Scott Levi

When small-town Pennsylvanian Emma Kaufman came to Columbia, she expected to meet brilliant professors, study with motivated peers, and take great courses. She didn’t expect to end up in jail.

Growing up in Camden, N.J.—one of the poorest and, according to many rankings, most dangerous cities in the nation—Tiffany Davis dreamed of obtaining the authority to shape more effective social policy.

Keondra Prier didn’t expect to become an activist at Barnard. “My initial expectations were to do well and graduate,” she said. But the former academic affairs representative for Barnard’s Student Government Asociation explained that soon, she realized “how easy it was to affect the institution by a little bit of work and involvement.”

Crumbling buildings, apartment mold, and overwhelming pests may be well-known city asthma triggers, but a comparatively high concentration of asthma cases in northern Manhattan has prompted Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and City Council members to zero in on a new target: negligent landlords.

On Tuesday morning, three Columbia professors received phone calls telling them they had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences—yet none had the slightest idea as to why. Earth and environmental sciences professor Paul Olsen, biology professor Carol Prives, and genetics and development professor Gary Struhl are three of 72 members appointed this year to the 150-year-old academy, which organizes committees of distinguished researchers to perform studies enhancing the country’s health, education, and welfare.

The Columbia faculty used to joke that raiding Low Library in the 1960s was like storming the Winter Palace, the notoriously grandiose residence of Russian czars. Peering onto Low Plaza through their office windows as they look back on that time today, some veteran professors say that, in that respect, we have indeed come a long way.

Nestled among a crowd of Methodist, Greek Orthodox, Baptist, Episcopal, Pentecostal, and Catholic leaders, Columbia University Chaplain Jewelnel Davis sat in St. Joseph’s Church in Yorkville last Friday awaiting the start of a service run by Pope Benedict XVI. Spectator’s Scott Levi sat down with Davis on Wednesday to review what she called a “worldwide experience.”

After a grilling from her colleagues and a long string of deliberations at Wednesday evening’s elections, Samantha John, SEAS ’09, has been chosen to lead the Activities Board at Columbia for the 2008-09 academic year. Selected by ABC board members not running for office, John will assume the role of executive board president alongside newly elected vice president Grace Chan, CC ’09, secretary Krissie Zambrano, SEAS ’09, and treasurer Scott St. Marie, CC ’10.

As a definitive decision on the controversial 125th Street rezoning plan looms a week from Wednesday, some residents worry that the New York City Council’s approval of the plan will only further frustrate one of Harlem’s most striking health issues—asthma.

Congregants of the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church—located on West 100th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue—have formed a close bond with its vaulted Gothic ceilings, prominent beige Corinthian columns, and stained-glass windows. But the beauty of the church could be fleeting due to a lack of funds to reverse the structure’s general decay and repair damage caused by the construction of luxury condominiums next door.

Embroiled in a lawsuit with its tenants over alleged failure to address housing violations, the Abyssinian Development Corporation says that, for now, it awaits funds to rehabilitate buildings and is in the process of dealing with plaintiffs’ concerns. ADC was sued in October 2006, when residents of West 135th and 137th Streets initiated a legal action which allows tenants to sue landlords for repairs in both private and public areas of their apartment buildings.

The General Studies Student Council believes it has found a way to unite its diverse and sometimes disparate student body—through a virtual student lounge. The council’s Web site, launched in September, features over 400 pages of content, including student blogs, surveys, a University-wide calendar of events, and minutes from weekly GSSC meetings.

Racial and religious tensions took the forefront at Saturday’s Coalition to Save Harlem meeting, where community members protested the 125th Street rezoning proposal to a tense crowd.

Bringing together numerous humanities and social sciences departments across the University, the newly founded Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life aims to examine the role of religion in politics and society, and to disseminate relevant knowledge to the public.

The Abyssinian Baptist Church on 138th Street has a distinguished record of prizes and partnerships, but its economic offshoot, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, has elicited tenant disputes—now more than 10 years in the making—that cause some to doubt the company’s fidelity to the community.

A signed photograph of F.D.R. sits on the end-table facing the armchair in which a student has comfortably positioned himself during a discussion section. It’s as if Roosevelt himself is looking at this young scholar, impressed by the U.S. senatorial cups and trophies situated nonchalantly at the back of the office.

University of Chicago political science professor Cathy Cohen spoke Monday about black youths, political and economic equality, and Barack Obama in a talk at the School of International and Public Affairs centered on her “Black Youth Project.” Though the presentation focused mostly on Cohen’s study of African-American young adults and their views on government and equal opportunity, questions posed afterward sparked a debate on the importance of Obama’s campaign for the Democratic nomination.

Student Governing Board’s release of financial figures on Saturday brought what many hope will kick off a period of greater transparency and solve what many have pointed to as a long-standing concern. The report was released on the heels of the Activities Board at Columbia’s mid-February decision to publish its student group allocations.

As part of a panel at Riverside Church on Sunday afternoon, Emmanuel Kamau of Nairobi, Kenya and others offered American audience members firsthand accounts highlighting the plight of gay and lesbian Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa. While several of the issues discussed resembled those faced by homosexuals in New York, the panelists stressed the problems unique to post-colonial Africa.

Immigration in the 1880s transformed the United States, giving way to the Chinese Exclusion Act, greater Western expansion, and the arrival of the bagel in New York City. Today, rising wheat prices might just threaten the accessibility of New York’s favorite breakfast bread.

The blue gym of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine is home to closets of basketballs, a wooden Trojan horse awaiting exhibition for an upcoming sixth-grade play, and two sets of bleachers that hold a total of about 20 spectators. On Friday nights, a crew of sleeping out-of-towners join the collection.

Not quite conforming to the clichéd image of Madonna’s Kabbalist followers, a crowd of religion experts and spiritual enthusiasts shuffled into Sulzberger Parlor Monday evening to listen to a lecture, delivered by Rice University professor Jeffrey J. Kripal, on the rise of Asian mysticism in American culture.

Lilliam Lara assembles piles of fresh produce behind the counter at Stephanie Grocery at 116th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Her daughter, after whom the store is named, stands at the cashier, surrounded by a colorful array of tomatoes, avocados, bananas, and grapes, as well as the usual hodgepodge of chips, cans of Coca-Cola, and six-packs of beer.

Chuck Norris Showdown With Brown Student Continues

On the heels of high-profile financial aid reforms by Ivy League peers Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, Columbia President Lee Bollinger said that, despite its lucrative capital campaign, the University cannot afford to make similar changes.

Given the resistance Columbia has faced among vocal activists in West Harlem, some might have seen City Council’s approval of Columbia’s expansion into Manhattanville as a feat of spin doctor magic.

As the 40th anniversary of the April 1968 protests approaches, alumni and administrators are collaborating to organize a three-day event to commemorate and promote intergenerational dialogue on the historic episode that shook Columbia University and the nation.

Hazardous paint fumes on the fifth floor of Lerner Hall led to an evacuation of a section of the building at around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, according to Lerner management. The odors, which resulted from recoating of the wooden floors, prompted building officials to vacate the 20 to 25 people who were in the affected areas.

With reforms to the Core Curriculum’s Major Cultures requirement in the offing, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese—which less than three semesters ago transformed Columbia’s Spanish-language-focused major—is once again expressing an interest in amending the department’s course offerings to complement whatever new requirements emerge.

The noisy brick cutting and demolition that provoked aggravated residents of the Barnard Quad to create an anti-construction Facebook group is the final part of routine renovations to the residence halls.

There is a little stretch of 116th Street on the other side of Morningside Park where talk of the Iliad and Aristotle gives way to a mixture of French and Wolof, where University Hardwares becomes Bahk Yaye store, and where Scott J. Salon becomes Même Amour beauty shop.

Two Episcopal clergy members, three orange-clad Namgyal Tibetan monks, and a number of Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists paraded down 113th Street Sunday to mark the conclusion of a nine-day residency of exiled Namgyal monks at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Displaying documents and drawings from as early as the 1880s, CC alumnus Tao Tan’s recently-posted WikiCU article on the history of the Morningside campus uncovers past movements for Columbia’s expansion that suggest a resemblance to the current debate over Manhattanville.

The construction of Barnard College’s Nexus is taking longer than planned—and its cacophonous distractions and vibrations are irking many students.