154 CommentsMany of you may have heard the distant rumblings of this news, but Bwog has recently received enough on-the-record information to post about a series of newsworthy events that will start tomorrow morning. And so:
Remember Solidarity, the anti-racist coalition with the long list of demands? Turns out six of their members are going on a hunger strike (water and gatorade allowed), starting tomorrow at 8:00 am, to pressure the administration into action. Their reference point is the great student hunger sit-in of 1996, which resulted in the creation of the ethnic studies department–many of their demands involve further empowering ethnic studies, in a plan to clear up unfinished business.
The precedent has been set apart from 1996, however. A 9-day strike went down at Harvard last May, when students deprived themselves on behalf of school-employed laborers, and this article from the Boston Globe has a good chronology of other recent strikes, which have been a lot more common than you’d think.
The striking group plans to make their intentions public knowledge at a dinner at 6pm this evening, so they have no official statement as yet. But campus awareness has reached the tipping point, so Bwog posts–despite threats to withhold information for publishing before the public release.
And, of course, we’ll keep you updated with other news as it develops.
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154 Comments
@wow my fellow columbia students are really disgusting.
i actually dont know if its more despicable to actually show up in front of the strikers with chicken, or to just talk big on the internet but lack the courage to show up in person. it’s a tricky ethical question. i bet, however, that it will remain abstract, because we’ll only see the second
@wasted I would say that any money used to expand the university is money well spent. Much of the space on the Morningside campus is used as residence halls or student space, no one was ever expecting only academic buildings to be built in the first place.
@money From a different perspective though, has anybody stopped to think about how much money will be wasted in this expansion plan? Surely, some of the proposed buildings will serve an academic purpose. But many will not.
@Hmm How about a real no-food hunger strike to protest the use of hunger strikes for non-urgent-and-truly-morally-repugnant issues?
@i found some chicken!!!
mmm.. delicious.
@the crux is why does any rational person even care about what these idiots are doing?
the best response is to just let them strike….as soon as they get hungry, you know these closet Marxists will reach for their granola bars and munch away.
just IGNORE THEM and they will go away. Same with the “bias incidents.” If no one reported on them, they wouldn’t be committed at the same rate in the future. All racists/antisemites want is publicity anyway. That’s why Ahmadinejad was here in the first place.
Let them strike/starve/leave and go on to their meaningless, unemployment-check-sponsored existence.
@andrew One can have a principled disagreement with the goals of the strikers while respecting their action as individual human beings while still being a respectable person themselves.
One cannot use these idiotic attacks that only reflect their own lack of self-reflection and be a decent person. You don’t understand it, but your own comments implicitly prove the strikers’ point – that the Columbia curriculum is producing “educated” semi-morons that can say things like this uncritically.
On the expansion tip, are you seriously saying that a neighborhood becoming “better” (also known as “wealthier” and in the American racialized class system, “whiter”) justifies leaving literally thousands of people to the brutal whims of neoliberal housing policy. Is it ok to displace all of a city’s minority residents in the name of some sort of abstract economic “progress”? Progress for whom?
@i like how your first paragraph stands in direct contradiction to your second paragraph. how’s that for logical coherence?
@umm I’m going to bed soon or I’d busily ‘deconstruct’ your argument. To give you a teaser:
I love your second paragraph. There’s really no way to reply. How do I disagree with the statement, “One cannot use these idiotic attacks that only reflect their own lack of self-reflection and be a decent person”? “Oh yes I can!”? Well then my attacks must be idiotic and reflective blah blah blah. Yet clearly I am a decent person if I’m going to renegotiate trade contracts so that poor people can have more chicken, right?
I don’t respect someone’s “action as individual human beings” if the action is stupid. Tell me to respect the people if you like, but the action?
You’re right that half my comments have been moronic, but that’s only half the fun. Do you really think the Columbia curriculum is to blame for my ability to mock your inane protest?
See also: progress for biotech research and the reputation of the world’s foremost academic institution! Non-white researchers working in Columbia’s labs! Progress for society!
Also, how did we go from drinking Gatorade and eating chicken to displacing “all of a city’s minority residents”, not to mention the “brutal whims of neoliberal housing policy”? Housing policies have whims?
@who? who are you talking to?
@who? who are any of them talking to?
@uhh your mom
@Bonus double post “Neoliberal housing policy?” Uh, dude, housing was a free market for thousands of years (and, aside from grandfathered-in apartments in Harlem, still is). Reserving half the city for poor people doesn’t work, it just benefits the handful of people lucky enough to get regulated apartments. Everybody else is up shit creek.
@core Do you really think they’re gonna revise the Core because some slim minority of students are going on a hunger strike?
@dear morons, Ahmadinejad was verbally attacked because he is a demagogue who represents and embodies militant extremism and repression, not because his complexion isn’t pearly white.
@from the strikers - FAQ
1. Why now?
The recent acts of hate on this campus have lent urgency to a long-existing effort to address this university’s climate of marginalization. Furthermore, we coordinate our efforts around the City Planning’s decision on Columbia’s rezoning proposal for West Harlem, which is due in less than two months. Lastly, we act in solidarity with the students that recently mobilized around the Jena Six case, which we see as a larger struggle against racism and injustice.
2.) How do acts of hate affect and relate to campus climate?
On September 24, controversial Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited campus, and Columbia President Lee Bollinger delivered polarizing introductory remarks, dividing the world between “civilized” and “ignorant,” and feeding into a national drumbeat to war. Less than two days later, racist and anti-Muslim graffiti appeared in SIPA. Within the weeks that followed, a Black Teacher’s College professor found a noose hanging from her office door, and anti-Semitic graffiti defaced Lewisohn Hall and the office door of a Jewish professor at Teacher’s College.
That the University’s policies and structures inadequately reflect a commitment to understanding and thinking critically about race, gender, culture, and power only mirrors and reinforces the atmosphere stirred by the recent acts of hate.
The Office of Multicultural Affairs lacks the staffing and space to sufficiently handle the scope of its responsibilities. The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and the Institute for Research in African American Studies are understaffed, underfunded, and have little autonomous power with which to extend their programming. The Core Curriculum marginalizes issues of racialization, colonialism, sexuality, and gender in a way that further marginalizes students themselves. And Columbia’s current expansion plan would displace at least 5,000 people (according to the University’s own estimate) and bulldoze almost every structure in the area. The cumulative effects of the Universities’ action and inaction send devastating messages about its notion of community, power, and cultural understanding.
3.) What’s a noose at Teachers College got to do with institutional change at Columbia?
The Teacher’s College is a part of the university community and bureaucracy should not distance our neighbors. The noose is not an isolated incident and what happens at Teacher’s College effects and contributes to the atmosphere on our campus. Vital is our ability to respond and understand as a unified community.
4.) What are we demanding?
We demand that Columbia expand ethically, support Ethnic Studies, reform the Core Curriculum, and improve administrative support for students of color, students of faith, and LGBTQ students:
Because our cause is multi-faceted, our demands call for change on all levels and ask for a spectrum of responsibility:
• a more systematic response to hate crimes from Public Safety
• a more collaborative expansion effort from the administration
• a revision of the Core that encourages critical engagement with issues of racism and colonialism
• more resources and support for the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER), the Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS), and the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA).
We don’t just want new programs or changes and improvements to existing programs. We want lasting changes in the power dynamics between the university, its students, and its community.
For a more detailed list of demands, see http://cu-strike.blogspot.com/.
5. Why so many demands?
Why shouldn’t students want more say in their life at the University?
Not one thing will change an institutional culture and not just Bollinger is responsible. Students experience life at Columbia in a number of spaces and ways, and only looking across issues will make a substantive change. We are looking toward not just Bollinger, but the Trustees, the Committee on the Core, and the Vice President of Arts and Sciences to help us in our efforts. Administrative reform, the Core, Ethnic Studies and the expansion are just the beginning of the problems with this university, but at least these four concerns begin to question the roots of them.
6.) Why this tactic?
We strike because student input on these issues in meetings, through protests, and through other avenues of vocalization has been ignored or patronized, and the response to our demands for change has been woefully insufficient. Hunger striking does not induce harm on others, and it offers strikers the opportunity for reflection, introspection, and self-examination. A hunger strike is also a physical symbol of our intellectual and spiritual starvation under the university administration’s current policies.
7.) Who are we?
We’re not a campus group. We identify with the past four, twelve, twenty and forty years of student struggle. We know these issues are not new, but we know these issues well. We experience these issues in our daily lives on campus. We’re here for the future generations on this campus – students of color, queer students, allies. We are the students who searched for safe spaces after the visit of Ahmadinejad, the harassment of an Asian-American student by the NYPD, the scrawling of graffiti in SIPA, the hanging of a noose on a Teacher’s College professor’s door, the spray-painting of a swastikas and anti-Semitic caricatures. We’re students who’ve heard too often the anti-democratic platitudes of the administration. We stand in solidarity with each other, and we stand in solidarity with other students who identify with these issues.
8.) What are ways to help?
Tell a friend
Tell your family
Tell the institution how you feel
Come out to the tents any time during the day
Join the vigils 9pm every night at the sundial
Visit our site for more ideas, updates and information: http://cu-strike.blogspot.com/
@strike the strikers I can’t believe you have the nerve to compare Mr. Bollinger’s 100% accurate introduction to those displays of bigotry (i.e. the “bias incidents”). It demeans every victim of racism to even think of making such a comparison, and betrays a great lack of intelligence on your part.
@incidentally Incidentally, have any of you ever heard of a professor/instructor who can’t use any of the texts on the syllabus to enter into some discussion/rant about everything they perceive to be wrong with the contemporary world?
@expansion Who says that bringing Columbia even closer to Harlem is going to serve us all particularly well?
@andrew Because Bwog had known of this and had held off publishing for probably a couple weeks and then decided to do so now, despite being explicitly told at every step that what they were being told was under no circumstances to be published until the official press release which has been sent out now. Bwog had shown itself to lack principles and journalistic integrity.
Anyway, the commentary deriding the struggles is vulgar and childish. It is no surprise that more supporters have not had the inclination to descend into this mud-slinging arena.
Think for one second. Just think. You are deriding some of your fellow students for basically REFUSING ALL SOLID FOOD FOR SEVERAL WEEKS, because they are drinking Gatorade?! Are you insane? This isn’t colonial India and these are no Gandhian martyrs. These are your peers, albeit ones that have decided to think critically about their place in the university and the world, that have no desire or intention to die. The fact, however, that they are willing to get extremely sick, to make their bodies extremely frail for a cause that they believe in speaks to the depth of their commitment.
The “mistake” that they have made is that for most people in this university, education is a game. You input a certain amount of labor, you get some letters on your transcript and you go on to your career in some over-valorized economic sector. These students have committed the sin of taking life seriously, of taking education seriously!
Support them as your brothers and sisters and friends and maybe someday we will be living in a better world.
@Why do I care? Over-valorized? A quick Google search reveals that the only people who have ever used that word are Lacan and you. Lacan is controversial, but you steam through that sentence like his Word were God. See, you present controversial ideas as though they were implicitly correct, and that’s the problem with people like you, who believe that agreeing with your particular worldview is the only way to take one’s education seriously.
I’m going to go back to studying my ass off so that I can get a letters on my transcript and a successful career that allows me to make a difference in the world. And someday, maybe I and my peers with our over-valorized economics degees will try to renegotiate global trade agreements to provide food aid to the hungry in developing countries. And you know what? While we’re trying to feed the hungry, you can drink your fucking Gatorade.
@5,000 columbia will displace at least 5,000 people (the majority of whom are low-income minorities) if its expansion goes forward in its current plan.
5,000 PEOPLE!
and they’ll do it while telling you that they are just “bettering” (ie whitening) the neighborhood.
@Sigh Fine, if you must change the subject from chicken (!) to expansion (¡):
a. Those 5,000 will have other housing.
b. They do not have an intrinsic right to the neighborhood.
c. is for chicken.
d. 5,000 includes the people who will be “displaced” because rents are likely to go up because the neighborhood will be better. If the neighborhood were not getting better, rents would not go up.
e. The actual number of people who will *have* to move rather than having an economic decision to make is much lower.
f. Food for thought: If you force a low-income minority person to move, is that worse than forcing a low-income majority person to move?
g. What color are research scientists again?
@hey it’s sad that a group of students, who geniunely and passionately want to change the way this university runs, are being torn apart. i shouldn’t expect much of bwog, but i would at least hope that everyone would realize that the students striking, and their supporters, are dedicated to challenging broader issues of the way that this university is run, along with their specific demands. columbia is more or less a bureaucratic hell-hole in which students have virtually no say in the decisions that affect them. that students are mobilizing to create an alternate vision, for a more transparent, accessible and just university should not be attacked.
@mmmmm chicken.
@mmmmmm your comments are fowl
@i checken!!! checken!!!! bawk bawk bawk
@G.O.B. KOO-ka-KOO! KOO-ka-KOO!
@yup 6 buckets, 1 for each protestor. to be placed in front of them and eaten while the smells of the breaded juicy pieces of chicken in the world-renowned secret seasoning of 11 herbs and spices, lightly fried to golden perfection waft out
@holy shit now that’s just cruel
@110 110 was in response to 105, but my pull down menu is too slow
@Penny To answer your last question, because they are wealthy and feel guilty about not being able to identify with other members of their affinity group (pick one) as a result.
@it's just sad how cruel people are being here, to quote 102. honestly, if you disagree with the demands, or the tactics, that’s ok, but there’s no reason to be so hurtful in your language or in any actions you may take.
@yeah but 91-94, 100, 101, and 106 are ALL THE SAME PERSON!
LAME
@=( =( =( Cry me a river.
No one has the balls to tauntingly eat a sandwich in front of the protesters anyway. Widespread apathy is probably even crueler in effect.
@chicken No one said anything about eating a sandwich. I believe the suggestion was eating 6 buckets of chicken in front of the protestors. Also, are you really suggesting people are too chicken to eat chicken?
@Also for those of you keeping score back home, I figured out how to get the pull-down menu to go straight to the end…who knew it was the fn key instead of ctrl?
@uhhh you can also click the “reply” link.
geez.
idiot.
@whatever I’m so hungry I can’t think straight.
Stop oppressing me,
jerk.
@but wait! jerk…
…chicken!
@jerk jerk? checken? beef jerkey!
it tastes so good when it enters
but sears like rocket fuel when it exits
@im going to JJ's all this talk about chicken is making me hungry for chicken
is JJ’s open?
@or this could be a brilliant too chicken to seriously go on a hunger strike chicken feast which is also insiduously racist consider stereotrypes regarding fried chicken etc
@ps... 1) the “bias” incidents on campus? probably just a shit stirrer looking to raise hell in a very liberal place. on the whole, columbia is a very liberal campus, if not one of the most liberal. seriously, find me some institutionally sanctioned bias incidents. or find me some evidence that the recent incidents are part of an overwhelming trend as opposed to exceptions to the rule.
2) daylong workshops would be a waste of time. don’t believe me, go attend a mandatory workshop on diversity elsewhere or a sexual harassment training workshop. come back from it and tell me with a straight face that it wasn’t a joke…
3) race bias is outmoded. it’s all about class these days. HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THIS?
@your 3rd point I may consider if and only if the 6 protestors are all white.
@guys.... nobody around here wants to oppress you. really. ok, maybe there are a few nutjobs, but on the whole…no. you bring it on yourselves with your asinine behavior and immature demands. and then when nobody takes you seriously you call it “marginalization” and “oppression.” you’re like that goofy, awkward kid at the high school dance, the one who makes a fool of himself on the dance floor, and then thinks everybody’s laughing with him, not at him. guess what? everybody’s laughing at him — and everybody’s laughing at you, too.
@idea for all the people against the demands these protesters are making and/or all the people who think this hunger strike is sort of weak (gatorade? seriously?) I say we all eat lunch right in front of them everyday (hopefully their hunger strike will require them to sit outside low or something for the whole time so we can all grab lunch and sit around them on the steps and just be cruel bastards)
@that's my chicken idea.
2xOriginal reciepe
2xFiery BBQ
1xExtra Crispy
1xHoney BBQ
@plus i don’t think “fostering debate” is their main purpose
@possibly a spectacle, but it is making us have this conversation which i don’t think you and i have ever had. sometimes spectacles are needed when there is no response to more subtle tactics, and more subtle tactics were tried, right? i won’t throw a party for you slashing your wrists just like i wouldn’t be happy if one of them got actually sick, and i believe they will stop before that. anyways, this tactic differs from the immigrant roundup example in that they are not going to be hurting anyone but themselves. but i do applaud anyone who puts themselves in a place where they might get criticized for sticking up for their ideas (as long as this doesn’t involve hurting others).
@the idea that this is only hurting themselves so its ok is absurd. Hunger strikes inherently act as an accusation against those who committed the purported injustices that their moral wrong is what has caused teh hunger strikes. It’s the unfair actions which have provoked others to hurt themselves to bring attention to the situation.
By the way, you’re argument is disturbing. You’re essentially sayign that if you’re argument and views can’t provoke debate the old fashioned way (you know–actually containing enough merit to cause people to examine it and discuss its validity on its own) then you can continue to escalate provocative actions to try to bring your point to the forefront. It’s a short skip from that logic to SDS bombings and then to Bin Laden’s boys protestign western imperialism by bombing the twin towers. Not to mention that we aren’t having a conversation about the actual merits of their argument–we’re having one over their tactics, spectacle and lack of respect for their peers. Its particularly sad because you again don’t understand that there’s nothing to it. The point is anyone can create a spectacle for their cause. Homer Simpson went on a hunger strike when the Isotopes were moving to Albequerque. Heck, the westboro baptist church could all go on a hunger strike to bring ‘debate’ to their retarded views about homosexuality.
And please consult a dictionary before using the world ‘subtle’.
@cute very cute 91-94, having a little pro-strike convo with yourself. just adorable.
@well then, i notice that those against the strike, while claiming not to care, are using the most vulgar, aggresive language…oh well.
@meh “i notice that those against the strike, while claiming not to care, are using the most vulgar, aggresive language…oh well.”
And I notice that those that support the strike are the ones that post 4 comments in a row and respond to themselves to feign a larger support body than actually exists… oh well.
@Anonymous Many supporters don’t read the bwog because they (we) don’t like it. The Bwog has become a circus arena. Unfortunately, I found out about this post and made the mistake of reading some comments. I don’t like how the BWOG frames things/issues/events, how it thinks they have the right publish something incomplete and especially how people use it to hide behind a comment and say stupid shit.
If you want to have a discussion about it, come tomorrow to one of the events and be open about it.
You won’t see a strong support when it comes to arguing about stupid shit on this blog because Bwog has turned into a place to discuss “chicken” instead of the actual demands.
@What? How does Bwog not have the right to publish something like this? Are you serious? You are a ridiculous human being.
@Hey Don’t blame Bwog for what commenters say. The original post is pretty objective.
@???? shouldn’t we repect students who are putting themselves out there to try to change something they (and we should all) care about?
@yes yes if you’re not going to be helpful at least don’t put people down for trying. i admire that they are going to do this
@are you suggesting that people who purposely do things to incite a spectacle under the purported intention of fostering debate should be applauded simply because they put themselves out there?
Cool.
When the republicans bring David Duke to speak or hold an illegal immigrant round up game then i hope you’ll support them.
And where does this valor end in your opinion? Will you throw a party for me if i slash my wrists cause i’m sick of the food at john jay for dinner(or if you’re goign to bring out a seriousness argument, if schip or something isn’t signed)?
@excuse me but WHO the FUCK are YOU to PREACH to us on what we should and shouldn’t care about?
these clowns are worthy of MOCKERY and CONTEMPT.. and after their entertainment value is exhausted i will go back to my homework and ignoring them.. they have incited amusement, not “debate”
@none Huh? everyone’s arguing about whether you can survive on gatorade or not, if they shouldn’t be drinking it? of course you can survive, to a certain point. i don’t think they want to die, i think they want to strike for as long as possible. living on gatorade and water and sleeping outside is NOT COMFORTABLE by any argument and if they were trying to “sneak calories” there are much more effective ways of doing it. a couple hundred a day doesn’t make any difference they are obviously not doing it to prevent more hunger and only to dilute possiblities of creating lasting damage. i don’t really think gatorade is the focus, though
@meh I admire them. I eat all day long, especially when I have to study. I could not imagine going on a diet, especially during the school year (actually at any time during the year…)
@08er They want a major cultures seminar about “racialization” added to the core? Wow. Never gonna happen. But if it does…SENIORS!
@Reader Rabbit I for one would very much like to read and respond to the list of demands in a suitably rational fashion. Unfortunately, copying victoria’s verbose comment showed that the demands are an 8-page single-spaced, 2100-word document with 13 distinct demands. To respond to each of these in as much verbosity, err…detail, would require writing my own 2000+ word essay. To expect people who work full-time to have time to digest all of this and respond in kind is really more than a bit absurd.
If you can’t express your point more concisely, you come across as crazy. Remember that part of what made Marx and Engel’s Manifesto so widely read was its masterful concision.
@EAL As usual, nobody gives a shit about you dumbass protesters. Grow up already and stop defacing the name of old Alma.
@i think people do obviously give a shit, meaning the tactic is working. STEP ONE, THEY HAVE INCITED DEBATE! even if it is about chicken, it’ll evolve
@to anybody claiming gatorade/water is a crazy thing to go on, i’ve done it for liquid diets to make weight a boatload of times
You’ll drop weight and it might suck but you can definitely get by (not to mention most people can survive at least 2-3 weeks without food biologically)..after the first day or so you also start needing less food and it becomes easier (we all know they’ll stop after 5 days tops)
And for people saying address the substantive issues (these strikers/shoccers/etc who are always the same people behind this and apparently asked their friends to speak out on bwog against teh general anti sentiment), these three college students are such attention whores that instead of debating peoples substantive points (ex..see the posts several down where one of the ‘shoccers’ asked bwog to delete those posts critical of their pseudo movement) they’re staging a half assed ‘hunger strike’
To those comparing them to gandhi, etc it is f’ing pathetic that you’re so haughty and arrogant to even say that. Those people consumed nothign nutritious to protest outright injustices of slavery, occupation, etc—not incredibly complex, muddled issues of expansion/the proper way to ensure philosophical education
And don’t try to throw the ‘bunch of swastikas, junk scribbled on bathroom walls and a noose’ thing into the same conversation. its legitimate to be disturbed by that. However, we still haven’ t learned who perpetrated the acts and their intentions (for example look at GW, where there two latest hate crimes were both hoaxes)—and even more infuriatingly the absurdly tenuous connection between those incidents and for example the core/expansion (which existed before and will exist after these hate incidents and are not directly relevant just because they happened concurrently) reeks of iraq 9/11 type connections. It is NOT an argument to say this is happening at the same time so its connected without establishing some type of reasonable casual effect.
By the way Joe and Victoria. You two have exposed what type of lax idiocy supports this movement. While Joe has exhorted us to think for yourselves and don’t follow teh masses, his compatriot Victoria has kept on posting ‘support the strikers’ in block caps and he has resorted to exactly the type of ad homs they supposedly condemn. And Joe, in a move which shoudl result in automatic expulsion from columbia, claimed that the theme of 1984 was ‘supporting the masses and ignoring minorities’. First, lets assume that we can take the book at its most literal level–how the heck did they ignore the minorities? they violently dealt with them you retard! cliff notes do not equal reading a book. and yet you failed to even comprehend the cliff notes.
1984’d is the new godwin’d
To summarize, thanks hunger strikers for again creating another retarded, extremist, over the top spectacle that detracts from relatively decent points because of your inability to consider the ramifications of your actions—sometimes you have to wonder whether they’re on the payroll of kulawik
@well said and well done, mate
@curious what are the names of the students who are striking?
@Boo It’s amazing Why is everyone so threatened by a hunger strike?
@LMAOnade OK, they want to have a strike – they’ve got the right; more power to them. And if the university wants to ignore them, that’s fine too; more power to them.
@Mitch You know, people think I’m into sports just because I’m a man. I’m not into sports. I mean, I like Gatorade, but that’s about as far as it goes. By the way, you don’t have to be sweaty and holding a basketball to enjoy a Gatorade. You could just be a thirsty dude. Gatorade forgets about this demographic. I’m thirsty for absolutely no reason. Other than the fact that liquid has not touched my lips for some time. Can I have a Gatorade too, or does that lightning bolt mean ‘no’?
@exactly no, let’s let the loonie minority decide that the solution to Columbia’s problems is simply hiring professors and enrolling students based on color (read: racism, either way it flies) instead of merit and by creating department upon department focusing on gay rights or south pacific islanders or what? how the heck is graduating Columbia with a major in LGBT studies gonna get you anything but a spot at the end of the unemployment line?
I’d rather some educated professionals shape Columbia’s course offerings instead of dumb college students who have nothing better to do (ie. go to class, study, try to contribute to society in a tangible way, and, oh, right, not waste their rich daddy’s money by failing out of school and blaming it on the so-called elite majority).
@bingo you got it
@soooo you’ve basically just rejected any aspect of huistorical conditionality s well as any value of democracy in favor of technocratic authority….. just be clear on the intellectual foundation on which u stand….
@democracy brought the communists to power in Russia and China, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Syria, and Bush in the US buddy
i’m all for authoritarian technocracy.. because I know that I’m advantaged and privileged enough to join the establishment
@Spectacle Here’s how this hunger strike is going to go down.
Kevin Schollenberger and Jewelnel Davis are going to come out to wherever this hunger strike is going on and offer the stikers some nice Columbia branded fleece blankets and free Gatorade courtesy of JJs. They’ll ask the strikers if they’d like to show their list of demands to President Bollinger, at which point they’ll be escorted into his office anteroom, where a Columbia Catering table will be set up with a modest selection of free sandwiches. They won’t mention anything about it, but it’ll be there. Bollinger’s chief of staff will warmly accept their list and tell them that the University is deeply committed to their concerns and that the President will be sure to take their list as an action item. Then she’ll check her Blackberry while she waits for them to awkwardly show themselves out. The sandwiches lay waiting.
@ARR Snaps
@It seems that the only people who support the strikers are the strikers themselves.
@coogan No, we’re all contributing to the spectacle.
@rjt I’m going to overeat to protest racism. I’m going to binge and it will make me vomit and it won’t be fun. I am awesome. Then I will encase my foot in concrete to protest racism more. All you haters: when was the last time you did something this unfun for a cause? I am making a difference.
@good work guys! I’m glad we got all these loonies under control.
@name It will be affected since it would draw funding from other departments, or necessitate an increase in tuition.
Minority views may be wrong, like most people here seem to think. Unless you can convince a majority, they should not be acted upon.
@most of what you need to know about capitalism was said by K marx folks.
@Joe wait, your education will be compromised if there is an ethnic studies department? the world will end? you already said you don’t care about it, so it wont affect you.
and we shouldn’t follow the desires of a few? let the masses decide and don’t pay attention to minorities? I mean 1984 was a good book, but ya didn’t need to take it literally.
and chicken people, ya’ll know too much about bad food. go feed the homeless with that chicken if you want to tell your grandkids you actually did something with your life
@science when it comes down to it, if i have to choose between an ethnic studies department and the downsizing of a current department or no ethnic studies department, i choose the latter.
and the desires of a few should not impinge in a negative way upon the majority. especially the vast majority, which this group of people has failed to realize is approximately 90% of the student body.
@striker fan Grad students of Columbia, unite! Take leave of your classes and recitation sections!
@striker fan Wouldn’t it be nice to have another GSAS strike? I’d love to see that fat inflatable rat again!
@please strike I don’t think that students here need to advocate for the introduction of a new department. There’s plenty of ethnic and regional studies here already. That said, a strike would be fun. In an ideal world, a large number of students and faculty would participate, giving us all a decent vacation.
@coogan Seems as though people are pretty pumped about the hunger strike.
I enjoy the Core because it helps me understand the oppressive world we live in and how it was created.
The list of demands seem to imply books will be dropped from the canon and others will be added in. That doesn’t sound like equality, it sounds like a power shift.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/07/loudest-voice-majority-opinion.php
@oppression Tell me about it. Virginia Woolf, for instance, is quite oppressively irritating.
@oppressment i think to remove female oppressmenters from our Core, we have to remove Virginia Woolf, Wollstonecraft, and Austen
i suggest as replacement the comic “V for Vendetta”, the movie “Superbad”, and Dodd’s “The Intelligent Investor”
@hold up This was all good and fun until you start talking about the only Canon that matters–financial texts. Benjamin Graham, the most respected name in securities analysis ever probably, wrote that book, not Dodd. (Though Dodd knew a few things too but please don’t make an error that egregious again.)
@!!! dude, don’t short change the fiery buffalo. That’s a classic and you know it. Nothing will make those fools cave in faster than a traditional buffalo sauce done to perfection with a blend of 7 different peppers and a hint of vinegar. This flavorful combination equals an extra KFC kick!
@good pt was never a fan of the popcorn chicken.. will switch it for another fiery buffalo.
@me again OK, final tally, after some suggestions:
1 x Extra Crispy
2 x Original Recipe
1 x Honey BBQ Wings
1 x Fiery Buffalo Wings
1 x Popcorn Chicken
@So... First they staged walkouts of their own classes and now they’re depriving themselves of food. How far does one have to sink just to satisfy this whole victim stereotype?
@Colonel Sanders CHICKENFEST ON THE HUNGER STRIKE!!!!!
@#s 15, 16, 23, 39, 40, and 41, In other words the same person,
You’re an idiot. Obviously your self-righteousness takes greater importance than the future of your university. Despite what you think, in order to maintain competitiveness with Harvard, UPenn and Princeton which all acquired >20, >15 and >5 acres respectively in the last 2 years, Columbia has to expand.
Not only that, the western cannon is slightly more important than the others because most of modern philosophy is based on the western writers. And I say this as a brown man. So don’t throw around terms like racist or Uncle Tom (if you were thinking of doing so).
Your “demands” are utterly useless. OMA has never served an incredibly useful purpose. Maybe because they haven’t had the manpower. I’ll give you that. But unless you want to raise your tuition about $2000 more per semester I suggest you keep your protests to yourself. I think more of us would not like a $2000 increase in tuition than would like to see your idiocy come to fruition.
@seriously these kids are just a bunch of attention-grubbing pussies. gatorade? it might as well be water and starbucks espresso brownies.
i’d like to see a cat food strike. these kids will eat nothing but IAMS on Low Steps until the administration does something about their demands. that would be some real shit.
@science Lets step back and see how difficult it would be to live on gatorade, absent of the hunger pain in your stomach which actually goes away after about 12 hours of fasting.
Typically, the body maintains enough residual glucose storage for about 10-15 hours of fasting, maybe a little less. So if they start fasting at midnight tonight, they would have expended their short term energy storage by tomorrow around 3pm, at the latest.
On top of the short term energy storage (read: glycogen, for you science/biology majors out there) the body maintains fat storage in the liver as well as in the fatty areas of the body, like the abdomen and ‘love handles’ everyone doesn’t quite love. This fat storage is approximately 80x as rich, in the average male, compared to the short term storage. Thus we’re talking about 33-50 days (800-1200 hours) worth of excess energy stored in the fat! So, without even EATING anything, these individuals could survive, at minimum and on average, 35 days without any food, or exactly 5 weeks. This all assumes that they would be drinking water, because without that they would die in approximately 2-3 days, as someone stated before.
Another important thing to point out about fasting – the continuous lack of food removes the necessary influx of dietary electrolytes, such as Potassium, Sodium, Calcium and Chloride. These are, mostly, replaced by gatorade (all except Calcium, it seems). Since sodium, potassium and chloride are essential to the nervous system to promote function, we can probably assume that the faster’s quest for these (one of the true definitions behind thirst) will be high. This can influence the amount of gatorade we drink.
On a caloric level, each gatorade provides approximately 125 calories per 20oz bottle. This is all in the form of pure glucose, which will mostly feed the brain, but will offset the expenditure of fats and glycogen. Each bottle also provides 275mg of sodium, or approximately 1/7th of the necessary sodium for the body. If we use sodium as a gauge for drinking gatorade, we can assume they will drink approximately 7 bottles of gatorade over a 24 hour period. That amounts to 875 calories, or 44% of our daily caloric intake.
If we take all of this as true, the body will move through its glycogen storage in approximately twice the time as before, now approximately 20-30 hours, and the fat depletion will take even longer! Now it will take approximately 120 days to expend all the energy stored in the fat of the body, maybe even longer!
Thus, drinking gatorade HIGHLY influences the body’s usage of its natural energy reserves and changes the nature of the so called hunger strike. If you do not eat anything and drink only water, it will take you about 35 days to deplete all of your latent energy storage. If, however, you drink some gatorades as well (7 a day means one ever 2.5 hours… pretty usual, in my opinion) it lengthens your ability to survive from 35 days to 121 days! That is a 3.5x increase in survival time! So, gatorade actually makes your fast almost pointless… at least from a scientific point of view.
Also, one caveat: the body tends to change its energy expenditure patterns when it has a low source of energy. Thus, at a caloric intake of less than 100 calories, you might only be spending approximately 1400 calories instead of the traditional 2000. This shift, which is difficult to anticipate and calculate, was not accounted for above.
Another caveat: the consumption of 800-1000 calories daily is considered an art form which certain individuals strive for. These people live long and healthy lives, much longer and healthier than people who eat the traditional 2000 calories. Thus, even supplementing your life with gatorade will place you there.
The only recommendation I can say involves vitamins – if you do a hunger strike, please take vitamins, specifically your Bs, Riboflavin, Niacin and Folate. If you don’t take those critical body functions will degrade and you can seriously harm your body. This has nothing to do with starving but everything to do with making sure you don’t shorten your lifespan more post hunger strike.
But, in the end, gatorade greatly changes a hunger strike and makes it seem like it’s barely a hunger strike at all, especially given the high caloric content of gatorade.
The end!
If, however, we factor in the gatorade that they will be drinking, things change. Each 20oz bottle of gatorade provides 125 calories in the form of glucose, exclusively. If we can assume that people drink approximately 5-6 of these daily, given their thirst
@science shit, that last paragraph after ‘the end’ wasn’t supposed to be there – it was part of a draft! disregard!
@Joe the fact that you took the time to figure that out just proves you don’t get the point of this AT ALL. take the time to learn 197-A instead. be useful
@kid you obviously didn’t take the time to “learn” 197-A. or you obviously didn’t take the time to learn a vital little economic concept called supply and demand. one of the two at least…
@science Clearly you don’t understand the implications of my assessment – that the strike is not a strike and should not be thought of as such. Gatorade undermines your desire to call it a hunger strike as it actually provides enough caloric intake to allow people to survive indefinitely.
Furthermore, I vehemently disagree with 197A and believe that Columbia’s expansion into Manhattanville is the only mechanism for our viability and survival throughout the next 30 years as a University. If you had half a brain you’d realize that the establishment of an ethnic studies department would almost be contingent upon a successful expansion into Manhattanville as there is no other place to put a new department right now. Space on campus is so cramped that existing departments are unable to fit the needs of students, yet you want to create a new one? Fuck off! The rest of us who don’t care about ethnic studies or are not interested in it should not have our educations compromised for the desires of the few.
Also, science makes a University viable, successful and great. It brings in money. Ethnic studies is a monetary sink. You cannot crowd something out for another thing without ensuring financial support exists there.
If you want to be useful, you’ll succeed as a student, go out and get an excellent job and make a ton of money. Through that avenue you can donate $50M to the University to start an ethnic studies department. Going on a hunger strike of something as trivial as ethnic studies is pointless – go out and make a difference instead. If you really want to go on a hunger strike, do it for a viable and good cause, like the fact that thousands of Americans a day die due to lack of health care or that millions of people world wide die from hunger. Those are worthwhile causes, not an ethnic studies department.
@calling your opponents crazy is great way to kick things off…
@Joe as a supporter of this strike, I will personally shove that chicken up your ass. actually, that’s where you all talk out of…
@wtf i’m willing to SHARE it with you bud.. come and have some.. i couldnt possibly finish 6 buckets on my own
@say it loud SUPPORT THE STRIKERS!!!!!!!!
@victoria SUPPORT THE STRIKERS!!!
@support for the non chicken eating crazies
SUPPORT THE STRIKERS!!!!!!!
@anonymous SUPPORT THE STRIKERS!
@no... I’d rather support my appetite and waistline
@What? I don’t agree with most of their talking points. Why should I support them?
@Joe because they are fellow students, part of the community, oh wait, you like to follow guidelines and do what bollinger tells you. must not think for self, must follow core, must not think of others. damn robots
@or maybe thinking for myself, and not necessarily parroting the Core or Prezbo, I still don’t agree with their talking points
whacha gonna do about that? can your brain even comprehend that a thinking, rational, sane individual might not agree with you?
on the chicken, i’m going to get 2 buckets crispy, 2 original recipe, 1 honey bbq, 1 fiery buffalo.. any objections?
@hey bwog Why don’t you talk about the strike that actually matters…the Writers’ Guild! Geesh if that continues we might not have good TV for weeks!
@Anonymous First of all, if you’ve eaten anything in the last 6 hours you’re in no position to dismiss a diet of diluted gatorade as some kind of cop-out. Maybe if you actually had a spine instead of a trite little mouth you’d have the nerve to go hungry for your scarcely-informed politics.
@wait If I have eaten anything in the last 6 hours, I’d not be in a position to dismiss a diet of water and bread, or juice and fruit, or water crackers and canned meat either. But each of those creeps further away from a true hunger strike.
@wirc It goes to show just how “informed” these people are that they repeatedly confuse this “Cotton Club” from the seventies with THE Cotton Club from the 20s.
sweet
@verifiable? Can these students also chain themselves to Alma Mater, so we know they aren’t secretly sneaking grub? Forget the Gatorade, this is just some half-assed hungry pledge. I don’t buy it!
@great news this way we get rid of campus nutjobs: hey, if they want to starve, let them starve.
@Nick It would be nice if those commenting would, I don’t know, attempt an intellectual critique of the demands that the strikers have, rather than resorting to ad hominems and straw men arguments. How about being a little less sensationalist and more constructive? Obviously, the people doing this care a lot about it, so it would be admirable for the critics to give them some respect.
@Yo Nick ordinarily, I’d agree with you but in this case, 1) they are not worth the effort, 2) this problem solves itself.. they starve and we get rid of em
@victoria for whoever wrote this, it doesnt sound like you wanted to. ouch, dude.
@wtf lydia? “Their reference point is the great student hunger sit-in of 1996, which resulted in the creation of the ethnic studies department”
WE HAVE AN ETHNIC STUDIES DEPARTMENT?
REALLY? MAYBE YOU SHOULD INFORM THE PEOPLE OVER AT CSER!
@get informed.
@if I were on campus this semester, I’d go out a buy boxes of KFC and wave it in front of the strikers Ali G Indahouse-style
@highly fucked up. And there will be hoards of support people surrounding them so don’t count on it?
@fine I’ll just get as close to them as possible and wave and eat said KFC. Can’t stop me from doing that, can they?
@you are seriously in need of help, not to mention a moral core.
@and you are more than free to join me. i couldn’t possibly eat 6 tubs of chicken.
@how can a gossip rag forget to mention the names of the 6 hunger strikers?
@victoria BWOG seems to have forgotten…or maybe we just didnt shine our hearts today, eh?
Demands for a more inclusive, responsible Columbia University
The following demands are the result of a number of townhall meetings, forums, and follow-up discussions that have happened amongst a number of students from various communities on campus. While triggered by the number of hate and bias incidents that have happened this semester, these demands are hardly new.
Administrative Reform:
Columbia University has failed to demonstrate its commitment to providing safe spaces for all members of our campus community. The administration has yet to fulfill its avowed goals of making the long-term, institutional changes necessary in stemming the rising tide of hate incidents aimed at students of color, students of faith, LGBTQ students, and other oppressed groups. We demand that the following changes be enacted so that students may hold the University accountable to its purported anti-discriminatory values.
The Office of Multicultural Affairs is an integral part of our community. From student group advising to programming, to building a support network for individual students, the OMA’s range of operation requires more resources than that which is granted by this school. The OMA is grossly understaffed and housed in a space that is simply inadequate considering the scope of its responsibilities. Furthermore, the OMA has only a limited purview in working with Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The OMA must have administrative support and a means of inter-school collaboration in order to address issues of diversity on a campus-wide level.
1. We demand more advisors and counselors for cultural groups, students of color, the LGBTQ community and communities of faith, with student involvement in the hiring process of said personnel. We ask that that the Office of Multicultural Affairs be expanded physically and responsibly, and that more support for collaboration between the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Columbia and the Multicultural Affairs Office at Barnard be given by the University administration.
The University administration has failed to facilitate inter-school communication between faculty, administrators, staff, and students alike, resulting in inconsistent responses to bias incidents and hate crimes. The introduction of a Vice Provost for Multicultural Affairs would greatly improve channels of communication between schools and the campus community on issues of diversity. This Vice Provost would be able to facilitate the connections between various schools and implement campus-wide initiatives.
The creation of this position would ensure a level of consistency and accountability in the way that the administration addresses bias incidents and hate crimes as well as other student concerns, and would encourage the university to be proactive in addressing issues of campus climate. Columbia would be able to respond to such issues preemptively, rather than reacting to incendiary incidents that reflect badly on our school as a whole. The Vice Provost should be responsible for providing incentives for certain policy changes that will encourage greater communication and interaction between faculty and students, communication and initiatives across schools, and lend continued support for anti-oppression training for incoming students, as well as for incoming faculty and public safety.
2. We demand a Vice Provost for Multicultural Affairs to administer and direct the University’s policies affecting students within all the schools of the University.
3. We demand institutionalized, mandatory, full day workshops on issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, power and privilege for all incoming faculty, and public safety; and that the training focus on anti-oppression, rather than sensitivity and diversity.
4. We demand that Columbia’s Public Safety announce instances of hate crimes when they are reported and issue an annual report of reported bias incidents and hate crimes and how they have been addressed.
Ethnic Studies
Ethnic Studies examines race as a social construction that has been shaped throughout United States history at the hands of forces such as policy, violence, law, and media. It includes an analysis of the influences of gender, sexuality, nationality, and class, as well as a critical look at the power structures that have been prevalent in joining together the elements in the formation of race and ethnicity as we understand it today. Especially given Columbia’s Eurocentric Core Curriculum, Ethnic Studies plays a crucial role in providing students with tools critical to understanding the formations of race and ethnicity in the United States and provides us with the necessary knowledge to understand the position of ethnicity and race as projects of power.
The state of Ethnic Studies at Columbia is in a critical condition. The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) and the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) are understaffed, underfunded, and have little autonomous power with which to extend its programming. This program has been denied the crucial resources that it needs to sustain itself. The risk of even further decline will become an even bigger threat unless the power to hire faculty and offer a full curriculum in the University is granted to the Center.
Following it’s institutionalization, student voices become powerless in determining the direction of CSER. As a result of the 1996 protests that led to creation of Ethnic Studies at Columbia, students were afforded special positions on the hiring committees of CSER. However, in practice, these positions have had no voting power and little influence, and are wholly symbolic in nature.
1. Given the inadequate number of core faculty present next semester, we demand the completion of 2 core faculty hires per year for both CSER and IRAAS until each has 12 core junior and senior professors, which must be maintained indefinitely.
2. The academic review of CSER and IRAAS must begin in Summer 2008 where the board must include only ethnic studies scholars from outside institutions as well as Columbia ethnic studies majors. The academic review must also research the steps necessary for the creation of Queer Studies, which has historically been placed under Ethnic Studies at other institutions, as well as Native American Studies which must be considered by the university following the review’s completion.
3. Interested Ethnic Studies majors collectively, shown through a vote, must be given 1 or 2 votes (depending on committee size) which will be delivered by the current student positions on all hiring committees for junior and senior faculty to increase student presence and determination of CSER’s direction.
4. To maintain the integrity of Ethnic Studies and the very possibility of its sustained growth, the CSER and IRAAS must be granted the ability to make hires autonomously. This is not a call for the immediate departmentalization of Ethnic Studies. Rather it is a call for the Ethnic Studies programs to make hiring decision on their own accord, without the need of outside departments to lead the hire. We recognize that this is unprecedented for centers and institutes throughout the University, but see it as a necessary step in creating Ethnic Studies classes and research initiatives that are accountable to the field and on par with peer institutions.
The Manhattanville Expansion and Community Accountability
As students of Columbia University, we find it impossible not to take a stand when our university is actively ignoring the rights of the West Harlem community. Instead of engaging the community in respectful and open negotiation, Columbia is pursuing an expansion plan of disruption and displacement. We believe that the community has a right to affordable housing, living wage jobs, and a prominent voice in any development plan for its neighborhood. We believe that Columbia’s plan must recognize the rights of all people regardless of their economic background or race.
The problems with Columbia’s plan are as extreme as they are abundant. According to Columbia’s own statistics, five thousand people would be placed at risk of displacement due to rent pressures engendered by the addition of university affiliates to the area – and this number is likely low. The plan seeks to bulldoze almost every structure in the area – including the current location of the Cotton Club and other community institutions – in order to create a 7-story underground “bathtub” upon which its structures would be supported. The university is planning to create buildings that are very tall, contextually out of place with the surrounding community. The university is also pursuing the use of eminent domain against property-owners who refuse to sell their buildings. While it claims to desire a productive relationship with Harlem, it is functionally colonizing a community and remaking the neighborhood in its own image.
The most basic problem with Columbia’s plan, however, is its wanton disregard for the basic principle of local democracy, something that the university’s humanistic ideals should hold as sacrosanct. Community Board 9 undertook a democratic, transparent process of many years to create a framework for development that took into considerations the needs of its residents. This plan conflicts directly with the expansion plan, which the university has stubbornly refused to revise. Despite the nearly unanimous rejection of the plan by the Community Board this August, the university is using its political muscle to push the plan through the approval process. The university’s basic principles should not be sacrificed on the altar of profit. We believe that Columbia must concretely apply the principles of the community’s 197-A plan to its planned expansion.
As informed and active members of this institution, we refuse to allow the current expansion plan to go forward in our name. We stand in solidarity with the 10 demands made by the Community Board in August and therefore demand that
1. Columbia withdraw its 197-C proposal to rezone Manhattanville immediately.
2. After withdrawing its proposal from the review process, Columbia submit its proposal to Community Board 9 for revision in line with the principles of the 197-a plan.
3. After making the relevant changes to its rezoning plan, Columbia negotiate a substantive community benefits agreement which serves to mitigate displacement created by the university’s presence and addresses job creation, environmental problems and university-community relations.
The Core Curriculum
Columbia’s Core Curriculum has been criticized for decades for not only its Eurocentrism, but its marginalization of nonwhite peoples within the West, and the issues of racialization and colonialism. While there have been additions throughout the years of a Major Cultures requirement, and individual texts such as The Souls of Black Folk, The Wretched of the Earth, and the Haitian Revolutionary Constitution, these efforts to remedy the Core have been insufficient in concept and execution. The Major Cultures requirements often take place in large lectures, where contrasting to the intimate seminars of other Core classes, content mastery can take priority over critical thinking, and the texts and themes that have been inserted into CC, Lit Hum, and Music Hum often seem to be tokenized additions rather than incorporated into a transformed conception of the Core. As such, we call for continued reassessment of all Core requirements, not as simply a matter of representation, but in developing a Core Curriculum that does not marginalize critical thinking about racialization, colonialism, sexuality, and gender. The Core Curriculum is not only out of step with Columbia’s students, but does not even tap into the resources of the intellectual work done by faculty who address the issues marginalized by the Core in their own work. The inadequacies of the Core Curriculum are not only intellectual problems, however. As the Core is one of the central pillars of a Columbia education, its marginalization of the issues of racialization, colonialism, sexuality and gender further marginalizes and traumatizes students themselves.
In this state of affairs, the University must work with greater urgency and consideration of the decades of dedication by students, alumni, and faculty to reshape the antiquated Core Curriculum into one that represents the values of a diverse, global, intellectually vibrant and just University. Towards that end, we recommend:
1. The reformation of the Major Cultures requirement to contain a course in a seminar format which challenges students to think critically about the issues of racialization and colonialism, global phenomena which also are at the Core of the “Western” experience.
Given that these recommendations have been on the table for decades, we realize that we are saying nothing new, and that more than simply asking is required for their execution. Therefore, we also call for further measures of accountability to students. Given that every Columbia student is required to take the Core Curriculum, we feel that the limited student participation in the Committee on the Core, the Committee on Instruction, and their various subcommittees is evidence of inadequate use of the resources of the student body. We call for:
2. More student voice and seats within these committees, and that their process of selection be better publicized, so that students’ passions for changing the Core do not have to flare up in moments of spectacle, but can be incorporated into the constant process of developing the Core Curriculum.
Furthermore, we would like to point out that many Barnard students have similar concerns about the 9 Ways of Knowing and have been involved in changing the curriculum both at Columbia and Barnard. However, we are cautiously optimistic about the initiative shown by Barnard’s faculty and administration to address our concerns. We hope that Columbia faculty and administration can look to and communicate with Barnard to think about the ways to best be accountable to student needs, as we all belong to a larger community.
@wtf Oh, shine a light. You cannot possibly be serious – MORE bureaucracy is going to prevent racism at Columbia? Forcing people into patronising anti-oppression training is going to help? No thank you. Not all of us white people are bumbling morons.
@victoria where is this “on the recrod info” coming? why aren’t the demands also listed in the story, because it obvious that some of the people posting have NO idea what is going on. bwog seems to do a good job at losing track of what students are fighting for when it comes to things like this!
i like to core, too. but in light of recent events…5 HATE CRIMES IN LESS THAN A MONTH…and these are public hate crimes, who knows what else has gone down, i think the core can be used to flourish more free thought. it is known that major cultures is taught from a western syllabus. it is known that past student action is what brought things like the haitian constitution and wretched of the earth onto the reading list. so it needs to be made known that students who truly care about the value of learning, would want core reform out of RESPECT for the core.
as far as expansion. mr or mrs. counterpoint. when 5000 people or more are at the gates homeless because of our school’s expansion plan, we will see what counterpoint you are bringing up.
There has been tremendous unrest on campus this semester, these past few years, this past decade. And people here feel psychically hurt by Columbia’s indifference to our heartache, to our struggle, to our rumbling need for a better university. With luck, Columbia will see the starvation of our bodies as a bellwether of our growing desperation on this campus. It’s a shame that Columbia was not more alarmed when we said our minds, hearts, and spirits were starving, too.
we are already starving, people.
@Counterpoint So, I like the Core and I think the Manhattanville expansion is a good thing overall. Do I need to go on a hunger strike to make sure these morons don’t force Bollinger to abandon them?
@bunch of children.
@President Camacho Now I understand everyone’s shit’s emotional right now. But I’ve got a 3 point plan that’s going to fix EVERYTHING
@gatorade!?!? gatorade?!? gatorade has calories!! those pansies. also, their demands are dumb. but not as dumb as the fact that they’re cheating on the whole “hunger” thing.
@Not Sure It’s got what activists crave!
@Assapopoulos this is a bad idea. bollinger will realize that all he has to do is wait until they starve to death and then the problem will be gone.
@ok then to #4, #5, and anyone else calling this lame: if it’s so lame, why don’t you tell us about the last time you went on only water and gatorade for several weeks? yeah, i thought so…regardless of what you think about their demands (over-the-top, in my opinion), there’s gotta be some respect for trying.
@no... of course i havent been on a water/gatorade strike before, and i think it’s lame. i think that’s just being consistent right?
i did go on a real hunger strike when i was 11 and wanted a dog. i went without dinner that night, didnt have breakfast the next morning and got a puppy a little after noon. i won out because i was hardcore and didnt pussy around with gatorade. grow a pair bitches
@lmao what the hell are you talking about?
@Yeah What the strikers should really do is drink as much water and gatorade as they want, but then withhold from toilets.
Now that’s what I call willpower.
@lame water and gatorade allowed? you could survive for quite a while with those two. that doesnt say much does it? real ballers would skip the gatorade, and maybe even the water. people are a lot more likely to be alarmed when your timeframe of survival is a couple of days rather than several weeks (a healthy individual could probably survive weeks with water and gatorade, no doubt)
@it is the rule of threes. 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without heat, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. yes these are approximations and there are certainly exceptions but these are the rough guidelines for survival.
@gatorade is kinda like food, so you think they could hold out for like 5 weeks?
doesnt that put them thru finals? when they could go home, eat all they want, and come back declaring they’ve been hunger striking for lik 12 weeks?
fraud?
@only people in prisons and Gandhi have been known to survive for more than two week on not Gatorade. On college campuses anywhere (Stanford on divestment from nuclear arms, Harvard and UCs for wages of employees) this is always done with plenty of supplemental drinks.
And what actually makes these guys hardcore is that it’ll be freezing three nights this week…
@Ebenezer Scrooge Maybe some will die and reduce the surplus population.
@anonymous I’d rather see all the coalition members starve to death on the steps than Columbia give in to their crazy demands…
@Hahaha Bwog is so funny when it thinks itself so relevant that there’s any sort of anticipation for posts like this.
In other news, I’m loving the new RSS feed in the Leopard version of Mail