36 CommentsSomebody call Nancy Reagan. NBC’s Brian Williams is talking about Adderall. Interviewed (and ready to scare you straight!) is our very Stephan Vincenzo/Perez (N.B. Stephan told the B&W years ago that “Vincenzo” is “as an homage to Al Capone’s brother.” But that probably doesn’t go well with his redemption narrative, so he’s back to “Perez.”)
For the uninitiated, he was the the Pike brother arrested in Operation Ivy League. For context: read his Campus Character. Remember his sick Carman party. From the horse’s mouth: “we r throwin da sickest party to get the year started rite…. Carman the sexyest dorm house ever…. we’re goin show these other dorms who runs shit…”
From the pretty awful network news story:
His decision to take Adderall ended up changing his life. That night Perez says he powered through his work and was capable of reading for eight hours nonstop—absorbing all of the information. Before long, he said he asked his friend how he could get his own Adderall prescription.
Contemporary context: the drug bust that involved Vincenzo is what got the three brownstones on 114th vacated, and why they’re up for grabs now.
Extra treat, courtesy Gawker:
It’s been too long.
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36 Comments
@Comic Avec I really like how all the thumbs-downed posts show up in comic sans.
Just saying.
@Anonymous Stephan was one of the best people I met at Columbia. The man was truly the nicest guy I met in college. He may be easy to lampoon but I think its disgusting the way bwog has portrayed him. Sure snagging a few funny Facebook pictures may be easy, but it in no way comes close to doing justice to the sense of community, generosity of spirit, and vibrance that Stephan brought to our campus. Very proud of Stephan’s turnaround, kinda ashamed of bwog. If u didn’t know him, don’t make claims as to the kind of person he is. That simple.
@Charlie the Unicorn @Anonymous: What turnaround? He clearly isn’t sorry at all. As I said, this entire interview spun his situation to make him seem like a victim.
@Bloodstain Lane His abs may be hard, but I GUARANTEE his chin is made of glass
@Charlie the Unicorn This is garbage. I don’t know why they’re including him in a report on the negative consequences of adderall usage. What happened to him isn’t the story of a great college student who got addicted to adderall then “fell from grace” as a result. His is the story of some fool who got in trouble for selling prescription pills.
I don’t feel bad for this kid at all. He’s running along with this as if he’s some sort of victim and that the circumstances conspired against him leading to his adderall usage and subsequent arrest. Throughout the interview he just still comes off as some smug asshole. I feel bad for his mother who doesn’t seem to know what a piece of shit her son is.
@cc12 who knew him Truth, this guy was up to no good the whole time he was at school. Not like he was struggling to get grades or anything, he didn’t give a shit! He partied like no other and probably took adderall when he studied because he left himself no time to actually LEARN, which is what people are supposed to be doing at college. But no, not this kid. He was sitting pretty on a GATES SCHOLARSHIP, so with his ivy league education paid for by Bill and Melinda, this punk-ass nit wit from the hood who happened to be accepted into a wonderful institution proceeded to make a fool of himself and the entire Columbia community as he necessitated an entire undercover operation by the NYPD to bring him and his nit wit druggie friends back to reality. It sickens me to think anyone would portray him as a victim.
@Also, Classes are often curved.
@Anonymous cannot believe this goon
@Anonymous These kids were a digrace to Columbia and never should have been admitted. They ruined it for a lot a pople due to their selfish acts. Thank goodness they are all gone now.
@CC '13 i don’t remember seas/cc ’11 or ’12 being this negative… i’m inclined to believe that some of you didn’t even know stephan.
@psh vyvanse ftw
@Anonymous This kid is KING of the Jabronies.
@Anonymous http://www.the-fed.org/articles/volume25/issue7/vincenzo.html
@Ace I don’t see why bwog is criticizing him, about half our students study with adderall, everyone knows it, why bother lying?
@and that makes it okay?
@Anonymous ok but the link to the 2010 gawker article and pictures at the bottom are too much
@CC'10 who knew him We weren’t close but we had a class together, became sort of acquaintance-friends through it, and that he was a very nice guy. Not arrogant. Not an ass. He was a regular guy in a our small intro poetry class who sometimes had really insightful things to say, and of course, sometimes didn’t (just like the rest of us). He was nothing like the caricature here or the dude bwog (somewhat righteously) mocked for the orientation party shenanigans.
I guess I’m posting just to humanize him and say that he’s a real person, he was a part of our community, and it’s sort of fucked up to see folks joking and taking pleasure in another person’s downfall. I’m not saying feel sorry for him or give him a pass — his choices were his own and not anyone else’s. But the fact that you haven’t met someone doesn’t make it okay to enjoy their suffering or to disparage them publicly.
I haven’t seen him or talked to him since it happened and have zero idea what his life is like. But I would imagine that whatever future he had aspired towards is radically different now, and that many many doors are permanently closed to him as the result of a relatively minor drug crime that undoubtedly happens every day at Columbia and most other college campuses.
@CC'10 who knew him ..and apparently bwog took away the ability to type in paragraph spacing since I’ve been gone – my bad
@Anonymous I’m sorry, but this guy doesn’t sound particularly smart or articulate. He evens seems dumber than the typical stupid state school student. How in the world could he ever have been accepted into Columbia? I would be willing to bet a million dollars that when he was a student here, he had a low gpa
@Anonymous They were all minority admits
@cc 13 i liked stephan he gave really good high fives
@Ditto I don’t think it’s the students who are to blame here. It’s the teacher’s who curve tests so that we are forced to get compete to beat the curve. And then it’s administration and social norms that tell us grades are important when it doesn’t mean diddly squat, like you said.
@cart = before horse we buy into that bullshit. we can buck those norms, if we show any courage at all. all we need to do is stop treating work like torture and take 4-5 instead of 5-6. God knows we’d probably get better grades, and enjoy them in the meanwhile.
@I feel like I need... …to bleach my phone after looking at this scum.
@Wow, Bwog You are being a total dick to this guy. Do your writers have souls, or are they just bitter assholes who get off with to these sorts of hurtful smear tactics? Bwog, YOU are the reason Columbia students feel no community and are too cynical. You produce the hate. Go to hell.
@Van Owen Adderall is the shit, yo. I make A’s rain like dollar bills in a strip club.
@I'm shocked, simply shocked... Sigh. Getting nostalgic for the days of crank, crack and cocaine. Now that you can get prescriptions for amphetamines, yuppies don’t have to mingle with drug dealers.
@I'm shocked, simply shocked... So, people are taking amphetamines so they can study longer and focus more. It’s a modern plague. Oh wait…
“To the beer and benzedrine,
To the way that the dean
Tried so hard to be pals with us all.”
“To excuses we fibbed,
To the papers we cribbed
From the genius who lived down the hall.
”
From Bright College Days (1959) Tom Lehrer
@CC '13 I loled at “Barry Bonds in the library”
bit of a clown, this one, eh?
@Anonymous The phrase “getting an edge” seems odd to me. School should not be a competition. Even though most people at Columbia don’t operate this way, you’re not supposed to be competing against other students for grades. You’re supposed to be trying to learn as much as you possibly can in four years. Why should we care (other than the health concerns) about what other people do to get ahead? I think the discussion of doping in cycling is a useful analogy. Because it’s a competition, it’s regulated, but if someone were trying to bike across the country, just for personal growth and fulfillment, would we care what supplements they used? I’m not saying we should legalize or encourage adderall abuse, I just think it’s interesting that our discussion of it automatically assumes that college is a competition.
@Anonymous Interesting, but you’re either unacquainted with or unconscious of the pressures of performing well in this school. Students only have their peers to compare themselves abjectly to when they they fail or perform poorly so even if they don’t intend to establish their superiority over others, that’s what they end up doing. Some of us give up in misery, others keep trying, and others yet choose to undertake drastic measures to try to stay afloat.
I can’t attest to the veracity of this guy’s story, but a lot of us have at least thought about medicated help as a way out.
@whoops that’s what they end up *trying to do
@Anonymous “He was permitted to take his final exams to complete the first semester of his junior year.”
The real question is, was he allowed to use Adderall to study for them?,
@This kid is such a fucking douche.
@Anon This is all a conspiracy by the caffeine industry to ban all competitors by keeping its products as the only legal one. Thus the only options students have to help them study late at night is to drink coffee and other caffeinated beverages.
@hahaha hahahaha