Anatomy of a Name Change

There are certain things a young man likes to do when coming out of the bathroom: zip his fly, latch his belt, wash his hands, and of course--if he's lucky--talk to a CCSC presidential hopeful about the pressing issues facing the class of 2007.

Such was the case during the past election season when your fine freshman columnist, emerging contentedly from the john, had the great fortune to find a bubbly candidate who shall remain unnamed in the narrow hallway of my Carman suite. With my fly down and my belt hanging loosely about my waist, the enthusiastic hopeful offered his hand and told me that he was going through Carman, meeting voters and "talking to first-years about the issues." Give me a reorganization of FYSAAC, or give me death!

Seemingly unconcerned as I zipped up, the bouncy fellow launched into an ebullient discourse on CCSC "policy." But my concern with the candidate's little speech does not lie with the poor man's student council plans. Election time--the two weeks of the year when a man can't read in peace on the Low steps--has thankfully passed. Rather, in this, the final installment of my freshman-experience column, Looking Up, I would to like to bring attention to a term that kept popping up in the then-hopeful, utopian discourse. As the candidate described a Morningside where Flex accounts ran free and financial aid flowed with the limitless bounty of the John Jay salad bar, everywhere was Columbia's now-favored designation for members of the class of 2007: "first-year."

If nothing else, this guy talked like a higher-up. Columbia's administrators have taken pains to establish this awkward and counterintuitive appellation for the University's youngest students. Evidently, their efforts have been met with some success. Favored by administrative offices, the odd designation is creeping into undergraduate vernacular.

Most members of the class of 2007 will still look at fellow classmates a little strangely if they use the designation. Carman, Furnald, and John Jay are known as "freshman," not "first-year," dorms. Yet taking a cue from Jay Orenduff's gripping "First-Year Flyers," the "First-Year Sophomore Academic Advising Center," and Alice!'s glossy pamphlets on how "first-years" can avoid gonorrhea, students are starting to warm up to the unlikely term.

How did this linguistic shift come about? After all, the other undergraduate ranks at Columbia are classified by their traditional, god-fearing appellations: seniors, juniors, sophomores. Why is it that that Columbia came to call its young'uns by a tag more appropriate for Hogwarts? After all, unlike Dumbledore, PrezBo is thoroughly and disappointingly unequipped with any sort of evil-fighting magical powers.

Caroline Middleton, senior dean in the First-Year Sophomore Academic Advising Center, is unsure about the precise timing and rationale for the shift. However, she speculates that the change came about in 1983, when women first came to Columbia College.

Though innumerable Columbia officials failed to return my calls this week--are you reading this, Q-Tip?--her speculation is probably correct. Had Columbia's top dogs taken a few moments from strike-busting, my guess is that somebody in Low could have confirmed the theory.

Cornell and Dartmouth have joined Columbia in the use of "first-year," with administrators at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania committed to the word freshman. Brown administrators use both designations.

As for me, I'm rather conflicted about the term. Certainly, the phrase "first-year" smacks of the sort of empty, overly-sensitive, and absurdly PC jargon that is probably best avoided. It is very hard for me to imagine that students could be hurt by the allegedly gendered term "freshman."

Yet after a semester in Science of Psychology, Columbia's favorite science class (ignoring, of course, the infinitely challenging Earth, Moon, and Planets), I'm hesitant to totally dismiss the term "first-year." Three weeks ago, while desperately trying to read 200 pages of Peter Gray's blessedly math-less and creatively-titled Psychology, I read that psychologists have in fact demonstrated that when individuals employ the term "man" to stand in for humans of either sex, those who hear or read the term actually do associate "man" with males. If this is so, then the very language we use to describe members of the class of 2007 when we use the term "freshman" does, in fact, imply that the men of Carman and John Jay are the true exemplaries of the youngest students at Columbia: that the typical Columbia "freshman" is a man. From this perspective, it makes sense to join Columbia administrators in abandoning the term "freshman."

Yet whatever the name, I'll be happy to be moving on rather than looking up in the year ahead. After all, there is little doubt that the most belittling term at Morningside currently denotes the class of 2008. And I, after all, am no pre-frosh.

Abe Handler is a Columbia College first-year. This is his last installment of the biweekly Looking Up.