47 Comments
Jay Pinho
The Morningside Post is SIPA’s “premier [only?] student-run news and opinion site.” Jay Pinho is TMN’s opinion editor. And two days ago, he sure had an opinion. He began:
This past December, with final exams looming, many SIPA students descended into Lehman Library only to stumble upon the only thing even more frightening than the prospect of failing a class: hordes of undergraduates.
Boorish undergrads, he whined, “conversed loudly, consumed entire meals in the library, and—perhaps most uncharacteristically for Lehman—arrived in their pajamas to cram for exams.” Don’t know what this last part means—that SIPA students are very fashionable?
Anyways, after profiling younger-looking people as undergraduates—did Jay ask them their affiliation?—he demonstrated the critical acumen it takes to get into SIPA. Apparently there’s a “dearth of available space” at Columbia, and Lehman is open to the entire University community—including pajama-clad undergraduates. He then explained that “A Morningside Post investigation,” which we can only assume means checking a few libraries’ websites and sending a few emails, found that Columbia and peer libraries also let in their entire university community. Except for asshole law libraries.
His spiel doesn’t conclude so much as peter out. He lamely finishes with the revelation that there’s not a lot of space at Columbia. And that some undergrads do need books at Lehman. (Presumably these ones don’t wear pajamas.)
According to SIPA’s About page, graduates strive to “secure peace, in their home communities and around the world.” So, these are our students of international affairs? How do we expect them to negotiate for scarce resources with unfamiliar peoples when they can’t even share library space with undergraduates at their own university without sniveling over it?
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47 Comments
@SIPA Student who doesn't agree These comments aren’t reflective of how all SIPA students feel nor act – so please don’t stoop down to Jay Pinho’s level and categorically stereotype all SIPA students as he did the undergraduates.
@Anonymous If you’re looking for rational discourse, you’ve come to the wrong place, buddy.
@occupy SIPA from now on I will study in SIPA in my PJ everyday
@Cristiano Who’d want to study in that filth factory anyway. I’d rather study in the bathroom. Zombies flock there late at night because they need darkness and moldy settings. My parents thought SIPA was the university parking lot when they visited.
Loving this highbrow sass though. Fighting on the internet is such a novelty!!!!!
– Proud SIPA student
@Anonymous this comment just made my day
@Cristiano Thank you Anonymous! The only praise thus far into graduate-level education.
To quote J. Danforth Quayle for no reason (or perhaps to explain this experience), “We all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.”
@sipastud Dear undergrads/youngins,
Just wait until you are in graduate school. You will be able to spot undergrads instantly, and it really has nothing to do with the meal consumption or even the pajama wearing. It’s the whole acting like you’re 18-21 bit. It’s the same reason no one 21+ ever wants to go to an 18+ bar/club. Or, for that matter, any 18 year old wants to hang out with an 8 year old. (Fun fact: the average age at SIPA is 27, so you are pretty much a decade younger…and more immature).
@SIPA student Speak for yourself. I’m 22, and I know a fair amount of people who are closer to my age than yours. Perhaps enforcing a more inclusive atmosphere in a library that contains many books of use to undergrads is a better measure of maturity than taking to the internet to write posts dripping with condescension and referring to people in their 20’s as ‘youngins.’
@SIPA 2y While I agree with your point, it is somewhat belied by your comic sans.
@Anonymous Dear Fuckface,
You don’t get out much, do you?
@haha …And you just proved sipastud’s point.
@GS Fun fact, GS students are undergrads too. Our average age is ~29. I’m glad you find that managing to not die has given you superiority. I’ve found I have to earn it.
@Anonymous We love GS.
@Anon Well bless your heart.
@Anonymous same shit in Uris. you get the dirtiest looks and overhead comments…
@Anonymous Same shit happens between Columbia and Barnard undergrads, too, every finals period. Many of the same OUTRAGED people complaining here now about SIPA students’ entitled attitude are going to be calling for Barnard students to be banned from Butler come May, I can promise you. http://bwog.com/2010/12/05/psa-what-fresh-hell-is-this/
@Jaylemeux Well-written.
As a SIPA student, I must say that it’s depressingly common among SIPA’s purportedly global citizens to imagine oneself as part of a cool kids club in which undergraduates, including hundreds of social science students, don’t belong in the Lehman Social Sciences Library. Never mind the preposterous and self-congratulatory implication that hours of self-managed study in a university basement library are made more legitimate by business casual.
Incidentally, it’s not uncommon to hear this exclusive attitude justified with the notion that, as graduate students, SIPA students are subject to a more demanding workload than Columbia undergrads. First ticket for the clue bus: Columbia’s undergraduate program doesn’t award three 6000-level credits for an accounting class.
@Anon Well said. Sorry I called you stupid.
@Vivian Coyne I tried…
@Rama Hey, the article implied “if you wanna use a grad school library behave like a grad student, you are not in a baseball game”.
@Undergrad Thanks for the clarification. I often confuse playing Baseball and studying…
@Anon SIPA grad students are only beat by journalism grad students when it comes to stupidity.
@Anonymous It’s not an opinion piece. Unnecessarily inflammatory blog is inflammatory.
@All ill sentiments aside, I’d hit it…just sayin’
@Anonymous Stop whining, SIPA is going to get a huge new building in Manhattanville (and the college can take over their current building.)
@Alum SIPA only uses a portion of its building. The economics and political science departments are there, too.
@Anonymous Yes, and Butler is the “undergraduate library of Columbia University.” I hope there are no grad students there.
@GSAS '14 I regularly eat my lunch and take naps in the Butler stacks, since there aren’t any private spaces in the Starr library.
I’m so sorry.
@Anonymous He just looks surly. Maybe if he smiled more often he wouldn’t be so jaded?
@van owen omg i hate it when phat ass white blonde girls wear yoga pants only to cover up their juicy, bouncy asses with a skirt. Why would you deprive me of my one true pleasure when it’s just a piece of clothe away from “rearing” it’s beauty? I swear, if there is a heaven, it will be an endless chain of phat ass white blonde girls in yoga pants clapping their thick booties rhythmically. ugh.
@Alum Mr. Pinto sees Lehman as a SIPA library that chooses not to exclude other students. It’s actually a general social sciences library, which also holds most of the journalism collection. SIPA has no special claim to it.
@my thoughts exactly it is called the “Lehman Social Sciences Library” not the Lehman International Affairs Library.”
@ugh grad students have lost all their imagination they are all about the practical it’s so sad
@JJ11 4 lyfe ay i just wanna let this guy know that all undergrads aint squares real talk im just tryna have a good time maybe he should too it sounds like he could use it. I mean like why you gotta hate on the younguns you know we the leaders of tomm but i don harbor hate i like to keep it chill idk Jay if u readin’ this and wanna kick it hmu i’m sure we’d be chill talkin bout jazz and giraffes lmao
@Anonymous :|
@Anon What are scare resources?
@caspar Boo!
@Anonymous *The Morningside Post. Good start.
@Anonymous I love when all the undergrads start filling up Lehman. Soooo many cute boys. Love, a big giant super gay SIPA boy.
@Are you a sipa student? and is your post meant to scare off male undergrads from studying there?
@Anonymous Haha, no… just being jokingly creepy / half-way serious
@Anonymous No SIPA student, of course, has never studied on the second, third, or fourth floors of Butler, a.k.a. the Milstein Undergraduate Library.
@Anonymous Oops, guess that should be “ever.” Guess I need a copy editor. Hey, Mr. Pinho, you’re interested in journalism and editing, right? I’m hiring interns… Interviews will be at the tables on the north side of Lehman’s main reading room, in between the bunches of loudly whispering grad students who, in my three years of working regularly in Lehman, I have never seen studying.
@Anonymous Insecurity is THE major personality trait among graduate students.
(except for facial hair and their lack of social graces)
@Beyonce Pad Thai Yo, just confirming SIPA’s full of devils.
@omg Who wrote this? It’s amazing! We’ll done Bwog.
@Sarah T. It’s Conor Skelding, editor-at-large for Bwog and editor of The Blue and White.