T H E U N D E RG R A D UAT E M AG A Z I N E O F C O LU M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y, E S T. 1 8 9 0
THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXV No. IV
Anything and Everything A conversation with Mary Schmich
Compelled Speech Students pay the bill when it comes to free speech, but what if they didn’t have to?
Also Inside
: A Pluralistic Core and Honorary Selections
Orientation 2019
SKETCHBOOK
Interested in writing or illlustrating? How about copyediting or publishing? Attend SEAS or GS? We Want You! Come to our weekly meetings Mondays at 8PM or contact us at bweditors@columbia.edu
Illustration by Julia Cobb
UFONOBONG UMANAH, CC '20, Editor-in-Chief ESMÉ ABLAZA, CC '20, Managing Editor MARY ELIZABETH DAWSON, BC '21, Publisher GRACE ADEE, CC '22, Investigations Editor JACOB SNYDER, CC '20, Literary Editor ZOE METCALFE, CC '21, Online Editor EMILY WANG, CC '22, Online Editor SAHRA DENNER, CC '21, Senior Illustrator GIGI LEE, CC ' 22, Layout Editor MALIA SIMON, CC '22, Senior Editor CASSIDY SATTLER, CC '20, Senior Editor KATE STEINER, CC '22, Audio Director ANDREA VALLEJOS, CC '20, Audio Director
Writers-at-Large Staff Illustrators AMAD ROSS, CC '22 HELEN BECKER, CC '22 MWANDEYI KAMWENDO, CC '22 DRAZEN MEDINA, CC '20 GABRIELLA FERRIGINE, CC '20 KASSIA KARRAS, BC '22 HANNAH LIBERMAN, CC '20 ROSE KUAN, CC'22 NICOLE KOHUT, CC '22 KATE STEINER, CC '22 NORA MCSORLEY, CC'20 LEA BROUDO, SEAS '21 SAM NEEDLEMAN, CC ' 22 REA RUSTAGI, SEAS '22 BILLIE FORESTER, CC '22 SUSAN STEINFELD, BC '22 Contributors CHRISTINA HILL, CC'19
Staff Writers ANNIE ZAVITZ, BC '22 IONA TAN, CC '22 SANTIAGO COSTA PEUSER, CC '21 TAMAR VIDRA, CC '22
THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXV
FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS
No. IV
Columns
6 Blue Book 8 Blue Notes 10 Campus Characters 12 At Two Swords' Length 18 Centerfold 30 M easure for Measure 34 Digitalia
Christina Hill
15
Features The Three Phases of Twilight The Blue and White continues its short fiction series with a story from a recent graduate from Columbia College
Grace Adee
20 A nything and Everything A conversation with Mary Schmich
Kate Steiner
26 A Pluralistic Core As the University becomes more global, its Western preoccupation may need a closer look
Cassidy Sattler
27 Honorary Selections Every year, Columbia designates awards to the best writing around. Shouldn’t we start reading them?
Grace Adee and Ufon Umanah
28 Compelled Speech Students pay the bill when it comes to free speech, but what if they didn’t have to?
Sam Needleman
33 Told Between P uffs It’sIn which our hero takes stock of the neighborhood.
theblueandwhite.org
f
Cover by Kate Steiner
SKETCHBOOK
Illustration by Kate Steiner
a
TRANSACTIONS
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
“Don’t be afraid,” starts A Mercy, Toni Morrison’s ninth novel. No, it’s not the book we read for Lithum, but it was the first time I read Morrison, and I have to admit I was afraid. I told myself at the time it was the cadence, which isn’t untrue. Morrison chooses in those chapters to write how Florens would perceive the world and considering how she wouldn’t have received lessons in the Queen’s English, it makes sense that she beautifully describes the Virginia night sky like “Night is thick no stars anyplace but sudden the moon moves.” Reading it now, it’s not hard to see that as ‘The night is thick, there are no stars anywhere, but suddenly the moon moves.’ So was I that irked back then that Morrison left it to me to understand Florens, and not a transliteration of her? Maybe, but a lot of things irk me. In the foreword to the 2004 Vintage International Edition of Song of Solomon, Morrison writes that “the challenge of Song of Solomon was to manage what was for me a radical shift in imagination from a female locus to a male one.” As a result, she adopts an old-school heroic saga instead of the sequence and time games she employs in other novels. And reading from that perspective I wonder, or rather conclude, that it was perhaps in high school I wasn’t able to shift perspectives in that way. Information comes sequentially, I perhaps thought. Anything else is cluttered. And for that I didn’t gain any more understanding of the world than if I never picked up the book. Some of you are already familiar with some of the Columbia brand tricks to get you to shift perspectives: Beginner’s Mind, free speech, the Core. And the people you’re about to meet will have their own perspectives to observe. However, I think that when it comes to learning how to think and deliver from a perspective not your own, nothing beats experience and initiative. It’s through conversations, reflections, memories, and yes, muses as Morrison puts it without the reluctance she would have earlier, that the ability to shift finally comes.
6
ARRIVALS
Ira Katznelson Amy Zavadil
Dos Toros returns! Dreams do come true! Inherent complicity “Hi, my name is ________, I live in _______, and I __________.” The muses (your professors) Toni Morrison
DEPARTURES
Antonio Gonzalez Your (parents’) stock portfolio The shame of Nussbaum and Wu Motorcycles
Come Again?! “Reject the libido cult worship; find your salvation in Butler.” — t. Roastie, Bwog comment section, Through this issue we shift constantly, from news to literature to satire, because that’s who we are. None of that takes away from the purpose of the magazine, nor the purpose of Columbia: to be the Renaissance polymaths who outshine Leonardo in his day, if not in subjects, then in modes of thinking. So I hope you enjoy the Orientation Issue as the leaves prepare to fly away. And perhaps, as I should have done when I was a first-year, read Morrison early. I won’t hate you if you start with A Mercy. — Ufonobong Umanah
The Blue and White
BLUE BOOK
Pocket Course Shopping Guide: Keep or Drop?
It’s shopping season at CU and we all know what that means: abundant indecisiveness and impulsive lastminute decisions made during morning conversations in Ferris. But tell your advice-giving friends to rest easy this time, because here at The B&W we’ve decided to take things into our own hands. No, you’re not dreaming: we’re doing everybody a solid this season by providing you with the very device all our greatest world leaders have used to make their most critical decisions: a pro-con list. Take this handy keep-drop guide anywhere and use it for those last remaining questionable courses by circling all that apply and weighing sides. You can thank us later (hint: we like illustrations and that berry salad from Ferris with all the arugula thrown out). Drop Keep: • Your prof keeps talking about “valuing work • The word “pop-quizzes” is ever uttered. Ever. • Above or equal to Hamilton 5 ethic” in the grading process • People keep mentioning an obscure pre-req • Below Hamilton 5 that you sort of noticed on Vergil but thought • You knew it was a “review session” before the you were too advanced for prof called it that • Your professor takes a passionate minute just • TA displays early signs of getting-angryat-wrong-answers syndrome (Put it to the to hype up the ever-humble and godly TA Test! Say something exceptionally stupid and • The first lecture makes you want to call your observe their face) mom and make her listen to what you learned • The first lecture makes you want to write a • Not an 8 AM Spec op-ed criticizing the lecture system at • Your classmates sometimes change their Columbia minds during discussion • Your seat neighbor has major study buddy • Is an 8 AM • Your crush from NSOP is enrolled (not gonna potential happen anyway)
POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE
Orientation 2019
Postcard by Mwandeyi Kamwendo
7
BLUE NOTES
O
n 112th and Amsterdam lies a Columbia staple. Over the years, Book Culture has become an integral part of most Columbia students’ lives. It’s where a freshman gets their LitHum box set, or the place you know you can rely on for a last minute textbook before an exam. With the Columbia Bookstore’s overpriced textbooks, supplies, and overflow of Pantone 292 merchandise, it’s no surprise that most students will say they prefer the local bookstore to one that lies on Columbia’s campus. As much support as Book Culture may seem to get from the Morningside Heights community, like most small bookstores in America, it has hit peaks in financial struggles this summer. As the chain’s owner, Chris Doeblin, announced in a Facebook post and video on June 24th, its four locations simply cannot compete with big companies like the Columbia Bookstore and their relationship
with Barnes and Nobles, warning that they would most likely have to shut down in the months to come. Since their announcement, Book Culture has received lots of support from the community. People have sent letters to the City Council, Mayor, and State Government officials. They have raised over $100,000 from anonymous pledges. To continue this, Book Culture has created a Community Lending Program– a way for community members to get involved socially or financially in order to promote the future success of Book Culture. While rumors have been floating around that this is just a PR stunt to increase the shop’s revenue, this announcement has brought a very legitimate discussion to the table: local bookstores are simply not supported by communities as much as they need to be. If bookstores can’t stay alive in New York– a city that is often fueled by publications like the New York Times and the New Yorker– what does that mean for the fate of bookstores in more rural areas across the country? —Nicole Kohut
B
efore Beto O’Rourke announced his candidacy for the 2020 Presidential election in March, Columbia students got a preview to his ideas and motives. The Columbia grad appeared on campus early Spring 2019 to speak to a handful of Columbia students, answering questions about politics and policies. He was positively received by the student body, with posts in support of his (at the time) non-existent candidacy swarming all social media platforms. At the same time, these posts and discussions on his potential presidency were created with the knowledge that there was no way O'Rourke would run, as the former United States rep has con-
8
Illustration by Rea Rustagi
The Blue and White
BLUE NOTES
tinuously told the public so. Yet, shortly after his Columbia visit, O'Rourke threw together a campaign. Support from a group of undergraduates might not have been the key factor in pushing O'Rourke to run, but it was probably a confidence boost that couldn’t have hurt. However, his abrupt decision to run definitely shows—there’s no overarching, explicit reason for why he’s running. While he makes thoughtful comments on Medicare and immigration, his campaign doesn’t have any defining features. Additionally, with his muddy position on student loans, it’s interesting that so many Columbia students took and continue to take a great liking to him. Perhaps we swooned over O'Rourke because his strident liberalism in a race against Ted Cruz was refreshing and encouraging, but when he’s up against other democrats, being well spoken just isn’t enough. Columbia students view this candidate through a very particular, insiders lens. We know he had to complete Core requirements just like us, and that his Columbia career started off with a position on the lightweight rowing team. Being a lion makes O'Rourke extremely familiar, maybe even relatable. However, to the rest of the American population, O'Rourke is a candidate without a narrative. —Nicole Kohut
harsh lighting, as if they were specimens to scour. Dylan Roston, CC ’22, appeared giddy in the Soviet hospital-esque setting. “The whole point of having bad decor is then you can’t rest on it,” he proclaimed. “Your bagels have to be good!” “I’m not sure Nuss is resting on their JewishAsian fusion decor,” Gustie Owens, Barnard ’22, retorted. “Like, I’m not sure that’s much to rest on.” We avoided a fracas over furnishings by digging in. Francesca Barasch, CC ‘22, who grew up two blocks away, couldn’t be persuaded. “I like Absolute so much better,” she confessed early on, mid-chew, her words tumbling in gobs of schmear. Limp scallions notwithstanding, Owens agreed, and awarded the Absolute staff points for silently vetoing the “toasted” part of our order. When gleaned, this power move provoked perspirant seeds to sprout on one group member’s forehead. But Wu wooed Sophia Cornell, CC ‘20, who had emerged from her summer abode, a kitchen on 109th, to embrace her role as the group’s “diversity—non-Jew—hire.” She praised the Wu everything bagel’s crunchy exterior and potential to cure a hangover. When only wrappings remained, Cornell threatened to return to her fellowship applications. Roston absconded with a bag of Absolutes for his private-equity colleagues. Barasch and Owens lingered to parse prison-abolition praxis. The jury hadn’t delivered a unanimous verdict, or even formed a majority—but why split hairs? Everyone was full.
O
n an early August morning, a crosstown quintet met with the sole purpose of determining the best bagel purveyor near Columbia: Wu + Nussbaum, on Broadway and 113th since July, or Absolute Bagels, on Broadway near 108th since Dinkins’s mayoralty. We procured our Wu samples just past 7:00 a.m., then replicated our order at Absolute: one everything bagel with scallion cream cheese, and one egg bagel with plain. We arranged the goods on joined metal tables under Absolute’s
Orientation 2019
Illustrations by Sahra Denner
9
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..
Sean Kelso
O
n average, Sean Kelso sees a new movie every week. One of his most recent favorites was The Art of Self-Defense, a small-release film about toxic masculinity with Jesse Eisenberg. But Kelso’s taste in film isn’t just confined to arthouse dramas. His other favorite? “It may be cliché, but I really liked Avengers: Endgame. It’s a franchise I’ve grown up with at this point,” Kelso said. “It’s incredible to see the overwhelming support for a movie of that scale.” Kelso doesn’t limit himself to liking just one genre of movies; similarly, his academic and extracurricular passions defy simple categorization. He has both dabbled and excelled in various aspects of art, literature, and science––and found exciting and crucial intersections among disparate fields. Kelso is the incoming president of Columbia University Film Productions (CUFP), an umbrella organization for students interested in any and all aspects of this art form. They produce student films, run an annual undergraduate film festival, host speakers from the entertainment industry, and lead trips to screenings and talks around the city. Kelso joined the organization right after he transfered from Saint Louis University in his sophomore year as the webmaster. At the end of his sophmore year, Kelso launched CUFP’s film criti-
10
cism website, CUFP entertainment (CUFPe). Kelso remembers being surprised that there wasn’t a publication devoted to student film reviews on campus––and so, using his backgrounds in both writing and computer science, he endeavored to change that. “I met Eric Kohn from IndieWire at a movie premiere and I spoke to him about some things that would be interesting to include,” Kelso said. “I just used that information and created a platform for students to share their thoughts.” A year later, they’re up to around 3000 views per month. For Kelso, it’s all about cracking open the film world for Columbia students, showing them that there’s more to this industry than meets the eye. That’s what he hopes to keep doing in the coming year: “Expanding CUFP’s horizons.” “It’s about getting more people interested in the subject and not thinking it’s cliché or a closed-off group,” he said. But Kelso does acknowledge that the film industry can be inaccessible to the public. Still, Kelso has managed to find his way into some major movie premieres and talks during his time at Columbia, finding his way into conversations with actors, directors, and industry professionals like Eric Kohn. How does he do it? It’s a combination of taking advantage of the opportunities the city has to offer and using those connections to expand your network. “It’s not an immediate process by any means––it’s much more a collective, slow gradual process of meeting people, reaching out to see if they have any other interesting people they can connect me to. It’s all with the goal of showing the people of the film club as much as they can see, showing them what it means to be apart of the entertainment industry at large.” He doesn’t talk about it much, but Kelso is also an actor, and he cites his time on set as a great source of industry connections. “My background in being a part of movies has helped a lot,” he said. “I’ve been lucky enough to work on shows like The Deuce on HBO,
Illustration by Lea Broudo
The Blue and White
as well as some other projects that I can’t necessarily talk about right now that I’ve played a small part in.” When he’s not attending a screening, Kelso is majoring in creative writing, concentrating in computer science, and completing all of the pre-med requirements. He even does research at the Columbia Medical Center on cardiac arrest. So he has a lot on his plate. Kelso talked a little bit about how he sees all of his interests come together through medicine. “We’ve always had to use forms of storytelling with patients, which is sort of how the creative writing concentration naturally came about,” he said. “But more recently, with the dawn of the use of artificial intelligence in the workforce, there have been lots of strides with computation being used in medicine. It’s exciting to be watching the emergence of this field.” But in spite of all the exciting directions he could take these interests after graduation, Kelso doesn’t want to take his senior year for granted. “It has been a wild ride already, but I want to keep myself grounded in the reality of being a senior, and not get too caught up with what will follow after. I just want to pay attention to what I’ve learned and how I can use it in the future.” —Grace Adee
Joanna Cohen
I
t’s not that being a part of the Columbia Democrats and serving as their president last year was out of the question for Joanna Cohen entering Columbia. In fact, between her physics major and her history concentration, she could have fulfilled a number of interests at Columbia and was looking for whatever grabbed her interest in a school she experienced first as a elementary school student at The School at Columbia. What grabbed her interest happened to be the 2016 Democratic Campaign trip in suburban Pennsylvania, where she campaigned on behalf of the local House and Senate Democratic ca nd idates, only to see them lose on Election Day. I don’t want in writing this to deemphasize
Orientation 2019
the shock involved. Every campaign trip for the Democrats involves sacrificing a rare break in the academic schedule to rally in a district every year maybe one or two people live in. And during the trip Joanna talked to enough people that she felt that her candidates were going to win. The Democrats even got local coverage for their efforts in 2016. However, the shocking yet illuminating experience, inspired Joanna to get more involved, as she chose to become a lead activist for the Democrats in the following year. 2017 in New Jersey would bring more success in this regard. Campaigning is in the turnout. While occasionally a campaigner might run into some Trump supporters, since the campaign trip occurs in the twilight hours of the election period, most of the doors knocked on are identified as likely voters. A word of advice: the trick lies in making the political personal. The end result for the Democrats was that the State Senatorial candidate they campaigned for told them that made a direct impact in flipping a district that Republicans had held for 30 years. There’s earned pride in that moment, in the power of being politically engaged. The opportunity to campaign each year is reliant on strong leadership, for which Joanna was blessed with reliable allies when she became president in 2018. Though as an institution, the Columbia Democrats are independent from any state or national organization, the large 12-person executive board, all with an opinion of where the organization should go. It wasn’t easy to navigate those dynamics in order to affect change, but it happened, as a resonant cap from which to look back on. Where in elementary school, Columbia’s Morningside campus may have been more an occasional visit for bubble tea and activities, now through the campus seems laughably different from the perspective of a dorm having overcome latent toxicity. Post-presidency, Joanna isn’t abandoning the Democrats on campus. On the contrary, she still plans to be involved in the group’s policy committees. She also wants to branch out towards other policy initiatives that dot the student landscape. If her experience with New Consensus, the think-tank primarily responsible for the contours of the Green New Deal, this summer is any indication, she’s likely to have a future in environmental or science policy after Commencement. And in the throes of the 2020 presidential campaign, like most Democrats, she’s keeping her eyes open, gravitating possibly towards policy-driven candidates like Elizabeth Warren. —Ufonobong Umanah
Illustration by Kate Steiner
11
AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N GT H
Should I I
f you’re considering it, then you may actually have that hasn't been beaten out of you by crippling selfthe brains admissions thinks you do. Otherwise, doubt and deep-seated insecurities. Get ready for you wouldn’t be contemplating this quandary in the those surfing lessons you took as a seven-year-old to first place. (Exhibit A of what happens when you stay finally come in handy) I strongly advise you, my poor, here too long: you start using words like “quandary.”) doomed reader, to get out while you can. College Well, leave your troubles with the classically-sexist isn't supposed to “prepare you for life,” it’s supposed marble statues at the front gates. I’m here to assist ye to be a four-year hiatus from it. Columbia’s got it all in distress. Whether you’re a senior with a mere year wrong with making its atmosphere as conducive to left here or a freshman stepping onto campus for the entering into the workforce as possible. Did we come very first time, it’s never too late nor too early to get here to kick-start our lives as proactive professionals the heck out of here. or to ignore the fact that we will ever No matter the amount of have to become one of those? Who time you’ve been in this claustrocouldn’t use a little break for a year phobic concrete postage-stamp, or four? If not now, when? (Exhibit C you’ve likely had a sip of the strange of what happens when you stay here Columbia brew we drink here. I don’t too long: you find yourself quoting know what the Dean or Dining Staff famous and morally-questionable men is spiking it with, but it just makes you without even realizing it.) feel… different. Even with the smallest I’m writing this out of the goodof samplings, one tiny taste will have ness of my heart; I don’t want you to you looking forward to a good study end up like me. And it has nothing to session in Butler, feeling excited for do with—how could you even imply class discussions or, God help us all, such a thing!—the fact that your leavwillingly showing up to your 8:40’s. ing will lessen the competition here. We’re all made to drink the Columbia I’m just writing this to warn you that Kool-Aid at some point, whether it the childhood thing you thought you be in the room of the boy down the could cling to for a few more years is hall who isn’t even that cute (but a goner the minute you claim the we’ll be damned if we’re not bumpy and borderline-dangerthere anyways), or in the stacks ous College Walk as your own. ffirmative post-11pm, or in the dining hall Sure, you’ll have your every meal in the midst of the breakdown we provided to you and you’ll find a By Nora May McSorley swore we’d relegate to our room. willing mate within a four-floorIt’s a brew that makes us do what radius, but other than that this is the rational minded—those who exist outside of these real life, baby. Don’t listen to the dorks here who call Ivy walls—would never think to do. studying anything other than the draining of one’s But you came to me with a question, didn’t life-force. Listen to me: a former-cool kid who wishes you? You wanted to know whether you should trans- they had read an article like this before deciding to go fer or not, to which I respond: heck yeah, man. It’s not through with her time here. Look at me now: spendthat I am questioning your ability to make it through— ing my Friday night writing an article that a total of you got here, you can make it back out. What I am seven people will get all the way through. If that’s not questioning is why you would ever want to. Speaking a cautionary tale, I don’t know what is. If you value as a senior and therefore, with infinitely more knowl- your sleep, sanity, and a social life that exists outside edge than ye, (Exhibit B of what happens when you of library walls, then yes, affirmative, trans-the heckstay here too long: you’ll learn to brag about anything fer.w
A
12
Illustration by Rea Rustagi
The Blue and White
AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N GT H
Transfer? Q
uick! Stop what you’re doing! Sit up then you’re either a Columbia student who’s not a first straight, take measured breaths, and notice year or you’re my dad. Let’s say, just for the sake of the position of your tongue in your mouth. argument, that you’re not my dad. Should you transfer? Now put this magazine down for a moment and The short answer is this: if you feel the need close your eyes to ask yourself this question: to consider the question in earnest, the answer is no. Am I a first-year at Columbia? Trust me, anyone who would entirely benefit from If the answer is yes, you should stop reading transferring away from Columbia doesn’t see it as a here. You don’t need yet another schmuck with his matter of deliberation—for them, it’s like an animal nose in the air to assure you that you’ve made it—wel- impulse that will respond to no weighing of pros come to the Greatest University in the Greatest City against cons. These people are simply beyond my help. in the Greatest Country etc. etc. If you were accepted, But maybe you really are on the fence. Maybe there’s a good chance the rewards of you—inexplicably and (let’s be hona vibrant and challenging educational est, here) stupidly—see this satirienvironment, and possibly even hapcal article in this partially-satirical piness—all of that awaits you here, publication as a tool for facilitatand so on and so forth. Give it a shot. ing a life-altering decision. In that Now, you may have found case, allow me to speak to you as yourself in the unusual circumsincerely as possible, imparting what stance where your answer to the I can from one Columbia sophoabove question is “I don’t know.” If more/junior/senior to another. that’s you, don’t worry! I’ve devised This place can be hard. It a simple, foolproof test for detercan be soul-crushing. It can drive mining whether or not you are, in you to the brink of insanity. But fact, a Columbia first-year. Take a isn’t that part of its charm? Would minute to evaluate the following you really want to leave behind further questions for yourself: Columbia’s over-demanding 1) Do you think of Carman as a and pedagogically controverreal=life location? sial requirements system in egative 2) Have I taken the Staten Island favor of a hippy-dippy, chooseBy Jacob Snyder Ferry within the last three weeks your-own-adventure stoner‘just to see the sights? curriculum like Brown’s? Is that 3) Have I ever hooked up with someone who asked really what you want? Would you really want to me if I was born after 9/11? abandon the magical social environment afforded 4) Do I find Ferris’ eggs at all edible? by Columbia, where you can belong to one of many 5) Would I feel only a little bit too old to fit in at a economically-stratified cliques tenuously and implicBillie Eilish concert? itly united by a prejudiced resentment of outsiders? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, What are you, some kind of little baby? Maybe you then you are a first-year. In that case, stop reading should transfer and leave the rest of us buttonedhere and see my above exhortation to give this place a down Columbians alone, you flat-footed commie! fair try before you decide to leave or stay in perpetuity. So there you go, that’s my honNow that we’ve weeded out any wide-eyed, hope- est-to-God advice. Hope it helps! ful first years, let’s get to the interesting stuff. It’s fair Oh, and if you are my dad, then hi dad! to assume that if you’re reading this far into the article I’m loving it here. I’ll call you on Sunday night.w
N
Orientation 2019
Illustration by Rea Rustagi
13
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
14
The Blue and White
T H E S H O RT C U T
The Three Phases of Twilight The Blue and White continues its short fiction series with a story from a recent graduate from Columbia College
By Christina Hill
A
round the time the second boy I ever had sex with stopped texting me, I was prescribed Adderall. The school psychiatrist said maybe the reason I was so unhappy was because I couldn’t focus. However, instead of using my new hyper attention on the mountains of work piling up on my to-do list, I directed my energy towards that boy. My thoughts turned repetitive and constant and only about him. About him not texting me. About whether or not he would text me. And, most viciously, about the many reasons he wasn’t texting me. On my 19th birthday, I kept refreshing my Facebook timeline to see if he had posted. I ignored the five calls my mom left. “Llamáme,” she would text. I wouldn’t answer. My mother, the school teacher, always
Orientation 2019
attempted to make my mistakes into lessons. Anecdotes I’d share quickly turned into advice so at some point I stopped sharing altogether. However, I tried again when I started freshman year, calling home with stories of the people I’ve met and what I was doing. But I’d still be met mostly with frustration. I’d explain on the phone that no, mom, I haven’t been going on dates because that’s not what people do in college. And no, mom, I don’t know if I feel at home here because I don’t know what’s going on in school. I soon stopped calling. After I got the prescription, the sun began to set at four and I’d swallow another blue pill to feel a spark of energy that my brain was incapable of producing naturally. The soaring buildings that surrounded the campus on Broadway and Amsterdam created shadows that made everything seem colder within them--they sucked up sunlight even faster. While I sat in my dorm hallway far into the early hours of the morning, waiting for the Adderall to come down so I could fall asleep, I would overhear conversations of my peers discussing their achievements as I would be struggling to finish an overdue paper. They would talk about their internship plans and I would search through my murky thoughts as to how to contribute to the conversation. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want me; I couldn’t even form a coherent thought in my head without those blue pills. After my last final, I stepped onto the plane
Illustration by Kate Steiner
15
T H E S H O RT C U T home twenty pounds lighter than when I had arrived. Trapped in my seat for this twelve hour flight from JFK to Honolulu, I went over every single moment of how I screwed up my freshman year. How he had first flashed a smile that was so bright in his dark room during that party in December. How the twinkle lights, strung up along the walls, had reflected onto his face and how his blue eyes would stare at me so intently when he looked down to talk to me. I thought on how I decided to have sex with him even though I knew it was really just sex and nothing more, even though in the cloudy recesses of my mind I wanted it to be more, and I knew I would get attached but I wanted him to want me and the words that I wanted to say -- like “I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with this” -- were stuck in my throat while I was under him on his Twin XL mattress less than three weeks later. Again, in his darkened room with twinkle lights. And then I remembered my attempts to make plans following that night. And how quickly his responses slowed down until one day they stopped all together.
My plane touched down and my mom came to pick me up. That summer it was just me and her in our tiny grey house with six palm trees in the front yard. My dad and my brother had gone to Alabama to care for my sick grandmother, leaving the house with a deafening silence because my parents could no longer argue with each other. It was only broken by the soft noise of our dogs’ tiny paws on the hardwood floors.
“The day I returned, I slept for 16 hours—held captive under the sheets of my bed attempting to dream away the past year. I decided I’d stay there until all the mistakes and all the missteps and all the people seemed like a dream that I could forget upon waking.”
I thought about how I was now bringing back a 2.8 GPA along with my luggage because it was easier for me to analyze our interactions and make a chronology of what went wrong than to focus on my schoolwork. Among my murky thoughts, a resounding piece of logic I played over and over was him being the key to my success in all other fields. Maybe with him I’d finally be happy.
His Venmo account showed that he paid a girl named Jess for Sweetgreen twice this week and for a ghost emoji last week. I couldn’t figure out what she looked like because her Instagram was private and she
16
didn’t have a Venmo profile picture. She wasn’t on Facebook.
“Hola! Hola!” Her hair was greyer than before and her eyes tired from long nights grading papers. She was wearing her signature orange shirt, matching her loud accented voice. Her presence was always out of place—a Dominican in Hawai’i, an islander on the wrong island.
The day I returned, I slept for 16 hours—held captive under the sheets of my bed attempting to dream away the past year. I decided I’d stay there until all the mistakes and all the missteps and all the people seemed like a dream that I could forget upon waking. I eventually rose to the sound of rain hitting the pavement outside and grey clouds obscuring the mountains. I posted Snapchat stories of the beach, my dogs, and those same towering mountains behind my house to see if he would view them. He didn’t. My mom and I would, for the most part, co-exist in silence in those initial weeks. Apart from occasional conversations on whose turn it was to feed the dogs and what was for dinner, I didn’t want to answer her questions. I would go to the community pool for my shifts as
Illustration by Helen Becker
The Blue and White
T H E S H O RT C U T a lifeguard, sometimes taking an Adderall beforehand so my thoughts wouldn’t wander. I didn’t want to think about him anymore. When the notion of returning to school--meaning more work and more mistakes I’d inevitably make--would infiltrate my thoughts, I’d quickly suppress it. I unfollowed him on Instagram in June because I didn’t have the self-control to stop looking at his profile daily. Around midsummer, when the Hawaiian humidity reaches its zenith and time moves slowly, my mother came out of my bathroom with the tiny orange bottle filled with the blue pills.
I didn’t respond immediately because I didn’t want to initiate a lesson. “Yeah, I know.” I finally answered. It was now nautical twilight and the sky had become so dark that only the wisps of her grey and black hair were visible, swirling with the trade winds. “You’re doing it. That’s all that matters.” She added a beat later: “And I’m proud of you.”
“What is this?” She asked. “I was prescribed it. They think I have ADHD. That’s why I get bad grades.” “You never told me that. But you did so well in high school? Why is this happening now?”
“You never told me that. But you did so well in high school? Why is this happening now?”
“You don’t know how hard it is there.” I snatched the bottle from her hand and walked back to my room. The dogs scratched at my closed door. Three days later, she asked me to come walk our dogs on the beach with her. In one of the classes I had gotten a C in that past year, I learned that twilight is separated into three phases: civil, nautical, and astronomical. By the time we made it to the beach it was civil twilight, a point when the sun just dips below the horizon and the stars creep out. Every moving thing seemed quieter now. The moon reflected on to the soft waves that inched up onto the shore. We sat on a bench next to the tangled naupaka leaves and I could hear nesting birds in the bushes. “You know it’s okay, right? You’re doing more than okay. Do you know that?” She said.
Orientation 2019
My sight adjusted to the black sky of astronomical twilight and I could see the shape of her brown eyes that I had inherited. Mine began to feel heavy with water and I started digging my toes into the sand. That night, I crawled into her bed—my tiny summer body wrapped tightly into hers. These were the moments that I wanted to keep unfolding.
A couple weeks later, my taxi from JFK to campus hit at least an hour of traffic. The city was facing a midAugust heatwave when I moved into a sophomore dorm that reeked of weed and BO. I realized that he was living in the same building when we saw each other in the lobby. He quickly looked down at his phone, pretending not to notice me while I stared straight on. I texted my mom, “Todo está bien.” Summer ended, school started, and my attention problems continued. After class, I went into my dorm’s bathroom and felt for the orange bottle with the blue pills. My thumb ran over the container’s top before opening it and swallowing one of them. I had homework that was already late, but maybe I’d go sit on the campus lawns with my friends first.w
17
18
The Blue and White
Orientation 2019
Illustration by Sahra Denner
19
T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N
Anything and Everything A Conversation with Mary Schmich
By Grace Adee Mary Schmich has been a metro columnist for the Chicago Tribune since 1992. In 2012, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary “ for her wide range of down-to-earth columns that reflect the character and capture the culture of her famed city.” She received international attention for her 1997 essay “Wear Sunscreen,” a hypothetical commencement speech that was adapted into a popular Baz Luhrmann music video and is frequently quoted to this day. Prior to her column, Schmich was a national correspondent for the Tribune and a reporter for several newspapers around the country. Investigations editor Grace Adee visited the swanky new Tribune newsroom speak with Schmich about shifting newsrooms, Brenda Starr comics, and the role of the “quiet column” in the information age. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. The Blue & White: How do you describe your column to people who may not have read it before? Mary Schmich: The great, what is your column about? People will ask me that. They’ll say, what do you do? I’ll say I write for the Chicago Tribune. They’ll say, what do you write at the Chicago Tribune? I’ll say I write a column. They’ll say, what is your column about? And I always feel stumped. It’s about everything. Years ago, a reader wrote me, back in the days when we only had snail mail. It was a postcard, and I still remember it. He said, you write an “anything” column––he put “anything” in quotes––and I like that. It’s the exact right description. I write an anything column, or an everything column. Because, from the time I started doing this, I’ve always thought that life is big and life is broad. The column that I wanted to write reflects that. I think when people think newspaper column, they automatically think politics. My philosophy is that politics is a piece of life, but most of us on any given day are thinking about a lot of other stuff. I want to write a column that taps into both what people are thinking and what they might not know, and what they might be interested in if they knew about it. It started off as a Metro column. It still technically is a Metro column. That’s a specific thing, too, and I always take that very seriously––this idea that it should reflect the city of Chicago somehow. Metro columns are almost extinct now, because the columns that are going to hit it big on the web are political outrage, especially national political outrage, or
20
something involving a celebrity. I’ve taken the stance that we are in Chicago, and so let’s root all of this in Chicago, even when the focus is on everything else. BW: Would you say that the personal is political in the case of your column? That even through the specificity, the focus on various aspects of life in this city, it’s still a political column in a sense? MS: No, I would not define my column as political. But I would say that the personal is universal. I would say that the political is philosophical. I think we’ve really warped the way we think about the world by thinking that politics is the big barrel that everything exists in. No. It’s a thing in the barrel. At the same time, things that are not overtly political do have some political tinge. I was once had dinner with Studs Terkel and Margaret Atwood. Margaret Atwood completely ignored me until at some point it was kind of rude to just pretend I wasn’t at the dinner. So she turned to me at some point and just said, “So what do you…..do?” I said I write a column, and she said, about what? And Studs intervened. He said, “Well, it’s not a political column….but, you see, it is.” And I thought, that’s exactly right, Studs. It’s not, but you see, it is. BW: You talked a little bit about the extinction of the Metro column. Could you talk a little bit more about how the role of the columnist has changed across the past few decades that you’ve been writing?
The Blue and White
T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N MS: I think several things have changed since I started writing a column, which was in 1992. I think there is less room for being ruminative, and just kind of thinking stuff through. There is less room for the quiet column than there used to be. I think there’s still a market for it––I think a lot of people yearn to be talked to in a quieter way. But it is hard to sell that online, and anything you can’t sell online might as well not exist anymore. I think since the election of Donald Trump, almost everything has been overridden or tinged by him. He drives it all. I try to resist that, because I continue to think that even on days like today, when you would think that there’s only one story going on in the world and it’s what Donald Trump said about the four young Congresswomen, there’s still a lot of other stuff going on. But I do think that the columns that make the loudest noise, even more than before, are the ones that are about––not even just national politics––it’s the ones that are about Donald Trump. I think there’s less space for the classic Metro column. Again, I hold onto the idea that there remains an audience, a market for it. It’s just harder to sell. So those are two distinctions: the quieter columns and local columns that aren’t necessarily built on outrage are more difficult to sell. BW: Do you have writers of that “quieter column” that you’re describing that you have looked to as role models in your career?
general I would say that poets and novelists have had a greater effect on me than columnists. BW: You write some poetry yourself, don’t you? MS: I call it doggerel, bits of rhyming poetry. When I do write that, it tends to be political, so that’s often the way I address politics. I write my Trump poems. BW: Do you remember a moment in your early life or early career when you knew you wanted to be a writer? MS: A few moments pop into mind. One was in fourth grade, when we had to write an essay about something funny that had happened in our house. I had five younger brothers, and I wrote about how my brothers had taken all the fuses out of the fusebox. The thing that excited me about it was when I realized that I could title it “Fuse Confusion.” I just remember the excitement, how I thought, oh my goodness, that’s fun, isn’t it? You can make words do fun things. Then in seventh grade, I had a teacher named Mrs. O’Neil and we had to write little essays, like if I were a millionaire, if I had 24 hours to live, that kind of thing. At one point, she wrote on one of my essays, you could be a writer. I remember looking at that and thinking, really? I don’t even know what that means. But yeah, I suppose I could. BW: You grew up down South, didn’t you?
MS: You know, I haven’t ever had columnist role models, with one exception. I would say that the writer Ellen Goodman invented the mold that I think I work in––not that I was really trying to write like her. She was a columnist at the Boston Globe. When I first got into journalism, her column ran in the San Jose Mercury when I was living in Palo Alto. It was the only column that spoke to me. There were all these huffing and puffing writers, all men. All huffing and puffing about politics. And Ellen Goodman created this genre that now a lot of people work in, men and women––this writing that was both personal and public. So sometimes she would write about falling asleep at a dinner party, and sometimes she would write about the big issue of the day. But she did it in a different tone, and I responded to that. It was a less bombastic tone than so many of the columnists I had encountered before. She had an effect on me. In
Orientation 2019
Illustration by Kate Steiner
21
T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N MS: I grew up in Georgia, and then moved to Arizona for high school. BW: Though you grew up in the South writing is all about capturing the essence of Chicago. Considering that, and the fact that you used to be a national correspondent as well, I was hoping you could talk about how place has affected your writing. MS: That’s a great question. I don’t know that anyone has clearly asked me that before. Someone did ask me once if growing up in the South has affected the way that I cover Chicago, which it does. Because I moved around so much as a kid, I was simultaneously not anchored in place, but also very aware of place. I think when you live in the same place all the time as a child, you don’t have to be aware of place. You don’t have anything to compare it to, you don’t have to learn it, it’s just there. Every time we moved, and even in Georgia we moved, I thought, oh my God, it’s a new place. Where am I? I’d have to look around, get my bearings. When I got to Chicago, I worked here for a couple years in features and then I went down to cover the South for the Tribune. When I came back in ‘92 to write a column, I realized that there would be people who just thought I was a fraud. Who is she? This woman who grew up other places––Georgia, Arizona, California, a couple years in France––who is she to be writing a column in Chicago? And I just decided that I was going to treat it the way I treated being a national correspondent. I was just going to learn it. I was going to go out, I was going to report stories, I was going to go into all the neighborhoods. That has served me well, because I had to learn Chicago.
the way Chicago newspapers wrote about Chicago, presumed that everyone here knew where a neighborhood was, or what that neighborhood looked like, or who lived in that neighborhood. Like nothing ever changed, and everyone was from here. This city is always changing. BW: You talked a little bit about how Trump dominates the discourse. It’s notoriously overwhelming to try to consume information in 2019, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you attempt to do that, how you read the news. MS: Like so many people, I feel like I’m on all the time. I’m always looking, looking, looking, trying to find out what’s going on–– but I’m looking through my screen. That makes me nervous. And yet, I feel like I have to do that, I have to know what’s trending on Twitter, I have to know what’s on Facebook, I have to look at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune. That’s what I will do in the mornings. I’ll go down mini-rabbit holes. Recently, I’ve been refusing to do that as the first thing I read. So now, I get up in the morning and I read something else. I’ve almost finished Moby Dick. I’ve just realized that I’ve got to take back some of my mind, because this constant news coming at you through your multiple screens, will not make you wiser. It will suck you into cliché, it will not leave you time to actually go out. I wrestle with it all the time. But anyway, that’s what I consume: mostly online, but I read the Sunday New York Times and the Tribune in print.
“this constant news coming at you through your multiple screens, will not make you wiser. It will suck you into cliché, it will not leave you time to actually go out.”
I think I’ve learned some things that aren’t necessarily evident to people who grew up here. Because if you grew up here, you have your neighborhood, you have your box. So I treated it as a foreign territory. I wrote this down on a yellow notepad, sitting in a coffee shop, I wrote down, make people see Chicago. Because I realized that a lot of the coverage, even in
22
BW: What do you think the most common misconception people have about newspapers and news organizations today? MS: The current president has planted the seed in many minds that you can’t trust any media. This has infiltrated even the minds of people who don’t think like Donald Trump. I have a lot of friends who will say, well, you just can’t trust any media any more.
The Blue and White
T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N That’s not true. More than ever, there’s this pervasive belief that all newspapers are intentionally biased to the point of fake, and that individual reporters are all part of the lefty complex. I do think reporters tend to lean more left than right, but it breaks my heart that people don’t understand how hard reporters and editors work, how deeply they care about getting at what’s true, and how hard it is.
in a much more acute way. It has helped my newspaper storytelling. BW: You’re probably sick of it by now, but I wanted to talk a little bit about your famous 1997 column, “Wear Sunscreen,” in which you dispensed advice to the class of 1997 in the form of a graduation speech. Your words reverberated across the early internet and across culture in various ways in this really early example of going viral.
If you are not in this business, you have no idea how hard it is to figure out what’s true in a story. Because what seems true on the first day will prove not to MS: Yes, before viral was even a word! have been exactly right by the second day. It will have BW: Did that overwhelmshifted again by the fifth ing response that people “what seems true on the first day had to your words take you day. So how do you write what you know in a way by surprise? that says, look, this is what will prove not to have been exactly we know now. These are MS: Everything about the our best efforts at truth. If right by the second day. It will have phenomenon of that colsomething proves not to be umn was surprising. Part shifted again by the fifth day. So of the weirdness of that true later, it’s not because we’re trying to hide somestory was that, as you say, thing. And people don’t how do you write what you know in it appeared at a particuunderstand how much the lar moment. The internet a way that says, look, this is what was new––that’s hard to news industry has shrunk and how that’s affected how imagine. Google was new. we know now. These are our best Email was new. The fact much we can do. The old Tribune readers want it that something could get efforts at truth.” to be like it was in 1989. around the world that Those days weren’t even fast….we had almost no all that good. We do some examples of that happenthings better now, frankly. We’re leaner, sharper. ing before. So all of that was really startling. It used to be that you wrote a column, it would appear in print BW: I know you wrote the comic strip Brenda Starr, in the newspaper, and then people would write you Reporter for a number of years. How do you think letters or call you up, but your audience was limited. working with that character for so many years has And now, all of a sudden, this thing went around the impacted your writing? world, aided by the fact that it was attributed to a very famous author with a cult following, Kurt Vonnegut. MS: I don’t know that working with that character, There were all these things that came together: the per se, changed my writing. But I do think that writ- novelty of the internet, Kurt Vonnegut’s name on ing a story strip affected my writing, and in a good it––so that began the first wave of the explosion–– way. Because I had to learn how to tell a story in a and then Baz Luhrmann, who’s more famous now really efficient way. Now, a lot of those Brenda strips than he was then, but he was a movie maker, and were not very efficiently told. I had a full-time news- when he put it to a song, it was on the radio. To me, paper job at the same time, and so I’m writing those it’s an interesting example of how the medium is the strips a week at a time, sitting on a courthouse floor message. It’s very alive today. People write me all the and FedExing them to the artist. God forbid anyone time about it, Tweet it at me. The BBC just called me try to go back and read those as coherent stories. But last week because they’re doing a whole thing for the it just did make me think in terms of dialogue and plot 20th anniversary of the song. But the combination
Orientation 2019
23
T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N of the medium of the internet, and the medium of a recorded version that could be played on the radio…. print was eh.
“Keep your old love letters”––well nobody has love letters anymore! “Throw away your old bank statements”––nobody has printed bank statements anymore! But I think that most of it holds up. It’s basically BW: Do you think that changed your relationship to saying, you know what, it’s going to be okay. You’ll the work as an author? Did you feel that you were kind look back in 20 years––I’m 65 now, right? I wrote of divorced from it as it traveled? that when I was 43. There’s a line in there that says “Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, nevMS: A little bit. I realized pretty early on that I had ermind. You don’t understand the power and beauty to give up any deep sense of proprietariness about of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, you’ll it, because it would forever be out there under Kurt look back in 20 years and see how much possibility Vonnegut’s name or under Baz Luhrmann’s name. lay before you and how beautiful you really looked.” I To this day, well, most people probably think it’s would say that now––you will look back, as a 65-yearBaz. But not long ago, I got a grumpy email from old, and think man, what was I worried about? I someone castigating me for am guessing that at the stealing Kurt Vonnegut’s age of 85, you will look graduation address. I’m “ you’ll look back in 20 years and see back at yourself at 65 and like, my God, have you think the same thing. Life been in a cave for 20 years? how much possibility lay before you is pretty good. There are But it’s another example, hard patches in there. But once something is wrong and how beautiful you really looked.” I think that’s the basic meson the internet, it can be sage, and I think it holds wrong forever. People have I would say that now––you will look up, even in 20–whatever stolen it in various ways. the heck it is. They’ve stolen it and preback, as a 65-year-old, and think tended it was their graduBW: Last week, you wrote a ation speech. There was column about how it takes man, what was I worried about?” a high school principal in a village to enable sexuFlorida who was fired for al predators like R Kelly doing that, but she wasn’t the only and Jeffrey Epstein, and how it also one. And then there were these greeting cards and takes a village to stop them. We often think of the mugs and t-shirts that had the phrase “Do one thing group being silent and individual heroes standing every day that scares you” on it, attributed to Eleanor up to stop things. So as a follow-up to that column, Roosevelt. That really got under my skin. Because I what does that village-wide collective action look like get the Kurt Vonnegut thing, I get the Baz Luhrmann to you. thing, I get the idea that these words are out there and maybe nobody said them, but when you claim that MS: I think the Me Too movement is a village action. Eleanor Roosevelt said something and then you’re As one person speaks up and the next person speaks selling stuff? That really made me mad. Finally, a guy up and the next person speaks up, there’s this colwho runs a good website called Quote Investigator lective consciousness that has arisen, one that allows exonerated me. But it will never be fully rectified. more people to speak out and allows more people to hear the people who are speaking out. I think Me Too BW: This Conversation in particular is for The Blue is an example of the village in action, but somebody and White’s Orientation Issue, so the first readers of has got to speak up first and somebody has got to this will be Columbia’s class of 2023, just stepping get heard first before people have the courage or the onto campus and feeling very anxious. I was wonder- knowledge. I think the fact that we are seeing all the ing if you would update the words in that column at all publicity, not just around Me Too, but around R Kelly, for an incoming class of students today. Larry Nasser, Jeffrey Epstein. These are outgrowths of Me Too, in a way, because these allegations have MS: There are some references I would take out. been out there for a long time and didn’t get heard.
24
The Blue and White
T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N Now, because there are enough people in the village that are speaking out about how sexual abuse has played out in their lives, now we say, that’s not okay Mr. Epstein, Mr. Kelly.
tion to just calming me down, which is a necessary thing, it’s really affected everything in my life. I think it affects the way I approach the news, which is not always convenient. Because having a somewhat more attached, philosophical, kinder but disciplined view BW: What have you been doing this summer that of the news is not always the most marketable tone for you’ve never done before? journalists. But I try to be honest about it. The other day, I got tons of hate mail on this column I wrote MS: I have been really conscientious about using my about immigration. Most of it I just deleted, it was summer mornings for something besides reading just people calling me the worst kinds of names––all the news. Or sometimes the afternoon. Yesterday, columnists get this. It’s the price you pay. After I had for example, Sunday afternoon, after I taught yoga, gotten just too many insults, I got one from some I drove over to Humboldt Park because I wanted guy, and I just wrote him back. I just said, I’m sorry, to see what was going on with that crazy alligator buster, you’re the lucky one! And my response wasn’t loose in the lagoon. I felt like, this is part of my vulgar, though I was tempted to be vulgar, but it was summer get-out-of-yourreally testy. I just said, this routine program. It was the is ridiculous. Stop romanperfect thing to be doing: your parents and “having a somewhat more attached, ticizing walking around the park, grandparents, because with everyone dancing to he said that they were the philosophical, kinder but disPuerto Rican music and “good immigrants,” and looking for the alligator. I these are the “lazy immiciplined view of the news is not just make sure that I go out grants” who are sucking in the mornings, I walk, I at our resources, always the most marketable tone for away read. I don’t let the mornand I told him to get away ing get away. his Fox TV news and journalists. But I try to be honest from go out into the world and BW: You have to find time see who’s doing the work about it. ” to be a person outside of in this country. I didn’t your career. even sign it. Afterwards, I thought, you know, I meant that. But I don’t really MS: I have to, but it takes vigilance! like acting and responding just in heat like that. I sat on it for a day, and I decided, you know, I’m going to BW: Columbia students especially need to hear that. write him and say, I meant everything I said but I do regret my tone. When I went back in to respond, he MS: I say this all the time, but the time you invest in had already written me back. He said, you’re the first going for a walk somewhere beautiful, in reading a columnist who ever answered me! book that nourishes you, in going to yoga, that time pays you back. It’s a miracle. You invest an hour, and BW: He just wanted someone to listen! it gives you two hours back. You think it won’t, but it does. MS: Exactly. He said something like, what makes you think that just because you write a column your BW: How long have you been a yoga teacher? opinion is more important than mine? Oh boy. So I did write him back saying, I mean this genuinely and MS: 15 years. with no rancor. I do regret my tone, but you have to understand that if you write someone with an insult, BW: How do you think that’s influenced your mind- you’re likely to get an insult back. But I let him goad fulness, how you interact with your surroundings? me, and there was something in my little yogic brain that told me that I needed to fix that. Because you feel MS: I’ve done yoga since 1994, 25 years. In addi- like you win, but….won what?w
Orientation 2019
25
M A J O R C U LT U R E S
A Pluralistic Core As the University becomes more global, its Western preoccupation may need a closer look By Kate Steiner
C
olumbia University’s Core Curriculum just passed its 100th birthday, and to be honest, it’s a bit dated. Throughout its life the Core has had many changes in classes, structure, and teachers, but it’s ready for a new one: to shift from a Western narrative to a global one. The Core Curriculum is a required set of courses and requirements for undergraduate students, ranging from semester to year-long classes, focused on honing a student’s skills in analysis, argumentation, and persuasion while building a greater knowledge of how the past has shaped the contemporary world. The Core is one of the reasons many students apply to Columbia, as they are inspired by the connection the Core creates between undergraduate classes and students and the emphasis on discussions relating to “fundamental questions of human existence.” By “human existence” one would think that this means a global perspective as created by diverse topics, texts, and authors. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. When Columbia faced the question of diversity, it created a new requirement which would become the Global Core in 1990. Columbia had run non-Western seminars before 1990, like the unfortunately named Oriential Humanities as early as 1947. However, in the syllabi for the central classes, the curriculum remains limited by the western ideals of prioritizing the work of dead, white men and heralding the Bible and classical antiquity as overriding inspirations. Their formal names, Masterpieces of Western Art (Art Hum), Masterpieces of Western Music (Music Hum), Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy (Lit Hum), and Contemporary Civilization in the West (CC), are an illuminating tell. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, faculty members were concerned that the haphazard or arbitrary insertion of non-Western material would take away from the Core’s coherence and integrity. Writing during the time, professor John D. Rosenberg criticized “the doctrine of affirmative action to culture studies” by calling it a “pluralistic smorgasbord of choices” with “lamentable superficiality.” More than 20 years later,
26
whether we would like to promote or interrogate Western values, we’re stuck in that canon. It’s problematic to tell a diverse body of 21st century students that the Western narrative is “considered the necessary general education for students, irrespective of their choice in major.” When over half your student body identifies as persons of color and you’re located in one of the most diverse cities in the world, projecting a Western narrative as the educational viewpoint is regressive and harmful, especially given the 21st century direction of Columbia. President Bollinger initiated several global programs such as The World Leaders Forum and expanded academic partnerships abroad. He has stated that “the forces of globalization are just too powerful to stop...that we had to, as a University, help our faculty and students get ready for that world and be part of it.” But how can we be a global university if we have a mostly Western core? Columbia touts its diverse student body, faculty, and programs, so why not support those claims by providing global syllabi in our famous and required curriculum? Because of the heavy requirements between the Core and their selected majors, for many students, these are the only art or literature classes they will be taking during their college career. Why not take the opportunity provided by a semi-standardized seminar system to give students a global curriculum to match their global student body? What kind of message are we sending to prospective and current students from cultures outside of the West by stressing the importance of Western sources of thought? At the end of the day, keeping exploration of non-Western ideals as elective may still promote a sense of exclusion. The Core Curriculum shouldn’t exist in isolation and should rather reflect the growing global perspective of the 21st century. Additions of greater diversity in sources of text, art, and music paired with some of the Western texts currently taught would enhance understanding and appreciation of both. And it’s about time that instead of letting Global Core be a “smorgaboard” of options, we merge the two into a coherent progression.w
The Blue and White
NOT ON THE SYLLABUS
Honorary Selections Every year, Columbia designates awards to the best writing around. Shouldn’t we start reading them?
By Cassidy Sattler
T
he Pulitzer Prizes have operated through Columbia’s School of Journalism since Joseph Pulitzer established them in his 1904 will. Though the awards have shifted through the years, their current slate includes fourteen prizes for journalism and seven for Letters, Drama, and Music— including the ever-coveted Fiction prize that has helped iconic volumes garner international acclaim. This year’s winner was The Overstoryby Richard Powers, a story of tangled webs that emphasizes the connection of humans to nature and, more importantly, the connection of humans to each other. Published by W.W. Norton—an NYC-based independent publisher—this book’s scope stretches from New York to the Pacific Northwest and far beyond. It opens with a series of vignettes, unfolding wrenching accounts of lives fully lived, but its gutting pulse fully materializes when the stories intertwine. A testament to the complexity of human relations—beautifully foregrounded by the nature’s eternal weaving—The Overstory is a critical read in this period of interpersonal and environmental rupturing. Last year’s victor was vastly different in scope, though it speaks to another complicated aspect of contemporary culture: love’s progression through age. Less by Andrew Sean Greer was published by Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company and follows a failed novelist around the globe as he uses a slew of international literary events as excuses for missing the wedding of a former love. Through the magic and misfortunes, Arthur Less endures
Orientation 2019
the complicated and comical drama of lost love in Greer’s punchy and polished prose. The perfect breather between Greek dramas and biology textbooks, Less refreshes the mind into contemporary consciousness and reminds us of the universality of emotion without losing hope. The year before was also a singular piece of fiction—The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, published by Doubleday. And likewise the years before that: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press), All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner), The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown), etc. The last of these is in film production with an anticipated release date of September 19, 2019, cementing it within the pantheon of great-books-turned-great-movies. Columbia’s literary legacy of the Pulitzer Prizes does more than give us an extra swagger as we meander down college walk, passing the building where the fates reside. It gives us extra incentive to read widely, to stay abreast of current trends and titles that simultaneously reflect and shape society’s greatest struggles. Though the weight of assigned reading is enough to make us shirk books altogether, especially for freshmen in Lit Hum—good luck, guys—there’s a simple pleasure in ending the day with twenty pages of a modern classic. Oftentimes, there’s an expectation that the greatest literature is behind us, that the classics are the only tomes worth learning from. The Pulitzer Prizes challenge that and, instead, urge is to look to the present for our literary lessons. As the school year begins and a shiny set of goals peeks from the first page of your planner, consider adding a Pulitzer-winner to the list of things to tackle. Odds are it might teach you as much as any class and provide a respite from assigned readings that, though great, carry the weight of responsibility alongside them. Of course, as an English major, I’m always biased toward reading more. But regardless of your major, there’s certain to be a book for you in the annals of the Prize’s history. And, if you’re absolutely lost, check back to the Blue and White as we develop a column reviewing some long-past winners.w
Illustration by Sahra Denner
27
I WA N T A R E F U N D
Compelled Speech Students pay the bill when it comes to free speech, but what if they didn’t have to? By Grace Adee and Ufon Umanah
I
n Fall 2017, Columbia University College Republicans (CUCR) hosted “free speech month,” in which they invited controversial far-right speakers such as Tommy Robinson and MIke Cernovich to campus amid student body protests. In response, the Columbia Black Students Organization (BSO) petitioned for the Student Governing Board (SGB) to derecognize and defund CUCR. In their statement, BSO argued that by inviting speakers that “normalized complacency and acceptance fo white supremacy” and put forth “ideas that are fundamentally based in our dehumanization, a hindrance to free speech.” SGB and the administration did not take this petition particularly seriously and no actions were taken to derecognize CUCR. These actions are consistent with two pervasive ideas on Columbia’s campus: that First Amendment principles of freedom of speech would be violated if CUCR was defunded, and that first principles apply to Columbia’s campus in much the same way that they apply to public universities and the country more generally. However, the truth is far more complex than that, and could potentially make viable aspects of BSO’s petition to derecognize CUCR. The Supreme Court case Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth (2000) sets a complicated precedent for situations such as this. The University of Wisconsin had developed a system similar to Columbia’s in which a committee of student appointees were in charge of allocating funds to student organizations. Many of the student clubs that recieved funding were political groups. Southworth, a conservative student, felt that the University could not compel him to pay a student fee when it was used to fund liberal advocacy groups on campus, arguing that compelling him violated his rights to freedom of speech and association. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Southworth, deciding that because the political groups weren’t germane to the University, forcing the student to pay the activities fee was a burden on his First Amendment rights. However, when the case advanced to the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy
28
dismissed this part of the ruling considerably, writing in the majority opinion that “it is not for the Court to say what is or is not germane to the ideas pursued in an institution of higher learning.” However, he went on to suggest that “if the standard of germane speech is inapplicable, then, it might be argued the remedy is to allow each student to list those causes which he or she will or will not support.” But while the majority opinion maintained that an optional or refund system as a remedy would be constitutionally permissible, they ruled that this should not be required in order to protect the free speech of university students, arguing that “the restriction could be so disruptive and expensive that the program to support extracurricular speech would be ineffective.” In other words of the practical difficulties of implementing such a remedy, the Court decided that such measures would probably end up restricting free speech for students by rendering programs to support university activism and politics impossible to support. What does this have to do with movements to defund CUCR? The idea that students could have the First Amendment right to withhold their support for a student political organization with which they disagree is fundamentally connected to the question of whether petitions to derecognize CUCR are viable. While it is unlikely that Columbia’s free speech policies would allow for CUCR to be directly derecognized by SGB, the Wisconsin case indicates that there is a precedent (albeit a complex and controversial one) for the petitioners to request back the portion of their student life fee that would have otherwise gone to CUCR. In 2017, the year Free Speech Month occured, CUCR received $4640 for SGB; divided evenly among the students of the four undergraduate colleges, corresponding to 40 cents per student. Although it is unclear exactly how many people signed BSO’s petition initially and precisely how many students would be interested in this kind of compromise today, this could potentially make a significant dent in the budget of a student organization such as CUCR––if there were 1000 signatories who requested a refund, for example, that would be $400 that CUCR would never see.
The Blue and White
I WA N T A R E F U N D This compromise, of course, would likely affect other political organizations on campus such as Columbia Democrats, Students Supporting Israel, and Students for Justice in Palestine. If it were implemented on a widespread scale, it could potentially do what Justice Kennedy feared: render most political extracurricular groups ineffective, and thus diminish the free speech of the student population as a whole. But the key idea here is that it such a remedy, however nuclear, could be a constitutionally permissible way for an organization such as BSO to accomplish the goals of its initial petition. Another case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, potentially strengthens the refund remedy. In this landmark Supreme Court case in US labor law regarding how unions charge fees to non-union employees, employees who declined to join the union were charged an “agency fee” that was a smaller percentage of the union dues. The plaintiff, Janus, believed that the Union’s “behavior in bargaining does not appreciate the current fiscal crises in Illinois and does not reflect his best interests or the interests of Illinois citizens,” and so he challenged the idea that he should have to support the union through any fees at all. The court decided the case in favor of Janus. In the majority opinion, Justice Alito wrote that “compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates that cardinal constitutional command [that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein], and in most contexts, any such effort would be universally condemned.” This opinion would seem to indicate that a refund system for the student activities fee would not just be constitutional, but would be constitutionally required. Why wouldn’t the ruling in Janus apply to the the University context as well? There’s not an entirely straightforward answer. Obviously, there is a crucial difference
Orientation 2019
between the situation of University of Wisconsin and that of Columbia: Wisconsin is a public university, while Columbia is a private one, free to set its own terms, even if it says that in most cases, 1st Amendment principles apply to Columbia. What’s more, Columbia’s president Lee Bollinger is a famed First Amendment scholar who occupies a unique position in these debates. Bollinger, through writing The Tolerant Society in 1986, is a primary proponent of tolerance theory, which is the idea that as a society we should avoid the impulse to excessively punish harmful speech. It is unlikely that he would approve of any plan that would contradict a traditional conception of the University’s purpose as a viewpointneutral platform for free expression, and because this is a private university, the administration has significantly more authority to dictate the policies on these issues when it comes to these issues. But under different leadership, one could imagine the University taking a different position on the way in which these freedoms should best be protected. In fact, this is a pressing concern amongst some faculty members. In the long term, students could see this as a call for a shift in the conversation around how Columbia interacts with controversial speech.w
Illustration by Sahra Denner
29
M easure
for
M easure
In this desert, the sky is yellow and biblical. In a small house with an unending yard that lolls into an arid hillside: she hems dresses, skirts, and trousers, careful to interact with her customers only as necessary. In this desert, the sky is yellow and biblical, and the clouds move in the dust of the windows of the house facing hers, while she is distracted by an ant crawling down a crack in the wall. Meanwhile, A moth busts its head against the kitchen window, worked up over the light of a streetlamp it mistakes for the moon and she looks at the dirt under her fingernails— downstairs, her son is getting high while her husband sleeps. When day falls into night, she sleeps in a bedroom stripped of decoration, the exception only of her husband’s paintings: sprawling brown smears mirroring the desert and vineyards surrounding their home, which, when the light fades, will give the impression of dozens of windows leaking the night and the hills into the room. The two never discussed having children (neither had ever consciously wished for children, and their parenting, or lack thereof, betrays it).
30
Yet they were incautious, absentminded, and largely indifferent; and children kept coming. Perhaps their first two, born two and four years before their middle, respectively, used up all the adoration and love they could muster up inside of themselves; and perhaps their last two, twins born three and a half years his junior, used up all the rest of their vitality, and their middle simply tumbled, unseen, into the bare space in between. Perhaps their middle son with the dark eyes that—from the instant he was born— bore up at his parents with an intensity that verged on disdain, frightened the two into detachment. Or perhaps his parents were so ashamed of their apathy, so appalled by their own inability to assemble any endearment for their child, that they could hardly stand to meet his gaping eyes that so resembled their own. Whatever the reason, their middle son grew up unbothered by his parents, and seldom by his siblings, in the shadows of the hills behind his house with the company of the worm lizards and the moorish geckos, the red deer and the boars, the barn owls and the yucca. —Hannah Liberman
The Blue and White
M easure
for
M easure
Untrust You became a shady space, a distraction from a fallen face, a way to think of something different, a place to turn my do’s to didn’t’s, a break from rhyming which I’ve since resumed, a reminder that even weeds once bloomed. Ugly things that should never have been, icy eyes on hidden men. Hands promising to make up for a hurt of wounds disguised with double-edged dirt. A trust given out again and again Thrown so far, I can’t say where it’d been. But it came back, skinny and asking for a mother. And it made me cry to send her to another. But I did and so it went, Crying and dying and waiting to be bent. —Nora May McSorley
Orientation 2019
31
M easure
for
M easure
Walls of a Men’s Room: Word Maze Found Next to a Drawing of Charlie the Tuna, Spokestuna for Starkist Tuna all parties concerned are subject to litigation proceedings pursuant to formal principles of means. these principles include, but are not as yet limited to, the following: private understandings reached between consenting persons or their counsel, a determination of the aforementioned magistrate, or appellation measures introduced by an externally authorized auditor. —Jacob Snyder
32
The Blue and White
V E R I LY V E R I TA S
Told Between Puffs In which our hero takes stock of the neighborhood. By Sam Needleman
I
t was once ordained, by a soul whose name and major have since given over to the winds of time, that: “On the Last Tuesday before NSOP, a discerning denizen of Morningside Heights shall mark the turn of our Scholastic Calendar by surveying our environs and offering an insightful Review of their findings: a henceforth-entitled State of the Neighborhood Address.” In assuming this annual duty last week, Verily Veritas aspired not only to buttress his ascent toward cultural eminence, but to reward himself one afternoon’s respite from the onerous, as-yet-unrevealedto-the-world intellectual pursuits that have occupied him all summer. Gleeful at the opportunity to ponder and pontificate in the great outdoors, Verily set out upon our steamy boulevards, his service hound and unimpeachable sense of self in tow. “Ah, the breeze, the great August reprieve!” Verily bellowed, mistaking a burst of sewer steam for a gust of wind. “How she tumbles off the Hudson and cascades up West 113th Street! What a cruise—and a muse—shall this afternoon prove!” Alas, upon traversing mighty Broadway, Verily expended an unforeseen sum of energy, and found himself wheezing on the far curb and hastened to assuage his physical exertion with a dash of light fare. The maîtres’d—nay, swine-hosts!—at Le Monde and Community condemned him and his sweaty brow to the stifling realm of the al fresco, so Verily thought to exhibit his characteristic whimsy by trying the newly minted Wu + Nussbaum. “What does the chef recommend today?” Verily asked an employee inside. “Uhh… We have some everythings left, and one poppy,” the man replied, motioning toward a meager array of bagels. “Nothing gluten-free?” Verily demanded. He made his best effort to control his temper, but the subject was sore; just the week prior, the doctor had selected gluten as the latest ingredient from which Verily ought to abstain, another installment in the series of mini-experiments undertaken to identify the source of his chronic tummy aches.
Orientation 2019
out.”
“Sorry,” the man said, shrugging. “We ran
Verily retrieved from his shirt-pocket a ballpoint pen and a leather-bound notebook that he had reserved for the afternoon’s observations, which were primed to be both ample and profound. He scribbled a note—“New joint: abomination!”—and then, satisfied with his judgment, stepped out of the establishment to continue his noble fieldwork. “I’m due for an Absolute Bagel,” Verily proclaimed. “They understand me!” Surely, no soul with such sound body and mind as our Verily could deign to walk to West 108th Street on this sweltering day. “Taxi! Taxi!” he cried, until one eddied at the curb. Peering out the window as the cab drifted downtown, he glimpsed— indeed, was struck by!—a cavalcade of first-years crossing West 112th Street, undoubtedly revelling in their lunchtime liberation amid a strenuous day of Orienting themselves. Verily was forced at once to confront his condition and to record it. He retrieved his pen and notebook once more and logged: “My days at this institution, and on this dear Earth, are finite. We must cherish our intellectual camaraderie before it dwindles—and dwindle it shall!” As Verily’s conscience struck this melancholy chord, he caught sight of a fellow-dwindler down the block: Book Culture, that neighborhood bastion of discourse and discounts that Verily’s plebeian neighbors, in their insatiable thirst for Amazon, had gravely threatened earlier this season. “Driver!” he yelped, in a cry of spontaneity that only the grandest of emotional realizations can produce. “Let me out immediately!” Verily strolled toward Book Culture and gazed longingly at its facade. His appetite having long since disappeared, he fetched his pad and pen once more and scrawled a eulogy far too poignant to reprint. A bookstore worker, taking note of the oneman spectacle outside, approached. “We’re open!” she said. “Come on in!” But our Verily didn’t hear her, for he was engulfed in the beauty of his tribute. Satisfied—yes, quite satisfied!—Verily began his long walk home.w
33
Digitalia Columbiana Last semester, The Blue and White reported on an interaction between a Columbia student and Barnard Public Safety that sparked a conversation about the role of campus security on both campuses. This August, Barnard released the results of their independent investigation, which concluded that while race was not a factor, the scope of the response and the lack of de-escalation practices were not in best practice for a campus security department. What follows are key findings from the investigative report. T&M did not find evidence to support a determination that race was a factor in the confrontation between BCPS and the Columbia University student. T&M did find the breadth of BCPS response and the lack of utilization of de-escalation techniques served to intensify the encounter for both the Columbia University student and for the Barnard students present in the Milstein Center and was inconsistent with best practices for a campus security department. T&M found a lack of updated written guidelines, policies and procedures to inform its staff in the consistent execution of their duties, including the use of radio codes. There is also an absence of training for BCPS staff regarding their duties including effective ways for BCPS to interact with the public, especially in reference to individuals who are found to be on the campus with no affiliation to the College. Communication between BCPS management and officers was also found lacking, perhaps most notably regarding the dissemination and implementation of new policies and the consistent enforcement of existing rules. T&M also found that the perceptions of BCPS by the student community while anecdotal, are a potent barometer of the performance of BCPS. Indeed, it is emblematic of the deficiencies of BCPS outlined in this report. A lack of updated written guidelines, policies, and training creates an environment in which each officer of BCPS responds or reacts dissimilarly. This lack of consistency in enforcement leads to a perception, if not a reality, of disparate treatment of individuals with whom BCPS interacts on campus. Notwithstanding the perception, T&M did not find evidence that race was a factor in this confrontation. However, the events of April 11, 2019 have shed a bright light on a multitude of shortcomings within BCPS.... On April 11, 2019 at approximately 11:30 p.m., a male individual later identified as a student at neighboring Columbia University, walked quickly past a Barnard College Public Safety
34
Officer assigned to the main manned access gate at 117th Street and Broadway without showing identification. There is a policy in effect at Barnard College that all individuals entering the campus after 11:00 p.m. must show identification to the BCPS officer assigned to the booth at the main gate. The only available source for this information is T&M’s interview with the BCPS officer on duty at the gate. There is no video coverage of the main gate. Interviews revealed that the Barnard College Public Safety Officer (“PSO”) on duty at the gate at that time was PSO #1, a 33-year employee of BCPS. He stated that while in the booth at the access gate, he observed a male quickly pass the gate looking straight ahead and enter the campus. The officer told T&M he immediately grabbed his radio and exited the booth. He recalled calling out to the male “excuse me, sir…excuse me, sir…” The PSO said the male was “walking with a purpose” and did not acknowledge nor otherwise respond to his repeated exclamations. The PSO explained that he then announced over his radio, which could be heard by other on-duty BCPS officers, that he had a trespasser on campus who was heading towards an area known as North Campus. He stated that the distance between the two was approximately twenty feet and that there was a lack of other pedestrians in the area. These facts, coupled with the volume at which he stated he was calling to the male, made it apparent to him that the male was ignoring him. Nonetheless, the PSO stated he repeated his effort to gain the male’s attention and called out, “excuse me, sir…” He then acknowledged that he radioed “supervisor, I need you,” as he continued to follow the male. PSO #1 indicated that failing again to receive any acknowledgment from the male, and not knowing the male’s possible intentions, he finally called a code “10-13” over his radio, indicating that he needed immediate assistance from any and all available officers. A “10-13” is a universally recognized law enforcement and New York City Police Department
The Blue and White
D I G I TA L I A C O L U M B I A N A
Orientation 2019
13” he thought PSO #1 was getting the “(expletive) beat out of him.” PSO #1 claimed that he had used the “10-13” code “hundreds of times” in his 33-year career at Barnard. Interviews with other officers contradicted this statement. Other officers stated to T&M that this code was seldom, if ever, used. Since radio transmissions by BCPS are not recorded and preserved T&M was unable to conduct a data driven analysis of the frequency of the use of this radio code.... One student believes that black male students are “definitely profiled” by BCPS though she could not provide specific details. Another characterized her interaction with BCPS as limited to one positive experience where BCPS was ready and willing to assist her. A third stated her experience with BCPS has been negative. She perceives BCPS to have a pattern and history of profiling black males. She did not provide details.... One student views BCPS as a disciplinary force which surveils the student body. She stated that as a black student,she felt threatened by BCPS and that other black students, whether male or female, at both Columbia and Barnard, share a similar view of BCPS which includes acts of racial profiling. She also stated that students from the LGBTQ-Plus Community have told her they feel BCPS has a negative bias towards their members. She also described a time when an officer “hit on” her.... T&M learned from interviews with BCPS PSOs and Supervisors that many policies and procedures are informal. A significant number of the BCPS officers have more than 20 years’ experience at Barnard and it is clear that institutional experience is how BCPS has conducted business for years. For example, T&M was informed that the policy requiring BCPS to check identification of all individuals entering the Barnard Campus after 11:00 p.m. was implemented in 2013 and set forth in the Annual Security and Fire Safety Report, although PSO #1 stated he learned of the policy by “word of mouth.” It is not a part of a formal written policy and procedures manual produced for Public Safety Officers due to what BCPS Supervisors again described as a robust unionized environment. In fact, Supervisor #10 stated there is no direction as to what PSOs should do if an individual refuses or ignores a request to check identification after 11:00 p.m.w
(“NYPD”) radio code used to indicate that an officer needs immediate assistance due to an imminent and serious threat of physical injury to the officer. As a result of PSO #1’s “10-13” radio transmission, 8 other officers responded to the Milstein Center. Barnard video footage revealed the male entering the Milstein Center. PSO #1 followed the male into the Milstein Center and saw him approach a small group of individuals who were seated near Peet’s Cafe. 9 PSO #1 stated that he approached the male and requested identification. The male did not comply with the request.... Supervisor #10, as observed in the video footage, displayed no attempt to utilize any form of deescalation in his interaction with the Columbia University student. Upon his arrival at the Milstein Center, and without assessing the existing dynamic between PSO #1 and the Columbia University student, Supervisor #10’s immediate action was a physical response, thereby creating a chaotic and potentially dangerous situation. Once the Columbia University student produced his identification card, Supervisor #10 made a belated and ineffectual attempt to de-escalate the situation. Supervisor #10, a retired New York City Police Lieutenant with more than twenty years of police experience stated he had never heard a “10-13” transmitted over the radio in his three and one-half years working at the Barnard campus. He further indicated that upon hearing the transmission, and without any Barnard training or policy to the contrary, he reflexively defaulted to his prior police training and experience relating to the significance of that radio code. As previously indicated, a “10-13” code, in police parlance, signifies a grave and immediate danger to the physical safety of the officer broadcasting the call. In contrast, PSO #1 had no prior law enforcement experience. PSO #1 stated he transmitted the “10-13” code, again without any Barnard training, to indicate simply that he required assistance. Moreover, response to the “10-13” transmission by so many officers also served to escalate the situation both for the Columbia University student and for the students present in the Milstein Center. Under the actual circumstances encountered by BCPS, this response was excessive and inconsistent with best practices for a campus security department.... In an interview with Supervisor #10 with T&M Investigators, he stated that upon hearing the “10-
35
E AT I N ’ G O O D I N T H E N E I G H BO R H O O D
36
The Blue and White