36 Comments
poster by Yanyi Luo
The ultimate study break with crafts, yoga, bluegrass, cider, Stressbusters, and PUPPIES galore is happening tomorrow! According to the Facebook event, a whopping 1200 people plan to attend. This is the stuff of community, folks! Bwog received official word on the crafts selection: expect glitter glue, princess stickers and “80s glam” sharpies, among other festive third grade throwbacks. And of course there will be puppies, well more like dogs, but cute ones nonetheless. “The dogs are coming” just doesn’t really have the same ring as “the puppies are coming”— it’s like “the British are coming,” but not. Anywho, the cutest breeds with the most adorable names will be there: 2 Golden Retrievers (Clara Belle and Daisy), a Norfolk Terrier (Jasper), a Cocker Spaniel Mix (Penny Lane), a Bearded Collie (name unknown), a Standard Poodle (Scout), a Westie (Maddie) and a Boxer (Mister Mattingly). We imagine that Mister Mattingly only responds to his full name. Because that would be swell.
Barnard and GS puppy enthusiasts are also welcome. There will be a sheet at each security desk for you to sign yourselves in. An “event host” aka puppy bouncer will be nearby in case you have any trouble, but it won’t feel like Saturday night at EC waiting awkwardly for someone to swipe you in. Puppies for all!
Here’s the schedule:
John Jay Lounge
1 pm – 3 pm: PUPPIES
1 pm – 4 pm: crafts, bluegrass, and hot drinks
3 pm – 4 pm: Yoga taught by Zoe LePage, BC’13, a Yoga alliance certified instructor. The Art of Living club will provide mats, but if you have your own then please bring it!
Furnald aka Fur-nald Lounge
1 pm – 3 pm: PUPPIES
1 pm – 4 pm: Stressbusters back rubs, crafts, hot cocoa, and cider.
Basically, it’s gonna be epically wonderful and insane. And you should come. Promise no one will judge your unwashed hair and subtle stank. It’s about the puppies. And capital C Community.
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36 Comments
@Anonymous …who wanted to see dogs come to campus*
@Anonymous who organized this?
@PUPPY COALITION Basically a group of students who wanted to see dogs to campus and who made it happen.
Also, Dean Martinez and Dean Kromm were absolutely instrumental in making this happen. All paper snowflakes and other crafts-table-products should go to them as a huge thanks. Seriously though.
@... i gotta be honest, folks… while i don’t doubt the intentions behind this are good, i think you should really step back for a second and consider the message that this is sending to barnard and gs students:
“we’re throwing a big columbia community event. …blah blah puppies blah blah… oh yeah, barnard and gs, we;’ll let you guys come too, we’ve even made special arrangements to expedite your processing through the security checkpoint.”
it’s really pretty much full tilt, unabashedly offensive, and really kinda succeeds at taking an initiative that is supposed to be for bettering this place and pretty much turns it into an example of everything that’s wrong with it.
i’ve never been one to really care about PC that much, but for fuck sake people, this is pretty disrespectful. express sign-in or no, throwing an event that is billed as this one is in spaces that are segregatory in nature really just serves to remind me of how unbelievably fucked up the culture here really is.
@Anonymous I would feel a little jilted too if that were me, but I think it’s important to look at this from the perspective of these groups who are trying to help on limited budgets. John Jay and Furnald have great spaces to host these events, and they are undoubtedly much less expensive to rent than a place like Lerner, and I’m not sure that Butler would even allow this. And they are within the nuclear campus. While there is a unfair culture, I don’t think it’s fair to take it out on this event, whose groups went out of their way to make it available to everyone given all restrictions and regulations they faced.
Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to organize this and good luck to those 8 dogs!
@... i did point out that i thought their intentions were good and indeed i do think their intentions are good — but at the end of the day, if the end result is a situation that leaves a large swath of the undergraduate population feeling slighted and excluded — then good intentions or no, it is pretty undeniable that the end result has gone horribly wrong.
bureaucratic bullshit and financial concerns are not excuses. if the administration makes it hard to do the right thing, you fight them tooth and nail. DO NOT EVER compromise your own sense of right and wrong to bend to the whims of financial concerns or sprawling bureaucratic morass. that is the definition of true, real and honest to god failure. (the anti-compromise argument is a rebuttal to your argument and does not reflect what i think actually happened in this case, just to be clear .. i think they accidentally stumbled onto this)
think about it, the old “they can come/join/do X too, but we will ensure they understand they are beneath us by forcing them through administrative hurdles or security checkpoints” is one of the most oppressive control schemes that appears frequently throughout history. do i think these guys are out to oppress anyone? absolutely not! but even with their great intentions they seem to have stumbled right on into a situation where their actions are frighteningly similar. even worse, they don’t even seem to have realized it. hopefully now, they’ll at least think about it as carefully scrutinizing one’s public actions for unintended offense is very important, especially for those with lofty and admirable goals like helping others.
@Anonymous it’s a good thing it’s in those lounges because hopefully you won’t be there
@Anonymous Uncalled for, bro.
@CC/SEAS Barnard . . . GO AWAY!
@after some research “Animals
Dogs, cats and other pets and animals are prohibited from the premises of Lerner Hall unless assisting a disabled individual.”
-lerner hall building policies page
Considering that dogs aren’t allowed in the residence halls, and that Lerner doesn’t even allow pets according to this, it must have taken some fighting for this to happen, especially with the sponsorship of two administrative offices here.
I respect what you’re saying and I think it’s a good point, but what does complaining do for the fact that someone worked really hard to make this happen for the Columbia community? You’ve got to put a foot in the door before you can get all the way in, right? It sounds like this is something you’re really invested in, so perhaps going to the event, talking to the organizers, and seeing how you can get involved would be more productive than expressing your dissatisfaction here.
Also, I think you should cut administration some slack. A good portion of them probably feel just as frustrated with the current system as you do, and don’t get the added benefit of being able to vent about it on Bwog. I’ve talked to quite a few administrators since coming here and most of them are not only nice, but willing to support students in constructive, well-pondered ideas for Columbia.
I’m tired of seeing the same game of finger-pointing. Columbia doesn’t have a shitty bureaucracy because administrators are out to get us, and Columbia students aren’t a bunch of whiny, apathetic, and pampered rich kids. Fuck all that. We can change this school and we can start doing it by just treating everyone who contributes to life on this campus like a human being. We need to come at each other, administrators included, looking for dialogue instead of self-victimization, with good ideas instead of a mouthful of problems and cynicism.
And yeah, bitches, it can all start with puppies.
@... what i am really invested in is the fact that i have invested years of my life and thousands upon thousands of borrowed dollars here and throughout those years have been consistently subjected to bias and treatment as if i’m in some kind of underclass. you’re right, i wouldn’t go to this thing, as the years of crust that have built up basically ensure that i never attend any student events. after having it drilled into my skull over and over for _years_ by way of little burns here and there like this that are taken at large to be acceptable or normal, i have come to the conclusion that indeed i am not part of this place and indeed none of the resources here are here for me. can you imagine what that must be like? just try…
i gotta be honest… i’m sick of it. utterly fucking sick of it. it has turned me into an incredibly bitter individual that is unrecognizable to my friends on the outside and to see something like this really quite frankly just rubs salt in the wounds. if i had known that columbia operates a class system like this, you can bet your ass i would have never come here in a million years.
moreover, the responses i read here, with their “sure, i see your point, but what about the kids who worked so hard” tone are really just excusing this bias. it’s wrong, it’s just plain wrong.
this isn’t funny anymore. this is real life, real life bias that exists here of all places. i really don’t know what else to say that might convince you that it’s wrong… hopefully with time you’ll figure it out for yourself.
@after some research I know exactly what you’re talking about when it comes to structural bias. It’s something I talk about a lot here, and it’s something that I’d like to see changed. I’m not trying to discount what you’re pointing out here — your experience is exactly the type of scenario that I wish never happened at Columbia, yet does too frequently.
And part of the problem is that the only time we really talk to each other is on these anonymous comments on Bwog or elsewhere, and I wish so much that this wasn’t the case. If I knew who you were, I would give you the biggest hug, and I would fight with you in what’s making students here feel so out-of-place.
I think we can change Columbia’s structural hurdles, but we have to do it together and we have to work with administrators, not against them. Treat each other with the respect and empathy that we each deserve. That’s all I’m trying to say.
@Anonymous i agree with your sentiments one hundred percent. unfortunately sentiment only really gets you so far and the reality of this situation involves the complete erosion of human dignity that comes with segmenting an entire swath of the undergraduate population and subjecting them to the inhumane degradation that comes with additional targeted security screening all under the umbrella of community building.
would i be willing to talk to the organizers? sure. but there is no way in hell i would sacrifice my dignity at a selective security checkpoint, even if it seems as innocuous as a simple sign-in sheet. this isn’t russia, this isn’t china, we’re not in the west bank… there’s no hukou, no propsika, no permits… this is a university in the united states of america and i refuse to participate in anything that even resembles these things. i will not compromise myself, i do not think i should. not even for puppies.
@Claire Whoever you are I am in love with you.
Baby steps. If we want to see real change happen on this campus, we need to start somewhere. (And by “we”, I mean “I”.) Puppies just seemed like a good place to do it.
:-)
@Wait... I’m confused. I didn’t actually read this entire thing, but is this person upset because they go to Barnard or are in GS and need to be signed into a CC/SEAS dorm for an event? That’s absurd. This isn’t Brown v. Board shit and you’re not an “underclass citizen.” We are in different schools so there are different rules that apply to us–I don’t see why that’s such a big deal. Barnard hosts Midnight Breakfast for the entire community to participate in, but Columbia students aren’t allowed to enter until 12:00 or so, while Barnard students can enter at 11:30. This is a trivial (and bullshit) argument. Sign the fucking paper and don’t ruin puppies for us.
@Engineering Senior, here. Anyone else feeling absolutely unmotivated to work? I’m too…tired…to even procrastinate.
I don’t have a job yet, so I technically need to do pretty well this semester. I’m getting so tired of being happy for every other senior who’s finally landing that job at Boeing or other big name firm. I’m tired of trudging through this last problem set, learning the last five chapters that will be the final exam, spending nights on enddd programming, etc.
I need puppies. I need them bad. *le sigh*
@hmmm Maybe you should plan to get one after you get a job, as a reward. But not before you take a bath…
@Anonymous fuck you.
@hmmm Your knack for spotting irony is surpassed only by your keen awareness of current events.
@Anonymous Yo that one on the left is so fat
@Not Popular what’s the fb event link?
@fb link facebook.com/events/105441436242472/
@Anonymous a thousand people will show up to this and they wont be able to play w the puppies. everyone will get super depressed. good job.
@Anonymous there are over 1,600 people registered for this on the facebook event. there are like 6 puppies. they will have no fur left by the time they have been stroked by everyone…
@Anonymous It’ll encourage you to finish faster so you can go play with the puppies :)
@Anonymous FROSCI, WHY YOU HAS FINAL TOMORROW DURING PUPPIES.
@the fuck?? Who calls it frosci??? That sounds unappealing.y It’s Frontiers. Or maybe I’m showing my age.
@Geezer '12 Back in my day we called it Frontiers of Shit. Or at least I did.
@the 1100 yes responses want to thank the people who made this happen. We cannot wait.!!!!!!!!!!!!
@whoever made this poster is my hero
@Postermaker :D We are storming the campus with them soon, so please don’t take them for your own until after the event.
@Carolyn Yanyi Luo. She’s my hero too!
@anonymouse PRINCESS STICKERS.
@'90s child g-glitter glue? and puppies? I’m going to cry…
@Postermaker This has been keeping me going for the past 24 hours:
http://fuckyeah1990s.tumblr.com/
@I don't know about you guys but i’m going just for the hot chocolate.