This Week: Columbia Edition

Sorry, You Can’t Pick Your Classmates

Writing in the March/April ’08 edition of Columbia College Today, alumnus Alan Wallach (CC ’63) laments the Senate’s appointment of his classmate, Michael Mukasey (CC ’63), to the position of Attorney General. Wallach opines, “Mr. Mukasey’s elevation to the post of attorney general should not be cause for celebration but an occasion for sorrow and shame on the part of the Columbia College community.” Sadly, he is not the only Columbian to think this way. But it is this intolerant attitude, not Mukasey’s personal politics, that we should be ashamed of. You’re free to disagree with a man’s ideology, but it does not justify you in ostracizing them. This is a necessary precursor to historical whitewashing. Be warned, it’s not impossible to remove someone from Columbia’s institutional history. Barnard did it to Martha Stewart and Journalism to Pat Buchanan. Strangely enough, disgraced politician Jim McGreevy (CC ’78) made the Columbia rounds without a scratch. Talk about a double standard.

Two Strikes

In his March 24th opinion piece, “Aiming our Activism,” Jonathan Backer, the media director for the Columbia University College Democrats, upholds his organization’s great tradition of putting Columbia’s tax-exempt status at risk. As an educational, tax-exempt 501c(3), Columbia is not allowed to support partisan candidates or allocate funds to political races. As Columbia affiliates, the Columbia Democrats and their Activist Council are bound to those rather unequivocal laws and federal regulations. One violation could cost Columbia their 501c(3) status and with it, millions of dollars. The College Democrats have toed (if not crossed) that dangerous line the past three years. On several occasions, they used thousands of dollars in University funds to pay for partisan campaign trips. You would think that after the first scare they would have learned their lesson.

But in his ode to liberal activism Backer boasted, “The Activist Council of the Columbia University Democrats has recently adopted the 15th Senate District, located in Queens. In 2006, Senator Serphin Maltese (R-SD15) narrowly defeated his relatively unknown opponent by a 783-vote margin, and the Activist Council is now working to unseat Senator Maltese in this election cycle.”

Let us, if just for a moment, return to our trusty but woefully neglected FACETs Appendix I, Columbia’s “Policy on Partisan Political Activity”: “Columbia University, as a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, is prohibited from participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.”

This isn’t a polite request at compliance. This is binding university policy. The Columbia Democrats, a university affiliate, can not actively campaign against a Republican candidate. Individual members are free to do as they please, but the organization cannot spearhead this partisan venture. Backer calls it “taking charge in an important race while control of the state Senate hangs in the balance.” I call it gray-area electioneering.

'68 Redux

For four days in late April, liberal members of the Columbia Community will celebrate the heroic labors of the 1968 rioters. Todd Gitlin, Mark Rudd, and that cast of ’60s characters will be reunited once more on April 24-27 in Low, Hamilton and about a half dozen campus buildings. This time they’ve been invited. The students that ruined Columbia’s reputation for the better part of a half century are now our esteemed guests and honored speakers. From a discussion led by Bollinger entitled “Political Action and Official Response,” to a noon “lunch for those who took part in the occupation of Hamilton Hall, their families, and friends,” the radicals that stormed buildings will quietly attend ludicrously institutionalized events. Funny, they don’t see the irony in that.

There is, of course, a caveat. The ’68 rioters are more than welcome on campus. Disagree as I might with their politics, they’re an instrumental part of Columbia’s legacy. For better or for worse, there’s no way around that. In 2008, however, Spring 1968 isn’t the problem. There’s no way to go back and right wrongs. The problem, then, is how we’ve come to remember not only the strikers but campus sympathies. I fear that today’s student radicals—the hunger strikers and their supporters, for example—look to the ’68 generation not with cautious and guarded praise, but with idolatry in their eyes. Conspicuously absent from the lectures and picnics is a discussion or celebration of the conservative and moderate students, the Majority Coalition. The Majority Coalition, largely a student venture, had thousands of signatures—they drastically outnumbered the liberal activists. And while they were as much student activists as were SDS members, they’ve been systematically written out of the ’68 narrative. Whether you attend the events surrounding the 40 year anniversary or not, keep the Majority Coalition in mind. Lest we forget, they were the true face of Columbia University.

Chris Kulawik is a Columbia College senior majoring in history and political science. Chris Shrugged runs alternate Wednesdays. Opinion@Columbiaspectator.com