Our Hallowed Halls

It's simply called the Great Hall.

The building's austere sandstone facade and its location, set back from the square where Third Avenue begins and the Bowery ends, made it a natural to draw crowds from tenements to the south and east when it opened in 1858, a year before classes began at its parent, Cooper Union.

Two years later, a lanky, shrill-voiced Illinoisan named Abe Lincoln jaunting through town on a presidential campaign took the stage and addressed a full house of a thousand or so people.

"If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away," he said. "If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality-its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension­­­­-its enlargement."

The speech was reprinted in the papers-in full-and historians argue it drove Lincoln to the presidency. It was that moment, in that pivotal speech, that the national political will to end slavery was articulated and began to garner broad support.

The Great Hall, it would seem, dared to live up to its name. And maybe it was that rhetorical spirit that drove another figure, two score and nine years later, to make another great speech and spawn another movement.

"I am a working girl, one of those striking against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in generalities," said a frail seamstress named Clara Lemlich, in Yiddish. "I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared-now!"

What ensued was the "uprising of 20,000," the first general strike in the garment industry and the beginning of the drive for real labor regulations-first in contract, later in statute-in New York. Protestors were viewed as radicals for what they demanded. A 48-hour work week. Unlock the fire-escape doors. Lunacy, indeed. The women marched through the winter, picketing factories around the city and rallying a few blocks from the Great Hall at Union Square.

I often sat in Union Square this summer, beneath the lights near the George Washington equestrian statue and listen to the new speakers. End the war in Iraq. Legalize marijuana. Vote for the socialists. I always smiled, because in a way, they rally in the tradition of those who came before them, upholding the rhetorical legacy of the space they occupy.

Before I came to Columbia, the man from my college interview talked up the campus but paused when he described Low Plaza. I'll always remember that strip, he said, that one strip below Alma Mater, for that day when the protestors were on the top, the NYPD were below, and the cops charged across it. Whenever I go back, that's what I see.

In his mind, those events will forever color that swath as a battleground. Sitting on the Low steps, I see their modern shadows. I see the students who sat on the same spot for a week three years ago this spring-dressed in black and speaking only through placards proclaiming "I am being silenced" to improve the racial climate on campus. Yesterday, students were there pushing to fund more health care workers in Africa.

Roone Arledge auditorium opened in 1999 and, in many respects, represents a clean slate for the students of our generation. Will it be the place where we fall to the floor laughing at the annual Varsity Show? Or meet the recruiter who hires us? Will it be the place where we shout down controversial speakers, and each other?

After last week's Minutemen incident, I'm not sure. This campus is our Great Hall, our Union Square. It's our space. What traditions glare at us from the surrounding walls? What rhetorical traditions are we setting? Which ones do we want to set?

Let's make sure we have a good answer.

Jimmy Vielkind is a Columbia College senior.

Tripping the Light Fantastic runs alternate Wednesdays. News@columbiaspectator.com">News@columbiaspectator.com.