college, I glanced at this building many times and each time wondered who the heck was living in Riverside Park.

Before this mysterious landmark was renovated, it was a rundown one-story limestone shed used to store tools. It couldn’t fit more than a few people inside at a time. There was graffiti on the walls and debris surrounding it. The backside of the house was commonly used as a bathroom for homeless people. It stood like this for 100 years.

On September 14, 2003, the building reopened as the Peter Jay Sharp Volunteer House.

The building could not be expanded horizontally without killing nearby trees, so an extra story was added on top and the original structure was renovated. Though it looks like a comfortable cottage, no one actually lives there.

In a New York Times article published in 2003, James T. Dowell, president of the Riverside Park Fund and commissioner of the building, said that the house is meant to be an “architectural folly.” By this, he means that it is designed to be an unexpected visual experience that is semi-hidden in the landscape.

My surprise and vague confusion at the building (and perhaps yours, tool) is actually well placed.

The renovation project in total cost $1.3 million. It was financed by the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. Peter Sharp was a hotelier and developer who dedicated most of his life to building high-priced

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buildings in Manhattan. Additional financiers were the LuEsther T. Mertz Advised Fund of the New York Community Trust, the Booth-Ferris Foundation and Peter Sharp’s mother. The architect was Jeffrey Murphy of Murphy, Burnham & Buttrick.

The first design for the house, according to the Landmark West preservation group, was not appropriate. “The precipitous height of the proposed building,” said Landmark West, “gives it the appearance of a ski chalet in Vail, Colorado, rather than a park structure in New York City.” After this criticism, the designs were redrawn to the structure as it stands today.

Once a mere shack, the building now has heat and water year-round. The first floor remains a storage room. The mezzanine is used for plant propagation. A bathroom and small kitchen make the building livable even though no one occupies it.

The newly-added second floor is home to the Evelyn Sharp Meeting Room, which has an 18 feet ceiling and is lined with pine and Douglas fir timbers.

Picture windows look out into the trees in the park, giving the room the feeling of a treehouse.

The most significant use of the Peter Jay Sharp Volunteer House is, fittingly, the center for the Riverside Park Fund’s Grassroots Volunteer Program. It is the only building in New York City dedicated to volunteer park work.

So on your next excursion to Riverside, slow your jog (if it isn’t already slow), or take hike before you light up, and take a gander at the house among the trees.w

Illustration by Yotam Deree

The Blue and White

M easure

for

M easure

Start Family Strange thing.

To make another person, With another person.

Strange thing.

To be half of one person And half of another — So that it might seem, All the good that lives in you Is a breathing monument of them.

And all that feels Wrong Is an accident of natural dangers Like the graze on your pillow palms When you Tripped And fell, Five years old.

Strange thing.

To have a slice of yourself Walking up your stairs And through your kitchen Like a most oblivious Home invasion.

The only risk is that They gain an Understanding Like this One. — Frank Baring

Submit your poetry, short fiction or personal musings to bweditors@columbia.edu

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

Gradual Learning A conversation with Stephen Sullivan

By Ufon Umanah Stephen Sullivan has almost spent as much time learning at Columbia as he has teaching high school students. With multiple awards and papers related to his work as a high school teacher, he spends his summers (and retirement) at Columbia teaching History of the City of New York. The Blue and White Investigations Editor Ufon Umanah, CC ‘20, sat down with Stephen Sullivan, CC ‘82, in the History Faculty Lounge in Fayerweather to discuss his history, Columbia’s history, and history in general.

The Blue and White: Some of our leaders might be called ‘history-phobic.’ If you had to teach them one lesson, which moment in history would you choose to try to convince such a person that your field actually matters?

Stephen Sullivan: Well, the easy answer is the founding of our republic is probably the single most important. I think that was a time of creation. I think creating our national Republic is probably the single

most difficult moment, because no nation had ever broken away from a mother country before, creating its own set of norms. Now as a New York historian, I like to teach the students in my Columbia class, I like to teach high school kids, that New York is significantly more valuable to the Revolution than people realized; that at the beginning of the Revolution we have a tendency to associate Boston and Lexington and Concord, and certainly that was important in bringing on the revolution, but so many of the battles fought in New York City: the Battle of Brooklyn, the Battle of Harlem Heights, which was fought really on Barnard’s campus, the battle down in Kips Bay, in which the colonialists were overrun, Saratoga upstate. So much of what’s going on was there.

How do you create the first new nation? How do you bind together southern slaveholding states, northern states, New York, which has interests in slaveholding because they were essentially the bankers of the slaveholding (states)? How do you bind together all these different people and create the first democracy in the modern world? And how do you create this large republic which had never been done before.

B&W: So how do you reckon with that history?

Because you mentioned in the founding of the republic, we had to negotiate with slave-owning states; New York had a giant interest in that. There’s a class taught in the Spring, a seminar: “Columbia University and Slavery,” where people have to research Columbia’s specific ties in the slave trade. There were protests, last year I think or two years ago, against Columbia’s ties to the slave trade, like Remington Arms, and I think it was Marcellus Hartley Dodge who owned that company, which sold guns to the frontier. So how do you reckon with that history?

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Illustration by Jennifer Bi

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N SS: I’m familiar with the professor who teaches that course. I’m not familiar with the course that you’re referring to. That was the Ebony and Ivy books.

Columbia was one of the universities, probably every Ivy was, deeply invested in the slave trade going all the way back, because unfortunately slavery and the slave trade was one of the best single investments that you could put your money into, and particularly if nobody knew you were investing and there was no downside, the university would put its institutional funds into it.

The Fugitive Slave Act made slavery a national institution, and made it very clear that it was a national institution. But, frankly, it was a national institution already. You had New York banks, you had Hartley, you had the universities, you had all sorts of trust funds investing in it already. So I think it’s important for students to get out and to protest, and for our students to get out and to make the point.

I think Eric Foner’s book, Gateway to Liberty, was based on one of his students studying and just digging around up in the Collections and discovering that there were abolitionists in New York City, which was largely hostile to abolitionists. I think the more that is brought to light, both negative and positive; Syracuse, for example, was a very very abolitionist city, very abolitionist friendly, the Underground Railroad was essentially advertising in papers, whereas in New York City, you could be beaten and mobbed and have had the slaves you were setting free taken out and shipped back. So I think that’s exactly how we need to educate. I think we need to have students doing independent research.

One of the things that I’ve done for the last 30 years at the high school level is to run an independent research class. You learn best by doing hands-on research. Now, that hands-on research has to be informed by a class in which a professor is showing you this and how to do it. But with the resources available at a university like this, with the research sources available online, why aren’t students at more universities with more professors going out and finding things for themselves, and arguing, and discussing,

and having Socratic seminars, and having a chance to present your research to the other students, and letting them critique, and then having the professor saying, “Oh, wait a minute, what about this and what about this?”

There are times where it makes sense for me to present my research to you and let you talk about it, but there are also times where you should present your research to me and to each other, because you guys are the future of this, and you need to explain to each other, to the world.

There should be more undergraduate opportunities to publish this work on these things. You need to put that stuff out.

“...the college application process, in some ways, has sucked the life and joy out of some of the discovery that 20 years ago I had with the high school kids.”

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B&W: There was a conversation about this during the last Fireside Chat less in that vein but, like, hearing that students weren’t curious anymore or they came in curious but the stress of Columbia combined with, I will describe it as a seeming lack of opportunity or really the idea that there’s not really that much opportunity to go outside of a career field. So there’s a sense of wanting that, as opposed to what I think I remember Bollinger saying, something to the effect of “The resources are here if you want it.”

SS: Well is it the stress involved with career or is it the stress involved with the process of graduate school?

Now, again, as someone who teaches both high school and summers here at Columbia, the college application process, in some ways, has sucked the life and joy out of some of the discovery that 20 years ago I had with the high school kids. For example, AP American History. Everything is so focused on the test, and the curriculum is so focused on testing, testing, testing.

It’s only in the other classes that I have an opportunity for the kids to do things that are really interesting. Is it because of law school? Is it because of grad school?

Is it because of LSATs and GMATs etc? Has that creeped in and overtaken?

B&W: I think the sense I got from the person who was asking the question was a sense of going through the four year process, whether or not you went to gradu-

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N ate school, or whether or not you went on to a year internship that went on to a career. Getting in and going through Columbia and getting to the next step of your life so robbed of the opportunity of exploration. I wish I could review tape but...

SS: Well, perhaps at Columbia we have to decide whether that (experience) is Columbia or whether that’s top-tier research universities. Now to a certain extent, it doesn’t matter whether that’s everyone or us, because we can change us, and we can hopefully make some changes in our department and our university. But if it is everyone, there’s only so much we can change ourselves without having the conversation with Princeton and Yale and Dartmouth and Stanford.

If Columbia wants to compete and wants our students to compete, because our kids still want to go to grad school and still want to get fellowships, we can’t become ‘Kumbaya University’, but there are things that we can do if we want our students to have a better and more fulfilling life.

And I think some of that, with our graduate students, Professor Colburn has been doing with the History Now movement, where our PhD students are involved with everybody who has a PhD who isn’t going to have an academic job. Let’s look at some other options from teaching in private, prep schools, to getting involved in museum work, to teaching outside the academy, etcetera. And they’ve begun to do some of that so maybe there might be some more, you know, career based ‘Let’s prepare everybody for a broader thing’ and the liberal arts prepares you for so much more.

of admissions came to our school to recruit us. I went to a very good Catholic school in Brooklyn, but Harvard sent us a graduate student who acted like he didn’t even want to be there. And it struck us as though Harvard has no interest in us. Princeton sent us the same. Columbia didn’t even call themselves Columbia in the City of New York at the time, but it was that Columbia was from there. A number of our students had gone to Columbia before and there was just a connection, and it was in the city. Even back then in 1977, when the city was not the draw that it is now; you know the subway was dangerous and blah blah blah.

Now, again, I was from Brooklyn, so I wasn’t really afraid of the subway. My mom was, but I wasn’t afraid of the subway. So the city was a draw. He explained the Core Curriculum and what I was going to take: I was going to take a philosophy/ history course, I was going to take a great books course, Literature Humanities, I was gonna take Music Humanities, I was gonna take Art Humanities. That struck me as what I wanted, and my logic—which worked for me, but seems a little skewed right now—was that I wanted to take philosophy, but I wanted to take CC with a broad range of students. I wanted to take it with history majors and chem majors. Then I was pre-med, so I wanted to take it with students who were not only philosophy majors. I didn’t want to walk into the class where the professor would make a joke in Latin, you know, about something Socrates wrote, and everybody else laughed, and I had no idea what he was talking about.

I wanted to be on an equal footing with almost everybody else in the class, and that’s what I got, and it was wonderful. I really felt that I was getting a wonderful introduction, and so was everybody else. Now, were there people who had gone to prep schools in Manhattan and had read Chaucer? Of course there were. But that was fine and I felt welcome and I felt fair.

“If Columbia wants to compete and wants our students to compete, because our kids still want to go to grad school and still want to get fellowships, we can’t become ‘Kumbaya University.’”

B&W: So looking back to the late 70s. Why did you choose to attend Columbia?

SS: I’m from New York. I grew up in Brooklyn, so there were some practical reasons and I really didn’t want to go that far away. I liked the idea of a core curriculum. And Columbia also paid the ultimate respect to my high school. Their assistant director

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B&W: What was your favorite LitHum book or Contemporary Civilization? Because my assumption

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N would have been, maybe The Histories, History of the Peloponnesian War, but you were a pre-med.

SS: My favorite experience, I can’t say my favorite book, was Columbia’s soccer team. That was before big scholarships etcetera, and John Rennie was the coach my freshman year, then Dieter Ficken, who went on to be a great, great coach. Columbia was number four in the country then, number two in the country the year after I graduated.

But Shahin Shayan was our great player at the time; he was the great star on the team. And so this was the fall and the spring of ’78, ’79, right as we’re about to go into the Iranian Revolution. He was Iranian and in the Columbia sports guide, everyone, every athlete in the entire university is listed by their hometown. His hometown is Tehran.

I went in what then was reverse order. They wanted to take CC first, then take LitHum. Now I know they recommend it the other way. But, it just fit my schedule better so I took it backwards, and the only two students in the entire class who did all of the reading was this junior soccer player and me, the freshman. Everybody else was like “Eh.” So we got the only two As. This guy was a really rough grader.

Freshmen: not supposed to get As, and jock: not supposed to get As. So the following year, we’ve got the whole Iranian hostage crisis etcetera. And suddenly in the guide you’ve got... he’s from Tehran. People didn’t realize that he was Iranian and now all of a sudden, he might be getting some problems. Dieter Ficken, who was German himself and had gotten some problems because his dad was in the German army during World War II, not a Nazi but he’d been in the German army, he had the entire media guide reprinted just to protect this kid. He changed everything to birthplace, because he was born in the Bronx. His parents were residents at Columbia Presbyterian when he was born. Now, most people their birthplace and the hometown are the same.

But suddenly he went from Tehran to Bronx. He was already calling himself Persian and everybody else switched. But I mean, how great is that? How brilliant is that for the soccer coach and for the athletic department for one kid to make him feel more comfortable?

B&W: I find it comforting that Columbia was that accommodating in the 1970’s given the news right now around the travel ban and Islamophobia, and

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random war-tweeting about Iran.

SS: Well back then it wasn’t Islamophobia, it was Iranophobia. It was that one country because that was the country that was taking hostages and Columbia switched. But Columbia switched it before it became a problem.

B&W: They were active instead of reactive.

SS: They were completely and totally proactive, and it was because of the coach. I actually think they probably would have done it to protect the, you know, the eighth best player on the team. I can’t swear they would have done it to protect the, you know, JV player; the fact that he was the best player on the team probably helped. But I think Dieter would have done it to protect anyone.

B&W: On another subject, history and Columbia’s history, we’ve touched on how Columbia is historically controversial. You already named a couple of instances. What was the most controversial moment during your undergraduate career at Columbia?

SS: Well, Jerry Falwell coming here to debate Jim Shenton. James Shenton was a controversial, quirky, interesting character; he was a professor of history who got his PhD on the GI Bill of Rights. He also was a tremendous supporter of secular humanism, not a religious guy at all. So when Jerry Falwell (Editor’s Note: Falwell was a Southern Baptist pastor and activist, and the founder of Liberty University) wanted to come to Columbia to speak, when he was forming the Moral Majority. Shenton was big on “the moral majority is neither,” and he, at his own expense, had a thousand buttons printed up saying “the Moral Majority is neither,” distributed them to whatever hundreds of students, covered the campus in them and then challenged Jerry Falwell to a debate at Ferris Booth Hall. So my friends, compatriots, and I—I was one of Shenton’s work-study kids at the time—we blanketed the campus, ran around, you know, “James Shenton debates Jerry Falwell.” And he had his debate and we formed the Immoral Majority.

The two of them went back and forth and debated points in the Bible, and it was pretty remarkable because Shenton’s knowledge of biblical text as a historian, as an American historian, was probably

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N as good as Falwell’s. Falwell was just pulling stuff out of context, as televangelists have a tendency to do. And Shenton was like “No, no, that’s not exactly what it is. In context it’s this this this,” and “I believe that what Paul was trying to say was...” And then, you know, Shenton was like, “Well you know Maccabees, according to the Jewish tradition, said this this this and this…” and it was quite an evening and two of them went at it, you know.

I mean The Columbia Republican Club at the time was only 37 people so the cheering was very clearly on Shenton’s side. Shenton had the crowd, there was no doubt. If you were scoring it on a debate fairly, Shenton won, although Falwell knew his scripture. I mean he is a preacher. That one was kind of a fun week.

exam. So in order to get your Masters, you need to pass one foreign language exam. In order to get your dissertation, you need a second foreign language. My Master’s essay got high grades. My grades were fine, but I didn’t have the Master’s in hand so my rating was not what it should have been. My fault.

So I then took a job at a Catholic school in Midtown and I was still working as an RA. Once I got the job though, I fell in love with it. So taking the job was opportunity and necessity.

At some awards ceremony for some, you know, teaching award that I won, I told them that what I liked about high school teaching, and particularly about adolescence, was that I had 125 chances a year to change the world and to change lives.

And I still believe that. By the time you get college students, I can make a difference in someone’s life but I’m not going to dramatically change everybody. If I’m teaching elementary school I have 24 kids, I have 25 kids. But I have so many opportunities, I’ve so many chances, I’ve 100, 125 kids, and there’s just this connection.

“I told them that what I liked about high school teaching, and particularly about adolescence, was that I had 125 chances a year to change the world and to change lives.”

B&W: After your time as a Columbia student, what drove you to teaching high school, as opposed to entering academia?

SS: Well what drove me to teach high school originally was need. Ronald Reagan became president. The aid to universities was cut drastically and it seemed as though it was almost aimed at me. Because the aid to universities was cut dramatically, universities got to decide what to cut. It wasn’t as if it was, “Okay the aid to the humanities would be cut.” But the aid to universities was cut dramatically and Columbia had significant matching grants from everything from the Agriculture Department, Defense Department and most of those grants were for STEM. So if you’re getting matching grants for STEM, you want to keep them. Obviously the Agriculture Department, the USDA, is not giving grants to the History department. So if you’re given a pot of money, you’re going to give less money to Anthropology and Archaeology and History. So the History department got less money.

My first year, 22 of us were on fellowship in U.S. history. That went down to, I want to say five.

I was rated (lower than others) in part because I had not yet completed my Master’s MA … I was rated number seven … so I wasn’t the next one, but I was close considering that I hadn’t passed my French

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B&W: So from getting masters degrees at Columbia in ’84, ’85, I noticed that you got your PhD, also Columbia, in like 2013. How was teaching high school while pursuing a PhD? SS: It was really really difficult. Part of the reason is because I took teaching high school, like, seriously.

Teaching high school was not something I was doing while I was working on my PhD, that was first. And John Irving in The World According to Garp has a line in which he describes someone as being a gradual student; that you’re going to school and you’re going to school and you’re going to school until you don’t go to school anymore. Well in my case, not going to school anymore is when I finally finished. I received four different notes from four different Deans of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The first two were snail mail—they were typed up on Columbia letterhead and sent with stamps on them. Now some of my high school and even some of my college students don’t really remember those things. The only things

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N they get in the mail with stamps on them are bills. The last two were emails, to give you an idea of how long it was that these were going on. They were referred to as “insufficient progress towards the terminal degree” notices, meaning if you don’t finish your dissertation within six months, within three months, within 12 months—they all varied—you are no longer going to be a student at Columbia University. Well, Kenneth Jackson, (Editor’s Note: Read a Conversation with Kenneth Jackson from Feb. 2018 on our website) my doctoral adviser, and Eric Foner, who was the chair on my dissertation committee, would take a walk over to Low Library and talk to whoever the Dean was and say, “Please leave Stephen alone. He’s working with all those high school kids out there, and they do all this really wonderful work, and his kids publish, and they win awards. He’ll finish. I promise he’ll finish.”

Then, after the Dean said “Okay, fine, I’ll give him some more time. I’ll leave him alone,” I would get a phone call in the evening, usually from Ken, and he would say “Stephen, I just went to bat for you, again.

You owe me a chapter.” And I would write another chapter or I would finish something.

My argument was always that I didn’t write my dissertation between summers, which really was true.

I defended my orals in 1988, and then I defended my dissertation in 2013; so if you do the math that’s 25 years. I didn’t take 25 years. I took 50 months: July, August, July, August, July, August, July, August …

And Ken Jackson always accepted that argument because his wife is one of the legendary public school teachers in Westchester. His wife was the chair of the English department at, I believe, Scarsdale High School, so Ken always got it. My mom always got it.

My wife, my mother-in-law … eh, not so much. They were a little impatient. My wife has the patience of a saint but she always said “Stephen, come on. Finish your book.”

So in any event, somewhere in between the 25 years and the 50 months lies the truth, because I really worked on it every Summer. During holidays I probably should have worked on it more, but my advisors have always shown tremendous patience. My kids, my own kids, who are now 29, 26, and 23 have lived with this their whole lives, have been making fun of me their whole lives, and my wife is just been long-suffering, like, “Ah man, Stephen, finish your book.” And ultimately I graduated from grad school, walked at Columbia the same weekend my middle

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child got his Bachelor’s at Binghamton, so that was a big party.

B&W: So this August, there’s going to be a new batch of first-years inducted into Columbia. What is your advice to them as a high school teacher who has taught here over the summer?

SS: Well assuming that Columbia still allows you to take one class pass/fail?

B&W: One class pass/fail every semester.

SS: Okay, use it. Take a class that is out of your comfort zone. Because that class that’s out of your comfort zone; astronomy, for example, when Professor Jasper was here. That class used to end up being some of his majors and some of his graduate students, because nobody goes to college to take astronomy. Take a class that’s out of your comfort zone.

I realize that we have really strict requirements. I realize we have a big core curriculum. But take something that sounds fun, that sounds challenging, and if it’s more challenging than you thought it was, take it pass/fail. It’s perfectly fine. That’s one of the best programs, the best ideas at Columbia. Join a club. Not seven clubs that you think are interesting.

And if it’s not then, you just quit, it’s perfectly fine.

But do something that’s out of your comfort zone.

Now when you are in high school, you are probably joining eight, nine, ten clubs because you were busy trying to get into college. No, now, do a couple of things that you think you want to do and then try one thing that’s new. Also make sure that you see the city. Make sure that you go downtown. Make sure that you get to the MoMA. Make sure that you get the Museum of the City of New York, which is wonderful.

Make sure that you spend some time in Central Park.

If there are free tickets to Broadway through the university or cheap tickets, if there is a walking tour of some part of the city through the university, do it.

Do something different, something fun something outside your comfort zone, but don’t do everything all at once. You’re here for four years, take your time.

You’re here for school but you’re also— you picked Columbia University in the City of New York because it’s in New York, and remember that it’s Columbia and it’s New York and you’re here for both of those reasons.w

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