Columbia’s favorite non-partisan political periodical is on news stands but not online, so we’re giving you the low down on this month’s issue by the page.

Rwanda’s President:  Westernizer or War Criminal? (Page 4)

Wall Street and Main Street: Vast oversimplifications of the credit crunch or is it just homeowners’ faults? (Page 6)

LitHum, CC and Major Cultures: The West and The Rest.  CESR’s “Common Core”: Colonization/Decolonization. (Page 13)

Obama vs. McCain: They have different policies on health care, outsourcing, net neutrality and abortion!   (Page 15)

Alan Brinkley is the most popular Columbia professor on Facebook.

Columbia is trying to “ameliorate” tensions with the community.

Columbia gets amazing athletic recruits, who eat McDonald’s every day, wear jeans so tight that their legs atrophy and smoke clove cigarettes. 

Statisticians: Here are all the sexy details about the rigorous lottery. 

Pity the first-year who did not witness the hunger strike and thus cannot fully understand the ramifications of the Global Core.

Tipster/photographer Matt Shields directs Bwog’s attention to the South Lawn, where law schoolers are staging a mock hunger strike protesting the ban on drinking in the Black Box theater. They’re calling themselves PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Alcoholics) and according to their colorful, upbeat propaganda, they “will not eat until they can drink—on stage.” (The third protester holds a sign that inexplicably proclaims “We’re not gonna protest.”) And look, they even have a tent and a guitar… just like real activist-types!

Read more…

Thai Jones, CU American history Ph.D. candidate and son of Weather Underground founder Jeff Jones, has written a piece in today’s New York Times about the University’s most recent hunger strike and the history of self-imposed starvation as a means of political activism. Jones compares much of the campus’s anti-hunger striking sentiments of just a few months ago with the similar frustrations of 1960s students towards Students for a Democratic Society.

Jones interviews several Columbia students, one postulates that the hunger strike was an argument “that our education has us starving intellectually”—the apparent appetite of the affordable housing-eating octopus non-withstanding. Jones also speaks to his own parents (hi Mom!), who also agree with his favorable comparison of Mark Rudd et al. to 2007′s hunger strikers.

Top right photo from NYT via Getty.

 

The day the strike ended, a motley group of students put together a list of questions for the strike team to answer. Avi Alpert, CC ’06, and Bryan Mercer, CC ’07, have now done so, posted below unedited by Bwog. Alpert, responding to questions posed earlier by Nina Bell, emphasizes that while he was not a hunger striker and does not speak for them, he supported their efforts. Mercer was a striker from the start. Get comfy, kids, it’s a long one.

From Alpert:

1) (On whether the strikers have general support from the student body) To answer the question honestly, we do not believe that any such data exists, or could be compiled accurately and scientifically by undergraduate students without advanced training in statistics. (Certainly the numbers of a Facebook group do not constitute such a study.) More importantly, however, we are not sure that this is in fact the real question at the heart of the matter. It is not clear, within the confines of the university, that Centers for the study of gender, African-American studies or human rights would have been created based on majority student interest. Quite frankly, it’s not clear that less popular majors (such as statistics, Slavic languages or dance) would exist either if this were the sole criterion. Columbia, as a self-proclaimed “global university,” supports research not just because of universal student demand, but also because of an intellectual responsibility to the expansion of knowledge. Thus, in making these demands, the students speak not only to their personal experiences and desires, but, equally, to the demands that scholarship be accountable to an ever expanding and complicated world.

We might also answer this question historically, noting that movements for marginalized groups (Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights, etc.), are, by definition, unpopular at first, and must be fought for without majority influence. The question of general support should no more be put to these students in asking for their demands than it should have been put to blacks in the South. (Of course, rapacious bloggers, these are vastly different situations, but the analogy of a group on the margins remains the same.) Read more…

If you’ve got a question about Manhattanville, and you’re looking for an answer that won’t make Columbia look great, talk to Andrew Lyubarsky. The CC junior led the talks with Executive Vice President Maxine Griffith over six “points of compromise” on expansion that, in a Spec op-ed, he characterized as “completely unproductive.” Bwog sat down with Lyubarsky to ask a few questions about how it all happened. Refer to our Manhattanville Decoder for help with the jargon.

Bwog: The strike obviously began a long time before two weeks ago, laying the groundwork for what you would demand from Columbia. What went into formulating the six points that you eventually presented to Maxine Griffith?

Andrew: The six points were come up with by the negotiators in conjunction with community members, some of whom were on the community board, some of which were on the local development corporation. Students on the expansion issue at least were never acting autonomously of the community’s desires. The original demands on the expansion basically came up both through the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification and its work with the community, as well as the series of town halls that occurred this semester and last semester in response to the race incidents on campus. Expansion was an issue that was constantly brought up in those forums.

The original plan, that the only way to be representative of the community is to pull the 197c plan, came out of the community board’s 32-2 vote in August. It rejected Columbia’s plan unless it met the 10 conditions of the 197a plan. Throughout this entire movement, we wanted to make sure we were representative of the community’s desires and didn’t go off on our own thing.



So then I’m puzzled, because of the e-mail [CB9 chairman] Jordi Reyes-Montblanc sent out on November 7, asking you not to strike. How is that being representative of the community?

Well, the first thing—and this is what I told Jordi—is that the strike wasn’t purely about the expansion, that there were curricular issues involved, and that the strike would go on without the expansion. And the second thing is that basically we didn’t have a tactical agreement with the chairman of the community board, there were other community members that were supportive of us, there were activist groups that were supportive of us, there were members of the LDC that were supportive of us, and even Jordi in his e-mail said he was supportive of our goals. Read more…

Poor, misunderstood Columbia. No one seems to get the story straight–not even campus media sometimes–and the Hunger Strike of Fall 2007 was no exception. We’ve compiled what we’re sure is a woefully incomplete list of inaccuracies.

Nov. 16 New York Sun article, in a statement she released to CB9 Chairman Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, posted after the jump.

“The Sun has informed us they intend to run some kind of correction of this inaccurate story, but for reasons known only to them have decided to wait to publish this in their next edition on Monday. We look forward to seeing it,” she wrote snippily.

While they’re correcting, the Sun might want to note that Emilie Rosenblatt is a senior, not a junior, and that the striker who dropped out is named Aretha, not Victoria.

Besides being generally noxious, the New York Post had a similar problem with the $50 million number:

“Columbia agreed to raise $50 million to beef up ethnic studies and expand programs for multicultural students, strike organizers said, but refused to budge on the protesters’ biggest demand – killing the school’s proposed expansion into Harlem…Columbia’s concession will expand the school’s multicultural student center and expand the required freshman ethnic-studies class from a several hundred-student lecture to small seminar groups.”

Also, the strikers didn’t directly want to kill the expansion plan, just withdraw it for revision. And the “freshman ethnic studies class” is neither a freshman nor an ethnic studies class. Too bad it’s already reached the right-wing masses! Read more…

The hunger strike is over, and contrary to what we we were told last night, so is the camp-out. Hunger-strikers and volunteers are currently taking down the tents, dismantling the Columbopus’s remaining tentacles, and otherwise preparing to permanently vacate Butler Plaza.

Hunger striker Richard Brown, C ’10 cited a “need to clean up” as one of the reasons for ending the nearly two-week encampment. “We can’t have these out here forever,” he said. “The tents have served their purpose.”

While the tents were a pretty obvious presence on campus, less obvious was what the strikers were keeping inside of them: Bwog spotted about a dozen blankets, a few portable radios, musical instruments, and a cardboard box full of books, including Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, a Penguin collection of English romantic verse, a long essay by Noam Chomsky (with the ever so Chomskyan title of “The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many“), the 33 1/3 for Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, and an anthology of poetry read at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

If this was a bittersweet moment for the strikers, none of them were showing it. “The hunger strike is over, but the struggle continues” said striker April Simpson, C’11. Even though the strikers are abandoning their temporary home and base of operations, and potentially (severely) diminishing their visibility on campus, this is about as sentimental as things have gotten out there. Right now, they’re pretty much just cleaning up.

-ARR

Going by the tone of tonight’s candlelight vigil (and counter-protest), the fact that the hunger strike has ended doesn’t change anything. The strikers still plan on holding vigils every night at 9. They still plan on camping out on the lawn between College Walk and Butler. And, as speakers and attendees to tonight’s vigil reiterated, they definitely haven’t forgotten about Manhattanville. Said one student, “this is phase two.”

As for the end of phase one: pre-vigil, the feeling among hunger-strike supporters was an almost unqualified sense of having accomplished something important. When asked if the lack of progress on Manhattanville and the failure to produce any spectacular, immediate concessions lessened the impact of the strike, Political Science professor Dennis Dalton suggested that the discussion started by the protest was its most important result. “I’m feeling very happy,” said Dalton. “[This is] a time to discuss our cause, and to add a whole new dimension to the discourse.”

By around 9:15, a group of about a half-dozen counter-protesters had gathered opposite the sundial. You’d think the anti-hunger strikers would have been happy to see the hunger strike end. Not so: “the strike isn’t ending in response to students,” said Josh Mathew, C’09, citing CB9′s statement of disapproval as a larger factor than the opinions of the students the strikers professed to be representing. Aga Sablinska, C’09, added that the counter-effort will still be going on: on the anti-strike Facebook group she created, she posted that “further plans of action (not by me, by others) are being formed right now.”

The vigil was billed as a celebration of the hunger strikers and all that they had accomplished during an undoubtedly rough 10 days without food. The hunger-strikers spoke first: Just about all of them thanked the students and the community for their support, and vowed to continue the fight for “ethical expansion.” Brian Mercer, C ’07 read an excerpt from Stoakley Carmichal’s autobiography (written, confusingly enough, by Oscar Wilde); after him, an older man arrested during the 1968 protests elicited cheers when he said that his daughter was one of the people who had occupied Hamilton Hall during the 1996 hunger strike.

Read more…

Following the release of a joint statement on the agreed-upon academic concessions–posted after the jump, in all its wonky glory–the four remaining hunger strikers will start weaning themselves off not eating after a vigil and press conference, same time same place (9PM at the sundial). 

Anything happen on Manhattanville? Nope.

The story on that will come out when we can pry it out of people.

UPDATE, 9:35 PM: According to Feditor Chas Carey, a “group of individual students” sent an open letter to the strikers, listing their grievances and questions, about a half an hour before the strike ended. Hey, it’s never too late to be friends!

Read more…

Now that the academic demands are taken care of, the hunger strikers are still going hungry for the Manhattanville expansion.  But in an e-mail to the Community Board 9 listserv, CB 9 chairman Jordi Reyes-Montblanc told them to knock it off: “I again beseech you to stop your hunger strike as it pertains to the CU Expansion issues,” he wrote. “The ULURP process is alive and well and I am confident that your personal sacrifices have been noted and opened some eyes both at the City Planning Commission and the City Council.” The full message is posted after the jump.

Also, according to this Observer article,  the West Harlem LDC has finally put up a number–the group wants “in excess of 100 million” for an affordable housing fund. Columbia hasn’t agreed to that number but, “the source said that the school, while it had not offered its own number, understood it had to contribute more, and in a more timely way.” This is one of the points the strike team was negotiating for. Looks like the need might be covered.

We also think it’s worth reiterating that, according to today’s Spec, Kofi Annan was never supposed to come to campus dinner last night, as strikers claimed two nights ago while speaking to the crowd at the sundial.  The “fancy dinner” they alluded to also raised $1.75 million for the College.

 UPDATE: The Coalition to Preserve Community–a group composed of anti-expansion West Harlem activists is pleading for the second time for the hunger strikers to stop.  A portion of their latest press release reads:

“Five days ago, on November 11, the Coalition to Preserve Community (CPC), a four-year old West Harlem community group opposing the Columbia University expansion plan, asked the Columbia students who had been on a hunger strike since Wednesday, November 7, to withdraw their demand that the University recall its

197C rezoning application. They rejected our request at that time, but today

we are asking them again.

We do not want the students’ health and welfare to be sacrificed in waiting

on Columbia to engage in an honest dialogue and negotiation with the community

on the rezoning application.”

And finally! Beyond the jump, behold our super-useful Manhattanville Decoder, to help you understand the jargon in the various intallments of our Hunger Strike Primary Source Reader.

- AMP Read more…

Low Plaza became a peaceful battlefield this evening as a sizeable crowd of people convened by means of the now 700-member facebook group “We do NOT support the hunger strikers” gathered by Alma Mater just half an hour before the strikers’ nightly vigil at the sundial. Formally, the group stood there for only about 20 minutes, carrying signs with such ironic slogans as “I AM BEING SILENCED.” By and large, those Bwog talked to didn’t have problems with the specific demands themselves, but rather the methods used to achieve them. Also, many of them hadn’t ever been to protests before–but then there they were, standing awkwardly in the cold.

Speaking to the group, organizer Josh Mathew, CC ’09, said: “I feel that in general what’s brought us together is that we haven’t had a voice, and we’d like to have a voice now. We’d like people to know that our presence exists, and we exist outside a facebook group.” Aga Sablinska, CC ’09 and creator of the Facebook group, stood watching.

Earlier this afternoon, members of the strike support team had e-mailed Mathew and Sablinska suggesting that the anti-strike gathering become “a space on Low Plaza for students to engage in open and constructive conversations.” Because of the logistical difficulty of making a collective decision to change the nature of the event, the anti-strikers went on as planned. Read more…

Despite the stormy elements, at noon, the hunger-strikers organized a rally at the sundial. They explained to supporters that two strikers had dropped out for medical reasons, declared progress due to the university’s concessions, and reiterated the six points of negotiation. Due to Columbia’s agreement to make major cultures into a seminar format, shower curtains were provided for students to pen their thoughts on how the changes should proceed.

The typical cast of characters was on hand, including Reverend Earl Kooperkamp, former striker Bryan Mercer holding a mini teach-in on expansion, Tom DeMott and Tom Kappner of the Coalition to Preserve Community, Professor Dalton on the eighth day of his fast, a random lady from the Spartacists calling for socialist revolution, and Nellie Bailey of the Harlem Tenants Council inveighing against the “outsider” Lee Bollinger (she mentioned that he was the highest paid university president in the country, which is not true).

Near the end, a student organizer got up to explain the game plan for today: negotiations on expansion will commence at 4:00 PM. At 5:00 PM, PrezBo will be holding an event with Kofi Annan to have a “critical conversation and dialogue” about matters of race and power, which she called an “attempt to divide and conquer this movement.” Faculty from CSER, IRAAS, and IRWAG, she said, will not be attending in protest.

More pictures after jump. Read more…

Two of the hunger strikers, Emilie Rosenblatt, CC ’08, and Bryan Mercer, CC ’07, have decided to cap off the Gatorade for something more substantial. Concessions were made, medical leave threatened, Manhattanville still happening.

For the full release… Read more…

Wednesday was a big day. Thursday, though, might be even bigger: striker kids (whom this UCLA student thinks are great) have scheduled a rally at the Sundial at noon in preparation for their final negotiations. While it seems that the three academic components have been largely straightened out, expansion has yet to be settled–and the hunger strikers have promised to go on hungering until those demands are in the bag. At a meeting this afternoon, the strike negotiation team presented six demands to Executive VP Maxine Griffith, who said responded with variations on “no,” “we’re working on it,” and “I’ll get back to you on that.” The negotiators’ points, which will be presented again at a meeting toda at 4:00 PM in the IRC, are posted after the jump. 

Meanwhile, about 650 people aren’t OK with that. Leaders of the anti-striker movement have called a “silent gathering” for tomorrow at 8:30 PM at Alma Mater (too late?) to protest the administration’s concessions.

Pictured is Professor Dennis Dalton, who hasn’t eaten since last Thursday, speechifying on the Sundial at the rally tonight. He told the assembled students, as quiet as if the steps were seats in a lecture hall, all about the successful movement for divestment from South Africa in 1985. “Again and again the students have been right,” he said, over his 39 year tenure at the University. “We have a tradition here at Columbia, and that tradition has to be upheld, and that tradition is to nonviolently protest injustice on this campus.”  The movement has a granddad!

Finally, since we didn’t mention it earlier today, SGA’s statement on the strike is also posted after the jump, in Bwog’s third edition of the Hunger Strike Primary Source reader. Read more…