Press Doesn’t Blemish Columbia for Prospies

Despite a semester marked by hate crimes, controversial foreign leaders, and fierce student protests, prospective students said that this semester’s activities have not tainted their image of Columbia as a “dream school.”

“To be honest, we don’t hear a lot about it,” North Carolina applicant Cydney Swofford said of the fall drama. “I knew you guys had the president of Iran speaking, but I didn’t hear about any of the aftermath.”

Many applicants said they found both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s October visit and the furor that surrounded it to be encouraging. “It says that they’re really interested in different ideas that they would actually allow this guy to come speak,” Virginian John Goodwin said.

“It’s actually a little bit comforting to know that students care enough to engage like that,” Swofford said.

“I really liked the visit of the Iranian president, even though I’m Jewish and he’s really anti-Semitic and wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth,” California applicant David Alpert said. “I think it was really interesting that such a high-profile head of state would visit a university.”

The hanging of a noose on African-American Teachers College professor Madonna Constantine’s office door, although nationally publicized, also met questioning faces among applicants. “I heard about the noose thing, [but] I forgot that was Columbia,” Alpert said. “That doesn’t bode well, but it’s just an isolated incident.”

“That kind of thing could happen anywhere,” Virginia applicant Stephanie Hanson said of the noose incident after a tour.

Lauren Minches, SEAS ’09, co-coordinator of the tour guide program, and co-chair of the Undergraduate Recruitment Committee, agreed that a semester of controversy does not separate Columbia significantly from other schools. As an example, she pointed to the lacrosse team controversy Duke University faced last year. “There’s events that go on everywhere,” she said. “We just hear more about ours.”

Minches said that the tour guides have seen a surprisingly low level of interest in the controversy. “I was definitely surprised there were so few questions,” she said. “I think maybe one person [tour guide] said someone asked. Maybe they asked at the info session, or maybe the group was just uninformed.”

“I’ve only had one question on anything like that, and that was about the tents [during the hunger strike],” tour guide Heather Lee, SEAS ’10, said. “When they ask me, I just tell the truth.”

Minches also answered questions about the tents, and said she even took the initiative to point out the still-yellow patches of grass on South Lawn in the days after they were taken down. She described the reactions of her tour groups as merely curious. “I think the prospective parent who asked about it was more interested than anything else,” she said.

“Even with the Ahmadinejad thing, I had a tour that week and no one asked!” Lee said. “I was ready, and no one asked.”

Thanks to the admissions office, all tour guides were prepared to field questions related to the controversies. “We had a meeting among all of the tour guides led by two admissions officers,” Minches said. “We discussed ways not to spin the event, but to point out positive aspects of the event. We’re definitely not hiding the fact that these things happened.”

But the events still aren’t advertised. “I try not to bring it up myself, because it interferes with the rest of the tour,” Lee said.

“Obviously,” Swofford said, “Columbia in the letters they send us isn’t saying much about it.”