Students from a Radical Democracy course are ending the semester with a bang: a truelife protest on Low Steps. This is not, as hypothesized by some, a final project, but rather an independent project dreamed up by a group of “classmates and friends,” as one mini-Mark Rudd put it.

One young radical was seeing waving a Soviet flag, and others passed out a poem called “Wake Up Columbia”, others held a sign with the same slogan. Things got real when the hooligans were kicked off the Steps by Public Safety. Public Safety threatened to send the group to a dean who would, the cops claimed, identify the students and hold a hearing to assess consequences for the students’ protest.

The confusing revolution is continuing at the 116th Gates. One vigilante sent us this photo from the frontlines. Read the poem that was being passed out after the jump.

-1

Columbia, wake up!
Columbia, sometimes my own head is too much for me. I’m a head case.
The worst part is that I’d rather be out for a stroll than inside health services.
I’d rather listen to Lady Gaga than progressive commencement speeches.
I’d rather smoke pot than learn about how the invisible hand will save us.
Bow down before your God-term, economists!  Tremble before the might of compound interest!
But surely I’m crazy.  Surely they’ll say…
“Rally ’round Columbia, Columbia!
Shouting her name forever.”
Columbia, Columbia!  I’m forever shouting your name but you’re hard of hearing.  In fact, I’m howling your name into the darkness at night as I collapse over my books, strung out, frantic even.
“Roar, Lion, Roar,
For Alma Mater on the Hudson shore!”
After all, she was the only woman here before 1983; it’s very gracious to cheer her.
Her cunt is the font of all knowledge and the white man’s phallus is surely the font of her cunt.  Glorious Athena bursting from Zeus’ head.
Columbia, I fuck guys and I fuck girls.  I read Judith Butler in drag.
Radical feminist queers unite!
Yes! “Stand up and cheer for old Columbia!
For today we raise,
The Blue and White above the rest!
Our boys are fighting.”
They certainly are!  Now 30,000 more of them in Afghanistan!
Friends, family members, dead.  Fuck you, show us your investments Columbia!
Pray for your dead.  Pray for the future dead of a thousand “small” wars, counter-insurgencies.
Wake up Columbia!
Columbia I’ve had it with your liberal bullshit.
Columbia it’s great that our student body is so diverse, but why is every single security guard darker than me?
And why does it seem that every single food worker have eyes that are narrower than mine, or wider hips, or larger breasts?
The only time I look at a worker here and see myself is when they look tired.
I’m tired and I look it.  Look at me Columbia.
Columbia, you hire half the population on the other side of Morningside Park to protect me from the other half.
Don’t talk to me about campus safety.  If everything were so great in this country, on this campus, why would we need protection?

A few bad apples…  A likely story…  Security alert!  Attempted Robbery!
Columbia, you stage useless security theater in every entryway to make parents feel better about their kids going to college in Harlem, but the effect is black people refusing entry to white people.
Columbia, I think that is a kind of justice.
So this is how the other half lives…
Professors, wake up!
Don’t give up and don’t settle.  Be my friends.  Have a drink with me.
Don’t you feel it, have you heard it?  That howling in the night?
I don’t think it’s just me.  It can’t be me all alone.
It could be you!  I guess you’re a part of me.
I want to be a part of you, not apart from you.
I want you to want me being a part of you, not apart from you.
COLUMBIA PLEASE WAKE UP!
You may have noticed, Columbia, that this poem is like “America”
By Ginsberg. Is it ripped off?
Is it worse than the frequency with which you whore out the Beats in your glossy college mail sent to every manwomanchild with a certain score on the PSAT?
(Kerouac wouldn’t have got one, he was here on football scholarship. He didn’t graduate, but he’s still in the brochures.)
Columbia why don’t you sell yourself with this list of alumni: Pat Buchanan, Norman Podhoretz, Thomas Sowell, Dr. Laura Schlessinger?
Are there limits to your tolerance?
Don’t your Great Books make everyone think right?
Columbia your favorite son is in the White House. You mean to tell me you force him to read the Symposium and he’s still against gay marriage?
COLUMBIA PLEASE WAKE UP!
or go to sleep. (Ask the econ majors to calculate the impact on the macroeconomy if grades no longer possessed the power to compel any purchases of Red Bull, coffee or tea in Morningside Heights. Compare numbers with the folks in public health.)