Congratulations to the both of you!
Valedictorian: Arianne Richard, Biological Sciences Biochemisty
Salutatorian: Jeffrey Spear, Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
Stay tuned for updates!
By
Bwog Staff on
Apr 26, 2010 
93 Comments
Congratulations to the both of you!
Valedictorian: Arianne Richard, Biological Sciences Biochemisty
Salutatorian: Jeffrey Spear, Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
Stay tuned for updates!
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93 Comments
@Anonymous I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE YELLING ABOUT
@both really All this argument about getting A+s – it’s all really the same. I’m a science major and I’ve gotten an A+ in a social sciences class. A+s are rare no matter what discipline, but possible in both humanities and sciences. Besides, none of us really have the data to look at so, this is all just speculation. Calm down all you bitter people, you still have 4.0s, and Jeff Spear is fucking awesome.
@fuck! you mean my 2.86 GPA didn’t make the cut off for Valedictorian?
@CC 2010 I don’t know Jeff at all and I only know Arianne from a couple of classes but I am genuinely happy for them both. It’s great to have such amazing classmates!
Congrats, guys!
@Anonymous woooooo jeff :) reppin’ EBHS
@Anonymous Jeff also WON NCAAs
That’s amazing no matter what sport it is
@Um. YEAH. SERIOUSLY! How do people forget this? As a person who has known him for the past three years, this kid is seriously one of the most dedicated and hardworking people EVER. He works for every grade he gets. On top of all that, he’s a world class fencer. He works his ass off for everything he gets, and he absolutely deserves this honor. GO J SPEAR!
@Anonymous yeah jeff!!!
@Anonymous what are the val and sal doing with their lives? jobs for next year, or grad school?
@fellow Amgen-er Arianne is AMAZING! I’m so proud!
@me too Agreed! Congrats Arianne!
@pbk i know they told some pbk people last week.
anyone know the gpa cutoff? i’ll be pissed if i’m as close to it as i think i am
@ugh really? that’s a bummer…totally thought a 3.91 would be close enough to get it…
@Anonymous It’s not a strict gpa cutoff. Did they really notify people already?
@ummm PBK isn’t dont just by GPA cutoff, you have to be nominated by a professor who is also PBK and then accepted
@definately easier to get val/sal as a science major bc the A+’s
@Anonymous Yes. Definately.
@Anonymous yes, but science courses are inherently harder than bullshit humanities courses
@Anonymous ok guys stop. its very simple.
the smartest person will get an A+ in a science course but an A in a humanities course.
the dumbest person will get an F in a science course but at worst a C or a B in a humanities course.
the discussion whether one is harder than the other is meaningless.
@?? “Spear is an athlete – 3x all american, 4x all ivy and individual national champion”
Wait…fencing is a sport?
@wtf …please tell me you’re not serious.
@FYI Humanities majors should count Jeff Spear as one of their own — EBHS isn’t really “science”. Here are the major requirements: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/e3b/undergrad_requirements2.html#major No hard science required, and you don’t even have to write a thesis.
@wah!! I am sure Jeff is uber smart but if you do not write a thesis you do NOT deserve to be salutatorian.
@.... he did write a thesis.
@Anonymous Early PBK (2%) came out way back in February, everyone else is in a little while (regular PBK
@seas valedictorian is a beast…trust me on that one, i know who it is.
@Anonymous When are SEAS and BC valedictorians announced?
@Hmmm I don’t think BC does valedictorian. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.
@1R Yay Arianne! Fellow special-fridge user, and all-around awesome person, congratulations!
@Who are these kids?` I’ve never seen em out at all…Guess it figures cuz they were studying all the time lol
@Seas CC is an easy school in general, science major or not
I’d like to see the SEAS valedictorian, now that’s an impressive person
@Anonymous LOL
that should suffice for the stupidity of this comment.
@Anonymous LOL
that should suffice for the stupidity of your stupidity
@seas2 Seconded. I really hope that whoever it is also has a life outside of studying, because that would be just plain godly.
@where's where’s senior wisdom? and pbk?
@Guy Why don’t you spare us all the speculation and inform us straightaway what CC 2010er has such an impressive resume?! The mystery is killing me! Anyhow, good luck getting into your joint program!
@2010 honestly, i can think of like 4 people who would fit that category. we go to school with some really awesome people. i don’t know the val/sal, but I’m really happy for them and respect their achievements a great deal. columbia kids are pretty cool. i’m happy to be here in the presence of such bamfs.
(ok happiness-hating bwog trolls! start…. NOW!)
@WOAH YO WHERE THE FUCK IS MY POST?! YOU KNOW? THE POST THAT YOU REPLIED TO? THE FUCK?! JUST CAUSE IM ON A PROXY DOESNT MEAN IM SPAMMING! IT WAS A LEGIT POST. I CANT SAY SHIT LIKE THAT?!
I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION. AND IM SERIOUS. I DIDNT KNOW BWOG HAD *RULES*
@Do you mean the one that is all the way up at the top of the page?
@WOAH ah! didn’t catch that!
lo siento. gracias for saving my post. i mustve double posted!
@Go Arianne! signed,
CUDM Steering
@Anonymous when do we hear about seas?
@an admirer miriam krule’s my valedictorian.
@Jeff! I see him every week in FOS help room! You know who I am Jeff…
@the thing is Humanities majors in this thread complaining about how science classes are easier to get A+’s in will fail any serious upper level science class. Science majors, for the most part can hold their own in the humanities.
@exactly! It may be easier to get an A+ in a science class, but that does not mean it is easy.
@Anonymous It never ceases to amaze me how smug science majors are. Just because they’ve read a few books in CC and Lit Hum doesn’t mean they won’t be completely lost in any upper level Classics or Philosophy class.
@GradStudent Seconded on that. Yes there are some skate-by majors in the humanities but there are also some very difficult ones as well. Keep in mind mastering ancient Greek or Sanskrit can be just as daunting as mastering upper level science courses. I’m certain these two are incredibly smart and deserving of their accolades, but at the same time don’t assume that everyone who chooses an arts major gets a free pass.
@Music Major Agreed! Anybody who has taken Chromatic Harmony and Counterpoint knows that it’s more or less the Orgo of the arts and humanities. Grading is very unforgiving in the theory sequence. Ear training can be, too. The music major is one of the most credit-intensive majors in the College. We work our asses off, too!
@I call bullshit I’m a science major. Took 3000 level Latin in my first semester here. Got an A without breaking a sweat over the class. Humanities classes are an order of magnitude easier than science classes, though I agree it is nearly impossible to get an A+ in a humanities class. The only way to get an A+ in a science class, however, is if you should really be in a higher-level science class
@GradStudent I wouldn’t call 3000 upper level kiddo. I took Orgo as an undergrad, (equivalent 300 level) and got an A with little difficulty. Also I said Greek; reading 500 lines of Homer is very different than 500 lines of the Ovid you were reading in 3000 Latin.
@Anonymous you’re a grad student studying greek. reevaluate…
@I call bullshit I read Greek too asshole. And it was Horace Odes/Epodes and Vergil Eclogues/Georgics, not some Ovid bullshit. Fuck you. All humanities grad students in the Classics are just as self-important as you. I’m not saying that Greek or Sanskrit are easy. I know for a fact they are not. I’m not attacking their value either. I love the Classics. But to say that they’re as hard as Orgo? That’s a straight-up lie.
@Anonymous Doesn’t the University elect the Val/Sal by committee to address this issue of grade disparity between majors? On top of that, the student with the highest GPA is given an award completely separate from Val/Sal. Granted, there’s probably some sort of probability/correlation between the award and Val/Sal, but at least there are tools in place to take care of these things that seem to get people all worked up.
@Bull You’re delusional. You can’t master the physical science material, so you feel the impulse to slam your classmates who took that path. You can’t accept the possibility that your science major cohorts are simply performers than you.
@senior congrats to both! and to the humanities people bitching…there are humanities, social science, hard, and soft science students represented in the fellowships office pool for this accolade. in the end, the requisite 4.0+ gpa is a mere checkmark on a list – recommendations, extracurriculars, and general goodness of spirit are all important qualities.
with that in mind – congrats once again to these two!
@Anonymous That’s a pretty offensive comment, and your comment that “…Science majors, for the most part can hold their own in the humanities” shows a degree of ignorance. Getting an A in Lit Hum or an intro history/English/Art History/etc. lecture is like one of us getting an A in Biodiversity: no great feat. Try taking a real class and then tell us how easy it is.
The point is, there are completely different skill sets involved in the sciences and the humanities, and even between specific disciplines within those subsets. The grading system at this school rewards those who excel in the sciences. I commend these two at their accomplishment, but the valedictorian and salutatorian labels are misnomers. I have no doubt that they are brilliant, but they are no smarter than top humanities students; they merely happen to have higher GPAs.
This is, by the way, a senior humanities major who received her first A+ last semester…in a science class.
@Anonymous what about pbk? out yet?
captcha: her tapas
@Anonymous the fellowships office does a holistic selection process, but only selects from a pool of 4.0+ GPA students. so the pool privileges hard sciences/math (more GPAs in curved classes) but the end result doesn’t necessarily
jeff’s a beast, too. congrats
@Anonymous Arianne has been in at least a couple modern dance pieces during her years here and ran the CU Dance Marathon this year, a fundraiser for a pediatric AIDS foundation. She’s a Goldwater Scholar too… Seems like they aimed to pick a couple well-rounded candidates.
@Anonymous science classes just have bigger tails, both high end and low end, so although there might be more A+s in science classes, there are more Cs as well.
@Anonymous whoah yeah jeff!
@Anonymous Spear is an athlete – 3x all american, 4x all ivy and individual national champion
@Anonymous So nice to hear someone signing the praises of an athlete
@yep it’s definitely nice to see them signing praise
@Yeah I sign their praises all of the time!
@GPA2.0 Jeff Spear is fairly good at fencing too, right?
Impressive…
@... He’s only the 7th best sabre fencer in the US and is pretty much in a different country every weekend.
@Anonymous Yea, it’s common knowledge that the grading scale here is pretty biased against humanities majors. all majors are pooled together for things like latin honors, but each major has wildly differing grading scales. sciences have way more in the A+ ranges
still, props to them though
@Anonymous and yet, at the same time, its possible to fail in a science class but not in a humanities class
@humanities major basically it’s a ton easier to skate by in the humanities with a b and near impossible to fail, but it’s also nearly impossible to get an A+ and end up valedictorian.
congrats to them both!
@exactly last year the Sal and Val were also science majors– I think this is a regular thing. There is no point in arguing whether it is easier to get A+’s in sciences because it is unquestionably is, just as it is unquestionably easier to get C’s .
Bio is ridiculously difficult at Columbia so props to both. Though I know shit about EEB dept.
@GPA what were their gpas? I bet they were over 4.0. No way to get A+s in humanities, hence the science majors. They have to give a certain number of A+s in every class, whereas its quite impossible to get an A+ in say a philosophy or english class.
@ok... thanks for that
@GPA2.0 this is plainly false.
@GPA3.0 That isn’t necessarily false. Humanities classes are largely dependent on writing (which is tremendously subjective), and most humanities profs at CU argue that there is no such thing as a perfect paper, making an A the highest grade possible. For science and math majors (although I fully acknowledge that this isn’t the same across the board), there is one finite and perfect answer for a lot of the coursework. Thus, a professor in math/science cannot reasonably deny a person an A+ when they got everything right. On another note, congrats to both.
@Anonymous That isn’t necessarily false. Humanities classes are largely dependent on writing (which is tremendously subjective), and most humanities profs at CU argue that there is no such thing as a perfect paper, making an A the highest grade possible. For science and math majors (although I fully acknowledge that this isn’t the same across the board), there is one finite and perfect answer for a lot of the coursework. Thus, a professor in math/science cannot reasonably deny a person an A+ when they got everything right. On another note, congrats to both.
@GPA2.0 only disputing that there is a quota of A+s. ;-)
Yes congrats to both
@Except The A+ is really just there to balance out the risk of a really low grade. It’s much harder to get a C , for example, in a humanities class than it is in a quantitative class.
@Not a science major, eh? “For science and math majors (although I fully acknowledge that this isn’t the same across the board), there is one finite and perfect answer for a lot of the coursework. Thus, a professor in math/science cannot reasonably deny a person an A+ when they got everything right.”
What? “One finite and perfect answer”? Are you a science student? If so, have you ever actually taken a science course in a field in which _new work_ is being done? In a well run science class, no one makes a “perfect score” because the instructor designs the tests to assess thinking skills, not declarative memory recall. Science is about method, not about content.
@er... the salutatorian is EBHS within EEEB – meaning Evolutionary Biology of the Human Species, which is more than straight science. I think he does Archaeology too, so…. I think saying “science major” is simplifying it a bit.
(and no, this isn’t him, just someone who thinks he worked hard for it so it’s not a simple matter of any ‘A+ quota’ – I’m sure this is the case for the valedictorian too)
congrats to both!
@Anonymous As the TA of a Science course, I know that (at least) for one semester no A+s were given.
@Ha! I’ve had an A+ in an English course.
Granted, until I saw it printed on my transcript I hadn’t known such things were actually possible. Nor had I known they were regular occurrences in the sciences.
@bio majors! wow, impressive. congrats!
@Anonymous i thought valedictorians were fake…
@Anonymous props to them
@WOAH Arianne is one cute dame. Hardworking, smart, diligent, and career-independent too. If you’re reading this, MARRY ME.
Signed,
Guy
Columbia College Class of 2010
Top-3 Law School Class of 2013
Candidate for Joint JD/MBA Admissions at Same Top-3 University (awaiting decision)
BOOYAH!
@Anonymous Sorry bud. She’s taken.
@Anonymous Sorry, I forgot to mention that he goes to state school.
@Anonymous he is also a total BAMF. True story.
@JD/MBA The biggest dickheads in the world. Any graduate student at any university can tell you that.
Then again, this guy’s post is evidence enough for most.
@NICE!! Good job! Way to generalize! So anybody who works hard and pursues a law degree is a douchebag? Great! That makes Obama who has extreme socialist views, a douchebag as well! I had no idea!
So what, in your opinion, makes a graduate major, NON-douchebag? Medical school students? Sure, they contribute to society. But there were lots of Ivy League medical guys who are in jail right now for Medicare fraud, giving unnecessary surgeries to patients for millions of dollars, and generally being what you just called me, a “dickhead.” Would you use those guys to generalize to the thousands of medical students who graduate every year and earn their keep because they worked harder and gave up more things than you to get to where they are? Same goes for JD and MBA students.
@ps I guess in your view, that also makes President Bollinger a “dickhead,”