44 Comments
This evening, running from 6 – 8 p.m. in Butler, Columbia is unveiling a war memorial to “honor those Columbians who gave their lives in service to the United States.” The memorial will include a plaque (seen at right) in the entrance to Butler, and an interactive kiosk that will allow students to see the names of Columbians who have fallen while serving in the armed forces.
The kiosk’s site is available online as well, including a list of deceased, brief entries on Columbia’s involvement with American wars, and a list of military-related ‘points of interest’ on campus. Bwog highly recommends it for procrastination.
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44 Comments
@Harvard is so great. they have so much money. they can spend it all on nice looking buildings and stained glass art. obviously this means they care more about remembering people than any of us. Actually, “real memorial” doesn’t look like anything.
@PUNSTER! YOU’RE BACK! :-)
And to #33 – it’ll be an NROTC program if anything
@now serving With MilVets and Hamilton Society, the repeated grassroots attempts at restoring ROTC in recent years, and this War Memorial, it appears that Columbia’s military heritage is making a broad comeback.
An ROTC program will be on campus within 5 years.
@now serving I wonder if Columbia will do anything to recognize the alumni who are currently serving in the war?
Lieutenant Loren Crowe, CC 05, is an Army infantry platoon leader in Afghanistan right now.
@follow up The WWI memorial in JJ’s Place (It’s the fireplace mantle in the back) gets no love on the site’s “points of interest”.
Way to miss an obvious one, Columbia. Unless you want to avoid publicizing the fact that one of the few extant alumni memorials on campus is located inside a fast food joint.
Note: Anyone else notice how only 2 Columbians died in the Revolutionary War? That’s what happens when your school was located in a Loyalist stronghold.
@The Mamluk No Columbians died in the war against the Barbary Pirates. Why is it up there?
@well maybe Columbians in the Revolutionary War were just good at self-preservation. You’re essentially lamenting that more didn’t die.
@Hamilton We at least have Alexander Hamilton from the Revolutionary War, whom the Hamilton Society is named for.
I wonder if Kings College grads from both sides of the conflict are recognized?
@Not really Hamilton was a veteran, yes. But he didn’t die in the war. So no memorial status for him.
Also, this is what a real memorial looks like: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~memhall/transept.html
http://www.facilities.yale.edu/images/BFS/2015.jpg
@am I... the only one who thinks it’s appropriate that the Hamilton society is named after someone who, while supporting independence, was also a monarchist?
@Colonel Hamilton Well, Alexander Hamilton was hardly a monarchist in the European inherited and ‘divine right’ sense, but he was a federalist who advocated for a strong national government. Like many of our founding fathers, he sought to find the right working balance between democracy and orderly governance. While he did make some arguments for an elected president-for-life, the mandate would still have originated from the people and the people retained the power to remove that president. Would it have worked in practice? I don’t think so, but such were the times when our nation was being defined. One can’t be right about everything when innovating, and I think Hamilton can be forgiven, given the valuable contributions and ideas he did provide to the nation.
One thing Hamilton can’t be accused of is short-term or tunnel vision; he was a visionary and always thought of the nation’s interests in the long term. And that’s what Hamilton Society is about: Columbia students who, like Hamilton, seek to serve the interests of the nation and the American people for the long term, both in and out of uniform.
@John McClelland While I am in total alignment with you, remember, Hammy became a Major General IOT put down the Whiskey Rebellion.
@MG Hamilton I stand corrected, sir. Nowadays, it would be a hell of thing to see a sitting President of the United States and his Secretary of the Treasury personally command forces in the field, just because they happen to be proven combat leaders who trust themselves to do the job right. Very ‘Independence Day’ (the movie).
In any case, you guys named your group after the right alumnus. Evocative of Columbia’s military and nation-building heritage and sets a very high standard of expectation for your members. Whoever thought of the name should be applauded.
@John McClelland I hope I didn’t come off as a stickler, because I am not. Some of my friends assumed that I made your post, since it seems you share a same affinity for early American history.
In regards to the POTUS and the Treasury Secretary putting down a rebellion, it definitely shows you how fragile our country was in the beginning, in turn how much more important AH contribution in creating a stronger central government.
The Hamilton Society’s name was coined by a CC’06 alumus, who is now executing extremely important and productive public health initiatives with the Army (in lesser known areas you don’t hear about). He is, most assuredly, holding up that high expectation we have for our members.
If you’d like to get in touch with the organization, look me up on the directory.
Regards,
JHM
@Alumnus Think before you write when you imply the fatality rate of King’s College alumni was low. There were approximately 107 graduates of Kings College and 27 students in the College as of April 6, 1776, when the College buildings were occupied by military forces and classes suspended for the duration. Assuming all 107 graduates were still living as of that date, two fatalities out of a pool of 134 living alumni was a high rate and certainly compares with the fatality rates in other wars of Columbia alumni as a percentage of all living alumni.
Further, the rate of membership in the armed forces of either the United States or of Great Britain by that pool of men during the Revolutionary War was exceptionally high compared to later participation rates.
Obviously some College alumni in 1776 considered themselves British subjects and chose to enlist in the British Army, if they were not already serving in it.
@Since when... …did we all start pretending that service men and women were the cat’s pyjamas?
@i don't understand what that even means.
@Sorry But you can’t use that phrase here, as cool as you think you sound. It doesn’t really make any sense in this context.
And I hate that when I saw this post I knew some jackasses would make this political.
@If you are implying that soldiers, sailors, marines ect. do not deserve great respect you are clearly a sad and wretched being.
@Beautiful site, but if you click “about the wars” and then scroll down to “enlarge” the image of the plaque, it shows up as a smaller image. Just a minor, slightly amusing inconsistency.
@This website is dignified, well-done, and functional. Does CUIT know about this?
@hee Yep. The people responsible: http://webservices.columbia.edu/
I’m surprised there’s no “Designed by CUIT” credit on the site.
@Commenter 13 I was responding to #10.
@wow Really great website. Nice work on this one, Columbia!
@Anonymous whatever you think of america’s military endeavors, the plaque’s point is that the best way to honor our fallen soldiers is through guarding peace. that’s all it’s saying. nothing more, nothing less. it’s not a political comment on u.s. foreign policy.
@Get over yourself It’s called a eulogy.
I’m sure the majority of civilians and soldiers who view the plaque won’t need your explicit prodding to realize that something like the VIetnam War was a mistake.
Please never deliver a eulogy. Or else, we’ll get some bullshit like, “We’re here to honor Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to helping the poor. Well, in reality, she wasn’t really helping the poor that much because her mission implicitly allowed the Indian government to fail to provide basic services to a portion of its citizenry. So even despite that stuff, yeah. We’ll miss you.”
@yes Considering the vast majority of those listed died in the World Wars, yes, I think you can argue that they died guarding peace. Sorry to rain on your anti-military parade.
@guarding peace? can any historically-conscious person really say the majority of american military endeavors have been ‘guarding peace’?! this is absurd. you can honor soldiers without telling lies about the conflicts they fought in
@Anonymous your reading comprehension ain’t too good…
@asshole admits he read the plaque wrong. and happy i was mistaken and it does not actually say that! apologies.
@you are stupid and you don’t know how to read
@you're an asshole
@woah revolutionary war
http://www.warmemorial.columbia.edu/find-deceased?war=The%20Revolutionary%20War
@Housman Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.
@wow columbia liberals are so SELF RIGHTEOUS that they can’t even thank the men who died in Vietnam without bragging about the “intellectual ferment” caused by their glorious protest.
I second post #2
@... heh. and i notice the conservatives surely don’t pass up the opportunity to shoehorn the whole thing into their “oh, we’re so oppressed by the columbia liberal hegemony, even tho we ran the show and tanked the country in the ’00s” talking points…
is there a hypocritical contradiction here? you betcha! it’s no matter, they started it!
@no... an alum donated money to build this. It had nothing to do with the NROTC thing.
@hello I wonder if this had anything to do with the ROTC business. Anyways, I agree with #3 in that its a long time coming.
@Alum A long time coming. Harvard and Yale have huge war memorials for their alumni. This is a small gesture in the right direction. Perhaps, the most poignant college war memorial I have ever seen is at Trinity College, Cambridge, where behind a statue of Issac Newton, there is list of the hundreds of Trinity alums who died in World War II.
They should also do something to the World War I memorial which currently sits awkwardly in JJs Place.
@Conflict: Vietnam Why is it called The Vietnam Conflict?
@if it's a conflict …that we lost, then we’ve still never lost a ‘war.’
@Oh... Perhaps they wanted to include the Saigon Grill saga. It is very Columbia!
@Well You know the old saying, let Saigons be Saigons…
@that's a really nice thing, columbia.
no sarcasm.