Weed? Or weeds?

Blaze it and raise it! Friday marked 4/20, every stoner’s favorite holiday. Columbia students were festive for the occasion, lighting up in honor of the one day a year people don’t care that you’re smoking. Here, in no particular order, are the best stories from this weekend. If you have any stories that you want to add, send them to us at tips@bwog.com and you may just see your story added onto this!

Bwog and 4/20:

• Got high and went hot tubbing. It was mind-blowing.
• Was high for thirty-six hours straight. (Relatedly, spent wayyyyyyyyy too much money on weed this weekend.)
• Got crossed on 4/20 and ended up throwing up at 3 in the morning (but I don’t think it was from the alcohol or the weed).
• Split a bottle of wine and then smoked a joint each with my sister.
• Got high with all my friends and cried for 15 minutes in JJ’s over a joke I made (not even a joke: I called fries “chips” and told my friends I was speaking British).
• Smoked 4 joints on 4/20 which is quite the jump from my 2 hit limit.
• (Almost) plummeted to my death in the EC elevator completely stoned.
• Learned how to roll joints.
• Slowly got low-key rly good at rolling & rolled them w lavender <3
• Found my new favorite smoke spot by the road in Riverside.
• Got high with my suitemates for next year I love them so much.
• Went to Chinatown high with my suitemates for next year and went to an arcade.
• Went to Q house and filmed myself smoking.
• Celebrated my friend’s birthday on 4/20 and then found out that her birthday on her fake says 4/19 even though she was actually born on 4/20 because she didn’t want to seem sus.
• Smoked and drank a lot on 4/20 and then did karaoke with my friends in KTown.

Blaze it after the jump.

GWC considers the support of undergraduate students to be crucial to their struggle. If you decide that you do sympathize with their cause after reading this article, consider making a banner and heading down to the picket line sometime this week.

You’ve probably received an email from Provost Coatsworth about the “possible strike by student teaching and research assistants.” If you attend CC or GS, you also probably received a message from Deans Valentini and Rosen-Metsch about how the strike would affect classes. Perhaps you’ve heard directly from your TAs or research assistants about their plans to strike. Perhaps you’ve seen posters from either the Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC) or by Student-Worker Solidarity (SWS) about events taking place.

Even with all of this information floating around, it’s quite possible you still have questions about the upcoming graduate workers’ strike that will take place unless administration negotiates a contract before Tuesday morning – which currently seems unlikely. In order to clear things up, we here at Bwog thought that it would be useful to provide answers to some FAQ about the strike.

1. What are graduate workers demanding, specifically? Graduate workers will be striking because Columbia administration refuses to recognize the union they formed nearly a year and a half ago.

A brief rundown on the union’s history:

• In December 2016, Columbia graduate workers voted 72% to 28% to form a union affiliated with the United Auto Workers Local 2110, which already represents a number of workers on campus. This move was supported by both SGA and CCSC.
• According to GWC’s FAQ page, graduate workers hope to unionize to “ensure livable wages, adequate benefits, clear workload expectations, and consistent and transparent employment policies,” enhancing “our conditions and our work – and ultimately, Columbia.”
• After the vote was announced, the administration stated it wouldn’t recognize the union or negotiate with the elected bargaining committee, because it didn’t view graduate workers as traditional “workers” and worried about inconsistencies in election procedures.
• The administration hoped that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) would also find that inconsistencies existed and therefore refuse to certify the union. This December, the Board rejected Columbia’s challenges in a 2-1 vote and certified the union.
• Despite the NLRB ruling, in January 2018, Provost Coatsworth announced in an email Columbia’s continued decision “not to engage in bargaining with union representatives and to seek review […] by a federal appellate court.”
• Union members allege Columbia is attempting to stall the process of unionization until President Trump can appoint new members to serve on the NLRB. Once he does this, it is likely that the new board will overturn the Obama-era decision that gave teaching and research assistants the right to collectively bargain. Therefore, this strike is being conducted in an attempt to pressure Columbia into bargaining immediately rather than waiting for the National Labor Relations Board to stop recognizing graduate workers as workers.

Find answers to even more questions here!

LOOK AT THOSE PANTS!

Columbia had a rough weekend. Sports Editor Abby Rubel gives you the deets.

Men’s Golf: The Lions performed poorly this weekend, finishing in last place at the Ivy League Championships with a score of 944. Yale took first place since the first time since 2011 with a score of 880. Columbia particularly struggled in the first round, scoring 332 where the other teams scored in the low 300s. (Princeton, which came in seventh place, scored the next-highest with 319.) And because their second and third round scores were on par with the other Ancient Eight teams, they couldn’t catch up. Individually, first-year Arjun Puri lead the team with a score of 24 over par.

Women’s Golf: The women’s team had a successful weekend at the Ivy League Championships, coming in fourth thanks to a strong performance from senior Nancy Xu. Xu tied for seventh place individually and shot a 73 on Saturday, keeping Columbia’s score that day low and putting the team within range of third-place Brown. But Brown shot 303 on Sunday to Columbia’s 307—good enough to hang on to fourth place but not good enough to catch the Bruins. Princeton won the tournament after a tie-breaker hole with Harvard.

Heavyweight Rowing: Columbia lost the race for the Doc Lusins Trophy for the eighth year in a row on Saturday. The Lions came in third place in all three of the day’s races, losing to both Boston University (the current holder of the trophy) and Syracuse. In the Varsity Eight race, Boston beat out Syracuse by just half a second, while Columbia came in eight seconds later. The other two races went similarly poorly, with the Light Blue coming in third by five or more seconds each time.

Men’s Lightweight Rowing: beat Cornell and MIT, beat Dartmouth
Baseball: won 2-0, lost 10-5, lost 7-6 against Princeton
Softball: won 9-1, won 9-0, lost 9-0 against Princeton
Men’s Tennis: won 4-0 at Brown, won 4-0 at Yale
Women’s Tennis: won 5-2 against Brown, won 6-1 against Yale
Lacrosse: won 14-12 against Brown

Editor’s note (1): Updated on 4/23 at 2:03 pm to address factual errors in President Beilock’s letter, as well as to correct inaccuracies regarding SGA’s and the College’s actions.

Editor’s note (2): Updated on 4/23 at 4:24 pm to add statements from Nas Abd Elal, a member of CUAD, and Aryeh.

Editors’s note (3): Updated on 4/24 at 12:30 pm to correct mathematical errors in a previous version of this post, which had stated that more than 30% of the Barnard student body voted for the referendum (our corrected number is 28.5%). Also, updated to include information regarding SGA’s response to this email.

Editor’s note (4): Updated on 5/1 at 8:00 pm to add statements regarding the referendum sent from President Beilock to SGA on 5/1. 

In an email sent out earlier today to the Barnard community, President Sian Beilock wrote that, if requested, the College will not take action to divest from companies with ties to Israel. President Beilock wanted to inform students of the college’s intentions ahead of the Student Government Association’s (SGA) discussions this week following last week’s student body vote in favor of the CUAD referendum. According to President Beilock, the referendum’s requests do not meet the standards of consideration for the Board of Trustees.

The referendum, which passed last Wednesday by a margin of 28.6% with a voter turnout of 49.9%, could lead SGA to send a letter encouraging the college to divest from eight companies associated with Israel. This week, SGA will discuss their plans going forward. However, according to Beilock, whatever SGA decides is irrelevant, because the College does not intend to take action, as the referendum does not fulfill two standards required for any case presented to the Board of Trustees that’s related to Barnard’s endowment.

These two standards are first, upholding the mission of the College in promoting freedom of expression; and second, an obvious consensus among the student body. According to Beilock, an institutional stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict would “chill the discourse” in which members of the student body should feel encouraged to participate freely. In addition, she wrote that although the referendum did pass by a majority, those who voted to support the referendum represent less than 30% of the student body and thus cannot be considered a general consensus.

Over 50% of the Barnard student body did not vote in the referendum

Although about 50% of the Barnard student body voted in the SGA elections, not all of these students opted to vote in the referendum. Thus, the 741 students who voted yes represent 28.5% of the student body. Those who voted no represent 15.8% of the student body, and 55.7% did not vote. These numbers are based on a Spring 2018 enrollment number of 2,604 students, provided to Bwog by the Barnard Media Relations department. Our calculations can be seen on the right.

Beilock’s email was initially written to the Student Government Association, then forwarded to the greater student body for transparency. In the email, she mentions thousands of alumnae who opposed the referendum, thereby stating that the College will not be taking action for divestment in order to “foster civil discourse.” In fact, the petition of those opposing the referendum is not composed solely of alumnae–at least 1,051 of the “thousands of signers” are simply listed as a “Friend and Ally” of the College (not an alumna, parent, or donor).

Bwog reached out to Nas Abd Elal, a member of CUAD, and Aryeh, for comments regarding the email. Their responses have been included at the end of the post.

The College has also prepared a Q&A for any questions on the referendum itself. A representative of SGA told us that the Executive Board will be responding to President Beilock’s email during external announcements during their regular Monday night meeting.

At the meeting following this email, the SGA Executive Board issued a statement emphasizing the board’s commitment to the democratic process and to “fulfill [the council’s] duty to advocate for students to the administration.” The SGA leaders expressed that the petition Beilock references does not represent the diversity of opinions held by Barnard alumnae, and that her email trivializes the council’s process and the voices of the students it represents. A past SGA referendum to divest from fossil fuel companies was not dismissed, this statement points out, even though it only received 565 student votes (almost 200 fewer votes than the CUAD referendum). Rather than working with SGA in an open dialogue to discuss divestment, as has been the process in the past, while “SGA was and is in the process of deciding how and whether to bring this issue to the administration, the President and the Board of Trustees have had their own dialogue and have chosen to dismiss the possibility of moving forward.”

Last night, SGA voted to write a letter of support to the Barnard administration for divestment from the eight companies associated with Israel listed in the referendum. The council also voted to write a “dissenting statement” regarding President Beilock’s response, and add it to this letter. During next Monday’s meeting (April 30), the council will vote on the wording of this letter; if it passes, the letter will be sent to the administration that night.

The SGA Executive Board’s full statement and more details on last night’s Rep Council meeting can be found in Bwog’s SGA coverage post for this week.

On May 1, President Beilock sent a message directly to SGA responding to their original letter sent to the administration.  In the statement, Beilock reiterates and re-explaining Barnard College’s reasons for disregarding the referendum. Her response has been included at the end of this post.

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Oh, Prezbo– it’s finally here. Spring is in the air and I am throwing up my arms and pretending that finals aren’t right around the corner. In my typical fashion, I have been off enjoying the weather and good food– like this veggie stir fry– rather than doing actual work. Please procrastinate with me and enjoy a simple, home-cooked meal– taking comfort in the fact it that costs basically nothing, while still managing to taste delicious.

Put an egg on it!

Veggie Stir Fry
INGREDIENTS
Sesame oil
Miso (not necessary, but a nice touch)
Honey or brown sugar
Soy Sauce
Chili Flakes
Water or broth
Ginger, minced (about a knob)
Whatever vegetables you have on hand, bite size pieces (I used broccoli, kale, bell peppers and snow peas)
Rice, cooked (use your leftovers)
Eggs or cooked tofu

DIRECTIONS
Heat up a large skillet with oil, soy sauce, miso, sweetener, chili flakes and water/broth. I use about a 1-1-1 ratio with the oil, miso and sweetener and then add in the soy sauce, chili flakes and water/broth to taste. (The great thing about this recipe is that it’s super easy to adjust the flavors. Fry your minced ginger until sizzling and then add your vegetables.) Cook until tender. Add the rice to reheat and meld all of the flavors together. Top with a fried egg and your other favorite toppings– like sriracha and kimchi.

*I would just like to take a moment to give a shout-out to the humble egg. It goes with basically anything and is a super easy way to amp up your protein intake without spending a ton of money. Plus, it’s just delicious– especially when you get that golden runny yolk that just makes everything so creamy.

Image via Bwog Staff.

Campus figure(heads) under fire

The Satow Room held more than a few combative viewpoints last night. Bureau Chief Nadra Rahman brings you the deets, piping hot. 

CCSC had an unusual number of guests last night—Deantini and Dean Kromm paid their semesterly visit, but their presence also drew protesters from 24/7 Columbia, a group that is demanding around-the-clock, in-person, unrestricted health care for all members of the Columbia community. The questions posed by members of CCSC to the deans were tame in comparison.

24/7 Disrupts

The protesters began by citing a re:claim article that reports administrative retaliation against students who seek help for health crises and sexual violence, such as suspension and expulsion. They asked how such retaliation could be justified, to which both deans responded they would need more details about individual circumstances; Kromm clarified, “That’s not my understanding of how things work here.”

Things went downhill from here

No more cars on these drives!

Happening Around the World: Duchess Kate has given birth to her third child with Prince William, a baby boy. This child is now fifth in line for the British throne. (CBS)

Happening in the US: The hunt for the man who shot up a Waffle House in Kentucky, killing 4 individuals and injuring others, continues into its second day. Nashville schools have been placed on lockdown and police are attempting to trace the steps of the man convicted of the crimes. (Washington Post)

Happening in the City: Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that beginning in June, Central Park will become car-free, allowing for pedestrians and bikes to fully claim the drives below 72nd. Transverses that are used by cars and public buses on 65th, 79th, 86th, and 97th streets will not be affected. (NY Times)

Happening on Campus: “Looking Back, Moving Forward: Envisioning Change” will explore the development of sexual assault, specifically on college campuses, over the past 40 years and the response by administration to these issues, all while looking to the future in hopes to plan to eradicate the high percentages of sexual assault on campus. More information can be found on the Columbia Events Page.

Weather: Sunny and a high of 64 F / 18 C. Spring is definitely here!

Artist of the Week: Gian Lorenzo Bernini. How could you not love his sculptures and their intricate details???

Image via Recycled Bwog Images