Editorial Fails to Recognize Support of Faculty for Fellowships Office
To the Editor:
While I was excited to see Spec’s coverage of the outstanding Columbia students who won Rhodes and Marshall scholarships this year, I want to correct an error that appeared in the editorial. The system we in the Office of Fellowships Programs in Academic Affairs have put into place over the last two years, while certainly dynamic and continuing to evolve, has done exactly what the editors suggested in terms of targeting students from the earliest stages for competitive scholarships. We have also relied heavily on—and received enormous support from—many eager faculty members who have brought exceptional students to our attention and have helped spread the word about our new office as well. In the final stages of preparation, we received tremendous support from faculty members, not only those who had previously worked with applicants or had written letters of recommendation for them, but also other faculty members we called upon to participate in practice interviews with students they did not know.
It is wonderful to know that the editors whole-heartedly support the measures we have begun to take. But before we think about ways to enhance these efforts, we should stop and honor the work of the many faculty members, administrators, alumni, parents, and friends—in short, the entire Columbia community—who gave generous encouragement and support to our office and to all of this year’s Marshall and Rhodes applicants, finalists, and winners.
Michael Pippenger, Associate Dean of Fellowship Programs
Nov. 19, 2007
Critics of Strikers’ Demands Miss Opportunity to Examine Race at Columbia
To the Editor:
A remarkable aspect of the recent hunger strike is its opponents’ failure to criticize the substance of its demands. One of the most substantive complaints is that the strikers made too many demands (“Miscalculated Demands,” Nov. 12). In fact, the strikers have elevated campus discussion by connecting Columbia’s encroachment on Harlem, recent expressions of racism on campus, and the University’s support for research on racism.
Most critics never addressed the strikers’ demands, but simply assailed their tactic using incendiary language that sounds more like war on terror discourse, such as “holding the University hostage.”
Dialogue, they insist, is the only legitimate way to change University policies (“Columbia Under Siege,” Nov. 13; “ESC Slams Hunger Strike as Two More Join,” Nov. 14). Dialogue would indeed be preferable if the administration permitted it to be effective, but the total authority over policy makes requests for dialogue nothing but invitations to beg. The strikers had to level the power relationships within the University so that dialogue could be legitimate.
A hunger strike, which merely embarrassed the administration, was a legitimate strategy and a far cry from terrorism. It was a valuable effort to address racism in our community. The critics, unwilling to discuss the issue, preferred to focus all attention on the strikers’ tactics. The Spectator ought to have provided a service by reporting more fully on the strikers’ demands, rather than allowing minor tactical disputes to masquerade as major political news.
Amanda Alexander, GSAS; Sarah Bridger, GSAS; Nisrin Elamin
TC; David Madden, GSAS; Amy Offner, GSAS; Russell Rickford, GSAS; Justin Steil, Law; Matthew Vaz, GSAS; Theresa Ventura, GSAS;
Cecelia Walsh-Russo, GSAS; Amy Starecheski
Nov. 15, 2007
Column Falsely Denies Validity of Hunger Strike and Ignores Past Successes
To the Editor:
In “Columbia Under Siege,” (Nov. 13) Chris Kulawik attacks the tactic of hunger striking, saying that it is “not a form of legitimate discourse.” While he does cite the 1996 hunger strike that led to the creation of the Ethnic Studies department, he neglects to mention the 1985 hunger strikes at Columbia that accompanied building occupations in an attempt to push the administration to divest from South Africa because of apartheid. Columbia gave in and divested, setting a precedent followed by many other American universities and institutions.
Gandhi also used hunger striking as a way of protesting British colonial rule in India. While some may debate whether the current situation on campus warrants the use of hunger striking, Kulawik is wrong in denying the validity of hunger striking as an effective, legitimate form of protest. Yes, it does “impose change on an artificial schedule,” but when issues are so blatantly immoral and so threatening to human rights, as was the case in South Africa and India, then sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures, and sometimes it even works.
Arielle Schwartz, BC ’08
Nov. 13
It’s Not the Costume That Counts, It’s What’s Underneath That Matters
Dear Editor,
As a college senior in rural Ohio, I have seen my fair share of students who have grown up, and those, for lack of better terms, who have grown down. In “Boo, You Whore,” (Nov. 9) the author concluded that with the beginning of most students’ college careers comes the demise of their high school identity. She states specifically, “Perhaps this is the point, then, where I no longer need my costume.”
Now that I am completing my own college degree in May, I feel that I too have grown up and felt the need to “lose my costume.” My vast social experiences in college have taught me that students are not whom they say they are. I have had the experience to shed my costume.
On the other hand, I have also felt the need to fashion a new costume, more importantly, a new identity.
Each one of us wears a costume at some point in our careers, whether you are a number in an identity-less lecture, or the outspoken overachiever. Yet those costumes are not just costumes, they are an identity. As a college student I have watched my classmates construct and destroy themselves, all in the name of generating a persona that will become a useless front for trying to become more social. I agree with the views of Alexandra Jacunski. It really is possible to hold your head up without the barely-there costume, but it is what’s underneath that same costume that has the superior importance.
Adam Leverone, Kenyon College
Nov. 13, 2007