1. education
2. alumni and reunions

Vol. CXXXIX—No. 10
Thursday, April 2, 2015
columbiaspectator.com
TRIAL AND ERROR
FILE PHOTOS
Revisiting the administration’s checkered implementation of the University Rules of Conduct
BY DANNY LI
Spectator Staff Writer
In February 2015, members of
No Red Tape, an anti-sexual assault activist group, disrupted a
prospective student information
session, chanting and distributing
fliers to participants about what
they believe to be gross mishandlings of sexual misconduct at
Columbia.
Following the demonstration,
nine members of the group received letters from the Office of
Judicial Affairs informing them of
possible violations of the Rules of
University Conduct, a disciplinary code that regulates protests on
campus, which are currently under review by a University Senate
committee.
The Rules of University
Conduct are meant to balance students’ right to protest with the university’s ability to function. Under
the rules, students who engage in
protest that disrupt “the proper
functioning of the University” can
be charged with violations and
sentenced to certain sanctions as
laid out in the rules.
The rules have consistently
faced criticism for its vague language and lack of explicit procedural guidelines.
The rules give sole authority to
begin a disciplinary process to the
University Rules Administrator
Stephen Rittenberg. Given the
ambiguities within the rules, the
rules administrator is left as the
sole judge of whether a protest
constitutes permissible expression or a violation that can be
punished by severe sanctions like
suspension or expulsion.
Ultimately, the letter was only
a warning and the students were
not put through any disciplinary
process. Some students viewed
this administrative action as a fear
tactic intended to discourage further protest.
These recent actions have also
been interpreted by some as an attempt on the part of the administration to bypass Rittenberg, who
many consider to be a lenient enforcer of the Rules of University
Conduct.
Rittenberg, who declined to be
interviewed for this article, is set
to leave Columbia after the end of
the academic year. His departure
sparked the current review of the
rules—the first since 1993.
Rittenberg’s departure adds
a sense of urgency to rules revision. The chance that someone
intent on strictly enforcing the
rules could step into the role of
rules administrator could be an
even greater incentive to refine
the rules.
While Rittenberg has been
seen as a lenient enforcer of the
rules, a look at the history of the
rules reveals that previous rules
administrators have been less
than hesitant to enforce the rules
in the past.
1968: A School in Crisis
At 2:20 a.m. on April 30, 1968,
approximately 1,000 police officers, requested by University
President Grayson Kirk, arrived
on campus to break up the student occupation of five buildings that persisted throughout
a 10-day demonstration. As the
officers advanced across campus, students were trampled and
stomped on, dragged down Low
Steps, smacked by nightsticks, and
beaten.
Students were protesting
University plans to construct
gymnasiums whose entrances
physically segregated Columbia
students from Harlem residents.
By 5:00 a.m., the demonstration was over. 132 students, 13
police officers, and four faculty members in total had sustained injuries. According to
the University’s Fact-Finding
Commission’s report, there were
a total of 692 arrests, 524 of which
were of Columbia students.
Out of this crisis, the Rules of
University Conduct were born.
“We needed a set of rules. In
’68, the University didn’t have
a code of conduct,” law professor and executive committee
Chairman Michael Sovern, who
would later become Columbia’s
president, told Spectator. “The
objective was to be fair to anyone
accused of misconduct.”
After the initial set of rules
proved inadequate following the
failure of four hearings due to procedural uncertainties, the foundations of the current rules were
set in 1982 when the Legislative
Reserved Powers in the
’70s
The tendency of the rules to
concentrate power in the hands
of specific individuals does not
end with the Rules Administrator.
Certain clauses in the rules leave
broad discretionary powers to
other university officials—the
university president and college
deans—that have raised questions
about limits on administrative
authority.
“Disciplinary matters not
specifically enumerated in these
Rules are reserved in the case of
students to the Deans of their
schools,” Section 443b reads.
At the Oct. 17, 2014 Town
Hall on the Rules of University
Conduct, former Columbia Queer
Alliance President Caitlin Lowell,
BY ANGELA BENTLEY
Spectator Senior Staff Writer
BY TEO ARMUS AND
DANIELLE SMITH
Spectator Staff Writers
VIA FACEBOOK
JOSHUA
|
The Joshua Villa Sunshine Scholarship honors a student from Villa’s hometown.
including paychecks from his
work-study job at Columbia as
well as donations received through
a PayPal page, and from the school
district and local businesses.
“Josh was really into serving
the community,” Julietta Villa said.
“I think he went really far beyond
what he needed to do. The thing
he was really passionate to do was
empowering young people in the
world.”
While in high school in Covina,
California, Joshua Villa interned
for local politicians, attended city
cleanup events, and volunteered
at book fairs at local elementary
schools. He was also a teacher’s
CC ’15, took issue with the clauses’
broad-sweeping rhetoric.
“This is far too broad of a reserve clause, since it allows deans
or central administration to prosecute for free speech activity that
sits outside of the Rules,” Lowell
said. “It should be made clear that
all contact related—conduct related to free speech activity is out of
the hands of the deans.”
A similar issue may be found in
Section 444f, labeled “Treatment
of outsiders.” The rules grant the
president “emergency authority to
protect persons or property.”
The emergency powers clause
allows the president to call police
onto campus to disband demonstrations deemed to pose “a
clear and present danger to persons, property, or the substantial
functioning of any division of the
University.”
On March 20, 1975, 17 protesters occupied the office of
the School of International and
Public Affairs Dean Harvey
Picker for two hours. University
President William McGill invoked
SEE RULES, page 2
Newcomers upset
incumbents in elections
Scholarship fund honors late Joshua Villa, CC ’18
When Joshua Villa found out
that he received few of the scholarships he had applied for during
an awards ceremony at Gladstone
High School in Covina, California,
he was disappointed.
“From my point of view, I think
he had something extra that other students don’t understand,” his
mother, Julietta Villa, said. “He
tried to achieve on everything and
he didn’t like to be like the others.”
After the event, Joshua told his
mother about his idea of creating
a scholarship for students who
demonstrate exceptional commitment to academics and community service.
And now, five months after his
passing, this idea will become reality when a student in his school
district is honored in May with the
Joshua Villa Sunshine Scholarship.
Each year, the scholarship will
provide $3,000 to a college-bound
senior from the Azusa Unified
School District, where Joshua and
many of his family members went
to school.
The scholarship will be funded through Joshua’s savings,
Drafting Service of the Law
School was asked to study the statutes and draft a new set of rules.
The coming years would leave
the impression in the minds of
many students that these heavily
revised rules had been divorced
from their original purpose of providing fair adjudication.
aide for a religious education program at his school.
“I was like his personal taxi
driver,” Julietta Villa said. “Every
weekend was a trip to some sort
of cleanup.”
According to Julietta, Covina
SEE VILLA, page 13
In an upset, Benjamin
Makansi
and
Vi v e k
Ramakrishnan, both CC ’16,
narrowly edged out incumbent
council leaders in the elections
for Columbia College Student
Council executive board.
“We’re both obviously on
cloud nine. We’re both very
excited,” Ramakrishnan said
about the Freedom, Liberty and
Freedom party. “We really are
looking forward to doing our
best in this role.”
Makansi and Ramakrishnan,
who initially billed themselves
as a satirical party, will be leading the executive board as
president and vice president of
policy, respectively, after beating Peter Bailinson, CC ’16, and
Abby Porter, CC ’17, by 31 ballots, or 1.6 percent of the total
vote.
The pair’s victory over
Bailinson and Porter, the incumbent president and VP for
communications, comes after
some concerns were raised by
both the Freedom, Liberty and
Freedom Party and CCSC veterans about the culture of the
council and the incumbents’
track record in their positions.
At the debates, Makansi and
Ramakrishnan challenged the
amount of initiatives on It Takes
Two’s platform and questioned
the transparency of the council
in the past year. Makansi said
that the central message of their
campaign was “representing
student interests more effectively,” and credits their win to
this message.
“Honestly, a lot of students
were really passionate about
the central message of our campaign, which was fixing some
of the issues, which we saw
within CCSC,” Makansi said.
“Every single day people would
privately message us or come up
to us and say that our campaign
resonated with them.”
Makansi and Ramakrishnan
shied away from a specific platform, saying they hoped to leave
SEE ELECTIONS, page 13
OPINION, PAGE 4
SPORTS, BACK PAGE
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Race, city via dance
The Light Blue had a solid run all
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and the women winning the National
Championship.
‘FLEXN,’ premiering at Park
Avenue Armony this weekend, and
inspired by the Michael Brown
and Eric Garner cases, uses the
Jamaican flex style of dance to
explore urban racial politics.
@ColumbiaSpec
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NEWS
PAGE 2
APRIL 2, 2015
FILE PHOTOS
HISTORY OF ACTIVISM | LEFT: Students fast in protest of Columbia’s investment in South African apartheid, 1985. RIGHT: Members of Columbia Prison Divest protest, 2014.
Rules of Conduct under review for first time in over 20 years
RULES from front page
his “emergency powers” by calling in police to end the protest
without the consultation of the
executive committee. Four years
later, McGill responded the same
way in order to break up a sit-in at
the Computer Center and Hogan
Hall.
The Rules of University
Conduct mandate that before
summoning police, McGill must
have consulted the executive committee, unless McGill declared an
immediate need to “protect persons or property.”
McGill argued that his actions
were in line with the Rules of
University Conduct.
“I do not take the position that
a group of people forcing themselves into a dean’s office and barricading themselves inside constitutes a non-violent act,” he said at
the time.
One month after the ’75 incident, following student criticisms
of the use of the reserved power,
the University Senate met in order to prevent future presidential
oversteps. Jay Marcus, CC ’80
and a University senator, pointed to the Rules’ broad-sweeping
language.
“Emergency powers should be
redefined,” Marcus said. “The ambiguity of the phrase, ‘emergency
powers,’ is no longer acceptable.”
But no changes were ever
made. Today, the section of the
rules devoted to “Treatment of
Outsiders” ends with the statement: “Nothing in the above
shall be construed to limit the
President’s emergency authority
to protect persons or property.”
On Dec. 4, 2014, over 200 students staged a “die-in,” sprawling
out across College Walk at the
annual tree lighting ceremony
to protest the non-indictment of
the police officer who killed Eric
Garner.
A University spokesperson
issued a statement to Spectator
that denied the presence of any
NYPD officers during the ceremony. However, six NYPD vans
were parked on standby along
114th Street.
Public Safety defined 114th
Street between Broadway and
Amsterdam as “off-campus,”
meaning the protocol for calling
police laid out in the rules technically did not apply.
While the rules refer to “external authority to bring about the
end of the disruption,” they do
not provide explicit guidelines
that define under what circumstances police have been called
“on campus.”
Critics have said that the
University has consistently manipulated ambiguities in language
and procedure to their advantage
in responding to protests and
prosecuting students.
1985: The First Test
In the mid-1980s, the rules
were used to prosecute members
of a student group dedicated to
lobbying administration to divest
from South African apartheid in
an effort that mirrored today’s
fight for prison divestment.
For the first time, the application of the new Rules of
University Conduct would result
in sentencing.
From April 4 to 25, 1985, student activists occupied the front
steps of Hamilton Hall and
chained the front doors shut, demanding the immediate divestment from companies doing business in South Africa.
University President Michael
Sovern appointed former Law
School professor Lewis Kaden
to serve as the hearing officer
in formal proceedings. Kaden,
who is now a senior adviser at
TGG Group, saw the hearing as
a challenge to the new Rules of
University Conduct.
“The new procedure was put
to a fairly severe test,” Kaden said.
“The University brought charges
against a very large number of students who the University saw as
violating the norms of conduct.”
The University rules administrator charged around 100 students for violating several sections of the Rules of University
Conduct. Around 30 students
opted for informal settlements or
the Dean’s Discipline process.
Dean’s Discipline allows for
rule violations to be informally
settled between a student and the
dean of their respective school.
Students who opt for an external
hearing are given the opportunity
to bring their rule violation to a
formal hearing process.
The University charged each
respondent with 10 violations in
total, including four serious violations. The Rules established
a structure of simple and serious violations in which serious
violations were aggravated instances of corresponding simple
violations.
Ultimately, Kaden dismissed
all charges against the students
aside from a simple violation of
entrance interference that resulted in semester-long disciplinary
warnings.
The most immediate reaction
emerged from Columbia administrators who found the ruling to be
too lenient. The Dean of Columbia
College Robert Pollack suggested
that the University Senate begin
reviewing the rules.
“We need to define hearings,
and sufficient evidence,” Pollack
said at the time. “We need to talk
about the use of outside lawyers
and review the difference between
simple and serious violations of the
rules.”
The problem with clarity that
Pollack expressed at the time is
mirrored by current students’ frustration over the ambiguity of the
rules’ language.
The difference between interference over “a very short period of
time,” which would result in a simple violation, versus “more than a
very short period of time,” which
would result in a serious violation,
is not defined.
The violation dispute in 1985
remains relevant today because no
effort to clarify statutory language
has been successful. The rhetoric
of the entrance interference violations remains the same.
But broad language is not the
only problem that remains.
Rather than outlining specific hearing procedures, the rules
placed broad discretion in the
hands of the hearing officer. As
the first hearing officer, Kaden was
forced to improvise.
“There were not, I would say,
comprehensive guidelines about
how the hearing officer should
conduct the procedure or how different questions that were likely to
arise about process should be answered,” Kaden said. “Much of that
had to be done as the matter was
proceeding.”
Today, the contours of formal
proceedings are still vaguely defined, granting the hearing officer
“broad discretion in the conduct
of the pre-hearing procedures and
the hearing.” Students are worried
that without explicit guidelines,
their right to due process and ability to review evidence may be severely curtailed.
“The rules were
used to intimidate.”
—Ben Jealous, CC ’94,
former NAACP president
In the coming years, poorly defined procedures would become
much more prevalent.
Pollack’s decision to place the
rules under review faced immediate criticism from the student body.
Students interpreted the move to
tighten rules as an administrative
power grab.
“They are unhappy with the
Kaden decision and they don’t want
to blame Kaden, so they blame the
rules,” Tanaquil Jones, GS ’86 and
a leader of the Columbia Coalition
for a Free Southern Africa who was
sentenced under the Kaden’s 1985
decision, said at the time. “It is an
attack on us—just another way of
ensuring that political protest is
restrained on campus.”
More and more, students began to view the Rules of University
Conduct as an administrative
means of coercion and bullying in
response to student protest.
“The Columbia University administration took ample opportunity to use and abuse the Rules
of University Conduct as a coercive and oppressive tool to end
what was always a non-violent
and peaceful action,” Tony Glover,
CC ’86 and a leader of the CFSA,
wrote in a Spectator editorial at
the time. “The Rules proved to be
practically a carte blanche for the
administration to selectively prosecute students.”
1993: A ‘Kangaroo Court’
On Dec. 14, 1992, over 100
Columbia and Barnard students
occupied Hamilton Hall for around
three hours to protest Columbia’s
demolition of the Audubon
Ballroom, the site of Malcolm X’s
assassination.
The University’s decision to
charge only seven out of over 100
protesters was seen as the blatant
targeting of activist student leaders. Todd Chretien, GS ’93, one of
the student respondents ultimately
charged and suspended, believes
that the University prosecuted the
seven as scapegoats for student
activism.
“They picked out the people
who they perceived to be the organizers of the actions. We had
been protesting for many years,”
Chretien said.
Another charged and suspended student, Ben Jealous, CC
’94, who would go on to head the
NAACP as CEO and president,
agreed, saying that scapegoating
was a scare tactic.
“The rules were used to intimidate,” Jealous told Spectator.
“These rules were ultimately created by a university that resented
the way that students had held
it accountable to its own values.
They were used to suspend only
students who had led the successful financial aid protests.”
On Feb. 14, 1993, the hearing of
seven Columbia students charged
with several serious violations for
their participation in the demonstration began. This hearing
shed light on the stark disparities
between University and student
resources.
“They had their own legal representation and three or four administrative personnel assigned to
prosecute us and present evidence.
They clearly spend tens of thousands of dollars to prosecute us.
We were not given any resources,”
Chretien said.
Yet, the respondents still chose
formal hearings over Dean’s
Discipline.
Compared to the formal hearing process, Dean’s Discipline does
not offer nearly as many defined
due process protections for students. Students do not have the
right to counsel or the right to call
witnesses and their ability to challenge evidence is severely limited
by time constraints.
The Dean’s Discipline process
has also been associated with conflicts of interest. Dean’s Discipline
often places students’ sanctions
into the hands of the same people
students protested against.
“One of the main problems with
the Dean’s Discipline process is
that the same administrative body
accusing students of policy violations is finding students responsible or not responsible and is also
determining a consequence,” Sean
Ryan, CC ’17 and CCSC class of
2017 president, said. “Student perspectives, including an opportunity
for witness testimony, are not on
the table.”
Adjudication by a hearing officer was simply a lesser of two evils.
Many criticized the appointment
of hearing officers with ties to
Columbia.
“At all of our peer institutions,
there’s a student-faculty review
board,” Jewish Student Union
Secretary for Community Action
Israel Kochin, CC ’95, said at the
time. “Here, students don’t even
have Fifth Amendment rights.”
The lack of Fifth Amendment
protection is of pressing importance today.
At the Oct. 17 town hall, Dan
Garisto, CC ’16 and a former editorial page editor for Spectator, cited
a Ben Jealous editorial from ’93 as
demonstrating the lack of Fifth
Amendment protection and asked
the committee for clarification.
In response, Law School professor and Rules Committee member Daniel Richman conceded
that rights protections “wouldn’t
be in the rules” and that it was
“an odd reference to the Fifth
Amendment.”
Garisto expressed concern
about the lack of explicit rights
protections.
“I think that clearly stating
what rights people have and don’t
have under the external process is
extremely important,” he said.
The issue is unclear precisely
because of the “broad discretion”
that hearing officers enjoy. The
rules acknowledge that as a private institution, Columbia “is not
subject to the Constitutional provisions on free speech and due process of law.”
But, in an effort to avoid turning
hearings into lengthy adversarial
processes, hearing officers do not
allot respondents with full constitutional protections.
“I wouldn’t weigh us down
with all of the rules of criminal
procedure. We have to adapt to
the kind of community we are,”
Sovern, who returned to a teaching post at the Law School, said.
“For example, should you have a
full opportunity to cross examine witnesses, well you know
how troublesome that can be in
the context of sexual assault so
I think the fundamental idea is
that you want procedures that
are fair.”
The lack of explicit hearing
guidelines led many in the student
body to see the 1993 proceedings as
an utter failure.
“The University should have
realized that the administration
had created a kangaroo court,”
Chretien said.
The administration maintained
strict control of not only the hearing procedure, but also the range
of sanctions.
Regrettable Sanctions
On March 24, 1993, Tyler announced his verdict: Four of the
seven originally charged students
were sentenced to one semester
suspensions. Jealous and Chretien
were among the four.
Tyler expressed regret that he
could not hand out a lesser punishment and criticized the rules for
being too inflexible and urged the
respondents to appeal the decision.
In 1988, with the administration’s “loss” of 1985 in mind, the
Rules Committee revised the rules
so that formal hearings would be
reserved only for students charged
with serious violations.
To avoid a repeat of the lenient
sentencing in 1985, the Rules
Committee limited the array of
sanctions for hearing officers to
only suspension or expulsion.
Milder sanctions would only be
available to students who opted
for Dean’s Discipline.
“Their prosecution of us was
so outrageous and so full of holes
and such a violation of freedom
of assembly that even their own
hand- picked judge refused to implement the severest of sanctions,
expulsion, and instead suspended
us,” Chretien said.
With the rules under review,
students have urged the Rules of
University Conduct Committee to
broaden sanction options for hearing officers.
“It’s really important to note
that in the external process the
minimum sentence is suspension,”
said Caleb LoSchiavo, BC ’15 at the
Nov. 10 town hall. “And so I think
it’s really important that we broaden the range of possible outcomes
in a review.”
For Judge Kaden, having sentencing discretion when overseeing the 1985 hearing was very
important.
“Sanction guidelines can be
constraining in circumstances
where you’re trying to take multiple interests and factors into account,” Kaden said. “I valued the
fact that at the time I had fairly
wide discretion and I was available to find the sanctions and
conclusions that I viewed as making the right contribution to the
community.”
“I would have been less pleased
with narrow sanctions—whether
that would have affected my taking it on, that’s just a hypothetical,”
Kaden added.
Jealous believes that the current rules create a chilling effect
on protest.
“The review committee has
to ask: Have the rules helped or
hurt? Have they set safe boundaries or produced a chilling effect?”
Jealous said. “In my experience,
they produced a chilling effect.
After we were suspended, that certainly seems to be the case.”
The 1992 Hamilton protest was
the last time a demonstration was
tried under formal hearing for serious violations laid out in the Rules
of University Conduct.
For Jealous, the sentencing of
harsh sanctions gave administrators the chance to display their
readiness to severely punish vocal
activist leaders.
Rules Under Review
With the rules under review
for the first time in decades, students see an enormous potential
for positive change. Many feel
a heightened sense of urgency
in the context of looming uncertainty over who will replace
Rittenberg and how they will apply the rules.
“We shouldn’t need to trust the
University and its administrators
if these rules are written well.
They should police against both
the most lenient and the most
arbitrarily harsh. That’s why we
have rules,” Eric Wimer, CC ’16,
a vocal student advocate for rules
reform, said.
[email protected]
NEWS
APRIL 2, 2015
PAGE 3
2015 COUNCIL ELECTION RESULTS
CCSC saw an upset as the Freedom, Liberty and Freedom Party edged out incumbent
President Peter Bailinson, CC ‘16, and VP for Policy candidate Abby Porter, CC ‘17, by 31 votes.
For ESC, Blue is the New Black beat SEAS for all five positions on the executive board,
while GSSC will be led by current VP of Policy Elizabeth Heyman, GS/JTS ‘16, as president.
ESC
Class of 2016 Council
Michelle Lee, President
Chloe Blanchard, Vice President
Juan Herrera, Class Rep.
Ravish Rawal, Class Rep.
Caroline Park
President
Class of 2017 Council
Larry Xiao, President
Sidney Perkins, Vice President
Prerna Kohli, Class Rep.
Mayank Mahajan, Class Rep.
Meaghan Hurr
VP of Policy
Class of 2018 Council
Vinay Mehta, President
Aakanxit Khullar, Vice President
Patrick Lin, Class Rep.
Saarthak Sarup, Class Rep.
Neha Jain
VP of Finance
Joshua Bazile
VP of Student Life
Siddharth
Ramakrishnan
VP of Communications
GSSC
Elizabeth
Heyman
President
At-Large Representatives
Aaron Apelle, Technology Rep.
Lucas Schuermann, Professional
Development & Alumni Affairs Rep.
Amritha Musipatla, Student Services Rep.
Charles Harper, Sustainability Rep.
Luis Rivera, Academic Affairs Rep.
Jonathan Barrios, Student Groups Rep.
Kara Odum, 3-2 Rep.
William Chung, Campus Affairs Rep.
Anna
Vladymyrska
VP of Policy
Dalitso
Nkhoma
VP of Finance
CCSC
Benjamin Makansi
President
Vivek Ramakrishnan
VP for Policy
Sameer Mishra
VP for Finance
Kelly Echavarria
VP for Campus Life
Grayson Warrick
VP for Communications
Marc Heinrich, CC ‘16
University Senator
Jade LeCascarino
VP of Campus Life
Class of 2016 Council
Saaket Pradhan, President
Charles Sanky, Vice President
Anna Broadbent, Class Rep.
Amy Li, Class Rep.
Ecem Senyuva, Class Rep.
Class of 2017 Council
Ravi Sinha, President
Marshall Bozeman, Vice President
Sheila Alexander, Class Rep.
Annette Finnigan, Class Rep.
Petros Krommidas, Class Rep.
Class of 2018 Council
Ezra Gontownik, President
Lani Allen, Vice President
Kaz Costello, Class Rep.
Sosa Omorogbe, Class Rep.
Heloise Taillet, Class Rep.
At-Large Representatives
Matthew Forrest, Student Services Rep.
Andy Truelove, Student Services Rep.
Nicole Allicock, Academic Affairs Rep.
Daniel Liss, Alumni Affairs Rep.
Kaitlyn Loftus, Sandwich Ambassador
Chris George, Pre-Professional Rep.
Sean Ryan, CC ‘17
University Senator
Donna Askari
VP of Communications
Senior Class President
Jin Han
EDITORIAL & OPINION
PAGE 4
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Reflections on the
student council race
A
s I write this, the council polls
have just closed, the campaigns
are putting up their shutters, and
profile pictures have returned to normal. As I write this, the anxious wait
for results begins.
DANIEL
That is, for candidates who were
GARISTO
interested in winning.
Da n t h About a month ago, Daniel Stone,
CC ’16, approached me with the idea
ol og y
of running for Columbia College
Student Council in an unserious fashion. I shrugged
and agreed—running with a party of Daniel(le)s
sounded like a good time. The Community Party for a
Better Tomorrow (with its short and sweet acronym
of TCPFABT) would exist to make what was an uncontested race contested, and a little more amusing.
TCPFABT’s first foray into the world of student government was at a rules meeting held after spring break.
The meeting itself confirmed many of my suspicions
about what student government elections were like: It
was incredibly boring, not particularly well-organized,
and someone showed up in a suit. And yet, I came away
surprised by how uncomfortable I felt.
I’ve been involved with campus media since my
first month at Columbia, so it was strange—foreign,
even—to be on the other side of a process that I’d previously only watched. I felt bizarrely out of place at
the rules meeting, and it wasn’t just because I didn’t
intend on winning. Student government has long
been criticized for being too insular (true, to some
extent), but I never quite understood the real psychological barrier that exists for newcomers until I felt
it. That barrier exists with anything that’s unfamiliar,
but at least with most normal clubs you can mess up
and fail more privately.
But, I have to admit, once I’d gotten past my apprehensions, I had fun. I got to know the other
Daniel(le)s of my party, and had a blast attempting to
do election-y things. Keyword: attempting. Because
of a late start to flyering, I was forced to use most of
my fliers on Furnald. (Note: This is not the optimal
campaign strategy.) We also attempted a meet and
greet, but were kicked out of Lerner—despite our
noble cause—because we hadn’t registered our table
in advance. (Is there a greater good than handing out
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APRIL 2, 2015
free ice cream floats?)
The debate on Sunday also started off whimsically—I even gave my introductory remarks laying
down. However, the debate quickly became serious
when Freedom, Liberty and Freedom dropped much
of their initially satirical act and directed legitimate
criticisms toward It Takes Two, a party of incumbents. Candidates for vice president for policy were
asked questions about sexual assault, and it became
impossible to maintain the comedic act.
I don’t regret running a satirical campaign. It was
fun, and I think the election process needed to be
mocked (I’m looking at you, suit-guy), even if the issues are real. The main issue our campaign focused
on is the anti-establishment sentiment resulting from
general dissatisfaction and apathy. Many have blamed
the student councils for this disinterest. Freedom,
Liberty and Freedom has capitalized on this. Perhaps
they should. There’s undoubtedly a ton of apathy, and
from that apathy stem problems with council transparency and inaction.
But the problem is that we only raise our concerns
about student council once a year, when the elections
come around. Witnessing the critiques of student
government—and participating in them myself—could
not have made this more clear: We, as a community,
forget about the problem we have with student government. And unless it’s an urgent matter like our
recent Bacchanal fiasco, we fail to work with student
government on issues that matter to us.
Last year, Alexandra Svokos, CC ’14 and the former
editor in chief of Bwog, wrote a column about the importance of paying attention to student government.
In it, she laid out ways to be informed and involved,
because “we do ourselves a disservice by not being
an informed population.” The onus isn’t and can’t be
solely on student government to get us to pay attention and work. It is impossible for student government alone to generate interest and engage students.
Whoever wins should remember this. I mocked the
name “It Takes Two” because it can read as a passiveaggressive dig toward uninvolved voters. Is that so far
off from what we need to be told? It’s easy to criticize
the establishment for failing to engage us, but a lot
harder to admit that we are at least as responsible for
failing to engage ourselves.
Ideally, the student body will now magically throw
itself into motion and offer its expertise, work ethic, and
attention to the student councils. But that won’t happen. So to whoever wins: Please reach out and drag us—
even if we’re kicking and screaming—to the table. We’re
lazy, and we need someone to bring us out of that lull.
We’ll try not to be too disgruntled.
Daniel Garisto is a Columbia College junior majoring
in physics. He is a former editorial page editor for
Spectator. Danthology runs every Wednesday.
STAFF EDITORIAL
Endorsements for student council executive boards
Yesterday, the polls opened for Columbia students to place
their votes for next year’s student government leaders. For
Columbia College Student Council’s executive board, voters
have the option to elect party members as individuals—with the
exception of the president and the vice president for policy—
because, as of last year, parties are no longer elected as an entire
ticket. For the Engineering Student Council’s executive board,
each candidate is voted for separately. The same is true with the
General Studies Student Council executive board.
After watching the candidates speak at the debates, the
Editorial Board presents the following recommendations for
the executive boards of CCSC, ESC, and GSCS.
CCSC
President & Vice President for Policy
During the CCSC executive board debate, two presidentVP for policy duos stood out: Peter Bailinson, CC ’16, and Abby
Porter, CC ’17, of the It Takes Two party, and Ben Makansi, CC
’16, and Vivek Ramakrishnan, CC ’16, of the Freedom, Liberty
and Freedom party.
Bailinson, the current CCSC president, and Porter, the current vice president for communications, both have valuable
experience as incumbents. Bailinson and University Senator
Marc Heinrich, CC ’16, can be credited with opening the lawns
to students for this year’s Bacchanal, and Porter was a key student figure in discussions regarding the newly implemented
sexual respect education workshops.
However, missing CCSC minutes—Porter’s responsibilities currently include uploading CCSC meeting minutes to
yourCCSC.com, a duty that she has ignored—that dogged
It Takes Two during the debate exemplify a disconcerting
lack of transparency. Part of being a student government
leader is communicating with the student body. The fact
that Bailinson and Porter have not managed to adequately
express the merits of their incumbency—emphasized by not
one, but two satirical parties running on the “student apathy”
gag—is telling.
The Freedom, Liberty and Freedom Party is the cynic’s alternative to It Takes Two. Makansi and Ramakrishnan would
be fresh faces for CCSC and, despite their joking demeanor
(Ramakrishnan came to the debate draped in an American flag),
both gave off an unexpected air of seriousness at the debates.
The two clearly came prepared: Right off the bat, Makansi called
out Bailinson for supposedly taking more credit than was deserved for a financial aid initiative.
However, it’s significantly easier to critique than to actually
achieve something. One criticism extended by the Freedom,
Liberty and Freedom Party was that It Takes Two would have
to carry out one plank of its platform every five days to fulfill all
the “promises” made during its campaign. However, an abundance of ideas should not be counted against a party, especially
not in the race for executive board. In fact, the Freedom, Liberty
and Freedom Party’s lack of any original proposals, or any kind
of substantive platform, makes the party difficult to endorse.
With this in mind, the Editorial Board does not endorse
either party’s ticket for president and VP for policy.
Vice President for Finance
We endorse Sameer Mishra, CC ’16, of It Takes Two, as he is
the only qualified candidate for the position. During the debate,
Mishra clearly demonstrated his experience working with finances in other student groups and he clearly understands the
problems students face: His example of working on updating
the vendor list, a constant source of stress for student groups,
demonstrates his familiarity with the issues. We are confident
in his abilities—he stood out during the debate as an informed
candidate with very specific proposals—and believe he is the
best choice for VP for finance.
Vice President for Campus Life & Vice President
for Communications
Kelly Echavarria, CC ’16, and Grayson Warrick, CC ’16, of It
Takes Two, are the only valid candidates for their respective positions. Echavarria planned Glass House Rocks and has experience in event planning from her leadership positions in EcoReps
and Columbia Women in Business. Warrick currently serves as
the academic affairs representative, and previously served as a
class representative for and vice president of the class of 2016.
While neither Echavarria nor Warrick performed well during
their debates, they are better choices than their counterparts in
the Community Party for a Better Tomorrow: Daniel Chi, CC
’16, and Danielle Crosswell, CC ’17. However, given that both
Chi and Crosswell are running on a satirical ticket, to say that
Echavarria and Warrick are “substantially better choices” is to
say almost nothing at all.
Note: Liam Bland recused himself from the CCSC executive
board endorsement because of his relationship with one of the
parties involved.
ESC
President & Vice President of Policy
As both tickets were inclined to remind us during the debate,
all of the candidates would likely do a good job in their respective positions. However, the Editorial Board endorses Robert
Ying, SEAS ’16, and Harry Munroe, SEAS ’17, of “Delta SEAS”
for ESC president and VP of policy.
During the debate, Ying showed a deep understanding of
policy and campus issues, and presented the platform of SEAS
clearly and convincingly. Moreover, his extensive past experience as part of a significant number of committees gives him
an edge in this race.
Both VP of policy options stumbled during the debate. For
example, when asked about Columbia’s sexual respect education initiative, Munroe expressed satisfaction with the program’s implementation and rollout—this is in stark contrast to
the general student body response to the new requirements.
However, Munroe’s experience as a class representative and
academic affairs representative sets him above Meaghan Hurr,
SEAS ’16, of “Blue is the New Black,” who lacked a meaningful
background in student government.
Vice President of Finance
Sarah Yang, SEAS ’17 and current student services representative, is another promising member of SEAS. Yang’s focus on “innovation and collaboration” was refreshing, and her
membership on the finance committee makes her a compelling
candidate. Yang also proposed changes to security and surveillance of “controversial” student groups, an issue that came to the
fore toward the end of last semester—despite the relative furor
it inspired, Yang was the only candidate to mention the topic.
Yang was also the only candidate running for the position of VP
of finance who bothered to show up for the debate—this kind
of absenteeism on the part of Blue is the New Black’s candidate,
Neha Jain, SEAS ’17, is inexcusable. For this reason, the Editorial
Board is endorsing Sarah Yang of Delta SEAS.
Vice President of Campus Life
Chaun Michael Medeiros, SEAS ’16, who described his experiences working on Glass House Rocks, was an enlivening
addition to an otherwise lackluster field. Although Medeiros
is running independently, his previous experience and performance at the debate makes him the Editorial Board’s choice for
ESC’s VP of campus life.
Vice President of Communications
During the ESC debates, Robert Adelson, SEAS ’17, of Delta
SEAS, was grilled about a platform proposal to introduce “universal non-spotty outdoor Wi-Fi”—despite the improbability
of the proposal’s fulfillment, Adelson demonstrated a much
better grasp of student desires than his opponent, Siddharth
Ramakrishnan, SEAS ’16, of Blue is the New Black. His experience working within student government makes him the
Editorial Board’s choice for ESC’s VP of communications.
GSSC
President
During the debates, Elizabeth Heyman, GS/JTS ’16, mentioned problems with campus accessibility and integrating GS
students with the rest of the Columbia community. Her opponent, Michael Neier, GS ’17, focused more on addressing the
issue of events on campus and the lack of integration of GS
students into undergraduate campus life. He cited his background in corporate event planning as a strength that would
allow him to expand the event series for GS students. He also
seemed comfortable with the idea of speaking with students to
find out what their concerns were—he noted, during the debate,
that he knew most of the students in attendance.
When questioned about how specific her platform is to GS,
Heyman spoke of issues universal to all Columbians, saying
that the diverse makeup of the student body made it difficult
to focus proposals on any one school. The idea that addressing issues relevant to all Columbians, as opposed to pandering
specifically to one electorate, was rather refreshing. Because
of this, the Editorial Board endorses Elizabeth Heyman for
GSSC president.
Vice President of Communications
At the debates, Donna Askari, GS ’17 and the current VP of
communications, expressed a desire to continue working on
a number of current projects, including improving the GSSC
website, a source of frustration for many GS students. Her
emails to the GS student body are noted as a particular highlight of her incumbency, which makes sense given her position.
As such, the Editorial Board endorses Donna Askari for VP of
communications.
Vice President of Finance
Dalitso Nkhoma, GS ’16 and the current chief finance representative for GSSC, is the most experienced candidate for the
position of VP of finance. As such, the Editorial Board endorses
her for the role of VP of finance.
We do not endorse any of the candidates for VP of policy or
VP of campus life.
EDITORIAL & OPINION
APRIL 2, 2015
PAGE 5
Confessions of a departing
drug dealer
BY ANONYMOUS
What do I have to do?
Participation involves clicking on the link to the survey
that is provided in the invitation email that will arrive on
April 6. The web-based survey will be sent to your email account by Westat, the research firm administering the survey
for us and the other participating universities. The subject
line of the email will be “Campus Climate Survey.” For most
students, completing the survey will take no more than 20
minutes. The data you provide will be completely confidential. No personal identifying information will appear in the
survey data file. When you submit your survey, you will receive a link to a $5 Amazon gift card.
My overarching aim as a Mailman researcher and faculty
member is to help create a base of knowledge that will promote sexual health. I view the full array of behaviors that fall
under the rubric of sexual misconduct as elemental barriers
to sexual health for individuals and for communities. This
survey is an opportunity to add to our collective knowledge
and to create a database that should systematically make
America’s campuses safer and healthier. Please support the
effort.
Bacchanal is approaching, and with it comes a week of excitement.
Midterms are long forgotten, receding more and more into the past with
each new day. The tarps are pulled off of the lawns, and everyone prepares
for one well-deserved day of pure fun. Part of this preparation, at least
for a good segment of the population here, involves acquiring a bevy of
“fun-assisting” substances.
That’s where I come in. Weed, edibles, MDMA, coke—I have sold
all of these over the past week, in staggering amounts. Several hundred
students (and I would call that a conservative estimate) will be smoking
my weed this Saturday. There will be more than 100 students rolling on
MDMA, thanks to me alone.
Some might say that I should feel ashamed for being responsible for
so much drug use, but I really don’t see any reason why I should feel
remorse. Most people agree about the relative safety of marijuana at this
point, and I would even argue that pure MDMA is safer than alcohol,
“pure” being the key word. MDMA, or “molly,” has garnered a pretty
negative reputation, but this is overwhelmingly due to the fact that many
street dealers cut it with other, more dangerous substances (something I
would never even think of doing in a million years). I always make sure
that people know what the proper dosage is, and nothing would make
me happier than for everyone to have a safe, fun time.
In a way, the liquor store attendants who do not check IDs generate
much more risk than I ever do. I make sure that everyone who walks
out of my room is well-equipped with the knowledge needed to use
substances safely. This is motivated by anxiety more than anything else,
to be honest. Two of the worst experiences of my life have come when
people have severely hurt themselves using drugs bought from me.
Though both incidents took place a good while ago, they still keep me
up at night sometimes. I have been responsible for some serious injuries,
and that is something I will always carry with me. Having learned from
past mistakes, I do my best to make sure there is no chance of something
like that happening again. (Don’t worry, parents, your kids’ drug dealer
is looking out for them!)
Fraternity brothers, artists, athletes, timid first-years (easily
discernable by the almost deferential manner in which they speak to
me), jaded seniors, General Studies students, Columbia College Student
Council members, resident advisors, Spectator writers, a couple of my
own TAs, and probably someone from every sizable demographic on
campus—they have all come to me in the last few days for their various
fixes. And I love every second of it. I find something so fulfilling and
exciting in being the person that people rely on for fun. There was a
period when I was aware that I was losing money—not even to mention
the time I was spending—doing this. But it results in a rush that’s honestly
somewhat addicting, funnily enough.
And yet, despite how exhilarating a ride it has been, I’m calling it quits.
Operation Ivy League still looms large over this campus, and if any law
enforcement group were to turn its focus back on our campus, I would be
a top target. I know that I would not be able to enjoy myself at Bacchanal
thinking about all the grams and pounds of various substances just sitting
in my room, waiting to be seized. The stress is no longer worth it. I feel
as if every policeman or Public Safety officer I walk by is sizing me up,
and my network is scarily large at this point. Of course the vacuum will
be filled—market forces at work and all that. People are resourceful here
and I can testify that they will put in the time to find the drugs of their
choice. To put it simply, things are not going to change in the long run.
I am so happy knowing that at Bacchanal a large portion of all the
fun will be thanks to me. I’ve always been less interested in selling
“study drugs” like Adderall and Ritalin, even though there is a huge,
thirsty market for those here—there’s already enough of a stress culture
surrounding academics. Fighting that stress culture, making sure that
people are able to smoke a fat joint after being in Butler all day—that’s
what has sustained me for so long.
So to all of you attending Bacchanal: Enjoy! There will certainly be
libations aplenty, but if for some reason you would prefer not to flirt with
alcohol poisoning, hit me up sooner rather than later. After Saturday rolls
around, the only person I will be providing for will be myself. If you see
someone in the crowd with bloodshot eyes or dilated pupils having an
especially good time, just know that I am likely responsible. I cannot say
how Columbia’s War on Fun will turn out, but I have certainly done my
best to win at least a few battles.
Debra S. Kalmuss is a professor of population and family
health at the Mailman School of Public Health.
The author has been granted anonymity due to the illicit nature of this
content.
infrequently you go to the gym—and may soon do so. Regulations
in the Affordable Care Act allow for employers to provide their
workers with financial incentives to don wearable devices, but
what the tens of thousands of employees now participating in
such corporate wellness programs may not realize is that companies are hoping to reap health care savings by identifying and
tracking employees with high-risk profiles. A spokesperson for
Cigna reported that the company’s effort to track users at risk for
diabetes led to double-digit improvements in its risk profiles, allowing it to move some users from classifications of “chronic” to
“at risk.” Such an ability to use data to identify risk is not inherently dangerous, but it can and may be easily abused without protective regulations.
While I’m worried about what companies may choose to do
with my data, I’m in many ways more worried about what the
government is already doing: compiling a network of its citizens’
communications and connections. From 2001-11, the U.S. government collected the metadata—email accounts and IP addresses—of all Internet communications with at least one participant
outside the U.S. or for which no participant was known to be
a U.S. citizen. According to The Guardian, this bulk collection
program was approved by a federal judge sitting on the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret surveillance panel, every
90 days. The key word here is secret. The government was able to
create this network of communications in and out of the country
without citizens agreeing to any type of privacy policy or legislation to protect themselves from potential negative repercussions.
This doesn’t only affect actual terrorists. Since 2007, the
Transportation Security Administration has spent over $1 billion
training staff to identify terrorists based on unproven ideas about
“microexpressions” like “a bobbing Adam’s apple” or “arriving
late” as signals. If our emails—in particular, those of hard-hitting
journalists or activists—are judged by a similar standard, then we
should be deeply concerned about whom the government may
use its discretion to watch. Americans deserve the ability to communicate free from the fear of investigation based on arbitrary
criteria.
In New York, we’ve already seen an example of similar farreaching discretion used to quiet protest. In 2012, the state of New
York ordered Twitter to hand over 3 1/2 worth of data—tweets, as
well as their dates, times, durations, and IP addresses—belonging
to a user who was arrested for disorderly conduct during an
Occupy Wall Street protest. Using these data, the state would have
been able to gain a comprehensive view of the user’s location and
communication habits for an extended period of time without the
requirements that must be met for a search warrant. This erosion
of privacy is chilling.
Leaving Facebook is not nearly enough to fight this erosion. My
current withdrawals from specific technologies are nothing more
than a silent personal protest: I stopped using Facebook because it
was easy, but I’ve been unable to will myself to stop using Gmail.
So long as I consistently provide my data to any online service, my
digital stockpile will still be out there for companies and the government to aggregate and use. Worse, and perhaps less obvious,
is the fact that as long as anyone I communicate with continues
to use such services, my footprint will still be out there for the
plundering.
Actual privacy takes a village, which makes it unlikely that
our privacy will be restored by individuals choosing to give up
their beloved technological services. Instead, it will likely come
through some combination of technological and legislative
shifts—and it is up to us to demand them.
On the technology side, many privacy-respecting services
already exist: Thunderbird integrates encryption easily into
email, Signal and TextSecure take care of encryption for texts,
and SpiderOak offers an encrypted Dropbox-like service.
Unfortunately, few of these services are popular. Widespread
adoption will require these services to look and feel as comfortable to users as those we are already using. In addition, because
these changes limit ad revenue, we may have to get used to paying
for services with money instead of our data.
Some privacy-respecting legislation already exists, but much
more is needed. Such legislation would need not only protect
individuals from malicious uses of their data but also expose—and
potentially curb—government data collection and use.
In the meantime, each of us will have to navigate the trade-offs
inherent to the data we give away, and who we give it to.
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF PAULINA MANGUBAT
Data drives change: A survey aimed at safer campuses
BY DEBRA S. KALMUSS
Next Monday, April 6, you will receive an email requesting
your participation in a web-based survey about sexual misconduct at Columbia. The study will assess students’ experiences with sexual harassment, stalking, sexual coercion, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence while at Columbia.
It will also seek students’ perceptions of the campus climate
regarding sexual misconduct and the availability of resources
and services. Columbia is joining 26 other universities, each
one a member of the Association of American Universities, in
this effort. It will be the largest survey yet of views and experiences concerning sexual misconduct, on or off college campuses. Questions will undoubtedly arise about the purpose
and details of the survey. To that end, Columbia has set up a
portal with additional information.
I am a member of the faculty of the Mailman School of
Public Health, where I specialize in conducting and analyzing data from surveys as well as qualitative data sources to
improve sexual and reproductive health. I am very familiar
with the AAU survey, because I was asked to serve on the
survey design team for this study. I am also responsible, along
with several colleagues here, for implementing the survey at
Columbia. Other experts participating in the survey design
team include professor Bonnie Fisher of the University of
Cincinnati and Dr. Sandra Martin of the University of North
Carolina, who were authors of the publication indicating that
one in five female undergraduates experienced some type of
sexual assault during their time in college.
I believe that the data collected from this new survey will provide a more valid and detailed quantitative assessment of sexual
misconduct than has ever existed before. The combination of
the large sample size and the quality of the research instrument
means that this study’s findings will help develop data-driven
programs and policies to prevent and respond to sexual misconduct at Columbia and elsewhere. The stakes are high. This study
is part of an essential effort to equip colleges and universities
across the nation with the empirical information needed to make
informed decisions about this persistent problem.
Why I left Facebook: A loss
of online privacy
Two months ago, I left Facebook, uninstalled
Foursquare, turned off location services, and installed applications on my phone and computer
to encrypt my emails and text messages.
These choices have not only made my life
more inconvenient—navigating Brooklyn has
DINA
become a real pain—but have also deprived me
LAMDANY
of many of technology’s subtle pleasures. Even
so, I’m sticking with these choices because I am
Flop py
worried about who has access to the data that
Disk
my digital memory traces, what they are allowed
to do with it, and just how little I know about the
answer to either of these questions.
Privacy—the ability not only to control who has access to our data,
but also to make choices free of fear of unlawful surveillance—is an
issue that concerns us, whether or not we believe ourselves to have
“something to hide.” Otherwise, we risk not only harming our personal reputations and finances, but also losing the fundamental freedoms—dissent and protest—that keep our democracy functional.
The digital memory each of us produces is vast. We regularly
provide companies with with our “personally identifiable information”—data such as a name, email, or IP address that can be used
on their own or in combination to locate or identify an individual.
Often we also provide companies with access to our entire digital
dossiers: our browsing history, emails, and complex social graphs.
These data can reveal a great deal about us as both individuals
and actors within broader society. Understanding precisely who
has access to this information matters immensely. Unfortunately,
such an understanding is elusive: We know to whom we hand
over our data willingly, but their privacy policies do little to clarify
which third-party services and advertisers receive our data and
how they may use this information.
This opacity is concerning because many of us have more to
hide than we might think. Your Fitbit or other “wearable” device
could easily inform your health insurance company of just how
Columbia will share the survey results publicly in the fall
in a manner that carefully protects all our students’ privacy.
The AAU will publicly release the aggregate results from
across the 27 participating universities.
At this point, the major, remaining variable determining
the impact of the survey is you: We need to hear all the different student voices—undergraduate, graduate, and professional —in order to paint a complete picture of our University
community. That includes students who have experienced
sexual misconduct, those who have not, and students from
the full array of gender, sexual, and racial and ethnic identities. No student group’s perspective or experience is more
or less valuable than any other’s. We need to hear from all of
you.
Dina Lamdany is a School of Engineering and Applied Science
senior majoring in computer science. She is on the executive board
of the Application Development Initiative. Floppy Disk runs
alternate Tuesdays.
NEWS
PAGE 6
APRIL 2, 2015
NYU union
could serve COLUMBIA VS NYU GRAD STUDENTS
as model
PAY
HEALTHCARE
for CU
Individual: covered by a GSAS
BY EMMA
KOLCHIN-MILLER
Spectator Staff Writer
The collective bargaining
process New York University’s
graduate student union and
administration engaged in to
agree on a contract serves as a
framework for what Columbia
graduate students hope to
achieve if they form a recognized union.
The contract, settled on
March 6, applies to NYU’s
graduate constituency and
baseline financial package,
which differ from Columbia’s.
However, the NYU contract
negotiation process provides a
model of how Columbia graduate students could collectively
bargain over funding and paycheck security, medical coverage, and teaching expectations
and training if their union is
recognized.
Though negotiations were
tense and ultimately culminated with some difficult compromises, the Graduate Student
Organizing Committee, NYU’s
graduate student union, said it
was largely pleased with the
contract, which secured increases in compensation and
health care coverage.
“We are very excited about
NYU’s contract and congratulate our colleagues down the
road,” said Paul Katz, an organizer for Graduate Workers
of Columbia, the group of
Columbia graduate students
attempting to gain union recognition, in an email. “Their
campaign has been an inspiration to us at Columbia and to the
growing movement of graduate
employees organizing across
the Northeast.”
In 2004, the National Labor
Relations Board ruled that graduate students at private universities do not have the right to
unionize, setting a precedent
that GWC is currently attempting to overturn. Graduate
students can also officially
Average
Columbia
Ph.D. student
finances
Average
NYU Ph.D.
student
with new
contract*
CHILDCARE
fellowship.
Standard stipend:
$25,336/year
Dependents: coverage varies
by department; can cost up to
$7,919/year for dependent
spouses, up to $4,194/year for
children, $12,713/year for family.
including teaching and
research
With teaching:
~$35,000/year**
Without teaching:
~$25,686/year
Contract instates 2.25-2.5%
increases/year
Individual: covered under NYU
student plan.
Dependents: medical coverage up
to ~$4,300/year for dependent
spouses, ~$3,700/year for
children, ~$7,819/year for family.
*Does not include master’s and professional services students, who had significant gains in the contract.
Students may be eligible
for one $1,000 subsidy per
academic year for each child
who is not yet in kindergarten.
This will increase to $2,000 in
the fall of 2015.
Contract will instate tax-free
childcare fund that begins
at ~$60,000 Jan 1, 2016,
increasing by ~$10,000 each
calendar year to ~$100,000.
**Teaching not guaranteed.
GRAPHIC BY EMMA VOLK
unionize with voluntary recognition from their university,
which GSOC gained from NYU
in November 2013. 98 percent
of graduate students voted in
support of forming a union in
December 2013, making GSOC
the only recognized graduate
student union at a private university in the country.
GSOC and NYU came to a
contract agreement on March
10 after 14 months of bargaining. If an agreement was not
reached, GSOC had planned to
go on a three-day strike. GSOC
members are currently in the
process of voting to ratify the
contract.
Under the contract, NYU
will pay for 90 percent of
health care premiums for
graduate students without
coverage, raise Ph.D. compensation, and increase wages at
NYU’s Polytechnic School of
Engineering from $10 to $20
per hour by the 2019-20 academic year. The contract also
includes workload security and
appointment protection.
GSOC organizers said they
had to give up some goals in
the process, including tuition
remission for master’s students
and a shorter contract.
“A shorter contract is helpful
for keeping members active
and enabling distinctive sets
of workers to determine and
fight for their own bargaining
priorities, especially in a workplace like ours where we have
turnover and changes,” Natasha
Raheja, a bargaining committee
member, said. The contract covers the next five years.
Chris Nickell, a GSOC organizer, said the contract fulfills
the union’s goal to provide support for graduate students who
most need it.
“I really hope that
we can be a model,
and it can be a less
painful process.”
—Jessica Feldman, NYU
union organizer
“It’s not everything we wanted, but it is a social justice contract. It raises up the bottom of
our unit, and that was our goal,”
Nickell said. In addition to increases in compensation and
health care coverage, Nickell
cited a new child care fund as
a significant gain.
THESHAFT
At Columbia, GWC organizers have focused on the cost
of living. In particular, they
say graduate housing costs increase at a faster rate than stipends each year. The average
stipend for a Columbia graduate student, which includes
compensation for teaching, is
$25,336 per year, according to
the Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences website.
The minimum stipend for
a fully-funded NYU Ph.D. student is $25,686 per year, not
including teaching compensation, which is about $5,000
per semester, though teaching
appointments are not guaranteed. With the contract, these
rates will increase yearly until
the contract ends in 2019-20,
amounting to about a 12.5 percent increase from the stipend
each graduate student received
this year.
Graduate students from both
NYU and Columbia have called
for improvements in health care
coverage, a priority GSOC was
fighting for up through the last
night of negotiation.
“We had to push the university that night to give us 90 percent health care, that was their
sticking point,” a bargaining
committee member said.
In an email to the NYU community, NYU Provost David
McLaughlin acknowledged the
difficult process and said that
NYU was pleased to come to an
agreement.
“Though a prolonged and
at times difficult negotiation,
both sides expressed the same
goal: achieving a fair contract.
And that was the outcome,” the
email said.
According to Nickell and
other GWC organizers, the
relationship between NYU
and GSOC was “contentious”
throughout the bargaining
process.
“There was a lot of posturing, there was a lot of intimidation,” the bargaining committee
member said.
Relations between Columbia
and GWC have not been as
publicly combative, though
Columbia has maintained
that graduate students are not
employees.
Nickell said GSOC’s contract
and the NLRB decision to review precedent should encourage Columbia to voluntarily recognize GWC.
“I think the stage is set for
something somewhat similar to
occur if Columbia’s administration sees the writing on the wall,
and that would be for a private
recognition of Columbia graduate workers,” Nickell said.
Nickell said if GWC attains
the right to unionize and graduate students elect to form an official union, GWC would need
to stay mobilized to negotiate a
satisfactory contract.
“I think they’d be ready to
have a vote to unionize, and
then move pretty quickly into
bargaining,” Nickell said. “They
would need to continue trying
to stay a step ahead of Columbia
in negotiations.”
Seth Prins, a GWC organizer,
said that the NYU contract was
a product of worker mobilization, which GWC will need to
maintain moving forward.
“They showed that sustained
worker mobilization and escalation trumps last-minute antiunion tactics from the administration,” Prins said.
Jessica Feldman, a GSOC organizer, hopes that GSOC can
serve as a model for graduate
student unions and that those
unions will have an easier negotiation process.
“I hope it’s less of a struggle for
them. I really hope that we can be
a model, and it can be a less painful process,” Feldman said.
[email protected]
THE EYE
Eye-ing you
Your guide to surviving the
Columbia housing process
theshaft.info
SINCE 1877
Weekend
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT • THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2015 • PAGE B1
‘FLEXN’ to explore race, city life through dance
BY CAUVERI SURESH
Spectator Staff Writer
In keeping with Park Avenue Armory’s tradition of
commissioning work that combines popular culture
with high art, the 2015 season opened last week with
“FLEXN.” This work explores sociopolitical issues
through Jamaican street dance known as flex, which
is “characterized by sharp, rhythmic contortion, pausing, snapping, gliding, bone-breaking, and animated
showmanship” and gained popularity in dance halls
and reggae clubs in 1990s Brooklyn.
“FLEXN” is co-directed by Brooklyn-based dancer
and choreographer Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray and theater director Peter Sellars. Gray’s work has long been
influenced by bruk-up, after his first exposure to reggae music as a young teenager. He went on to become
a pioneer of the flex dance style.
Franklin Ace Dawes, a Brooklyn native and one of
the dancers in the piece, emphasizes flex’s link with
ILLUSTRATION BY LEILA MGALOBLISHVILI
Brooklyn. “If you’re from Brooklyn, you’re flexing.
Flexing is a Brooklyn thing, like lite feet is a Harlem
thing, like popping and b-boying is a Bronx thing.”
Soon after, Sellars was approached about being a codirector for the piece and was immediately enamored
with the “brilliance of the dance form” and the “incredible work ethic and energy” of the group.
Because of the improvisational nature of flex, the
individual dancer is responsible for what is created in
each performance—every time “FLEXN” is performed,
it is different. This lent itself to Sellars’ intention to
create a forum for the dancers’ stories to be told truthfully and organically.
“One of the things about flex is the in-the-moment
sheer genius of it,” he said.
Improvisation altered the nature of Sellars’ role as
a director. Instead of telling the dancers what to do, he
worked to find a way to bring all the dancers stories
together, to create an overarching guiding force.
“What we have agreed upon is the emotional intensity
and storytelling high points. Then along the way, every performance is different, and frequently how the
dancer gets to the high point is different,” he said.
“The most important thing for me was for people to
be presenting themselves in the way they wanted to be
seen, that they were putting out stories and situations
that were theirs so nothing would be imposed on the
dancers but the opposite—that you could really feel the
culture of Brooklyn. And everyone was speaking in their
own language, which was flex.”
The dancers offer the audience an intimate look into
their creative processes and their relationships with
dance via detailed bios in the program for “FLEXN.”
James “Banks” Douglas, one of the dancers, stresses
how this sort of authenticity is necessary for the dance
form in general. “You can’t be fake with krump or flex.
If you’re fake, everyone will know,” he said.
In keeping with this desire for an honest portrayal of
SEE FLEXN, page B2
WEEKEND
PAGE B2
Best
of
APRIL 2, 2015
Iconic Dance Moves
From the Twist to the Lawnmower, every generation boasts its own unique dance moves that can bring back an instant rush of nostalgia
as soon as you hear the opening lines of their respective songs. As ridiculous as the names and actual moves can look—can anyone pull
off the awkward, stiff hand motions of the “Thriller” dance besides Michael Jackson himself?—these iconic dances serve as a tangible
reminders of past trends. More importantly, they have the power to evoke specific memories. The pull of the “Cha Cha Slide” is strong
enough to make people forget their differences for five minutes and “cha cha real smooth” at every awkward school dance and karaoke
hour. —AFRODITE KOUNGOULOS
‘Crank Dat’
Moonwalk
Popularized by Soulja Boy’s hit song of the same
name, “Crank Dat” spawned enough YouTube fan
parodies to last a million years. As much as everyone
loves to poke fun at Soulja Boy’s lackluster lyrics, he
had every preteen in America trying to “crank that
Roosevelt,” whatever that means. One of the more
complex dances on the list, “Crank Dat” begins with
jumping up to cross and uncross your legs and then
bringing your right foot behind your left leg and tapping it with your left hand. Leaning to the right, you
pivot your hips out and can cross your hands over
then lean back and snap with both hands after crossing them over your legs. After criss-crossing your
legs one more time, you step on one leg and spring
forward, spreading your arms out to “Superman.”
While this may not sound like the height of choreographic sophistication, you could score yourself major cool points by properly executing the Superman.
One of Michael Jackson’s many iconic
dance moves, the moonwalk became his signature move after the debut of his “Billie
Jean” music video. Variations of the moonwalk have been around since the 1930s, started by jazz musician Cab Calloway and used
by French mime Marcel Marceau during his
routines from the 1940s. Jackson was inspired
by a moonwalk by the dancers on “Soul Train”
and performed a version they taught him during a televised Motown special in 1983. The
moonwalk involves alternating between keeping one foot flat on the ground and the other
in a tiptoe position, giving off the illusion that
you’re stepping forward while moving backward. When properly executed, the moonwalk will leave everyone impressed by your
dance skills.
ILLUSTRATION BY JACQUELINE TAVS
‘YMCA’
“YMCA,” one of the most well-known songs
from disco group Village People, has impressively
managed to stay popular well past its release in the
’80s. At first, the song listens like a commercial for
the Young Men’s Christian Association. Though
lyricist Victor Willis denies this claim, a popular
fan theory alleges that the song is actually about
‘Pop, Lock, and Drop It’
the YMCA being a popular place for gay hookup
culture. The dance is very simple, only involving
hand movements formed into the shape of the four
letters in the title to the beat of the song. Because of
its universal instant recognition, “YMCA” always
manages to be played everywhere from sporting
events to children’s birthday parties.
The debut single from American rapper
Huey, “Pop, Lock, and Drop It” was released in
May 2007 and was Huey’s first and only hit to
reach the Billboard 100 list. The corresponding
dance that was the focal point of the music video
involves three fairly simple steps. “Popping” is
jutting out your right knee and bringing it back
in and then repeating the movement on the left
side. “Locking” is simply freezing the pose for a
second and goes immediately into a squat, with
hands clasped and raised over your head for the
“Drop” portion. The slow tempo and easy motions
made this dance a staple at every middle school
homecoming and family barbecue.
COURTESY OF PARK AVENUE ARMORY
POLITICAL
|
Inspired by the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases, the dancers use a Jamaican style of dance that was popularized in Brooklyn to portray the intersection between race and urban life.
Park Avenue Armory dance show combines street dance with social commentary
FLEXN from page B1
the artists’ stories, Gray asked the 21 Brooklynbased dancers commissioned specifically for
this project to bring in their own pieces.
“I know a lot for my dancers, we like to create. I wanted to push them to be their own artist
as, ‘Bring in a piece and see what we can create
from your vision.’”
Sellars concurred. “Everything you see on that
stage are the dancers bringing their own stories,
music, and moves to put something forward that
they’re totally connected to,” he said.
Martina “Android” Heimann, another one
of the dancers, found this freedom to create
one of the main draws of flex. “Flexing is the
first dance style where I could feel myself able
to do whatever I wanted to do and add to the
music what I felt. Flexing gives me what I was
looking for the whole time—to let myself be
free and create,” she said.
Sellars also attributes the improvisational, self-created nature to flex’s ability to be a
“dance form that can sustain emotion,” something that is especially necessary for the heavy
topics that this piece explores.
Sellars wanted to explore topics of criminal
justice and equality in America.
“Coming off of the Eric Garner and Michael
Brown cases, where the implication is that this
is a young generation of disposable people,
what was important was to show that these are
indispensable people,” he said, referring to the
deaths of two unarmed black men at the hands
of police officers earlier this year, making the
parallel especially timely.
Gray found that his dancers were working
with similar topics. “Dancers started to bring
in pieces about some people dying and we were
like, ‘This seems to be what’s on people’s minds
right now,’” he said.
“The piece started becoming its own thing.
It manifested that way. It wasn’t forced at all.”
Sellars saw “FLEXN” as an opportunity to
show the “sheer brilliance and the multidimensional lives that show range of who’s in
this.” He called it an “incredible kaleidoscope
of human emotion, that shows the multidimensionality of the human portrait that dance can
express. That is something that has such incredible power.”
“Flexing gives me what I was
looking for the whole time—to
let myself be free and create.”
—Martina Heimann, dancer
Aside from this commentary, Gray also wanted the piece to be an exploration of the nature
of flex dancing.
“Because flexing has its own language and its
own way of speaking to people, you can look at
it and interpret it in so many different ways,” he
said. He adds that its power to speak to people
is timeless, saying, “It’s not a fashion—it has so
many ways to describe what situations.”
Android, who was born and raised in
Brooklyn, finds flex as a way to “portray what
people are going through. It can be anger. It can
be happiness. It can be anything. It’s like putting a mask on,” she said. “As soon as you put
that mask on, it’s a performance for the people.
They understand and they feel empathy. Street
dancing is whatever you want. I was born in
the hood. I usually put my two cents in things.
I’m going to be political no matter what. Real
is real. You can portray where you come from,
because that’s you, that’s who you are.”
Sellars also stressed the importance of using
dance as a vehicle to express a personal take on
what’s happening in the dancer’s reality.
“These issues are always written about in
such an abstract way. It doesn’t even begin to
touch the power and brilliance of who the rising generation really is,” he said.
Dawes described the emotion behind his
piece: “In my solitary piece in ‘FLEXN,’ I’m in
a box. I can’t control my anger. I lash out. The
only thing I’ve got that makes me feel complete
is my hat when I’m in there. I can’t do what I
want to do, because it’s a small box. It’s hard to
maneuver when the walls are so close. I play a
tune called ‘Creep Street.’ I choose it because
there’s a lot of pandemonium when it plays.
That’s how I feel when I’m in there, everything
just so live, I’m just so boxed in. It’s like all
my energy and anger is just bouncing off the
walls.”
Feelings of entrapment and haunting are also
present in Calvin “Cal” Hunt’s piece. “In my
‘FLEXN’ solitary piece, I’m in jail for life but I
love somebody and I’ll never get another chance
to argue with them or anything like that. There
are so many things I didn’t get to do,” he said.
“It’s haunting me now I’m in this jail. That’s
to a song called ‘See You In My Nightmares’ by
Kanye West. I like that we get to do that in this
show. We don’t have a limit. You know, Peter’s
not telling us, ‘Guys, don’t do that. It’s going
to offend someone.’ We really get to go there.”
Gray also echoes Sellars’ assertion that this
dance style uncovers our shared and distinct
humanity, reminding the viewer that we are just
as human as one another, while also speaking
to the uniqueness to all our stories.
“All these styles symbolize how we’re
different,” he said, referring to the different implications of styles like gliding, bone-breaking
(where the dancer creates the illusion that his
movement is causing their bones to break), and
pauzin (where the dancer exaggerates different effects to make the moves appear as though
someone is pressing play and pause on them).
The collaboration and open dialogue that
are a guiding force for the project are furthered
with public conversations that preface each
performance. This conversation, led by the creative team as well as community leaders and
public officials, seeks to address specifically
law enforcement policies and the juvenile justice system.
The “FLEXN” creative team and Park
Avenue Armory are also engaging underserved
public middle and high school students with
free performances accompanied by initiatives
like art-making workshops and a masterclass
led by Gray and company members.
Gray found this sort of engagement with
the youth crucial to what they were trying to
achieve with the piece.
“There’s no voice for kids in their communities
to come out and say this is how I feel about the
situation. Everyone has a voice to bring in. This is
the way they express their feelings and its through
dance and they need to be heard also,” he said.
For this reason, Sellars describes “FLEXN”
as “a real positive piece against a very negative
system. This is people stepping forward with
their dignity, brilliance and best ideas. And that
makes it pretty exhilarating.”
“When you come see the show please come
with an open heart, a lot of energy, a lot of love,
a place of freedom of expression,” Gray said.
FLEXN runs from March 25 to April 4 at Park
Avenue Armory.
[email protected]
APRIL 2, 2015
WEEKEND
PAGE B3
The one where
‘Friends’ is pretty
dated
I
COURTESY OF YEARS & YEARS
UP AND COMING
|
The band has recently won BBC’s Sound of 2015 award and achieved a No. 1 hit with their single “King.”
Years & Years discuss creepy fan art, sportswear
BY NOAH JACKSON
Spectator Senior Staff Writer
If you haven’t heard of Years & Years yet,
pay attention.
The U.K. three-piece has experienced a stratospheric rise to fame over the past year, winning
BBC’s Sound of 2015 award and snagging a No. 1
hit with their danceable single, “King.”
Much of the hype is focused on Olly
Alexander, the band’s frontman, vocalist,
and rising actor, most recently seen in Lone
Scherfig’s “The Riot Club.” An R&B lover,
Alexander imbues the band’s catchy electropop
with a soulful vibe that distinguishes their music from the mass of synth-laden SoundCloud
efforts. We caught up with him to discuss the
group’s origins, reclaiming sportswear, and
strange gifts from Years & Years’ fans.
Noah Jackson: How did Years & Years form?
Olly Alexander: Mikey, the bassist, came
over from Australia about six years ago
and moved to London. He wanted to
start a band, so he advertised online on
a finding-bandmates website, and Emre
responded to the Lonely Hearts Band ad.
I met Mikey a few months later at a house
party. I had been in bands when I was
younger but I stopped when I moved to
London when I was 18. I wanted to be in
a band again, so me, Mikey, and Emre met
up, and we started writing songs together.
NJ: Your music is such a wild mix of styles. Who
brings what to the table?
OA: What’s good about being in a band is that
each individual’s creative input comes
from everything they’ve grown up on
and everything they’ve ever listened
to and are inspired by. With us you get
three weird combinations. Mikey grew
up listening to a lot of classical music and
then got into Metallica and Dr. Dre and
Radiohead. Emre loves Radiohead, too,
but he grew up listening to the Beatles,
Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, and I
grew up listening to Stevie Wonder, Joni
Mitchell, more kind of singer-songwriters, and I’m also really into R&B and
house music. We’re just trying to shove
all of those influences into one hole.
NJ: As well as being a musician, you’re also a rising actor. What came first, film or music?
OA: I was making music first. I started writing songs when I was about ten years old,
then started playing in bands when I was a
teenager. The acting thing happened when
I was about 16 or 17, and I had to stop playing music. You get really different things
from both of them, but if you want to create something, being a musician is way
more fulfilling since you actually make
the music yourself and perform the music
yourself. You’re involved in every process,
whereas with acting you’re normally only
involved in one part of the process, delivering lines that someone else has written
in someone else’s movie. For that reason,
music has been more creatively fulfilling.
NJ: You’ve been touring across the U.K. and the
U.S. for the past few months. How’s the
live show turning out?
OA: We’ve always made it our No. 1 priority to
really deliver live, so we’ve spent a lot of
time working out how we can play everything live onstage and make sure the experience is really great for the audience.
It’s quite an energetic show but there
are some slower songs as well, a variety,
I guess. We’ve been taking out new songs
on tour, and because the album’s basically
finished now we have loads of new material to play to people.
NJ: Onstage you’ve repped U.K. sportswear
brands like Palace and Fila. Is that a deliberate part of the Years & Years image?
OA: It’s definitely part of what I like to wear,
but I don’t think Mikey and Emre would
be caught dead in it. I like being comfortable, and maybe I’m reclaiming my youth
when I was bad at sports and didn’t wear
a lot of sportswear.
NJ: Your fans seem to produce a lot of Years &
Years fan art. What’s the weirdest thing
someone’s made for you?
OA: These Russian dolls someone made of us
were pretty crazy, and I also got M&M’s
with my face on them. I get sent weird
and wacky drawings quite a lot. One of
them had my face drawn next to an alien
with love hearts. I guess we were meant to
be married or something. Someone made
stamps with our faces as well.
Years & Years performed at (Le) Poisson
Rouge in Greenwich Village on Tuesday. The
band’s upcoming debut album will be released
later this year.
[email protected]
Feminist artist Joan Semmel explores female body, lust
BY LIPIKA RAGHUNATHAN
Spectator Staff Writer
This Thursday at Alexander Gray Associates,
striking works about the female body, presented
by feminist painter Joan Semmel, will raise provocative questions about body issues, lust, and
the aging process.
“Joan Semmel: Across Five Decades” endeavors to provide a full retrospective of the artist’s
repertoire. Semmel uses her work to explore the
female figure and show eroticism in a response
to the way the media treats female sexuality and
bodily autonomy. Semmel paints nude portraits
of herself and other women—her self-portraiture
is especially prominent in her later years. The
exhibit shows five decades of her work, chronicling her changes in style through abstract art
and portraits.
“That moment when she shifted that perspective to the pictorial body neck-down, it’s a really
important one—not only in reaffirming through
the body, but it’s her own body. It’s the idea that
she’s not objectifying another body, it’s her own
self that’s being depicted and moments of intimacy
between her and her partner,” Ursula Davila-Villa,
senior director at Alexander Gray Associates, said.
“Those images really speak to issues of vulnerability and intimacy and an imperfect female
body. At the time, what she really saw overall in
the public here was an idealized female body,
highly sexualized for male eyes rather than sexuality. That was claimed for a female perspective,” she said.
Semmel began painting at an important time
for women’s rights and autonomy. Notable
events, including Rosa Parks’ protest and the formation of the National Organization for Women
(NOW), were sources of inspiration that punctuated her career. However, her work was not
COURTESY OF ALEXANDER GRAY ASSOCIATES
BODY | The artist’s paintings depict the female form, especially during the aging process. Much of
Semmel’s later work is self-portraiture, seeking to reclaim the female body from objectification.
necessarily a response to these movements.
“I think it has to do more with issues of positioning the female body as a vehicle of agency,”
Davila-Villa said. “At the time, 1970s in New
York, female bodies were not depicted in that
way. Currently, what she is really thinking of is
aging bodies complete the invisible in everyday
lives. So presenting the aging bodies has to do
with bringing visibility to issues that are otherwise invisible in the cultural realm.”
While Semmel’s work is innovative, it must be
considered not as anachronistic within a larger
narrative of male artistry, but rather an exemplar
in a long line of feminist artwork.
“The history of female artists depicting the
female body is very long and it goes beyond and
before Joan,” Davila-Villa said. “I think Joan has
been the living voice and the pioneer in not only
being part of the feminist movement of the ’70s,
but also in continuing to raise issues that have to
do with feminist concerns that have to do with
the decades she has lived across, through her
work, in topics that are of her courtesy.”
The painter took matters into her own hands
to show that the female body does not necessarily have to be sexual.
“It’s less so about spectatorship and more a
broader comment on culture, and media perception in the 1970s about the female body and the
aging body,” Davilla-Villa said.
Joan Semmel: Across Five Decades is on view
at Alexander Gray Art Gallery at 510 West 26th
St. from April 2 to May 16.
[email protected]
f you ever hear me say
anything witty, chances are I’m just quoting a
line from “Friends.” I have
watched Ross say Rachel
and seen Underdog get away
REBECCA
more times than I can count,
POT TASH
and Netflix’s recent acquiCo l lege
sition of the show has not
helped the obsession.
RuinedTV
Which is why writing this
particular column is so upsetting.
In some ways, “Friends” was a progressive show. It was among the first of the nowpopular friends-growing-up-in-NYC genre. It
featured a gay character pre-“Will & Grace,”
though Ross’ ex-wife’s sexuality is played
for laughs quite often. And it allowed two of
its main characters to have children out of
wedlock.
Yet in many ways, the show now seems like
a relic of the ’90s—particularly in how it handles gender norms and sexuality. Chandler is
constantly humiliated by the mere existence
of his trans father, and all the male characters’ “effeminate” habits are mocked throughout the show. In “The One Where Phoebe
Runs,” Joey begins crafting and hanging up
pictures of flowers in his apartment. His redecoration makes him particularly emotional,
which leads him to exclaim, horrified, “I’m a
woman!”
In another episode, Ross and Joey take the
best nap of their lives together—but swear
never to do it again, lest someone find them
and assume they were doing something else.
And it is a recurring joke that Monica is
stronger than Chandler, a constant source of
embarrassment for the latter, whose manliness is thus called into question.
In some ways, “Friends” was
a progressive show. It was
among the first of the nowpopular friends-growing-upin-NYC genre. It featured a
gay character pre-“Will &
Grace.”
It’s easy to say that “Friends” was just
a product of its time. This is the justification we often use and probably rightly so.
It would be hard, for instance, to fault “I
Love Lucy” for Lucy and Desi’s narrowly
defined gender roles. I can’t expect hit TV
shows to be ahead of their time—after all, if
a show differs too much from mainstream
values, people won’t watch it, and if people
don’t watch it, it doesn’t stay on air for ten
seasons. So maybe “Friends” is just a product of a decade largely devoid of conversations about sexuality and gender in the mass
media.
That’s not to say that the show didn’t
break boundaries. GLAAD even includes it
on its list of the TV shows that “helped shape
national attitudes on same-sex couples and
marriage equality.”
But that doesn’t mean that I can or should
forgive the show without qualification and
laugh away the sexist jokes. So what am I
to do when my beloved Chandler mocks his
father’s necklace choice or shies away from
even the slightest hint of effeminacy?
I cannot—and should not—just pretend
that the problems aren’t there. But it is fair, I
think, to watch this and other shows with one
eye on the past. If a television show aired today with some of the same jokes as “Friends”
makes, I might not be able to watch it.
But “Friends” is not a show about today.
Nor is “I Love Lucy.” They worked and even
broke boundaries in their own times. So
while it is fair to note and acknowledge the
problems in older TV shows, it also seems
unfair to judge them too harshly for those
problems.
Of course, it bears noting that not all old
TV shows’ problems can be explained away
by calling them products of their time. “Amos
’n’ Andy” was pulled off air after two years
thanks to NAACP protests, and I can’t get behind the smart-but-ugly man, dumb-but-pretty girl trope on “The Big Bang Theory.” Some
shows are homophobic, racist, or otherwise
offensive. Some shows are just too outrageous to watch. But I don’t think “Friends” is
one of them.
Despite its problems, “Friends” is still
good television—the envy of countless modern producers and writers. Maybe the solution is to watch it as a reminder of how things
have changed. And maybe I’ll just stop laughing so hard at certain jokes.
Rebecca Pottash is a Columbia College senior majoring in American studies and sociology. College Ruined TV runs monthly.
WEEKEND PAGE B4
APRIL 2, 2015
‘Sometimes I Sit and Think’
Flipside
Guide
WHEREIT’SAT
Time: Already available
Cost: $10
Rating: »»»«
Barnett’s new album poised to make
her one of this year’s breakout artists
BY NICHOLAS CHO
Spectator Staff Writer
Spring may have just begun, but “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and
Sometimes I Just Sit,” Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist
Courtney Barnett’s new album, is already set to be a strong contender
for best debut album of the year.
“Sometimes I Sit,” which was released on March 24, showcases
Barnett’s now-trademark sound of simple instrumentals, golden lyrics,
and spoken vocals.
Barnett generated a lot of buzz from her 2012 EP “I’ve Got a Friend
called Emily Ferris” and widely praised appearances at both the 2013 and
2014 CMJ Music Marathon festivals in New York City. The release of
“Sometimes I Sit” caps nearly three years of hype for the rocker’s debut,
and Barnett has delivered an album that is well worth the wait.
The instrumentation is fairly simple, even generic. The strength of this
album lies in Barnett’s lyric-rich stories that stem from contemplations
on the little things in life, which then expand into metaphors for subjects
like love, isolation, and heartbreak.
Take the song “Small Poppies,” which sounds like a slow Texas blues
jam on an acid trip. Barnett begins the track by singing “I stare at the lawn
/ It’s Wednesday morning / It needs a cut / But I leave it growing.” She
then goes from the sight of the overgrown lawn to the heartbreak and
anger of a nasty breakup as she sings “Who am I to deny myself a pawn
for you to use? / At the end of the day it’s a pain that I keep seeing your
name, but I’m sure it’s a bore being you” before ending it with “I dreamed
I stabbed you with a coat hanger wire.”
As shown in “Small Poppies,” Barnett’s profound observations turn
her songs into reflective explorations that churn out the deepest feelings
at their climactic ends. But at other moments of the album, the lyrics
are not as introspective and instead just capture the feelings of daily life.
“Depreston” is one of the lighter songs off of “Sometimes I Sit,” with instrumentals that are vaguely reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac.
Its lyrics describe Barnett’s depressing time of searching for a new
home in the Australian suburb of Preston with simple detached observations like “We drive to a house in Preston / We see police arresting a man
with his hand in a bag / How’s that for first impressions.” Another song,
“An Illustration of Loneliness (Sleepless in New York),” which was inspired by her hectic time in New York for the 2013 CMJ Music Marathon,
is a song about Barnett missing her partner back home in Australia while
WHEREIT’SAT
Time: Already available
Cost: $6.99
Rating: »»»»
COURTESY OF MOM+POP RECORDS
BOLD | Though most of the songs on her new album are introspective, Barnett does not lose her trademark edginess.
she tries to fall asleep as she repeatedly sings, “I’m thinking of you too.”
Even with softer songs like those, Barnett does not lose the edginess
that she had in her previous releases in “Sometimes I Sit.” “Pedestrian
At Best” is auditory mental chaos, and it captures Barnett in a fit of hysteria and rage with rambling lyrics like “I love you / I hate you / I’m on
the fence it all depends on whether I’m up I’m down I’m on the mend
transcending all reality.” It then goes into its scathing chorus, “Put me on
a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you,” and ends with “I think you’re a
joke but I don’t find you very funny.”
What this album shows is that one of Barnett’s biggest strengths is
writing songs that connect with its listener. When listening to “Sometimes
I Sit,” there are moments when you cannot help but feel that Barnett understands you. In “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party,”
Barnett struggles to decide whether or not to get out of the house for a
potentially boring time, which is captured by the chorus line that many
people have felt before: “I wanna go out but I wanna stay home.”
With Barnett on the cusp of breaking out, as she already has three
sold-out shows in New York scheduled for May, “Sometimes I Sit” seems
like the release that will push her over the edge and into the mainstream,
where she deserves to be.
Courtney Barnett’s “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just
Sit” was released on March 24.
[email protected]
COURTESY OF ASTHMATIC KITTY RECORDS
SUCCESS | The album is Stevens’ most critically acclaimed to
date, due to its polished sound.
‘Carrie & Lowell’
Sufjan Steven reaches a mature
sound with new album
BY COCO DOWLING
Spectator Senior Staff Writer
In his most recent album’s opening track, “Death With Dignity,” Sufjan
Stevens sings “Every road leads to an end.” Fittingly, Stevens’ newest
album, “Carrie & Lowell,” feels like a final and natural destination for
Stevens’ long musical road, with its stripped-down production, cutting
lyrics, and quivering vocals.
Throughout his rather prolific collection of 12 albums and EPs, Stevens
has experimented with everything from synthpop on his 2010 effort “The
Age of Adz” to highly developed orchestral sounds on his 2005 collection
“Illinois.” In “Carrie & Lowell,” Stevens creates a distinct and bare sound
that brands this album as his most mature yet.
This album is possibly his most critically acclaimed effort to date—
and for good reason. Instead of relying on gimmicks or heavy production
values to keep the listener’s interest, Stevens makes himself the album’s
vulnerable and pulsing epicenter, unapologetically painting an extremely
human and honest picture.
Structurally, “Carrie & Lowell” flows very well as a unit and creates
the feeling of a journey. Steven’s voice and lyrics weave a story that brings
the listener along on his own emotional coming-of-age.
While many of Stevens’ previous songs have referenced his childhood,
he often mixes fiction with personal experience, distancing himself from
the music. Throughout this album, the listener feels intimately connected
to Stevens and his history, especially because the album’s title, and many
of its tracks directly reference Stevens’ upbringing.
The album’s title refers to Stevens’ mother, Carrie, and stepfather,
Lowell. Carrie left Stevens and his family infamously at “that video store”
while Stevens was very young, “three, maybe four,” as sung in the track
“Should Have Known Better.” Stevens’ mother battled schizophrenia and
depression, struggled with substance abuse, and fought cancer. Stevens
visited her at the hospital just before her death in 2012. Lowell is known
to have been a very positive influence in Stevens’ life, and he stayed in
Sufjan’s life years after his five-year marriage to Carrie.
In the album’s first-released single, “No Shade in the Shadow of the
Cross,” Stevens becomes heartbreakingly honest and exposed in singing, “Fuck me, I’m falling apart” with a breathy falsetto. The theme of
human weakness, which Stevens proclaims with unabashed honesty
and strength, runs throughout the entire album. “Death With Dignity”
introduces this idea with its lyric, “Again I’ve lost my strength completely.”
Though the album explores Carrie’s death, it also looks at Stevens’
inevitable demise. As the singer turns 40 this July, he appears to have
avoided a midlife crisis and jumped straight into an acceptance of the
darkness of the human condition. The song “Fourth of July” croons, in
a distant, unaffected tone, “We’re all going to die.” The album also looks
toward God for inspiration, with Biblical references aplenty, from citing Biblical names in “Drawn to the Blood” through lyrics like “Delilah,
avenge my grief” and ““How? God of Elijah” to the inspiration for the
title of “No Shade in the Shadow of The Cross.”
Stevens also draws on Greek mythology to enhance his ideas. He
sings, “Slain Medusa, Pegasus alight from us all” in “The Only Thing,”
invokes Icarus in “John My Beloved,” and states “I will bow down (Dido’s
Lament)” in the album’s title track.
While many of the songs are slow and creeping, “Eugene” and the
album’s eponymous track provide some brief moments of levity. In these
songs, Stevens describes innocent love and uses a chirpy guitar to set
bright scenes.
Although moments of the album seem to dwell unnecessarily on unavoidable aspects of life—namely death—the album as a whole creates
a beautiful circle, leaving the listener feeling inexplicably relieved and
fulfilled.
[email protected]
WHEREIT’SAT
Time: Multiple times
Place: 239 West 45th St.
Cost: $40-$135
Rating: »»
COURTESY OF JOAN MARCUS
ECLECTIC
|
The play boasts an eccentric cast, including a repressed housewife, a hippie, a teenager, and an art historian.
‘The Heidi Chronicles’ stars Elisabeth Moss, Jason Biggs
BY ALEXANDRA VILLARREAL
Spectator Senior Staff Writer
“You either shave your legs or you don’t.”
An exasperated art historian rants about her relationship problems to a room full of odds and ends from ’70s society. One is the
spitting image of the lesbian left, another a repressed housewife
probably inspired by Betty Friedan. Then there’s a hippie and a
teenager. All the characters fulfill their stereotypes dutifully except
the art historian, who stands out.
Because what is a stereotypical art historian? The others will
grow up or out of their roles. What happens to the one woman who
doesn’t subscribe to a mold, whose beliefs aren’t fabricated to fit
the era but are genuine manifestations of her values?
These are the questions that Wendy Wasserstein pursues in
“The Heidi Chronicles.” An elegy to second-wave feminism—or
perhaps a confused cautionary tale against it—the 1988 play says
a lot in a limited timespan. It’s overwhelming. It’s disheartening.
And, at its conclusion, it feels empty.
Of course, “The Heidi Chronicles” is Wasserstein’s great masterpiece, awarded many a Tony and even a Pulitzer after it debuted on
Broadway in 1989. It could have been more poignant then, as women
in the thick of the George H.W. Bush administration, facing the aftermath of their radical adolescence, flocked to the theater. It could be
one of those ephemeral works that only resonates in its time but has
so much value when it’s first produced that it lives on for posterity.
For the millennial, the play is devastatingly pessimistic and
fairly confounding. Do we accept gender roles, maternity, and
femininity? Or do we fight the ever-waged war against the cult of
domesticity of the 19th century and push for careers? Either way,
is there any chance of achieving happiness? Is discontentment a
unique issue of womanhood, or is everyone melancholy, waiting
for the world to make sense?
These complex questions are emphasized in the return of “The
Heidi Chronicles” to Broadway almost a decade after its author’s
death. Wasserstein was famous for her humor, and there are still a
few hearty laughs in the first act of the rendition now at the Music
Box Theatre. But the second act takes itself too seriously, and its
pace is painful and tedious by the end as the protagonist, Heidi
Holland, rocks her newborn.
Directed by Pam MacKinnon, this production of “The Heidi
Chronicles” should be spectacular. The number of producers alone
speaks to the alacrity of show biz bigwigs to tag their names to
it. The ensemble is comprised of theater veterans, many from
Broadway, some from off-Broadway. Most have television and
film credits in critically acclaimed dramas like “Orange Is the
New Black” and “Mad Men.” Elisabeth Moss, who plays Peggy
Olson in “Mad Men,” is Heidi, and her two male confidants, Scoop
Rosenbaum and Peter Patrone, are brought to life by Jason Biggs
and Bryce Pinkham, respectively.
Unfortunately, Pinkham is the only actor who delivers. Fresh off
of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” where he portrayed
the charming and murderous Monty Navarro, Pinkham accepted
a more multidimensional part in “The Heidi Chronicles.” Peter is
a gay man living in a heteronormative culture. He comes out during the birth of the gay rights movement, when the passion of the
Stonewall riots is pulsing through the LGBTQ community’s veins.
But as the action unravels, so does Peter’s positive outlook.
His light, joyful disposition turns into cynicism under the Reagan
administration and then complete emotional collapse as the AIDS
epidemic exercises a greater influence on his circle. Of course, in
the play, the sociopolitical climate is implied, and so it is all the
more powerful in its implicitness. Pinkham perfectly captures the
nuances of pain, isolation, and loss with subtle potency.
Moss is also good—after all, she must be. She’s not great, however, until one of her final scenes, during which Heidi speaks at an
alumnae event for Miss Crain’s School. Moss’ monologue is packed
with substance—about what it means to be a woman, about oppression, about desire, about depression. Somehow, she digs into all of
it. For a few minutes, her audience is captivated, sympathizing—
even empathizing—with that girl on a podium at The Plaza Hotel
as she has a nervous breakdown. It’s breathtaking.
Also breathtaking are John Lee Beatty’s scenic design and Peter
Nigrini’s projections. They overlap to foster a historic mood that
helps carry the narrative, at least through the first act.
But a few flawless moments and nice sets can’t make up for what
this version of “The Heidi Chronicles” lacks: finality. Messages
are rarely as black and white as “you either shave your legs or you
don’t,” and Wasserstein’s central message gets obfuscated as the
play progresses.
What’s the point? Why did the viewer spend over two hours in
her seat, sympathizing and empathizing with an idiosyncratic art
historian? Was it all supposed to mean something? As theatergoers flood out into Times Square’s April showers, they may not be
able to pinpoint their answer.
The Heidi Chronicles runs at the Music Box Theatre at 239 West
45th St. Tickets start at $40.
[email protected]
APRIL 2, 2015
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PAGE 12
SPORTS
APRIL 2, 2015
COLUMBIA FENCING ENDOF-SEASON RANKINGS OVER
THE PAST DECADE
COURTESY OF COLUMBIA ATHLETICS
IN IT TOGETHER
|
Both the men’s and women’s teams had solid seasons, culminating in dual-national championships.
How Columbia fencing dominated
FENCING from back page
NCAA Championships, said the recruiting classes were instantly exposed to
Aufrichtig’s enthusiasm for successful
team—not just individual—performances,
which has contributed to an improvement
in Columbia’s showings at the Ivy League
Championships.
“I think that’s just trickled down to the
overall feeling of the team,” Dubrovich said
of the evolution to a more team-based
mentality. “People are motivated, people
truly care about the team’s results versus
just their own individual results … and I
think that was something that was holding
us back before.”
The concept of teamwork, though difficult to fathom with an individual sport
such as fencing, is one that has thrived under Aufrichtig’s reign due to multiple team
practices during the week, a new mindset,
and new regulations.
“To be the best fencer you can be, to
be the best teammate you can be, and to
be the best person you can be,” Aufrichtig
said of his team’s requirements. “Today’s
team members definitely want to be here.
Today’s team members love the sport for
what it is—win or lose. And they understand the concept of a team.”
THE RETENTION
A regular season record of 18-6 for the
men’s team and a nearly spotless 26-1 tally
for the women marked a historic year as
both teams finished No. 1 in the country. This marked the first time in the 14year history of the CollegeFencing360
Coaches Poll that the Light Blue men’s
squad has garnered the ranking, while
the women rebounded from last year’s
No. 6 finish.
With a 2015 national title and both
Ivy championships added to the shelf,
Columbia fencing has reached the peak
of a decade-long climb. However, the
crown does weigh heavy, bringing with
it the pressure to maintain the standard of
excellence with which Columbia fencing
has now become associated.
The question now becomes what
the Lions must do to remain the royalty
of collegiate fencing. This challenge is
something that Aufrichtig said he already addressed with the team at its last
practice.
“I said, ‘If anyone is content winning an NCAA championship and an
Ivy League championship, now is your
time to retire. Just do it, because this is
the top, this is it,’” he said. “‘But, for all
the other people that want to take the
journey of coming back and repeating
it, there’s going to be a lot of pressure, a
lot of high expectations. … If you want
to take that journey, then get ready for a
lot more work.’”
Aufrichtig noted that continued excellence does not just come from the
current team, but the incoming class of
recruits as well. Over 25 emails a week
have appeared in his inbox, with high
school fencers claiming why they have
what Columbia fencing is looking for.
Some potential recruits have even gone
so far as to prepare the spreadsheets of
their statistics with which Aufrichtig’s
selection process typically begins.
Though the historic 2014-15 Columbia
fencing season has officially come to a
close, the work required to repeat as Ivy
and national champions does not stop
in the offseason. That applies to both
coaching staff and fencers because, to
Aufrichtig, the work put in when the fans
aren’t watching is what matters most at
the end of the season.
“They can be content. We can sit back.
But no, let’s see what we can do with this,”
he said. “The title won’t mean anything,
but the way we got there I think is what’s
going to mean a lot to the team.”
[email protected]
W
O
M
E
N
1ST
2ND
2014-15
1ST
2006-07
2ND
2012-13
3RD
2008-09
4TH
2005-06,
2007-08,
2011-12
5TH
6TH
2013-14
2009-10
7TH
8TH
2010-11
9TH
2014-15
2006-07,
2013-14
3RD
4TH
2007-08
5TH
2008-09
6TH
2005-06
7TH
2012-13
8TH
9TH
10TH OR
WORSE
2011-12
2009-10,
2010-11
M
E
N
SOURCE: COLLEGE FENCING 360 COACHES’ POLL / GRAPHIC BY ELLORINE CARLE
Lacrosse falls to No. 11 Penn
BY JACQUELINE DIGGS
Spectator Staff Writer
It was a tale of two halves yesterday, when, after battling through a
closely contested first frame, the
lacrosse team was unable to hold
off No. 11 Penn, falling 10-1 at home.
Stingy netminding allowed the
Light Blue (4-6, 1-3 Ivy) to prevent
a tough Quaker offense from running away with the game early on.
Six first-half saves from first-year
goalkeeper Kelsey Gedin prevented
Penn from capitalizing on its possessions and held the deficit at 1-0
going into halftime.
But the second half did not go in
the Lions’ favor.
Penn (9-1, 3-0 Ivy) doubled its
lead just two minutes into the half
and then again 10 minutes later. The
4-0 advantage held until Columbia
sophomore defender Caroline Joy
found the back of the net to put the
Lions on the scoreboard.
In the final 10 minutes of the
game, Penn scored six unanswered
goals to finish things off.
“We did have great energy going into the game, and we definitely
upheld that in the first half,” head
coach Liz Kittleman Jackson said.
“Penn definitely grabbed the momentum in the first half and with
that they grabbed the energy going
into the second half.”
The Lions won five draw controls to Penn’s eight, which hurt the
Light Blue in the second half, as it
attempted to claw back.
“We struggled on the draw in the
second half,” Kittleman Jackson said.
“That was a huge difference maker.”
The Lions will take a break this
weekend, next playing on April 8
against Holy Cross.
[email protected]
COURTESY OF COLUMBIA ATHLETICS
HERE COMES THE SUN
|
After a long winter, sophomore Rachel Shi and the Lions are looking to build up steam.
Women’s golf gets into full swing at Seton Hall
BY APRAKRITA SHANKAR
NARAYANAN
Spectator Staff Writer
YOUJIN JENNY JANG / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
OVERWHELMED | Sophomore defender Caroline Joy scored the Light Blue’s
lone goal in its 10-1 loss. The Quakers out-shot the Lions, 22-11.
Sophomore Rachel Shi and the
women’s golf team are building up
steam after a long winter.
The women’s golf team will
head to Bedminster, New Jersey on
Thursday, for the Seton Hall Pirate
Invitational, a 36-hole event.
The par-72 course, which will
be set up at 5,802 yards, will see
the Lions square off with a trio of
fellow Ancient Eight programs—
Penn, Princeton, and Yale—as well
as a slew of programs from the
Northeast and South.
“It is a good opportunity for us
to play against good competition
within the Ivies and national competition,” head coach Amy Weeks said.
The lingering winter conditions
in the region delayed the course’s
opening to earlier this week, presenting a special challenge for the
Lions. But Weeks has found the
positive in the adversity.
“I do not know what kind of condition it will be in,” she said. “But
we are looking forward to the opportunity to get out and play.”
She added that most of the team
has played the golf course before.
The Lions are coming off a
razor-thin 316-315 victory over
Kennesaw State on March 17.
Sophomore Rachel Shi tied for first
place with a score of 77 (+5) while
junior Monique Ishikawa placed
third with a total score of 78 (+6).
The Pirate Invitational is the
second event of the season for the
Lions, who are just starting to get
back into top form after a long winter break, which was extended by
late snow cover.
As of late March, no putting surfaces on the East Coast had opened,
so the Light Blue has only had the
opportunity to play on temporary
greens.
Despite the setbacks, Weeks remains positive. “I think things are
coming together, we made a lot of
birdies when we played in Georgia,
which I thought was a very good
sign,” she said.
And the Lions are already looking ahead to conference championships, which start on April 24 and
last till April 26.
The tournament will tee off at 10
a.m. on Thursday and finish Friday
afternoon.
[email protected]
NEWS
APRIL 2, 2015
Late
student
honored
with fund
VILLA from front page
is a primarily low-income suburb of Los Angeles, home to many
first- and second-generation immigrants. Joshua was the first student from his high school to attend
Columbia.
“Many of these students are
barely understanding the importance of going to a private institution, let alone an Ivy League
school,” Julietta Villa said.
She added that her son wanted
his classmates to know that they
could attend a top college even if
they didn’t attend a private high
school.
“For him, it was very, very important that students have the
skills to go out into the real world,”
Julietta Villa said. “He believed you
need to hold really high expectations for yourself. You need to seek
opportunities.”
At Gladstone High School,
Joshua helped create student
groups to teach his peers test-taking techniques and increase students’ low participation in these
tests.
Steven Ali, CC ’18 and one of
Joshua’s friends on campus, said
this scholarship is a way to show
the many sides of Villa—something
he said was missing in administrators’ responses to his passing in
December.
“This scholarship is an opportunity to reconcile that part of
Josh with the human that did all of
those incredible things,” Ali said.
“The guy who sought to help people, the guy who would do as much
as he could for you, even if it was
just putting a smile on your face.”
Ali said Villa left a lasting impact on him and his friends at
Columbia.
“He helped us form this community in a place where normally
you find a lot of people who are just
alone together,” Ali said. “I think
that’s what I miss most about Josh.
He tempered us and sort of made
up for the flaws in each of our
characters that would have kept us
from coming together and coming
together well.”
angela.bentley
@columbiaspectator.com
PAGE 13
After criticism, Bailinson, Porter lose council elections bid
ELECTIONS from front page
room in their agenda for student feedback and did not want
to make empty promises.
“What we’re most excited about is reaching out to a
diversity of student groups
and figuring out what their
concerns are, what their
feedback is, and really shaping a policy agenda that’s responsive to those concerns,”
Ramakrishnan said.
Despite his loss, Bailinson
said he was proud of what CCSC
has accomplished over the past
year with Porter and the rest of
the council.
“While I am disappointed
that I will not be able to see
through some of my initiatives
as student council president,
I am confident that Columbia
College Student Council will
remain an important voice for
students in the coming year,”
Bailinson said in a statement to
Spectator.
In a status on his Facebook
page, Bailinson congratulated
Makansi and Ramakrishnan on
their victory, giving them advice
for the year ahead.
“I hope you don’t underestimate your mandate to listen
to the student body’s opinion—
their agenda should be your
agenda, and I hope that you are
both willing to open your eyes
to the issues of students around
you,” the status said. “Even if an
issue only affects 10 percent of
Columbia, it might *wholly* affect the lives of that 10 percent,
and that makes it worth fighting
for.”
Ramakrishnan said that he
and Makansi both greatly appreciated Bailinson’s status.
Porter declined to comment
on the election results.
Reactions from the rest
of executive board
Joining Makansi and
Ramakrishnan on the executive
board will be the three other
members of It Takes Two, who
won their individual races for
the remaining vice president
positions.
Vice
President
for
Communications-elect Grayson
Warrick, CC ’16, and Vice
President for Finance-elect
Sameer Mishra, CC ’16, said
that while they are sad their
COURTESY OF IT TAKES TWO
ELECTION RESULTS |
Peter Bailinson, CC ’16, and Abby Porter, CC ’17, lost their CCSC election bid to two council newcomers.
entire party did not win the
elections, they look forward to
collaborating with Makansi and
Ramakrishnan.
“I know that they’re very,
very much interested in not
only bringing a fresh face to
CCSC, but really working
hard to make sure that CCSC
remains through all of it and
actually becomes a presence in
students’ lives,” Warrick, who
currently serves as CCSC’s academic affairs representative,
said.
“I’m really excited
when there’s a call
to action.”
— Andrew Ren, CC ’15,
current CCSC VP for
Campus Life
Mishra added that while
working with Makansi and
Ramakrishnan will be a great
opportunity, he appreciates how
much Bailinson and Porter did
for the school.
“It’s going to be really special
to get to work with them on really improving the student experience here for Columbia College,”
Mishra said. “I really want to
credit Peter and Abby for doing so much for this University
and particularly the Columbia
College.”
With Makansi, Mishra, and
Ramakrishnan all in Beta Theta
Pi, three of the council’s five executive board members will be
brothers in the fraternity.
Kelly Echavarria, CC ’16, who
did not immediately respond to
comment, will serve as the vice
president for campus life.
Reactions from current
council insiders
Current VP for Campus Life
Andrew Ren, CC ’15, said that
while he was sad to see Bailinson
and Porter lose the election, he
is eager to see the council go in
a new direction after the somewhat surprising results.
“I’m really excited when
there’s a call to action, even if
the call is something some people might not agree with,” Ren
said. “It [CCSC] should be invigorating with Ben and Viv. I
think it’s going to be a transparent, open, lighthearted council,
but still tackle some issues going
forward.”
Ren praised Bailinson for his
leadership in guiding the council
through difficult conversations.
“Council is often a group that
takes on a lot of different personalities and opinions in agenda,” Ren said. “It’s very difficult
to be able to moderate and lead
discussion in a way that is not
particularly based in one way or
another.”
Current Vice President for
Finance Michael Li, CC ’15,
campaigned for the Freedom,
Liberty and Freedom Party
in the election. Li declined to
comment.
Additionally, Ren said that he
hopes that the council puts more
attention to the Communications
committee, which has been understaffed and under-resourced,
he said.
University Senator Marc
Heinrich, CC ’16, who has been
re-elected for a second term in
an uncontested race, said he is
looking forward to the upcoming year.
“We’re excited to work with
Ben and Viv on a number of initiatives and look forward to the
upcoming year,” Heinrich said.
“I’m proud of what I accomplished this year with Peter and
Abby.”
But Sean Ryan, CC ’17 and another University senator-elect,
recognized that things might not
be easy.
“It’s going to take some adjusting,” he said. “I hope we’re
able to work with them to get
things done and represent the
student body—but it will take
work.”
ESC & GSSC
In other council races, Blue is
the New Black, led by Presidentelect and current VP of Student
Life Caroline Park, SEAS ’16,
beat the opposing party, ΔSEAS,
for all five seats on Engineering
Student Council’s executive
board.
Park said her platform prioritizes an increase in communication, resources, and
opportunities.
In General Studies Student
Council, current VP of Policy
Elizabeth Heyman, GS/JTS ’16,
won the race for president with
58.17 percent of the vote, beating current First-Year Class
President Michael Neier, GS
’16.
“I’m excited to make some
change happen next year,” she
said. “I ran on accessibility,
and that will manifest itself of
many ways next year—the bigger things can happen over the
summer.”
Heyman added that she
is excited about the “female
power” on GSSC’s executive
board, which will consist of all
women.
[email protected]
ACSRI recommends Columbia divest from private prison industry
BY DANIELLE SMITH AND
ANNIE BRYAN
Spectator Staff Writers
Columbia’s
Advisory
Committee
on
Socially
Responsible Investing recommends that the board of trustees
divest any direct stock ownership
interests from the private prison
industry, the committee said in a
statement released on Wednesday.
ACSRI said that their decision was based on “community
sentiment, the merits, and the
possibilities for shareholder
engagement.”
The committee’s recommendation cited constitutional problems with private prisons as one of
the main reasons for divestment.
“Private prisons have been the
subject of litigation alleging violations of constitutionally required
minimal levels of maintenance,
welfare, and medical conditions,”
the statement read.
Columbia Prison Divest core
member Gabriela Pelsinger, CC
’15, said she was excited by the
decision, because it demonstrates
how grassroots campaigns can
hold institutions accountable.
“This call is about recognizing
the University practices, which include its investment practices, and
how they have a direct impact on
the students and the communities
the students come from,” she said.
Since winter 2014, CPD—a
committee of Students Against
Mass Incarceration—has been
campaigning on campus to
raise awareness Columbia’s investment in the private prison
industry, particularly in the
Corrections Corporation of
America and G4S.
MADELEINE LARSON / FILE PHOTO
DIVEST
|
Columbia Prison Divest has been lobbying for Columbia to divest its stocks from the private prison industry for over a year.
“These [private prison] companies make their profit by incarcerating as many people for as
long a time as possible,” Pelsinger
said. “The companies are very
politically active in inspecting the
crumblier justice system.”
The group has worked to build
grassroots support for divestment
and has met with administrators
including University President
Lee Bollinger to advocate for their
position. CPD also presented the
proposals to ACSRI that led to today’s announcement.
“We’ve been working with
ACSRI for about a year, so although long overdue, this decision is great news to us,” said
Dunni Oduyemi, CC ’16, a core
member of CPD, and former
editor in chief of The Eye. “We
hope that President Bollinger
is responsive to the support
that we’ve gotten from the SAC
and ACSRI, as well as the overwhelming student support that
investing in private prisons is
fundamentally unjust.”
ACSRI’s announcement comes
days after the University Senate’s
Student Affairs Committee voted
23 to zero to support private prison divestment.
University Senator Marc
Heinrich, CC ’16 and a member of
SAC, said he was glad that ACSRI
has voted to support Columbia’s
divestment from private prisons.
“This is an important issue
that Columbia Prison Divest has
worked on for the past year, and
I’m glad that SAC had a role in
making this happen,” Heinrich
said.
While all ACSRI members
agreed on the content of the resolution itself, an addendum to the
resolution said that some committee members did not want
their decision to mean that “proponents of the divestment resolution would undertake additional
efforts towards improving conditions and outcomes in private
prisons and public prisons.”
Additionally, the addendum
noted that some ACSRI members had concerns about the racial make-up of inmates in private
prisons.
The resolution also included
a footnote saying that an independent manager disposed of the
University’s holdings in CCA—
one of the private prison companies that has been mentioned
most often by CPD—in February
2015, although Columbia may
own shares in other firms.
CPD announced plans
on March 30 to pack today’s
University Senate meeting to
demonstrate student support for
prison divestment.
“An educational institution
that claims concern for the future,
for its students, and that prides itself as a global leader, should not
profit from racist and classist systems of incarceration and detention,” CPD said in a release following the announcement from SAC.
After ACSRI’s recommendation, the University’s Board of
Trustees will make the final decision regarding divestment from
the private prison industry.
Pelsinger said she hopes to see
trustees act upon the recommendation as soon as possible.
[email protected]
PAGE 14
ADVERTISEMENT
APRIL 2, 2015
APRIL 2, 2015
SPORTS
PAGE 15
TIGISTU:
Columbia
students, don’t
jump to support
NYCFC just yet
B
ig investment
YEABSIRA
from profesTIGISTU
sional partners,
such as the Yankees, Yeabhub
has New York City
Football Club on the path to a starstudded roster.
Amid March Madness and an
otherwise busy sports schedule, you
might have missed it. But last weekend, the MLS season started again—
and New York has a new team.
Funded by Manchester City and the
New York Yankees, NYCFC looks to
be a worthy addition to the league.
Logically then, NYCFC could be
the perfect club for any Columbia
student with a burgeoning interest in
soccer to adopt. There are no strings
attached with supporting a potential
super club with no formal history to
this point. But all is not as rosy as it
seems for NYCFC and for the MLS
at large.
Since the LA Galaxy’s acquisition
of British superstar David Beckham
in 2007, the league has made monumental strides in achieving international legitimacy. With the seemingly
endless addition of expansion clubs,
the MLS no longer occupies a lower
tier in the American sports hierarchy.
Beckham’s arrival dominated
American soccer headlines and
prompted numerous foreign (read:
aging) stars to descend upon the
league, including Thierry Henry,
Robbie Keane, Bradley WrightPhillips, and most recently, Steven
Gerrard. But naturally, this retirement home system has led to
a plateau with respect to league
perception.
In 2013, MLS Commissioner Don
Garber addressed the issue, identifying domestic player development—as
opposed to international signing—as
an integral part of improving the
league’s stature. But the recent of
signing of David Villa by NYCFC—
and Kaká by Orlando City SC—points
to a fundamental divide between the
commissioner’s office and ownership.
Front offices around the MLS
hope that signing past-their-prime
superstars to lucrative deals will
increase fan interest, and allow the
league, in the long run, to compete
for talent and fans in the global
market.
But this has not necessarily been
the case thus far. Although attendance and viewership is up, true
super clubs like Real Madrid and
Paris Saint-Germain have only increased their stranglehold at the top.
Whether it’s the prestige of European
clubs or their overflowing coffers, it
is evident that American clubs are
nowhere near ready to challenge
them on the international stage.
It would then seem prescient on
the part of NYCFC and clubs of their
ilk to take note of international clubs
like Ajax Amsterdam and Sporting
Lisbon, known for their elite youth
academies, and begin focusing more
on their own. Both foreign clubs have
made impressive runs in Europe’s
two premier competitions—the UEFA
Champions League and the Europa
League—and boast scores of alumni
across soccer’s top flight. But instead,
NYCFC is committed to the same
shortsightedness plaguing the rest
of the MLS. Chelsea legend Frank
Lampard is expected to join the club
this summer. At the age of 36, he too
will lack the longevity necessary for
long-term success.
This is not a new indictment
against MLS. For years, fans and
analysts have been clamoring for a
higher level of play on the field. But
the success of super teams like the
2011 Galaxy—whose roster boasted Landon Donovan, Keane, and
Beckham––has done nothing but create a cyclical problem for the league.
As teams with foreign stars continue
to win, the desire for them will only
increase. But without a strong foundation of developed players, domestic
popularity, and increased revenue,
the MLS will continue to struggle to
gain the legitimacy it so desperately
desires.
Yeabsira Tigistu is a Columbia College
junior majoring in political science.
Yeabhub runs biweekly.
DOUGLAS KESSEL / FILE PHOTO
THE UNIT | Light Blue coaches Brett Boretti and Pete Maki have shaped relievers, such as junior Willis Robbins, into mentally-tough, strike-throwing hurlers.
Aggressive and experimental, the Lions’ bullpen shines
BY BENJAMIN DRACHMAN
Spectator Staff Writer
Brett Boretti and Pete Maki have
shaped relievers, such as junior Willis
Robbins, into mentally-tough, strikethrowing hurlers.
In his first stint as a head coach,
Brett Boretti skippered D-III Franklin
& Marshall to four years of sustained
success. From 2000-04, the Diplomats
went 116-82, twice winning conference titles and advancing to the national tournament. During this period, Pete Maki, a lanky lefty from
Connecticut, emerged as a dominating
force on the mound, posting a teambest 3.42 ERA his senior season.
Boretti departed Franklin &
Marshall for Columbia the same year
that Maki graduated. But the two
would not remain separated for long.
In 2008, Maki joined Boretti’s staff
as pitching coach, and has since been
promoted to associate head coach.
Reunited, the duo teamed up to craft
a new kind of pitching staff. While
Boretti shaped the ideology and culture of the bullpen, Maki crafted a
regimen of drills and mechanics.
The result was unconventional and
set the Lions on the path to success.
ATTACKING THE ZONE
Boretti’s bullpen philosophy is unapologetically aggressive. According
to Maki, each reliever called to the
mound is expected to do one of two
things: get an out or give up a hit. Maki
is a believer in Boretti’s system, but
he’s fully aware of how odd it might
appear to some.
“It sounds probably unconventional,” he laughed. However, the
strategy is rooted in a coherent aim.
By attacking the zone and pitching
strikes, the system—when executed
properly—prevents the surrender of
any free bases. Giving up walks, Maki
says, should be avoided at all costs.
“We’ll take our chances with a ball in
play, as opposed to a four balls and a
free 90 feet,” he explained.
“When you’re putting on guys
for free, that’s inexcusable,” Willis
Robbins, a junior reliever, added. “As
a bullpen pitcher, you’ve got to pump
in strikes.”
This system can be jarring for
younger hurlers. Most pitching recruits come from high school careers
where, as starting pitchers, they frequently threw outside the zone. But
the sharper eyes of collegiate batters
turn attempted trickery into a free
pass to first base. As pitching coach,
Maki tries to wean the rookies off
their old ways.
“It’s new for most of them–almost
all of them,” he said. “I try to help
them navigate it. Monitoring what
type of throwing they’re doing when
we don’t have game days is super
important.”
It takes time, but the strategy almost always wins the favor of Light
Blue rookies. “It’s something I had
to settle into,” Harrisen Egly, a firstyear righty said. “The first few times
out there, I was a little tense. But it’s
a great philosophy to have as a pitcher, not going in afraid of anything. It’s
your battle to win.”
Indeed, Egly has taken the instruction to heart. Last weekend, he
appeared in two games in relief situations. Between the contests, the
walk-on from Minnesota threw 33
strikes on 50 pitches, allowing a hit,
striking out three, and inducing three
fly-outs, earning Ivy League rookie of
the week honors.
The strategy relies on two assumptions. First, that relievers will induce
fieldable hits. Second, that the defense
will field them cleanly and get the out.
And these assumptions are far from
certain. Last year, the defense rose to
the task, posting an impressive .975
fielding percentage, second best in the
Ivy League. But this year, a slew of uncharacteristic errors have dipped that
figure to .953, which places the team
in the middle of the pack.
Furthermore, at the season’s halfway mark, these errors have already
afforded opponents 30 unearned runs.
By contrast, last year’s gloves allowed
just 41 unearned runs over the entire
year. Without a defense to back the
pitcher up, Columbia’s strategy can
be put in jeopardy.
Despite its imperfection, the staff
has bought into the system. “You’re either giving up that hit, which is an aggressive mistake, or you’re getting the
batter out,” Robbins said of the system. “If you don’t have an aggressive
mindset as a bullpen pitcher, you’re
not really going to be too successful.”
RUNNING THE SCRIPT
While Boretti has established this
aggressive culture, augmenting his
instruction with team-crafted mottos and mission statements, Maki is
charged with putting it in practice. In
doing so, he looked to the past.
In 1998, Tom Hanson, a former major league pitcher, and Ken
Ravizza, a professor of psychology at
Cal State-Fullerton, released a book
called “Heads-Up Baseball: Playing
the Game One Pitch at a Time.” In it,
the authors extol the value of mental
toughness in a pitcher.
The book introduces concepts of selftalk, visualization, and focus. Though
pitchers and batters alike have been utilizing these tools since the dawn of the
majors, the book was the first instructional guide to coaching these skills. The
text is the touchstone source for pitching
coaches seeking a competitive edge.
Nearly two decades after the book’s
release, Maki continues to modify its
lessons. With the Light Blue, he has implemented his version of Hanson and
Ravizza’s drills, called “dry mechanics.”
On their rest days, Maki’s relievers
takes turns running through these drills.
Standing on the mound, glove and ball
in hand, the pitcher is alone on the diamond. Instead of a batter, they stare
down an empty backstop. There’s no
catcher either, nor are any teammates
manning the bases. In fact, in these practices, the pitchers don’t even throw the
ball. Instead, they visualize their throwing motion. Coaches stand nearby, feeding the athletes game-like scenarios and
calling imaginary strikes and balls.
Locked in mentally to the exercise,
the pitchers imagine the toss, from their
stretch and release to the ball hitting the
catcher’s glove.
“Basically, dry mechanics is visualizing certain situations—particularly adversity innings—when things aren’t really going well,” Robbins said. “Whether
it’s the weather or the umpire not calling
strikes, the drill focuses on how we adapt
to that.”
The exercise, Maki says, is surprisingly exhausting. Rather than visualize
an entire game, the program calls for
shorter, precise simulations. “I prefer
quality over quantity,” he said.
Maki, according to Robbins, is a
strong proponent of visualization.
Together with Boretti, he has further
developed dry mechanics to include
scripts, role play, and even simulated
accelerated heart rate.
Prior to the simulation, pitchers
will complete a series of cardiovascular exercises. “When it’s the seventh
inning and you’re on pitch 95, your
heart will be pounding,” Maki said.
“Even in golf, Tiger Woods’ dad used
to make him run sprints and then go
putt,” he added.
The hope is that the visualizations
will aid the relievers in tricky, gametime situations.
“When I got out there [in game] the
first couple times, I used the exercises
to calm me down,” Egly said. “Against
Duke, I went back to those scripts and
focused on them, taking one pitch at
a time.”
After seven years with the program, Maki is even more certain of
the efficacy of his techniques. “It just
works,” he concluded.
MEASURING SUCCESS
Not every outing goes perfectly. And
when relievers struggle under adversity, Boretti and Maki have no qualms
about replacing them, even after just a
single batter.
“Our expectation is that if a guy
is coming in, he’s going to be in the
zone,”Maki said. “If you don’t have it
that day, we’re going to go to someone
else who does.”
Junior righty Matt Robinson struggled uncharacteristically with control
in his appearance against Dartmouth
last Saturday, walking both batters he
faced. After the second walk, Boretti
pulled him.
Boretti is clear that such a change is
not a vote of no confidence in the pitcher. Rather, it’s based on the immediate
cost-benefit analysis over the next few
batters. “Matt just didn’t have his stuff
today,” he said after the game.
And even when the relievers are hitting the zone, the coaches don’t hesitate to make another call to the pen. In
the Lions’ 4-1 win over Dartmouth last
weekend, the coaches sent four different relievers in, none of whom pitched
over .2 innings. And in a 6-3 win over
South Carolina Upstate last month, five
separate relievers split 4.2 innings, allowing a single run and only two walks.
It’s hard to point to numbers as signs
of success for the Lions, due to a tough
early-season schedule. But trends from
Ivy League play show promise, and the
bullpen is confident of its strength.
Boretti’s trust in his pitchers, dating back to his time at Franklin &
Marshall, inspires this confidence.
“They’re confident in all their
guys,” Egly said. “They’re confident
because they prepare us incredibly
well.”
[email protected]
SPORTS
THURSDAY, APRIL 2 • PAGE 16
COURTESY OF COLUMBIA ATHLETICS / MIKE MCLAUGHLIN
WINNERS
|
The 2014-2015 season saw a host of honors for the Columbia fencing program, including Ivy League titles for both men’s and women’s teams, capped by a National Championship.
A new reign: How Columbia fencing rose to claim the crown
BY KELLY RELLER AND
MADELEINE STEINBERG
Spectator Staff Writers
“By your junior year, we have a great
shot to win Ivies and a great shot to win
NCAAs as well.”
That is what junior épéeist Jake Hoyle
recalls being told by the still new Columbia
fencing head coach three years ago, when
the prospective recruit was considering
joining the team.
Given the program’s recent success,
that promise does not seem overly ambitious. However, the Light Blue fencing program’s dominance was far from assured
when head coach Michael Aufrichtig took
the reins in 2011. That season, though the
women’s team finished second at the Ivy
League Championships, the men went
2-3 to tie for third, and the team finished
eighth overall at NCAAs.
Fast-forward to 2015, and the Lions
have brought home both the Ivy crown and
the NCAA Championship—with Hoyle
earning the national men’s épée title.
Hoyle is part of a junior class that features the first crop of fencers recruited by
Aufrichtig, a business school graduate and
former college fencer. Although Aufrichtig
has an admittedly unique recruiting style,
he has brought together a winning combination of talented fencers.
Understanding the current success of
Columbia fencing requires not only an exploration of the changing composition and
attitude of the team, but also a little background on its maverick coach.
THE RISE
Aufrichtig first picked up a sword in
his first year of high school at Northern
Louisiana’s Caddo Magnet High School
without any knowledge of its sport.
“Fencing? Is that with the swords?” the
future women’s épée world team coach
asked.
But after two years of training and exposure to national level competition, the
young épéeist knew that he had to put his
dream of becoming an Olympic marathon
runner on the back burner for this new
passion—fencing.
After Aufrichtig met future Columbia
volunteer assistant coach Wesley
McKinney, the two started attending
camps and watching fencing tapes in order to improve their skills. Upon qualifying
for his first Junior Olympics in Orlando,
Florida, Aufrichtig noticed that the major
collegiate programs, especially those on
the East Coast, were well-represented in
the final round.
“I saw all these people at the top from
schools like Columbia, and there was a guy
from New York University, and Penn State,
and Notre Dame—but I noticed that there
were a lot of people from New York in all
the weapons,” he said.
With the release of the 1987 film “Wall
Street,” Aufrichtig found himself inspired
by Michael Douglas’ Wall Street tycoon
character. He knew that New York was
where he needed to be for both business
school and his athletic career.
“That’s what brought me up to New
York,” he said. “I wanted to be Gordon
Gekko. Business and fencing.”
A degree in marketing from NYU’s
Stern School of Business pushed Aufrichtig
into a career in brand management and
fundraising, but fencing remained an integral part of his life, as he continued to
fence on the international circuit and place
in the top-12s of the North American Cup.
In 2007, Aufrichtig was named chairman
of the New York Athletic Club fencing
program, a volunteer position to which
he dedicated upward of 30 hours a week
for five years.
Despite balancing his career with his
athletic interests, Aufrichtig still held onto
the goal of earning enough money to fence
full-time. Little did he know that his dream
would be realized, albeit in a coaching capacity, at an Ivy League university just
a few miles up the road in Morningside
Heights.
THE REIGN
Now in 2015, with a national title under
his belt, one can easily see that Aufrichtig
has not stopped blending his two passions. Each of this year’s nine Light Blue
All-American fencers is a product of one
of Aufrichtig’s three recruiting classes.
His ability to apply statistical analysis to
the arena of fencing has led some to view
his recruitment tactics as a “Moneyball”
approach similar to that of Major League
Baseball general manager Billy Beane.
“I could definitely tell that he was one
of a kind the first time I met him,” Hoyle
said of his coach. “I’d met with a lot of
other college coaches … but when I went
and talked with Mike, we sat down and he
had maybe 20 pages of my results from the
past four years, and all kinds of things were
circled and highlighted.”
That note-taking reflects the intense
attention to detail Aufrichtig brings to his
role and is a result of years of analyzing and
researching what makes a college fencer
great. The roots of his analytic approach
can be found in his trips to the Louisiana
Downs Horse Track with his parents,
where he would try to pick the winning
horses.
“I would go back and look at past
history, and circle different things—were
they on grass, were they on a turf, was it
slippery, was it not? I’d really get down on
the details,” Aufrichtig said. “I did the same
thing for fencing where I’d look at past
performances, but first I’d look at the big
picture. In horse racing, you look and see
where they were at certain furlongs. So for
fencing, I look at their ultimate number.”
This ultimate number—a composite
ranking based on precollegiate results—
gives an overall picture of a fencer’s final
performances at tournaments. However,
what sets Aufrichtig’s style apart is his
deeper analysis of the five-touch bout performances that occur in the preliminary
rounds, an approach he calls “just mastering the obvious.”
While most tournaments are 15-touch
bouts, collegiate fencing is first-to-five.
Aufrichtig gave a TED Talk last year
that explained the importance of this
oft-overlooked statistic in recruiting. He
spoke about current sophomore foilist
Drew Johnston, whose stellar five-touch
record caught Aufrichtig’s eye and who
has thrived at Columbia, most recently
finishing fourth at the NCAA Regionals.
“I’d say Michael’s a little bit more willing to take risks than the average coach
and go with kind of unconventional people
who are a little bit outside the norm for
fencing, but are still getting pretty good
results,” Johnston said.
By focusing on recruiting individuals that can thrive in a collegiate setting,
Aufrichtig has been setting the stage for a
national title since his first class arrived to
the Light Blue strips in the 2012-13 season.
“He’s very good at predicting what
we’re capable of and very good at doing
what he can to make sure it happens,”
Johnston said. “I don’t really think if
you’d asked anyone in the fencing world
four years ago, ‘Who’s going to win them
[NCAAs] in four years?’ they would have
said Columbia.”
Aufrichtig hasn’t just been responsible
for recognizing and recruiting world-class
fencers, but also for retaining world-class
coaching. Dr. Aladar Kogler, one of the
fencing world’s most significant contributors to the sport, served on the Columbia
coaching staff from 1983 until he announced his retirement in 2011.
A four-time coach for the United States
Olympic fencing team and USFA National
Fencing Hall of Fame member, Dr. Kogler
has been widely recognized for his coaching tactics that focus around mental concentration. At the age of 83, he can claim
responsibility for more than 20 Olympians,
as well as 10 books on sports psychology.
Realizing the incredible loss Dr. Kogler’s
absence would be to Columbia’s program,
Aufrichtig made it a point to get him back.
Now back with the Light Blue, Dr.
Kogler conducts individual lessons with
fencers like Hoyle and junior foilist
Margaret Lu, who were Columbia’s top finishers at this year’s NCAA Championships.
“If that isn’t Mike’s crowning achievement so far, I don’t know what is,” Hoyle
said of Dr. Kogler’s return to the team. “I
owe the success to Aladar for making me
better, but without Mike Aufrichtig, Aladar
wouldn’t even be here.”
Building solid recruiting classes and
compiling a coaching staff to match
were just a few of the goals Aufrichtig
had upon his arrival at Columbia, and he
continues to perfect the program. Jackie
Dubrovich, a junior foilist who earned
an individual bronze medal at last year’s
SEE FENCING, page 12