Roughing It: Seniors Camp For Sports Class

A few dedicated Columbia sports fans spent the night outside the International Affairs Building on Monday. Only the courageous (and perhaps slightly insane) showed up to brave the night air and the ferociously wandering security guards in order to get into one of the most highly sought-after classes of the fall—Sunil Gulati's Sports Economics senior seminar.

I first heard the legend of "camping" for this class last year—I thought that it meant that the entire class went camping in the mountains before classes actually began. Oh, how twisted this interpretation was. I imagined that there would be some kind of slumber party with Sunny G, the infamous Principles of Economics professor who has gathered a cult-like following over the years. I wanted to hear about pillow fights and eating ice cream and pulling pranks on each other during the night. (I could definitely see Gulati trying the hand-in-the-water-cup trick on an unsuspecting slumbering student.)

But no. These students were so adamant about taking their senior seminar with this man that they sat in line like anxious preteens waiting for tickets to the new Hannah Montana movie. They even gave up their last night to party before senior year truly began.

By the looks of it, the prospective students came prepared. Some brought blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, and sweatshirts. The majority brought laptops and DVDs, and one person even thought to bring a fold-out chair. Perhaps for these econ majors, taking Gulati's class is worth more sacrifice than Harry Potter books, The Dark Knight, and Wii, combined (minus the sabotage, laxatives, and violence).

From the composition of the line, I gathered that the kind of student who will show up to IAB late at night (or early in the morning) to register meets the following criteria: first, it is likely that this student carries a Y chromosome—eight of the 10 students who slept in line were male. Most of them were white, and at least three were actually student-athletes, ranging in sports from field hockey to golf to baseball, leaving the rest to be staunch sports fans, Gulati-obsessed maniacs, or both.

What does this say when generalized to the student body on Columbia's campus? In stat class, we've already learned that it is possible to take this subset of the student body and find the projected ratios for the entire campus.

Is it really true that there is just one female sports fan on campus per every four males? Is it true that a third of the people who follow Light Blue sports are the athletes themselves? We do have hundreds of student-athletes on campus...

But by that logic, it would make every student on campus a Gulati fan. And if CULPA can be seen as a legitimate source of information, we already know that's not true.

What the class does do is fill a void. If you're looking for a class that talks about sports, this is one of the few. Unless you're in the grad school for sports management or are taking gym, Gulati's is the only class offered with the word "sports" in it—which, as a testament to the value that the University puts on athletics, sucks. But let's save that for another column.

If you are a Gulati-aholic, a sport-aholic, or a work-aholic who missed the 10-person cutoff, don't worry—there is hope. There's an application/interview process to fill the final spots in the class. It sounds like it's Gulati's version of affirmative action—balancing out the ratios of girls to boys, investment bankers to the future Jeffrey Sachses, and so on. So don't forget to stop into one of Career Services/Career Development's mock-interview preparation sessions and prepare yourself for how best to dazzle.

That, or try a pink, scented resume. I hear those things never fail at Harvard.

Lisa Lewis is a Barnard College junior majoring in economics.
Sports@columbiaspectator.com