Eye -- March 7 EDITED - Columbia Daily Spectator

The magazine of the Columbia Spectator
7 March 2013 / vol. 14 issue 6
the
eye
THE DODGE DIVIDE
examining the role of athletics in the Columbia community
by Trevor Cohen & Jim Pagels
PLUS:
fiction
by
Johnso Allen
n, pg 6
The magazine of the
Columbia Spectator
THE DODGE
DIVIDE
examining the role of athletics in the
Columbia community pg. 07
by Trevor Cohen & Jim Pagels
Editor in Chief
Rikki Novetsky
Managing Editor for Features
Alison Herman
Managing Editor for Optics
Laura Booth
Art Director
Suze Myers
Lead Story Editor
Zoe Camp
Senior Design Editor
Annie Wang
Head Copy Editor
Natan Belchikov
Associate Editors for Features
Carolina Gerlach
Parul Guliani
Kierstin Utter
Dunni Oduyemi
Eyesites Editor
PJ Sauerteig
Interview Editor
Gabrielle Noone
20/20 Editor
Rebecca Schwarz
View from Here Editor
Adina Applebaum
Fiction Editor
Eric Wohlstadter
Deputy for Online Content
Kelly Lane
Deputy for Multimedia
Morgan Wilcock
Visuals Associate Editor
Hannah Sotnick
Associate Editor for Online Content
Amy Zimmerman
Production Staff
Paulina Cohen
Aida Duarte
Katy Nelson
Tian Saltzman
Copy Staff
Lauren Chadwick
Lily Fishman
Jess Pflugrath
Spectator Editor in Chief
Sammy Roth
Spectator Managing Editor
Finn Vigeland
Spectator Publisher
Alex Smyk
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© 2013 The Eye,
Spectator Publishing Company, Inc.
cover and lead visuals by
Suze Myers & Annie Wang
CONTENTS
3 EYESITES
BOOKS
4 The Rise of Downstairs
Rachel Ende
IDEAS
5 Micro-Size Me
Parul Guliani
FICTION
6 Pageant Drawl
Allen Johnson
THEATER
12 Work, Then Play Lauren Brown
BOOKS
13 Not So (Self-) Helpful
Hannah Wederquist-Keller
20/20
14 The Ultimate Untagger
Finding My Ideal Bookshelf
VFH
15 Against The Odds
Margaret Boykin
Rebecca Schwarz
Allyson Gronowitz
EDITOR’S NOTE
How many of us have never
attended a single Columbia
sporting event, and won’t do so
until we make our way uptown
for our senior homecoming
game? Even though my first-year
roommate had a brief bout on the
field hockey team, and a floormate
of mine plays for the women’s
basketball team, I (bashfully) count
myself among this number.
In this week’s lead story,
Trevor Cohen and Jim Pagels
approach student life from the
angle of the Columbia athlete.
As an ever-visible presence
within the student body often
distinguished by their Columbia
Athletics gear, athletes occupy a
niche that the average Columbian
may never pause to consider.
The piece raises questions that
many of us, even those of us who
were athletes in high school,
are unwilling to ask for fear of
appearing disrespectful, prejudiced,
or ignorant towards a wide swathe
of our classmates. Are athletic
recruits on the same academic tier
as the average admitted Columbia
student? Do athletes struggle
to keep up with other students
in class? If so, is this because of
real differences in intelligence,
or because of the impossible
schedules they must maintain
when in-season? The writers
attempt to demystify these
questions by illustrating the
culture on campus surrounding
athletics and what it means,
as an athlete, to be a subject of
that culture.
While Jim and Trevor may
not have all the answers, their
conversations with individuals
ranging from athletes
themselves to the head of the
Columbia Athletic Department
shed light on the issue and offer
a basis for honest reflection.
Whether you’re a dedicated
athlete or a die-hard eschewer
of sports, we all ultimately came
to Columbia to learn about each
other. Read the story. You’ll
gain insight into a subject that
is so much a part of our college
experiences, we are tempted to
forget it is an issue at all.
Laura Booth
Managing Editor for Optics
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
This letter was received via email in response to last week’s lead story, “The Not-So-Secret-Society.” Another response written by
Sewa Adekoya and Jake Stavis can be found at eye.columbiaspectator.com.
Re: the not so secret society
Sorry Spectator, but you need to do better. Who is this staff writer, who accepts the unethical gossip of a classmate—an unnamed
classmate—as factual, and who also thinks herself a film critic, able to judge a work out of context to serve the biased purposes of the
article? Editors: did you not think to ask the writer to consult the professor of Marianne’s course—a video production course by the
way—to get another opinion on the film? Has Spectator journalism now become all about the writer’s personal interpretation? Sounds
to me like the writer had an ax to grind. This article smeared the integrity of an amazing student and the Spectator owes her an apology.
So here’ s the professional opinion of the professor of the course: Marianne’s two videos are superb. Marianne could have
chosen as her subject the various tenured and distinguished professors whom other students chose—the medievalists, economists
and choreographers—but she bravely turned the lens on her own environment and worked in collaboration with her subject.
Marianne filmed and re-filmed, edited and re-edited, and produced what turned out to be among the two best videos in the class.
So beautiful and crafted was the work and her treatment of Gaby that the Barnard College Library posted a link to her videos in a
post about the success of the class and our collaboration with Barnard IMATS.
No, you don’t judge Kubrick’s personality through A Clockwork Orange, and you shouldn’t distort Marianne’s videos and
use them as evidence of social injustice. There was a context for the work. Oh, and kindly cite your sources. This article should
spark an examination of classroom ethics. Why was it so important that Marianne mention St A’s? I applauded her discretion, full
knowing the locale. Who cares and whose business was it anyway? Great job, Marianne. That’s why I gave you an “A.” Put the
video up on YouTube with pride.
Madeline Schwartzman
Adjunct Professor
Barnard and Columbia Colleges Architecture Program
BY THE NUMBERS
by PJ Sauerteig
Like the seasonal locust plague, the scourge of midterms has once more
descended. If you’ve studied, read, and prepared properly for every exam,
congratulations on being a sleepless robot. If you haven’t, that’s OK, too.
The Eye sympathizes with you. That’s why we’ve created this foolproof
guide to avoiding tough midterm questions—go ahead, take advantage of
Columbia’s hyperprogressive, PC environment!
1.
For econ/math questions with
gender-normative prompts
(e.g., “Bill has 42 watermelons. How many watermelons will he
end up with?): Your answer should
address the fact that nowhere else
in the prompt does it say that Bill
identifies as a male, and therefore
the use of the pronoun “he” is wholly
unfounded and problematic.
2.
For oral exams (i.e., for foreign
languages), show up with a
note-card that says, simply,
“I have taken a vow of silence in honor
of the innocent victims of the medieval
Crusades.” Your professor will likely nod
slowly in approval and respect.
3.
For philosophy/CC
prompts asking you to
refute or contest the
arguments of famous thinkers
like Marx or Eliot, say, “They were
anti-Semites and heteronormative
so therefore they were wrong.”
Go ahead, put your teacher in an
awkward position.
4.
For astronomy/environmental science exams: Take
out a Sharpie and on the
first page of the exam write, “What if
Copernicus was right?” Then walk out,
maintaining intense eye contact with
the TA until you reach the door.
OBSCURE SAINTS EDITION
HIPSTER HOLIDAYS
by Suze Myers
illustrations by Brian Thorn
THE CORE ON
SPRING BREAK
EYESITES
FOUR MIDTERM
COP-OUTS
IVY LEAGUE APPLICATIONS
by Alexys Leija
Supposedly, Columbia’s Core Curriculum is designed such that, in 30
years from now when we’re at some fancy cocktail party and someone in
an ascot brings up Cicero or Brahms, we can join in on the conversation.
In the meantime, it’s natural to feel like maybe our $60,000 a year isn’t
as practical as we’d like it to be. Don’t fear: This spring break, all that is
about to change! Here are a few ways to get a head start on reaping the
benefits of your Ivy League education:
At a wet T-shirt contest in Cozumel,
sit back, stroke your chin, and purr,
“Hmm, this quite reminds me of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Intriguing.”
Use your elementary knowledge of
French to hit on waiters/waitresses
in St. Barths. Quickly realize that
everyone there speaks fluent English.
Immediately lament (as you always
have) taking French.
Remember to decline when someone
offers you any “party favor” or “drank”
made from lotus.
In line at the airport, remember
your Stoic texts (“to resent
anything that happens is to
separate oneself in revolt from
Nature”—Marcus Aurelius’
Meditations) and choose to not
complain about the incompetence of the passport checker.
While in some sweaty Miami
club, comment loudly on the
syncopation and homophony
in the David Guetta song blaring from the speakers. Thanks,
Music Hum!
In the wake of February’s most famous holiday and saint—Valentine­—The
Eye has been wondering why other saints don’t get any love, let alone their
own shelves at Hallmark. In our dream world, things would be different. In
our dream world, less-appreciated saints would have their own celebrations,
their own cultural relevance, and the world would be a better place, damn it!
These are all real saints, by the way.
John the Evangelist
patron saint of art dealers
Once a simple fête akin to a Parisian salon, St. John’s Day was transformed when the
new wave of young art dealers in the ’80s decided they were “so over this Gertrude Stein
shit.” Our only insight into this week-long festival based in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood (party-goers were often unable to articulate themselves after eating nothing but
crudités for seven days) is a 1993 New Yorker article, which describes one gallery opening
as “a champagne-fueled clusterfuck” whose participants were “overly comfortable with
nipple-bearing outfits.” The festival was discontinued in 1997 after Damien Hirst attempted to stab Cindy Sherman with a phallus-shaped ice sculpture.
The Archangel Raphael
patron saint of matchmakers
In the Victorian age, Raphael was commemorated by a highly anticipated
springtime festival during which blushing teenage girls were courted by chivalrous
men in bow ties and top hats. However, after centuries of successful pairings,
the celebration took a turn for the worse in 2005, when financial woes forced
organizers to seek assistance from OkCupid. In an ill-fated attempt to encourage
participation, the online dating site opened the floodgates to thousands of fedorawearing bachelors who were “down for anything but especially a BJ.” Despite this
misstep, the festival managed to stay alive for three more years before being shut
down by Dateline: To Catch A Predator. Chris Hansen, you impious bastard.
Gummarus­
patron saint of lumberjacks
Perhaps the most
masculine patron saint
of all, St. Gummarus
was celebrated in the
mountains of Vermont
with a day of flannel
shirts, breakfast foods,
and unapologetic
burping, followed by the
midnight log-cutting
competition (cosponsored by Wrangler
Jeans). After a violent
1969 mass boycott (led
by famed logger Bert “Big
Axe” Jones) spurred by
the addition of “healthy
vegetarian options” to the
traditional Cracker Barrel
feast, the jubilee was
shut down indefinitely.
3
THE RISE OF DOWNSTAIRS
BOOKS
LONGBOURN TELLS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PRIDE AND PREJUDICE STORY
by Rachel Ende
illustration by Laura Diez de Baldeon Cerv
Being a servant in the world of Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice must have sometimes felt
like watching a modern-day soap opera. Just
picture the help whispering among themselves
while listening to the gossiping, wooing, and
fighting going on upstairs.
In many stories, such as British television
show Downton Abbey, the “downstairs,” or the
world of the servants, becomes a window into
the lives of the wealthy family “upstairs.” Of
late, this “downstairs” view seems to be gaining
popularity—not only with the rise of Downton
Abbey, but in the literary world as well.
In Jo Baker’s new book, Longbourn, we see
much more than just glimpses of the world
downstairs: We see all of it. The British novel,
set for release this fall, retells Pride and Prejudice from the servants’ perspective. The stories
of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are merely
the background to the true narrative—that of
the servants.
According to a press release from Knopf,
Longbourn will reveal “the tragic consequences
of the Napoleonic Wars and focus on a romance
between a newly arrived footman and a housemaid, the novel’s main characters,” while
simultaneously offering a behind-the-scenes
look at the preparations for balls, the chaos in
the servants’ quarters, and the housekeeper’s
real thoughts about Mr. Bennet. Although the
upstairs portion may be gone, the popularity of
the story definitely isn’t. Baker’s novel was recently bought by the publishing houses Knopf,
Transworld, and Random House, and it has
also been signed for publication in eight other
countries. Random House and Focus Features
have even snatched up the book’s film rights.
Columbia creative writing professor Maggie
Pouncey believes this interest in the downstairs
world lies in its secretive, behind-the-scenes nature.
“I think part of the pleasure of seeing
beneath the stairs in these upstairs/downstairs stories is that it’s a bit like being allowed
backstage during a play, it offers a glimpse of
how the glossy production is put together,” she
says. “Those grand old houses were meant to
run as if by magic­­—no one was supposed to see
the maid light the fire, it was just to appear in
the hearth, fully lit. Seeing downstairs is like
seeing a hidden, secret world.”
The relative popularity of Baker’s novels
attests to this fascination with the downstairs. Baker published four novels prior to
Longbourn, but this is the only one that has
achieved widespread popularity. While the
other novels took place in similar time periods,
many were stories of middle- to upper-class
4
girls. That Longbourn, which spotlight working-class servants, was the only one to receive
acclaim speaks to the current shift in interest
from the unattainable life of the privileged few
toward the more commonplace ups and downs
of the working world.
So what’s the reason for the switch? A huge part
of it, according to Barnard English professor Amanda
Springs, may be the current economic downturn.
“I think the recent resurgence of this narrative framework can probably trace some of
its roots to the recent international economic
upheaval ... The recent attention on wealth
disparity in many of the developed nations has
some people, I think, thinking of their country,
or even the world, as an upstairs/downstairs
arrangement, and are figuring out that the vast
majority of us are ‘downstairs,’” Springs says.
Pouncey agrees, citing the breakdown of the
boundary between the public and private worlds.
“I’m sure there are many socioeconomic
reasons for this trend appearing today,” she
says. “But I wonder if it might also have something to do with our Facebook-ruled world, the
way in which there are now so few boundaries
left between public and private, between what
is shared and what is hidden.”
And as Springs argues, even if “the escapism
that the ‘upstairs’ portion of these narratives
offers is alluring when people are faced with financial difficulties,” maybe it’s just becoming too
separate from who most of us are.
Baker herself says, “As I read and reread Pride
and Prejudice, I became aware that, had I been
living at the time, I wouldn’t have got to go to the
ball. I’d be stuck at home doing the sewing.” And
that’s certainly where most of us would be.
Emma Rivera, a Barnard College first-year
and both an avid watcher of Downton Abbey
and a working student, agrees.
“To me, hearing the downstairs story is more
relatable,” she says. “I work to earn my way
IN A WORLD OF OCCUPY
PROTESTS AND ECONOMIC
UNCERTAINTY ... IT CAN BE
MORE GRATIFYING TO HEAR
ABOUT THE SUCCESS STORIES
OF “PEOPLE LIKE US.”
through college, and it seems way more accessible to hear about people who also have to work,
but can still have fun and move up in their jobs.”
In a world of Occupy protests and economic
uncertainty—where the gap between the middle
and upper class is growing ever wider—it can be
more gratifying to hear about the success stories
of “people like us.” Baker’s decision to mix the
familiar fun of the Pride and Prejudice drama
with something more relatable offers us the best
of both worlds. We can operate primarily in the
downstairs while remaining in earshot of the unattainable possibilities just out of sight. a
MICRO-SIZE ME
by Parul Guliani
floor plan courtesy of adAPT NYC
Living in New York City can be affordable—if
you’re thrifty and willing to break the law. For five
years, professional organizer Felice Cohen paid a mere
$700 per month for her 90-square-foot apartment. In
2010, the What Papa Told Me author posted a YouTube
video showcasing her (literally) closet-sized living
space and exceptional organizational abilities, garnering 5 million views and, sadly, an eviction notice.
Turns out the video—and subsequent media attention—alerted Cohen’s landlord that she was illegally
subletting the space.
While Cohen has since graduated to a relatively
spacious 500-square-foot apartment, Manhattan as a
whole is getting ready to downsize. Mayor Bloomberg
recently unveiled the winning design of his adAPT
NYC Competition, a pilot program aimed at developing a new micro-housing model for the city’s growing
small household population—one that is currently in
desperate need of shelter.
That New York City has a shortage of smallhousehold dwellings is not exactly news. The city is
currently home to 1.8 million one- and two-person
households, while only 1 million one- or two-bedroom studio apartments are available.
Bloomberg’s micro-housing initiative looks to
combat this problem. In September, 33 contestants
proposed designs for a building composed primarily of
micro-units, defined as apartments smaller than what
is currently allowed under health and safety regulations, which currently mandate that apartments
must be at least 400 square feet. According to a press
release, Bloomberg’s micro-apartments will range
from approximately 275 to 300 square feet, smaller
than many Columbia doubles.
According to Columbia architecture and economics professor Moshe Adler, this downsizing is
absolutely necessary. In fact, he argues in his book
Economics for the Rest of Us that most of Manhattan’s
housing problems could be solved by a reallocation of
living space.
He says, “Some people live in 20,000 or 40,000
square feet [homes]... Rich people are managing to
gobble up way, way too much space he says. And they
take it from the rest of New York and this is wrong.”
Adler argues that if all Manhattan apartments
were broken up and rearranged so that none exceeded
1,200 square feet, the number of apartments available
would increase by 35 percent. Of course, Bloomberg’s
initiative calls for even smaller units than this.
The mayor announced the competition’s winner
on Jan. 22. Designed by a team consisting of Monadnock Development LLC, Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation, and nARCHITECTS, and dubbed
"My Micro NY," the proposal is currently on display at
the Museum of the City of New York.
The design will be implemented at 335 E. 27th St.
in Kips Bay, and residents are expected to move in as
early as September 2015. At least 75 percent of
the apartments in the building will be microunits fully furnished with kitchens, bathrooms,
and Juliet balconies.
Jeff Lubell, executive director of the National
Housing Conference and Center for Housing Policy,
believes amenities such as shared lounges might make
the micro-units more attractive.
“In this country we tend to atomize everything
and everyone has to have their own individual living
room” he says. But you could potentially all share a
living room. It’s worth looking at, worth exploring.”
Lubell suspects that there will be at least some
demand for the micro-units. “We have more older
adults and more younger adults without kids ...
Together these populations are really creating a lot of
pressure on city urban housing markets,” he says.
But Mark Thomas, director of the nonprofit organization City Limits, thinks micro-living is not the
right solution.
“I like Bloomberg’s ambition and innovation,”
Thomas says. “But I don’t think this is a practical
solution as far as urban planning. If people didn’t have
other options outside of New York City, this would be
great. But there are other great cities.”
For Thomas, a living space smaller than 450 square
feet is too small. “I think anything smaller than that,
you’re boxing people in a place they don’t want to be
for too long,” he says.
Thomas likens the micro-units to dorm living.
People might want to live in them temporarily, but
not for more than a year or two.
“You don’t want people who only want to
live in 300 square feet for 10 months and then be
gone,” he says. "It’ll create neighborhoods that are
really non-existent.”
And small size is not the only undesirable aspect of
the micro-units. Sarah Polsky, editor of the real estate
blog Curbed NY, points out that efficient design does
not necessarily translate to affordability. The microunits will likely cost around $2,000 a month.
But then again, Polsky believes affordability is not
the main concern of the micro-unit initiative. Rather,
the project is primarily aimed at addressing the growing number of single households in the city.
Eric Klinenberg, a New York University sociology
professor and author of Going Solo, agrees. In 1950, 22
percent of Americans were single. Now, that number
is nearly 50 percent. According to Klinenberg, there
are a number of reasons for the demographic shift. For
one thing, norms about marriage have changed. Many
divorced people would rather live alone than with
roommates. Women are increasingly more economically independent, and people are living longer than
ever before, outliving their spouses and aging alone.
Technological change has also made solitude
more viable. Klinenberg says, “You can be home
and alone and also on Skype and email and instant
messaging. Cities are full of people who are going
solo. And in certain neighborhoods, living alone
can be a social experience.”
IDEAS
MINI APARTMENTS MAY BE REAL ESTATE’S NEXT BIG THING
ACCORDING TO A PRESS
RELEASE, BLOOMBERG’S MICROAPARTMENTS WILL RANGE FROM
APPROXIMATELY 275 TO 300
SQUARE FEET, SMALLER THAN
MANY COLUMBIA DOUBLES.
While living alone is becoming more popular,
micro-living is not necessarily for everyone. Even
Cohen, the queen of micro-living, can attest to that.
“I wouldn’t say that most people would be able
to live in micro-units,” she says. “But for those
whose priority it is to ‘make it’ in whatever their
goal is, be it in theater, writing, finance, then yes,
for those they can certainly live in a micro-unit.”
Will the average New Yorker take so easily to
micro-living? We’ll just have to wait until September
2015 to find out. By then, we may even find ourselves
looking to buy our own (micro) piece of NYC. a
5
FICTION
PAGEANT DRAWL
BY ALLEN JOHNSON
photo courtesy of
Library
of
Congress
In the camper registration line, Bax runs
back to some of us wild smiling and says, “Free
fucking haircuts!”
“Oh, how wonderful,” Oni preens, touching his
hair like he’s in a Pantene commercial. “It’s been
weeks and I’ve been craving a neck trim.”
An emphatic Ugh from all us boys. We’re not really into Oni’s brand of prissy pretentious coquetry
anymore. He’s been doing it since forever but now
that we’re older it reminds us of our mothers and we
don’t want to be anything like our mothers.
“Number one: faggot,” Bax says. “Number two:
it’s a full shave.”
“Military style,” Winston adds.
“A What?”
“Mandatory, too,” Mr. confirms from farther
behind in line. “They say it builds character.” He
rubs his already shaved head and grins. “And who
wouldn’t want to look like me?”
Oni, eyes wide, pauses, runs his fingers through
his hair making incomprehensible sounds. He takes a
deep breath.
“No,” he says. “This isn’t a thing. Things
aren’t this.”
“Well believe it or not, there’s a pile’uh hair
taller’an 10 dicks in the next room,” Bax says.
“Your metaphors,” Winston glares.
“My dick.”
Oni looks like he might hyperventilate.
“So we absolutely have to?”
“Yes,” Mr. says.
“Like but are we at summer camp or concentration camp? That’s what I’m wondering.”
Winston Ums loudly. Bax laughs from his throat.
PhD rouses. “Oni, no. We are definitely not in a
concentration camp.”
We wait in line until the last of the troop
ahead of us moves on from the next room. The
pile of hair is indeed taller than 10 dicks. The
6
boys coming out of the chair all look selfsame: white shaved lambs ready for combat or
camping or both.
“I do not see the need, is all that I am saying.”
“Oni.”
“It’s just that you can’t take my hair away from
me it makes me beautiful and it means a lot to me
and because and what about human rights and my
body and.”
“If you break that down he’s not exactly wrong
but my ability to care is hamstrung by the fact that
Oni is Oni,” Winston says to Bax.
“Oni,” Mr. says, using the voice adult white
men use to indicate that they believe they have hold
of the power in a situation.
“Mr.”
“Sass!” Winston mutters.
“Oni. Oni.”
He is next in line.
“No no no no no no no no no no no no no no
no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no I
conscientiously object to the removal of my follicles
no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.”
“ONI.”
“MISTER.”
“Wussfaggot,” Bax says, and spits on the
hardwood.
All eyes on Oni and he is intractable. We watch
as Mr. picks up his body while he struggles flailing
and it is both horrible to look at and incredibly funny
because really.
“MISTER MISTER MISTER NO.”
Finally, Mr. pins him down with both hands
locked on Oni’s thighs. Oni pushes against arms
that are much stronger than his and shakes his
head back and forth up and down, hoping Mr.
will surrender and save him from this.
“Um, what do you want me to do?” the barber
asks Mr.
Oni is crying now and it’s still kind of funny but
it’s also like not that funny because of he’s really upset
and they’re doing it to him, they are the willful upsetters, and we’ve literally been at camp for something
like less than a half hour, and if this can happen to
Oni, could something else totally circumstantially
different but like essentially the same happen to us?
Could we be ripped open like this? Is there something
in us we don’t know about ourselves that could gash
us up too?
“Mr., respectfully, let Oni keep his hair,”
Winston says.
“Really,” Bax adds. “He’ll whine the whole week if
we buzz’im.”
“It’s camp policy,” Mr. says in a voice that
now indicates that he has instantaneously lost
all former power over said situation. He strains
his brow and looks up as if all reason were
cornered in the ceiling joist. His eyes fall to the
mustachioed stand-in barber who is holding
his blade humming and cocked ready in the air,
poised but looking wholly disarmed, a person
in an entirely different kind of story who is
presently coming into the vague apprehension
that he is ill-equipped to actively interpolate this
kind of a scene.
“Uh,” he says, “you’re right, sir, it is camp policy.”
And then Oni starts to moan and quiver and spit
everywhere because he doesn’t deserve this, he
thinks. We think that that’s what he thinks. He is a
boy who usually gets his way and now he is throwing
a temper tantrum because something he doesn’t want
to happen to him is about to happen to him.
Pretentious preening coquetry.
“I’m going in,” the barber stranger says.
“No no no no no no no NO NO NO.”
We hear Oni cry out again but it’s a different kind
of thing, infinite and injured, and we all of us take a
step towards him.
Winston mumbles through dark fits of laughter,
“Oh my god the barber literally has blood on his
hands this is too much, this is TOO too much.”
“Not cool faggot,” Bax says, lobbing Winston
a look.
“Oni, hold on,” Mr. says, putting his hands on
Oni’s forehead. “You got a little cut.”
“Geez, I’m sorry,” the barber says. “I should
have waited till he calmed down. I just thought…
and so weird—”
We wait for Oni to say something. Head down,
he gestures two fingers limp-wristed to the barber
who in turn approaches the way you might approach
a man about to jump off a building not tall enough to
kill him. Oni asks, “A mirror, please.”
“Oni…” Mr. says. “It took out a good chunk of
your hair.”
“A mirror.”
The barber jimmies to the table and finds a Compact and brings it over to Oni who claps the mirror
open, holds it up and changes the angle gingerly a
few times. A slender diagonal line of hair in his left
eyebrow has gone missing, and above, a triangular
notch has set the part back another inch. Connecting
them is an incision thin but deep that could have been
wrought by penknife or axe.
In all, new Oni looks strange: askant and a bit
threatening, the way he’s always looked to us, but
now he’s even more of it.
“Regrettably,” Oni sighs, “I cannot say that I hate
it, but I do think I will need stitches.”
“Well, yes,” Mr. says, coming to.
“I think that’s a given, mate,” Winston smiles.
“If they have blue thread I would like the thread
to be blue. Preferably royal blue. Indigo as a second
choice but very second.”
“That is one faggotass thing to say,” Bax proffers.
The barber steps forward, asking, “Should I…?”
but Mr. holds his hand out to stop him.
“No, no, the hair stays. No.” a
The Eye is now accepting 900-1,200 word
fiction submissions. Send your story to
[email protected].
THE DODGE DIVIDE
EXAMINING THE ROLE OF ATHLETICS IN THE COLUMBIA COMMUNITY
BY
TRE
VO
RC
OH
E
N&
JIM
VISUALS BY
PAG
EL
S
SUZE MYERS & ANNIE WANG
“I felt like there was more support at my public high
school than there was at the entire University,” one former
football player told us.
The adversaries Columbia varsity athletes have to face in
their four years here tend to number far greater than those
they face on the field. These antagonists often sit beside
them in the classroom, pass them in their dorm—even deliver their lectures and grade their papers and exams.
It’s no secret that athletes, who represent roughly 13
percent of enrolled students at Columbia College and the
School of Engineering and Applied Science, tend to be
stigmatized by students and faculty. Others believe that
athletes largely form an insular, distinct community, cutting them off from the University at large.
As Columbia’s athletic department wraps up construction on a new $50 million athletic facility 100 blocks
north of campus, it’s hard for many to see a future in
which the troubling status quo—with attitudes toward
athletics from many outside the program somewhere on
the spectrum between disregard and disdain—is meaningfully changed.
“Obviously, one goal is to have winning teams and
compete successfully against our peers. We are doing that
at Columbia,” Athletic Director M. Diane Murphy writes.
However, evidence is largely to the contrary. Over the last
three seasons in three of the most prominent Columbia sports—football, men’s basketball, and women’s
basketball—only two teams have finished higher than
sixth place in the eight-team Ivy League: the men’s and
women’s basketball teams, which tied for fifth and fourth
respectively in 2010.
The recent marks for futility are endless. With the
football team winning only three games over a 22-game
span from 2010 to 2012 (lowlighted by a recent 69-0
blowout to Harvard and the lack of a road win since 2009),
the women’s basketball team losing by over 60 points to
Princeton in consecutive seasons and recently winning its
first road game in two years, a 3-98 conference record for
women’s lacrosse since its inception in 1997, and only one
Ivy League title in any sport over the last three years, it’s
hard to ignore the hard abysmal facts—however much the
athletics department tries to spin the often fruitless on-thefield performances as a success.
Balancing the Budget
Unlike across the Harlem River, where Yankees fans
are outraged by their team’s recent thriftiness in pursuing
top-price talent, many of the nonathlete students we spoke
with oppose the large portion of University funds that they
perceive goes to athletics.
“I sort of wish we weren’t spending as much money on
it,” Grace Rosen, a Columbia College junior, says. “I know
a lot of it is sponsors, but you see athletes walking around
with full Columbia Athletics outfits.”
Rosen has plenty of company in that attitude. “I’m from
Europe, where we don’t really take athletics that seriously,”
one first-year says. “I don’t really see the point.”
Statements from Columbia’s athletic department,
though, suggest the athletic financial picture may be different from what many students believe it to be. According
to government data mandated by the Equity in Athletics
Disclosure Act, Columbia’s $20 million annual expenditures are exactly offset by its revenue. Judging by the nearly
empty venues for many games, that may seem impossible,
but Murphy cites Dodge memberships, student term fees,
fundraising, and other sources to round out that total—including significantly more than pure operating revenue as a
means to achieve that balanced budget.
Not all students assume athletics to be a drain on
University resources. Although the athletic department
does not release its donation records to the public, Alex
Harstrick, a former rower who quit the team after one
semester and graduated in 2012, believes that the athletic department lines Columbia’s pockets rather than
drains them.
IN FOCUS
“You can’t eliminate a D-1 football team and then
expect alumni to donate to the rest of the school,” he
says. “A lot of people may be angry about that, but it’s
the reality. If you want to fund the science lab, you
have to have the football team.”
“What the Fuck Are You Doing Here?”
Many students have more than a strong suspicion
that athletes take a slightly different path toward
admission. The primary element of this recruitment
process is the infamous Academic Index, a metric Ivy
League schools apply to potential athletes.
The AI made news last year because the Ivy League
raised the minimum score a student could receive and
still be admitted. According to the New York Times,
the floor now rests at
176, which translates
to about a 3.0 GPA
and an 1140 on the
combined math
and critical reading sections of the
SAT. While the
Times notes that few athletes are actually admitted
at this level, students have no way to differentiate
who among their peers is at that level and who is well
above it, leading to a blanket assumption of lower
academic pedigree for all athletes.
Once coaches have picked out their desired athletes and received approval from the admissions office, they can issue what is known as a “likely letter”
to potential recruits after Oct. 1. This letter serves as a
de facto admission letter, barring any significant drop
in academic performance before graduation.
Jessamyn Conrad, who has taught both Lit Hum
and Art Hum, is strongly against what she refers to as
affirmative action for athletics—admitting students
with lesser academic credentials because of their
athletic prowess. She believes that bringing in students who aren’t up to the academic challenge posed
by Columbia causes both those individuals and their
classmates to lose out, particularly in the intimate
environment of Core classes.
“If you have people who can’t do as much, especially in the Core Curriculum, where you’re basically
in a seminar and where much of the learning that you
get out of it has to do with the kinds of conversations
you have among the group in your class, it’s a loss for
everyone,” she said.
The idea that recruiting athletes isn’t fair to other
students at Columbia, or to other applicants, is far
from new. For Conrad, though, the more pressing
issue is the psychological toll she believes this system
can have on the recruited athletes themselves.
“My main problem with it is that it’s terrible
for the students. What it does to the students’
psychology, when they really can’t perform, is extremely unfair,” Conrad says. “I think it’s immoral
to bring in students to these situations in which
they cannot succeed.”
Conrad stresses that the vast majority of athletes
are capable, some even exemplary, but says that
those who struggled have stuck in her memory. The
experience of a football player she taught, she says,
is indicative of the negative consequences of athletic
recruitment in the Ivy League.
“I remember him saying, ‘I
know I’m never gonna get a B
at Columbia, but I just want to
not get a D,’” Conrad recalls.
“And my heart just sank for
this kid. He wasn’t bright in
the way that Columbia students
are bright, but he wanted to do
well—he was willing to work.
I mean, he was a good kid, but
there was no way for him to
succeed, and he knew it ... I
think that he probably would
have had a better education if
he were not at Columbia.”
These judgements are
prevalent in the student
body—even among athletes
themselves. “It’s definitely
true that standards are lowered a little bit,” says Columbia College junior Walker
Harrison, who walked on to
the baseball team. “That’s
what creates the sort of idea
that academically they’re at a
lower tier.”
“I THINK IT’S
IMMORAL
TO BRING IN
STUDENTS
TO THESE
SITUATIONS
IN WHICH
THEY CANNOT
SUCCEED.”
8
Dario Pizzano, a former member of the class of
2013 who left after his junior year to enter the Major
League Baseball draft, also acknowledges that the numerical standards are lowered for recruited athletes.
In his experience, knowledge of this fact sometimes
led members of the Columbia community, particularly certain professors, to automatically view athletes
in their classes through a negative lens.
“Realistically, athletes are admitted to the school
with lower scores because they’re being accepted for
athletics,” Pizzano said. “We maybe couldn’t get SAT
scores like 2200 to get into Columbia, but we were admitted, and some people were a little bit bitter about
that. Some people have that negative attitude, like,
‘They were already given a favor getting in here, so
they just want to keep getting favors.’ That was kind
of the attitude with some teachers, and I felt that.”
Despite this widely-acknowledged differential in
minimum academic standards, Murphy maintains
that “all student-athletes are subject to the same
admissions process as other students.”
“All student-athletes,” she writes, “are
admitted on the basis of their potential as students. The athletics program does not set the
academic standards for admission, nor does it
admit students to Columbia.”
Contrary to Murphy’s implied claims of standard
process, almost every athlete we spoke with readily
acknowledged that he or she would not have been
accepted to the University under normal admissions
standards. Many justify their system, though, by attributing many of their standardized test scores and
GPA drop-offs to the significant time drain associated
with their athletic involvement in high school.
“My test scores weren’t the best—they were good
for a middle-of-the-pack school but not for the Ivy
League. Sports helped me out there,” sophomore basketball center Cory Osetkowski says. “But, if I wasn’t
playing sports in high school, maybe I could have had
more time to dedicate to schoolwork or studying for
those tests.”
Former football player Colton Bishop, a sophomore who left the team after one season due to injury,
is equally candid. “I don’t think that being a white
male from a middle-class public school in Arizona
that I would get accepted into this school without
football,” he says. “But I’d also like to point out that if
the time that I spent playing football growing up was
spent doing other stuff—whether that’s academics,
or clubs, or hobbies that students have here—then it
might be a different answer.”
However, this raises the question of why students who devoted their high school lives to equally
demanding nonathletic extracurricular pursuits still
have to maintain near-perfect GPAs and SAT scores to
be competitive in the eyes of admissions officers.
Harstrick isn’t so quick to admit that many athletes would have been denied admission had it not
been for the recruiting process—in fact, he doesn’t
think recruiting matters that much.
“I think any athlete who can make it through and
graduate deserves to be there,” he says. “The goal
of college is to get a degree,” and athletes tend to
graduate in the same proportion as other students.
Additionally, Osetkowski believes that recruiting
athletes creates a more diverse student body.
“Rather than having people that are just dedicated to schoolwork and getting that degree,
you have athletes that have different lifestyles,
different personalities,” he says.
COLUMBIA
LIONS
$20,173,732
PENN
QUAKERS
$37,669,540
YALE
BULLDOGS
$37,384,374
DARTMOUTH
BIG GREEN
$21,203,543
PRINCETON
TIGERS
$20,905,487
HARVARD
CRIMSON
$20,132,914
CORNELL
BIG RED
$19,856,594
BROWN
BEARS
$16,876,364
other way around. He mentions a system by which
coaches send him a note when one of his students
has to miss class for a game or practice. By the same
token, he says, when he takes his class on a museum tour outside of class time, he should be able
to release a student from practice with no consequences for that student.
“That practice isn’t the end-all be-all of why
you’re here right now,” he says. “The kids still believe
they’re D-1 athletes —they still worry about losing
their starting spots for going on a Met tour. As things
are currently constructed, that’s fucking ridiculous.”
Women’s soccer head coach Kevin McCarthy
makes clear that, for his athletes, their life as students
takes priority. Men’s basketball head coach Kyle
Smith echoes this.
“If they come to me and say they have an essay
due, I kind of say, ‘That’s on you—you have to balance
your time.’” But for things like tests or academic trips,
he’s happy to accommodate. “I’m probably too soft,”
Smith says.
Smith does, however, express some concern
that his athletes might not tell him when they
have something like a visit to the Met for fear of
losing playing time.
Seybold says that, in her experience, Smith
and McCarthy’s claims of support are borne out
in practice.
“They say school comes first, and they mean it.
They know that we’re here for a reason,” she says. “I
think here, school really does come first.”
The Dodge Divide
Before they even set foot on campus, athletes
are divided from their peers by structure. “When
we first got here for freshman orientation, we
missed a lot of that, so we didn’t get to interact
with a lot of the students that don’t play sports,”
Mascot = $5,000,000
Source: Equity in Athletics
A Day in the Life
Harrison, like senior football player Shad Sommers, views athletics as a benefit to his academic
performance. “You have to get up earlier. You can’t
go out every night,” he says. Malone agrees. “I think
it’s difficult, but I also think that having a structured
schedule really helps,” she says.
Core professor Susan Pedersen shares those sentiments, stating that she has no problem with studentathletes in class and that they tend to be disciplined
and responsible. “I don’t know why—perhaps they’re
healthier and just get sick less?—but if anything, they
probably miss class less than than the student average
for such things,” she says.
However, for every athlete who believes the discipline of athletics has helped them in academic life,
there seems to be another who has felt crushed under
the pressure of unrealistic time commitments. Harstick, for one, feels that his participation in athletics
was a serious drain on his academics. “My grades fell
considerably being on the rowing team,” he says. “I
found that the work-life balance that was advertised
to me wasn’t true.”
This seems to contradict Dean of Student Affairs
Kevin Shollenberger’s statement: “Advising deans
from the Center for Student Advising work closely
with all student-athletes to create a support system to
ensure they reach their academic and personal goals.”
Pizzano, who stuck with his sport all the way to
the pros, also had to face trade-offs. “I saw my friends
stop playing as I got older, and they were doing that
internship stuff, and I was still playing baseball. ‘If I
don’t make it, I’m not going to have any internships
on my résumé’ was always a thought in the back of
my mind,” Pizzano reflects. “I never actually considered it, because since I was five years old and swung a
bat for the first time, I knew that’s what I wanted to
do, and I was gonna play baseball until they took the
bat out of my hands—until they told me, ‘You’re not
good enough.’”
For those players who don’t have realistic
professional aspirations, and who make up the
vast majority of student-athletes here, Nathan
Pilkington, a Lit Hum instructor, wants to see a
change in the culture, such that it becomes more
acceptable for student-athletes to sacrifice athletics for academics on occasion, rather than just the
IVY LEAGUE SPENDING ON ATHLETICS
IN FOCUS
Conrad also strongly believes in socioeconomic
diversity among students, which she thinks increases
the value of the Core. However, while some may be
more naturally disposed to the particular exigencies
of Core classes, she believes a certain expectation of
ability should apply to all.
“Everybody has a set of capabilities and different
kinds of intelligence—different things that are intuitive for them or not,” she says. “But you need to
have people who can jump in that ring and engage.”
Ali Seybold, a Columbia College junior former
walk-on rower, believes that one qualification for
preferential treatment in the admissions process
should be a student’s ability to bring success to
Columbia’s sports team—a trait she and others
have found to be conspicuously absent in studentathletes here.
“Should we go out of our way to recruit sub-par
intellectuals and at the same time sub-par athletes?
No,” she says. “One of my problems is, if you’re not
good at sports, and you’re not good at school, then
what the fuck are you doing here?”
Sommers says. “So right from the get-go, you’re
kind of separated.”
Columbia College junior Chris Carrano says the
divide is clear. “There’s definitely a social role in the
way we see these gray pants and sweaters, and you
immediately identify them as an athlete,” he says.
“It’s almost like, ‘he’s an athlete,’ rather than, ‘he’s
an engineering or CC student.’”
Despite the perceptions of many nonathlete members of the student body, the segmentation of athletes
into insular groups defined by their teams does not
seem to always be self-imposed. One former rower,
who left the team to escape that culture, describes the
directions from the coaches as “militaristic,” specifically mentioning their strict requests for teammates
to room together and spend as much time in each
other’s company as possible.
On the other hand, Osetkowski considers athletes and nonathletes to be fundamentally integrated parts of the student body—thanks, in large
part, to the Core.
“I feel like, at this school, everyone’s here for the
same reason: to get the education. And then for athletes, it’s like athletics is coming second,” Osetkowski
says. “Being in classrooms together—Lit Hum, CC,
those classes—the athletes work with the nonathletes,
and I feel like there’s a strong bond.”
One issue commonly expressed by current
and former athletes is the difficulty for members of a varsity team to take advantage of other
extracurricular pursuits.
“Going to Columbia and being among people who
were very academic but also cerebral, I think there
was more to me than being ‘just an athlete,’ which is
how I felt being on the rowing team portrayed me,”
Harstrick says.
“I did not really socialize outside the athletic
community,” he continues, noting that the rowing
9
IN FOCUS
team at one point received an email from their coach
encouraging them to spend time together.
James Valentini, dean of Columbia College, says
that the main difference between athletics and other
time commitments is flexibility. “I think there’s
something special about being on a team, because
someone else is determining the terms of your engagement, and when you have to show up, which
probably doesn’t happen in quite the same way in a
purely student-run activity,” he says.
Harrison wrote for both Spectator and The Federalist while on the team, which he says was difficult
but feasible if he budgeted his time. However, he also
noted that, as an athlete who participated in other
on-campus organizations, he was in the minority.
“They’re in their own little world,” Pilkington
says of varsity athletes here. “I don’t feel like they’re
integrated in the same way. But not by choice, just by
structure. Their time is just so differently and strangely constructed.”
Supporting this point, many of the athletes we
interviewed say they are not involved with many
student groups outside of their athletic teams, athletic
organizations such as the Student-Athlete Advisory
Committee, and fraternities that generally segment
themselves by team.
Zeta Beta Tau (baseball), Kappa Delta Rho (basketball), and Sigma Chi (football) are strongly associated
with particular sports due to their overwhelming
composition by certain athletes. (The latter fraternity counts only five to six members who have never
played for the football team among its 44 members,
and according to its president, Columbia College
junior Chris Mooney, the organization has been tied to
football for over half a century.)
However, Harrison—a member of ZBT—and
Mooney note that their fraternities have been making
an effort to remove the automatic association of certain fraternities with certain sports. “It makes sense
fraternity-wise if we’re limiting ourselves to eight or
nine individuals every year, that’s really going against
the idea of a fraternity, which is to cast a wide net,”
Harrison says. “That’s definitely been a goal of ours
the past year and coming year. Our past recruiting
class was much more non-baseball, and that’s hopefully something that will carry over into the future.”
Hanging Up Their Cleats
Many teams have had high rates of attrition, with
some teams, such as softball, men’s lightweight
rowing, and lacrosse having over 30 percent of their
eligible squad quit between seasons, often leaving
them with a relatively small percentages of juniors
and seniors while the bulk of the squad is comprised
of newly recruited freshmen and sophomores.
According to Murphy, student-athlete retention
is an issue across the conference, as there is no fear of
losing a scholarship, and athletes are still eligible for
financial aid whether or not they remain on a team.
Pilkington fully supports student-athletes who
decide to stop playing their sport. “When a student
comes to me and says he’s thinking about quitting, I
always remind him he owes the University shit,” he
says. “They’re not getting any added benefit by doing
it, and they’re sacrificing their own time. So if they
want to do other things, then they should take advantage of what is here.”
Athletics hopes to retain 90 percent of first-year
student-athletes for their sophomore year, Murphy
says. She cites this figure as having been 87 percent
10
for the class of 2010 and up to 98 percent
for the class of 2014. Murphy also cites a
program goal of a 75 percent four-year
retention rate, noting that this figure
has risen from 51 percent to 70 percent
over the last four years, attributing this
progress to renovated facilities, increased
resources, and other factors.
Katie Day Benvenuto, associate director of athletics development, speaks
about the vast increase in resources
allocated for athletics to curb attrition rates that
has occurred since she played women’s basketball here a decade ago, noting that athletes can
now take advantage of dedicated staffers in the
athletic department “whose job it is to help athletes make connections with alumni and explore
career opportunities.”
“IT’S SORT OF LIKE WE’RE ALMOST P
THAT WE’RE NOT AN ATHLETIC SCH
THAT WE’RE NOT FOCUSED
Lions Who?
From the insularity of the athlete community, to
the negative perceptions of recruitment, to the relative lack of success by Columbia’s marquee sports,
few deny the existence of widespread apathy toward
sports on Columbia’s campus.
A considerable number of the students we spoke
to said that they had little to no interest in Columbia
athletics—even if they were fans of sports in general.
Only a handful said they had attended more than one
athletic event.
“I sort of wish the student body were more aware
and involved,” Rosen says.
Athletes tend to agree that student support is
minimal, and express a desire for it to increase.
“It’s very surprising in a satisfying way when you
do see someone who doesn’t play athletics, and they,
like, know who you are, or they’ve read an article
about you, so it’s nice, but it’s rare,” Malone says.
As one former football player tells us, the lack of
support for the team was something he experienced
throughout his career, while a former rower cites this
apathy as one of the main reasons he left the team.
“I realized that, win or lose, nobody really cared that
much,” he says.
Some students even find amusement in the futility. “As far as the big sports, I don’t really follow them
other than the sort of overall record at the end of the
year, which we all laugh about,” says Rosen.
For Pilkington, though, the answer is not
necessarily to develop a more winning program.
It’s more about creating community through
tradition, something he believes that “Columbia
abdicated by doing stupid things like moving the
baseball diamond out of the middle of campus
and way uptown.”
Baker Athletics Complex is located 100 blocks
north of the Columbia gates, a divide many
consider a deterrent to both student attendance
and athlete enrollment. And while Harrison,
the baseball player, believes the effects of the
recently-opened, much-touted Campbell Sports
Center will be positive in allowing athletes to
“work meals and lifts around practice more
easily,” the spatial aspect remains a significant
obstacle in bringing campus life into further
contact with athletics.
“We always joke about how it would be nice if it
were like the Lou Gehrig days, when you could hit
home runs off Hamilton,” Harrison says. “It’s definitely a challenge, because you have to build in an
extra hour every
day.”
While athletes are divided on how big a hassle the distance
to Baker really is, nonathletes seem to
find it an insurmountable hurdle. Carrano
expressed interest in attending a basketball
game but said that if they were located at
Baker, “I would never do that. It’s way too
far.”
Jeremy Feinberg, a 1992 graduate of Columbia College and a 1995 graduate of the Law
School, who was sports editor on Spectator’s
115th managing board, was one nonathlete
undergraduate who did become engrossed in
athletics. He continues to support the athletic
program by donating what he can (though
“no one’s going to confuse me for that Kluge
fellow,” he says) and staying involved in the
community. A lecturer at the law school, he
makes himself available for guidance to any
student-athlete who is interested in pursuing law after graduation. He says he likes the
idea of “being able to be a face that can be
counted on both to be at games and to give back
to the program.”
Pilkington has also noticed a pervasive lack of
support for athletics. “I don’t think there’s a stigma—
I don’t get that sense. The sense that I get is that
nobody knows them.”
He feels that such indifference is just as damaging as negative stigmas—and that the lack of support
doesn’t end with the student body. Many faculty
members, he says, have attitudes toward athletics
ranging from indifferent to combative.
“There’s some really virulent beliefs out there,”
says Pilkington, who believes that athletes here have
the same intellectual capacity as the rest of the student body, but also alludes to a sizable contingent of
“crazy faculty that despises sports.”
“And that matters. Professors have to
come to games too. That’s why I’m saying that it’s more of a mentality over the
whole community,” he continues. “The
community has to give something to
them, or the community has to make
a decision that they’re gonna stop
making these kids sacrifice for not
a clear benefit, other than maybe
admission to Columbia.”
Feinberg may have always
meshed well with the athletic
program and those who participated in it, but
he, too, remembers a pervasive, anti-athlete
attitude that was expressed by more than just
students.
“The big problem when I was here was
we had just gotten past that awful football
losing streak that people don’t talk about
anymore, and everyone found it to be
fun to rag on the football team about all
their losing,” he says. “And professors would get into the act. They’d
make fun of student-athletes for
things other than what happened
on the field—like you’d walk into a
class, and the professor would ask
people who were on the football
team to raise their hand, and then
make a joking comment about,
‘Oh, this will help the curve, for
those of you who are interested.’
And that was awful.”
Brains vs. Brawn
One Core instructor of over
a decade, who chose to remain
anonymous, spoke strongly
about unfair, negative stereotyping of athletes he’s found to
be prevalent within the faculty
community, even today.
“You hear something like,
‘How’s your class going?’ ‘Oh,
well I got a lot of studentathletes in my class this year,’”
he says, illustrating the level
of contempt expressed by
his peers toward athletes in
their classes. “And it would
be like, ‘What?’ How is that
even an issue? Even if they’re
not particularly enthusiastic or
whatever, your job as a teacher is
to get them enthusiastic. That always rubbed me the wrong way.”
He theorizes that such sentiments held by instructors tend to
be self-fulfilling prophecies, creating something of a vicious cycle. “If
I walk in there with an attitude like,
‘These people aren’t up to snuff,’ of
course they’re not going to give, and
“THERE’S DEFINITELY
A SOCIAL ROLE IN THE
WAY WE SEE THESE
GRAY PANTS AND
SWEATERS, AND YOU
IMMEDIATELY IDENTIFY
THEM AS AN ATHLETE.”
of course they’re gonna be turned off by you
and the class,” he says.
Multiple players we spoke with indicated that
they’d been confronted with negative attitudes toward their athletic commitments from instructors,
which, in some cases, added undue stress to their
academic lives.
One current recruited athlete, who chose to
remain anonymous, says that student-athletes he
knows at other Ivy League schools generally have
the same experience, unlike friends he has on sports
teams at big schools, such as those in the Atlantic
Coast Conference or Southeastern Conference, who
“get treated like gods.”
“The first thing you associate with an Ivy
League school is education,” he says. “So I guess
teachers who have been here for a while have that
instilled in their head, that sports aren’t really
important to people’s education.”
“I think that that has a lot to do with just being
an academic,” the Core instructor says, positing his
own theory behind the phenomenon. “We like to
think that we’re totally enlightened about everything
and everyone, and you certainly wouldn’t find much
racism among academics, right? But they have their
prejudices, too, and one of the prejudices that comes
out is this prejudice against athletes.”
He feels strongly that it’s an issue that needs to be
addressed. “It just requires a little reflection on the
part of professors to check their own prejudices and
preconceptions before they go into the classroom,”
he says.
However, Osetkowski says that he’s yet to come
up against one of those professors. “They’re willing
to meet with me even when they don’t have office
hours, talking after class—they always ask how sports
are going.”
Pizzano doesn’t quite share that view. “Our coach
and our advisers kind of learned over the years from
other student-athletes which professors were like
that, and they were kind of like, ‘If you’re gonna
take this class, try and stay away from this professor,
because they don’t really reason with the athletes.’”
Conrad says that, although the majority of athletes in her classes have been “absolutely capable,”
she has had issues with students who were recruited
for athletics, particularly in certain sports.
For Conrad, the problems she has seen have had
more to do with ability than motivation or time
management. “I see students having a lot on their
plates, but the issues I’ve seen are largely not with
the time commitment—they’re with academic
ability,” she says.
“But they weren’t disengaged—they didn’t not
try. I didn’t feel like they were killing time in the
class. I think that they were good kids,” Conrad
says. “I just don’t know what they get out of it, and
I don’t know, for them, that it’s really preparing
them to be as successful as they could be.”
Conrad’s claims may bear some empirical traction. According to a 2011 piece in the Yale Daily
News, Columbia had the second-lowest Academic
Performance Rate (a metric used by the NCAA to
measure athletic progress toward graduation) in the
Ivy League, only ahead of Cornell.
Conrad believes that, to fix these issues, a
broader dialogue must be started, especially among
instructors. “This is a thing that we don’t talk about
enough as teachers—about what’s going on with
students psychologically, and that’s the part that I
find so disruptive. It beats them down,” she says.
Seybold walked onto the women’s rowing team
her first year but then left the team due to frequent
illness and the strain athletics put on her academics.
Seybold attributes a significant degree of athletes’
struggles in the classroom to the intense workout
schedule to which they adhere.
“I personally felt like I was bringing a bad vibe
because I was tired so much when I was still working
out,” she says. “I did fall asleep in Lit Hum, but I also
felt like I was kind of disruptive in that I feel asleep
all the time.”
Seybold bluntly acknowledges the negative
stereotypes of recruited athletes held by much of the
student body.
“Frankly, people think they’re dumb,” Seybold
says of recruited athletes. “I remember one of my
friends who also walked on—we were talking about
it one day, and she was like, ‘Wow, I cannot believe I
was on the waitlist to make room for these people.’”
One first-year tells us about some of the less
enlightening experiences he had with athletes in
classes. “I had a few athletes in my UWriting class,
and they probably had the worst critical skills,” he
says. “There was this one guy on the golf team who
tried to make every one of his papers about golf. It
was completely inappropriate. Like, English is my
second language, and I knew it was really bad.”
Henrique Teles Maia, a junior on the club
men’s volleyball team, denies any stigma existing against club athletes but adamantly confirms
there is a stigma against varsity athletes. “If you
see someone wearing all athletics stuff, just all
Columbia blue, coming in sweat pants, running in
late to class, then your brain automatically goes
somewhere, and then when they ask a question,
you just assume—so there’s definitely a stigma. It’s
very hard to avoid it,” he says.
Thoughts like Maia’s are the reason that junior
field hockey forward Liz Malone admits she tries
“to not wear sweatpants as much as possible, so
you appear as if you’re not coming from practice.”
Unlike professional athletes, who often eschew
team apparel to avoid recognition by ravenous fans,
Columbia’s athletes do so to avoid recognition by
judgmental peers.
IN FOCUS
PROUD
HOOL—
ON IT.”
Bridging the Gap
True to his roots, Feinberg proposes a solution to
the divide—whether expressed through apathy or
insult—between athletes and the rest of the community: Have the players’ stories told.
“Give them an opportunity to get to know the
players,” he says. “These are wonderful young
men and women, and regardless of how many
losses and wins they walk away with, they’re all
going to be great leaders and great people once
they’re done here.”
Like Eisenbach, Feinberg believes things have
improved over the years, perhaps because of the
higher academic achievement of recruits.
“We’ve come a long way,” he says.
“There’s still obviously a long way to go, but
things are better.” a
11
WORK, THEN PLAY
THEATER
AFTERWORK THEATER KEEPS PROFESSIONALS INVOLVED IN THE ARTS
by
Lauren Brown
In the college bubble, it’s easy to ignore that
those of us who major in the arts will one day
face a scant selection of well-paying jobs. I, for
one, am majoring in film studies, although part
of me doubts that I’ll ever direct a film or write
for television. Once I graduate and the real world
slaps me around a bit, I’ll probably have to let
go of my lofty artistic
dreams and settle
for something more
reliable. These college
years may be my last
opportunity to work
on productions of any
kind. Right?
Evan Greenberg would
beg to differ.
Greenberg is the creative
director of the AfterWork
Theater Project, a program
in Midtown Manhattan that
stages productions of popular
ensemble musicals, including,
most recently, Hair. The twist?
The cast is made up of working
adults of all ages and professions,
many of whom have little to
no theater experience. For
a “tuition” on par with that
of a gym membership
or a child’s summer
camp, adults from any
walk of life can be part
of a complete staging of a
musical with real sets and
costumes, with the help of a
professional creative team.
This past February, Erik
Piepenburg featured the project
in his New York Times article “The
Audience Pays, but So Do the Actors.”
Of the participants, Piepenburg says,
“Every performer got something that
many a struggling actor strives to achieve by
skill alone: a New York stage credit.” Though the
overall tone of the article is positive, lines like
these show the disconnect between professional
and recreational performing arts.
When I ask Greenberg about this skepticism,
he is understandably frustrated. He didn’t start
the project to further anyone’s theater career.
AfterWork is like an after-school theater program,
except this program is, literally, after work. But
Piepenburg hints that a recreational theater
company for adults seems ridiculous.
“When I look at my cast of Hair, I see big
kids,” Greenberg tells me. “I don’t see the line
that people draw between kids and adults, it
just doesn’t exist in my world.” Greenberg loves
theater, and the AfterWork Theater Project
lets him keep theater in his life as he offers the
experience to anyone who missed out.
Greenberg never dreamed the project would
inspire any backlash. The main purpose of
AfterWork is to give people a chance to be a
part of a theater community. Regardless of the
quality of the show, just being in the musical
Show would agree. When I explain the AfterWork
Theater Project to members of the crew, I expect
a bit of snobbery, but all I get is immediate
approval. “I think it’s great, a program that can
give the arts to adults who otherwise would lose
that or would never have found it,” says Laura
Quintela, a Columbia College junior and coproducer of the Varsity Show.
Everyone in the Varsity Show is so eager
to share their love for theater that they can’t
get the words out quickly enough. They take
pride in their completely original production,
but they still feel the camaraderie of more than
a hundred Varsity Show groups before them.
Ally Engelberg, a Barnard College sophomore
and the other co-producer of the Varsity Show,
says, “I have dedicated my entire life to this
show, and I feel great about it.” Everyone I
talked to found the same pride and joy in their
work, despite the time commitment.
When they look to their future in the
arts, they are uncertain, but do
not despair. Gina Borden, a
Barnard College junior,
is a choreographer for
the show. She loves
to dance, and she
expects that after
college she will
continue to dance
unpaid. “The
great thing about
New York City is
that there are so
many opportunities
for not-prominent
choreographers and dancers
to perform. Even if you’re not
getting paid, you will be able to
find a group of people that you can
work with on a weekly or monthly
basis,” Borden says. Whatever
happens, Borden plans on finding
a way to incorporate dance into
her life because she can’t do
without it.
When I asked Greenberg about
the power of taking part in a production, he
explained, “It’s a collaborative art that we’re
talking about. It’s really much more than the
art: It’s the art as a mode of connection with
other human beings.”
The AfterWork Theater Project, the
Varsity Show, and the many other creative
opportunities in the city create a feeling of
community based on building something
together. Every individual is a valuable part
of a collective production. According to
Nick Parker, a Columbia College junior and
lyricist for the Varsity Show, “It’s almost like
discovering what is best about yourself.” a
FOR A “TUITION” ON PAR WITH
THAT OF A GYM MEMBERSHIP
OR A CHILD’S SUMMER CAMP,
ADULTS FROM ANY WALK
OF LIFE CAN BE PART OF A
COMPLETE STAGING OF A MUSICAL.
12
makes the participants feel like kids again. The
cast of Hair formed a strong bond, complete with
sleepovers, hair braiding, and preperformance
chants, according to Greenberg. Some felt that
the production was life-changing, some fulfilled
dreams of being onstage, and some who had just
moved to New York found friends in a new city.
“It really does regress you to another time. I don’t
know why we don’t operate like that anymore,
and I don’t know why theater is the key to
bringing that back, but it really does do that for
people,” Greenberg says.
Theater can be therapeutic, as anyone
involved in student productions like the Varsity
NOT SO (SELF-) HELPFUL
by Hannah Wederquist-Keller
illustration by Hannah Sotnick
Throughout the many cold, depressing months of
winter in New York, I often find myself curled up in
bed with Nutella and Netflix, my mind lingering on
every past almost-relationship. I start questioning
what I did wrong, how things might have panned out
differently. Maybe I should’ve paid more attention,
or waited longer to get to know the guy. Like a lot of
women, I’m all too ready to blame myself for relationships gone wrong, and today’s self-help industry only
reinforces this notion of women’s culpability.
But is it correct? Should self-help books only urge
women, instead of men, to change in order to create a
lasting and meaningful relationship? Maybe not.
Carlos J. Lee, a self-published author featured on
Amazon.com, is one guy out of hundreds ready to
give women all the secrets to the perfect relationship.
His book, Bitch Are You Retarded? (think He’s Just
Not That Into You, only less feel-good and significatly
less politically correct) is eager to help women differentiate between a man who loves her and a man who
is in love with her. According to Lee, the difference is
crucial, and ultimately makes or breaks a relationship.
On reading the title, I was shocked and ready, like
a lot of reviewers, to express my anger. The book’s
subtitle continues, Stop Being a Dumbass! Either He
Loves You, Is in Love with You, or You’re Just Something to Do for Now. Either Way, Learn the Difference, and When to Walk Away. In an interview with
feminist blog Jezebel, Lee claims that the offensive
title was only meant to grab women’s attention. But
what kind of attention is it receiving? In the Amazon
customer reviews, Lee is referred to as “egotistical
and condescending.” Because of its title, people see
Bitch Are You Retarded? as patronizing and insensitive. Readers are eager to point out how inappropriate
it is to lay all of the responsibility on women. Laura
Beck, Lee’s Jezebel interviewer, asked, “Why not
publish material that, rather than accepts the status
quo, works to help men change?” In response, Lee
explained that women buy and talk about books more
frequently than men, thereby making them an easier
clientele to target.
In her book, Self-Help Books: Why Americans
Keep Reading Them, Sandra K. Dolby reasons that
the “feminization” of self-help books comes from
the idea that they favor “the soft over the hard, the
emotional over the logical, the therapeutic and verbal
over the stoic and reticent.” Women tend to be more
willing than men to look to outside help for ways to
improve their relationships.
However, this leaves a lot of room for the self-help
industry, a market that is estimated to make over $1
billion a year, to take advantage of its readers. In an
interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Micki McGee,
the author of Self Help, Inc., explains why self-help
books keep flying off the shelves. “They remain an incredibly successful marketplace product because they
claim they’re going to solve the problems in your life,
but your life is lived in a context where the problems
are going to be ever-changing and constant.”
Which brings us back to Lee, who claims to be
an expert in the relationship department and is all
too willing to dole out advice. But what makes him
worthy of our time? How does he distinguish himself
as someone women should listen to? His explanation: He’s been a “dog.” He writes that because he has
“used and manipulated so many women for personal
gain and [his] own sexual physical pleasure,” he is in
a position to “answer all of your questions about your
man and men in general.” Lee claims that his experience in promiscuity has led to comprehensive knowledge of how men work, and how women should.
Nonetheless, simple generalizations do not
a good book make. A.L. Kennedy, a novelist
interviewed by The Independent, warns readers
of the problems with self-help books: “They all
want us to understand how other people work.
But you can’t understand how other people
work because other people aren’t always comprehensible. And neither are you.” Highlighting
an issue brought up by many reviewers, Kennedy is emphasizing our individuality—our actions
cannot be that easily explained.
Bitch Are You Retarded? is a classic example of
sweeping generalizations that are based on personal
experience rather than psychological
research. Two professors from
Fort Lewis College, Hal Arkowitz
and Scott O. Lilienfeld, warn that
BOOKS
CARLOS J. LEE EXPOSES THE PROBLEMS OF A GENRE
books based on “personal biases” and “one size fits
all” strategies should not be trusted. In an article for
Scientific American Mind, Arkowitz and Lilienfeld
explain that the hyperbole created by an author’s
“expansive promises” can create “false hope” in
readers, thus evoking dramatic expectations—
and when things go awry, readers tend to blame
themselves. Lee’s straightforward approach to telling
women what is wrong with their relationships might
work in a homogeneous world, but people need a
more flexible way of looking at their relationships. As
Christine Whelan explains in a City Journal interview,
“Idealized examples of how advice works [will only
lead] real people to wonder why they keep failing.”
Lee’s book is more of a rant than a viable source of
helpful information—which brings us to the question
of how the book was released to the public in the first
place. The answer: self-publishing. Although sold
BITCH ARE YOU RETARDED?
IS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF
SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS
THAT ARE BASED ON PERSONAL
EXPERIENCE RATHER THAN
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH.
on Amazon and the iTunes bookstore, it has not yet
reached any brick-and-mortar shelves. Holly Brady, a
director of Stanford Publishing Courses, explains that
there isn’t any “quality control” in the self-publishing
department, making these books hard to trust. Bitch
Are You Retarded? is not based on any psychological
evidence, and, as usual, asks women, not men, to
change their habits. Overall, the book is a perfect
example of a self-help book not to read.
As my English professor pointed out in our
reading of Freud, a deduction of patterns is not the
equivalent of truth. It’s much better to focus on the
unique aspects of each relationship than
assume everything can be fixed
after reading a 137-page book
on your Kindle. a
13
20/20
THE ULTIMATE UNTAGGER
by
Margaret Boykin
Facebook and self-control really don’t mix.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but
Mark Zuckerberg has stolen too many years
of my life. I’ve spent hours clicking through
photos of people I barely know, looking at pictures of couples I idolize, or at my own photos,
wondering at the many, many stages my hair
has been through. Now that it’s just over eight
years old, Facebook is an electronic minefield of memories, and it’s often hard to resist
indulging in a trip down memory lane—even if
it’s not a pleasant one.
With this in mind, Erica Mannherz and Clara
de Soto launched an app called “KillSwitch”
this Valentine’s Day for Androids and iOS
phones that selects a “target” for the kill from
your list of friends, then entirely erases them
from your Facebook presence. Photos of the
two of you against a variety of tropical backgrounds, embarrassingly lovey-dovey statuses,
tagged posts—gone. Well, not gone gone: If you
decide to, you can undo the action or save all
the materials in a special folder for days when
you really feel like crying. Mannherz and de
Soto described their target audience to Business
Insider as “anybody that’s had a falling out...
be it a friendship or coworker,” but the V-day
timing of the app’s release suggests a different audience: anyone at home watching Blue
Valentine with a bottle of whiskey, hitting the
refresh on their ex’s Facebook page.
There’s really no winning with exes and
Facebook. Either you’re clicking through old
photos of the two of you together, or you’re
looking through photos of him and his new
girlfriend while plotting murder. Everyone
knows that breakups would be a lot easier if
people just vanished the second they were no
longer in your life, but our generation’s attachment to social media has made that nearly
impossible. There’s a reason Facebook has to
adjust its platform every few months to include
more privacy and editing options—the wealth
of information we store in this website is insane, and managing it is truly difficult.
KillSwitch is a practical idea, but it only
further caters to our generation’s obsession
with recording everything and contributes to
the idea that our online presence needs to be
constantly maintained. Applications like KillSwitch only encourage us to live in an artificial
reality where unwanted memories, like unattractive photos, can just be untagged. The real
world is not as neat as friend requests and relationship statuses, and if we keep buying into
this online paradise where we control our own
images down to a T, we’re going to forget how
to handle ourselves in reality.
After all, you can KillSwitch your ex, but
you can’t literally kill them. So what happens
when you run into them at the airport or at
your local organic market? Are you going to
cover your eyes and run away? No, you’re going
to feel sad and awkward and uncomfortable,
because that’s what happens when you break
up with someone. But you’ll live, and maybe
even learn something from it. The real world is
a lot messier than Facebook, and if, a few years
down the line, you can mend a broken heart
with the click of a button, I’m still not buying
in. I’ll keep the albums, notes, and alternating
capital-lowercase love declarations and cry it
out, old school, because if experiencing real,
off-line feelings is wrong, then I don’t want to
be right. a
FINDING MY IDEAL
BOOKSHELF
by
Although I grew up a proud bibliophile,
my attitude toward reading used to be strictly
quantitative. Reading was an equation between
books read and knowledge gained: As one
increases, so does the other. My family joined
Goodreads.com early on and turned this into a bona
fide competition to claim the title of most “books
completed.” Then I found My Ideal Bookshelf.
Jane Mount’s Ideal Bookshelf project offers a
more intimate view of the powerful connection
between books and readers, painting portraits
of individuals by depicting the spines of their
favorite books. Recently, Mount partnered with
writer Thessaly La Force to produce an essay
compilation also called My Ideal Bookshelf,
which brings together 100 great creative
thinkers to discuss the books that would be on
their ideal bookshelves.
In some cases, the person-bookshelf connection
is fairly self-explanatory. Professional skateboarder
Tony Hawk’s bookshelf contains works with the
common themes of perseverance and endurance—
fitting for a man who makes a living “pushing the
boundaries of the mainstream.” Not to be outdone,
professional overachiever James Franco compiled
14
Rebecca Schwarz
a collection of books that looks less like an ordered
shelf and more like a mosh pit of Penguin Classics,
containing everything from Don Quixote to MobyDick to Macbeth.
In a bewildering twist, the award for Ideal
Bookshelf MVP easily goes to Vladimir Nabokov’s
Lolita. But how can such a morally questionable novel
be counted among the favorite works of so many?
Dave Eggers, one of the contributors who
included Lolita on his bookshelf, acknowledged the
dark themes that underlined most of his personal
selections and explained that the books he chose
were precisely the ones that hit him the hardest.
For me, the staggering power of Nabokov’s
tale came from the way the narrator’s voice
made me, as the reader, feel almost complicit
in Humbert Humbert’s corruption. Lolita is
Exhibit A of the intimate connection between
the reader and the novel—albeit one in which
this connection is uncomfortably exploited.
It is the kind of book that refuses to be taken
lightly. Lolita is the ultimate representation of
the dynamic reader-book connection and the
way in which books can forever alter—or at least
challenge—our personal views. If you read to
enter the mind of someone else, this book does
exactly that.
Though the hardest books to read often pack
the biggest emotional punch, my own Ideal Bookshelf contains its fair share of Happily-Ever-Afters
as well. Here’s a selection of the books that would
make my list:
The Book That Always Makes Me Cry: The Kite
Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. I recently reread this and
still found myself emptying out a box of Kleenex at the
end. I can’t help but identify with the deeply flawed
narrator, whose path to redemption provides him
with much-needed catharsis, while assuring my ofttimid ego that there’s hope for the rest of us as well.
The Best Book I Ever Read: Beach Music, by
Pat Conroy. Can you think of any other book that
explores weighty and seemingly disparate themes
such as suicide, cancer, the Holocaust, adventures
at sea, terrorist attacks, mental illness, religious
struggle, and more, seamlessly integrating them
into one ginormous story while jetting from Rome
to South Carolina and back?
The Book That Changed My Life: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling. You
know the rest. a
VIEW FROM HERE
AGAINST THE ODDS
STANDING TALL, EVEN ON SHAKY SKATES
by Allyson Gronowitz
illustration by Hannah
Sotnick
The tone of incredulity is always the same,
marked by slight differences in pitch and degrees
of eyebrow-raising: “You play hockey?”
Then a beat. Usually another. Next, a narrowing of the eyes and a tilting of the head, as if my
small stature might magically magnify from a
different angle. No luck.
And then the inevitable conclusion: “You
don’t look like a hockey player.”
Like most contact sports, ice hockey
favors the big. Bulging biceps provide power
for booming slapshots, and more body mass
and height inevitably mean harder hits along
the boards. Despite my diminutive figure,
though, I was destined to play for the Columbia
University Women’s Ice Hockey Club.
I was both blessed and cursed to have
been born to a long-time New York Rangers
season-ticket holder. My father had me waddling around with a hockey stick in my hand
and a personalized Rangers jersey on my back
before my second birthday. I grew up playing
street hockey with my younger siblings, firing
the bright orange ball into broken crates in our
driveway all year round. Sometimes, if we were
feeling particularly adventurous, we would ditch
our sneakers for roller blades, reveling in the
thrill of a more precarious mode of movement.
I joined the floor hockey team at my high
school and continued to nurture my skills and
passion for the game. One of my most cherished moments occurred in the last game of my
senior year, when I tipped in a key goal from
right in front of the opposing goaltender off a
flawless feed from my line-mate. It provided
the perfect—albeit bittersweet—farewell to my
floor hockey career. But however dear to me
it was (and still is), floor hockey soon became a thing of the past; I was heading off to
the “real world” of college, where I would be
hard-pressed to find a competitive floor hockey
league because, as I’ve been told numerous
times, floor hockey is not a “real sport.”
Though the prospect was daunting, I decided to make the jump to the more intense sport
of ice hockey. For someone who only enjoys
participating in activities in which she excels,
learning the ins and outs of this complex sport
proved to be a real lesson in humility.
I certainly had a fair share of roadblocks ahead
of me. Unless you count a summer of lessons
when I was four, I had no idea how to ice skate.
Learning involved quite a bit of falling down and
quite a bit of embarrassment on my part. It didn’t
help that I’m not exactly built for a sport that involves players careening around an ice surface at
breakneck speeds, frequently colliding with one
another in order to gain an upper hand on the
possession of a small (but heavy—another strike
against me) vulcanized rubber disc.
Fortunately, joining the Columbia team
provided me with the perfect platform to
sharpen my skating, shooting, and stickhandling skills. What’s more, I was not about
to embark on my unexpected journey without
guidance. Undersized hockey player Petr Prucha
has been my personal hockey hero for almost
a decade—he’s the reason I wear number 25 on
the back of my jersey. Prucha played for the
New York Rangers from 2005 to 2009, spanning
my entire high school experience. While his
glass-cutting cheekbones certainly can’t be
discounted, that wasn’t the only reason I
developed a soft spot for him. Prucha is 6 feet
tall and, despite the generous inches Prucha and
I both gain from our skates and the veneer of
bulk that the rest of our hockey gear affords us,
we’re both still hopelessly small.
Prucha was beloved by fans because he turned a
deaf ear to those who complained of his small size.
My hero-worship became about the feisty energy
that Prucha brought to the ice to make up for his
lack of size, and only by embracing these values did
I then turn to my own development as a player.
Admittedly, the crisp scraping of my skates
on the ice and the inexplicable thrill of hurling the puck into woven twine is exhilarating,
even addicting. More often than not, though, the
puck hits the boards instead of the net—or fails
to move off the ice entirely—and I skid, or flail,
or sprawl out on all fours, and wonder what the
hell I’m doing out there. As a beginner, I learned
to swallow my pride and accept falling as part of
the learning process. At the same time, I resolved
never to be too humbled not to get right back up.
I’m a big believer in mind over matter; I applied this principle in my first Columbia ice hockey
game, two months into my freshman year, at the
Ice House in Hackensack, N.J.
The other players were big, experienced, and
skilled. I was an undersized neophyte, a newborn foal on skates. Still, I gave it all I had, and
then some. I skated. Hard. I sweated. My calves
were burning. The ice, with its frustrating lack
of friction, taunted me.
Determined to prove myself, I dug my blades
into the ice and parked myself in front of the opposing goalie’s net. I lost track of the puck and
then found it, grinning at me, so dull and unassuming against the backdrop of glistening ice
and the harried motion of blue and gray players
alike. It was an inch away from my wobbly stick.
I swatted at the puck with my stick in a
PGA-worthy putt and promptly ended up on
my knees. Miraculously, though, the goalie also
ended up on her knees. And the puck scuttled
past the faded goal line.
There was no jubilant arm-raising on
my part. I wasn’t even close to coordinated
enough for that.
But I saw my smile reflected on the faces of my surprised teammates as we exchanged gloved fist-bumps,
and I felt my helmet vibrate joyfully as my grinning
coach tapped me on the head. A goal for the home
team­­—it was slow, it was messy, but it was mine.
The incomprehensible hockey gods rewarded me for my hard work. I have given my all to
the sport, and it has given it all right back. a
15
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