11-15-13 WEB - Columbia Daily Spectator

Transcription

Vol. CXXXVII—No. 119
Friday, November 15, 2013
columbiaspectator.com
SGA seeks
to rewrite
BC guest
policy
Green
groups talk
goals at
summit
BY CHANNING PREND
Columbia Daily Spectator
Members of the Office of
Environmental Stewardship
and students from dozens of
campus sustainability groups
shared the projects they were
working on Thursday night
at the Earth Institute Student
Advisory Council’s inaugural
Environmental Summit.
EISAC co-president Melanie
Valencia, Mailman ’14, said the
event at Earl Hall fostered collaboration and dialogue between
the OES and student activist
groups.
“Many organizations on this
campus are working towards
similar goals,” Valencia said.
“But there is a lack of communication between them.”
The summit offered a platform for groups to inform
one another about upcoming
events. Representatives from
12 environmental organizations
briefly presented their current
initiatives.
“This has been a great way
to raise awareness for our own
events,” Lisa Howard, SCE ’14
and co-president of SUMA Net
Impact, said. “But it’s also been
invaluable for networking and
finding out what other people in
the community are up to.”
In addition to student group
presentations, OES administrators discussed their current projects, including the Green Fund, a
new program which gives funding to student-led projects that
improve sustainability in campus operations.
Jessica Prata, assistant vice
president of OES, said applications for the grant will open
sometime this semester.
SEE SUMMIT, page 2
Student survey
will gather
feedback on
housing policy
BY EMMA GOSS
Spectator Senior Staff Writer
DAVID BRANN / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
BLACK-TIE
|
Former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein speaks at the Hamilton Dinner in his honor on Thursday night.
Klein, former schools chancellor, honored at Low
BY CASEY TOLAN
As the chancellor of the
New York City Department of
Education, Joel Klein, CC ’67,
worked to instill the same appreciation for education in the city’s
1.1 million students that he found
in Columbia’s Core Curriculum.
Klein, the first in his family to attend college, received
the Alexander Hamilton Medal,
Columbia College’s top honor, in a
Low Library ceremony Thursday
night.
“Columbia opened me up to a
world I didn’t know existed,” Klein
said in an interview before he received the award. The liberal arts
education “enabled me to think
about what it means to live a life
that was worth living.”
“It planted seeds in me,” he said.
With more second graders,
TCCS faces space issue
BY DEBORAH SECULAR
In response to the low performance of second-grade
students, Teachers College
Community School opted to
split its two second-grade
classes into three smaller
classes, placing even greater
demands on the school building’s space.
“If you’re going
to have to split
groups into smaller
subunits, you end
up losing space for
extracurriculars.”
—Judith Insell,
CB9 member
After 10 students did not return this year after first grade,
TCCS admitted several new
second graders from Districts 5
and 6. But assessments showed
that the new cohort of second
graders performed only at the
kindergarten level, far below
the level of their peers.
“We’ll see whether or not
they’ll be able to raise their level,” Judith Insell, Community
Board 9’s representative to the
Teachers College Community
School Leadership Team, said
at a CB9 education meeting
Wednesday.
Teachers College, which
provides funding as part of its
partnership with the public
school, will pay for the additional teacher that administrators hired this week.
“If you’re going to have to
split groups into smaller subunits, you end up losing space
for extracurriculars,” Insell
said, adding that the room now
used for a third second-grade
class had earlier been used as
a space for extra-curricular
activities.
Insell expressed concerns
about long-term space needs
for the school, which currently serves students from kindergarten through second grade,
and plans to add an additional
grade each year and ultimately
expand to the eighth grade.
The additional class, Insell
said, “raises the issue of space
needs in the near future, considering the building they currently reside in is supposed to
accommodate K-8.”
Insell said that because students take standardized tests in
third grade, it’s especially important that second graders are
making progress.
“Second graders don’t take
standardized tests, but third
graders do,” she said. “It is an
issue when some of their population of second graders is not
on track to test at the thirdgrade level.”
[email protected]
Klein, who received a law degree at Harvard after graduating
from Columbia, went on to argue
in front of the Supreme Court,
serve in the Clinton White House,
sue Microsoft in a major anti-trust
case, and run New York’s public
schools.
He’s now in charge of Amplify,
a division of News Corporation,
where he is pioneering new tabletbased technology to help teachers
teach more effectively.
“He has used everything we
have provided to him to his full
potential,” Columbia College Dean
James Valentini said in a speech,
calling him an “innovator in a long
tradition of innovators that have
made possible the expansion of the
endeavor called teaching.”
Valentini said that among the
15 percent of current Columbia
College students who are the first
in their family to attend college,
“I’m very sure there is another
Joel Klein.”
In his speech, Klein said it was a
“surreal experience” to receive the
top honor of a college that “literally
changed the arc of my life.”
He recalled crying when he was
admitted to Columbia “on April 15,
1963”—at age 16—and received a
scholarship that allowed him to
attend.
Donors gave the school more
than $1 million at the black-tie
Hamilton Dinner, much of which
will go toward financial aid. Big
media names came out to support
Klein, including News Corp chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch,
New York Times publisher Arthur
Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., and New York
Observer owner Jared Kushner,
along with his wife, Ivanka Trump.
Even former Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger made a video appearance, telling Klein, “I don’t
know anybody who has done
more—and very few who have
done as much—as you, Joel.”
“You have focused on improving the quality of education, realizing that the future of our country”
depends on it, Kissinger said.
But Klein didn’t just rub shoulders with the celebrities. He
hugged Rachel Mintz, CC ’93, a
New York public school teacher
during his tenure, when she introduced herself.
“I saw a number of chancellors
in my time, and he was the best,”
Mintz said. “I like his approach to
the schools.”
In his speech, Klein stressed
that education is key to fighting
socioeconomic inequality.
SEE HAMILTON, page 2
NEWS BRIEF
FILE PHOTO
GLOBETROTTING | A new fellowship will fund a summer abroad for 15 first-years. The
program will help students make use of Columbia’s global centers, including in Amman, above.
15 first-years to receive funding for summer abroad
Fifteen first-years will have
the opportunity to spend their
summer abroad, fully funded by
the University.
Columbia College Dean
James Valentini announced
the creation of the Presidential
Global Fellowship, which is
open to rising sophomores in
Columbia College, the School
of Engineering and Applied
Science, and the School of
General Studies, on Thursday.
“We want to provide every
student who wants to do so the
opportunity to study, work or
do research abroad, and to offer
opportunities for global experiences early in students’ undergraduate careers,” Valentini said
in an email.
The fellowship will fully cover living expenses and
airfare for selected students to
study near one of Columbia’s
eight global centers.
The program will include
special sessions aimed at helping students understand how
their global experiences are
relevant to their Columbia
education and professional
goals. Students will also have
the opportunity to meet with
policymakers in their specific
countries.
Ad m i n i st ra t o r s
said
Thursday that the program
might be expanded in the future
to provide funding for independent research projects abroad.
Information sessions will be
held on Nov. 15 and Nov. 22 for
students interested in applying.
Applications are due Feb. 15.
Finalists will be interviewed
by a committee of faculty members, and University President
Lee Bollinger will select the 15
fellowship recipients.
“The Global Fellowships
will help undergraduates take
advantage of unprecedented
opportunities for self-directed
research and learning available
now because of Columbia’s
network of global centers,”
Bollinger said in a statement.
The announcement of the
fellowships comes as administrators try to make the global
centers more accessible to undergraduates. Faculty members
and administrators are hammering out plans to hold certain Core Curriculum classes
abroad, which will be funded
by Mellon Grants.
—Samantha Cooney
Barnard’s Student Government
Association is hoping to convince
administrators to rewrite the college’s controversial guest policy in
response to accusations that it polices the sex lives of students.
This semester, Barnard introduced a policy that limits the
number of nights a guest may stay
in Barnard housing to no longer
than three consecutive nights and
no more than six nights total within a 30-day period. After students
voiced concerns, administrators
said they would not strictly enforce
the policy.
After an article published on
Nov. 4 on the blog {Young}ist
claimed that the policy negatively impacts Barnard students’ sex
lives, several other media outlets
have picked up the story, bringing
the policy back into the spotlight.
Now, Sharon Kwong, BC ’14
and SGA’s representative for campus affairs, is working with the
Housing Advisory Board to survey
students on the policy and present
data to the administration, in the
hopes that administrators will rewrite the policy to make it more
acceptable to students.
“We hear a lot of people who
are upset with it. Now, we want
hard numbers,” Kwong said. “Real
student input, and not just, ‘Oh, we
heard that people are upset.’ This
is really the opportunity for students to make their voices heard.
And we’re trying to create an opportunity for students to do that.”
Kwong, who is the chair of
HAB, will send out an online survey next week asking for student
feedback on a variety of topics regarding residential life and housing. Many of the questions will ask
about student concerns with the
policy and, if students could rewrite the policy, what would constitute a fair compromise.
HAB will present the feedback
to administrators in December,
though Kwong said she does not
think the policy will be changed
this year.
“There is no guarantee that
they’re going to listen, but at least
we are collecting this information, students have an outlet, and
we have an idea of what students
want,” Kwong said.
George Joseph, CC ’16 and the
author of the article published in
{Young}ist—which The Nation
reposted—said he is supportive of
SGA’s efforts to tackle the issue.
“I hope the administration is
kind of conscious that this law may
have unintentionally affected students’ lives, and does not feel stung
by the pride and not do anything,”
Joseph said. “What I was hoping
to achieve from the article itself
was to voice some of the anger and
frustration that some of my peers
at Barnard had expressed to me
personally, and allow that to foster
a more public reaction at Barnard.”
In an email to Spectator, Annie
Aversa, Barnard’s associate dean
for campus and residential life, dismissed the argument that the policy polices the sex lives of students.
“This policy is about providing
the Barnard community—both students and administrators—with a
consistent structure for addressing and resolving issues related to
SEE HOUSING, page 2
WEEKEND
OPINION, PAGE 4
SPORTS, BACK PAGE
SPECTRUM, ONLINE
FOLLOW US
Horror film festival to
thrill Tribeca
Take care
Women’s basketball
hosts Lafayette
What dog are you?
@ColumbiaSpec
@CUspectrum
@CUSpecSports
@theeyemag
Spooky scary: The 11th annual New
York City Horror Film Festival will hit
Tribeca Cinemas this weekend. Hear
from the directors how the festival is
inspired by Parisian theater.
As winter and finals approach, we
must embrace wellness and honesty.
Community, college
Columbia must form a committee to
address its crisis of community.
The Light Blue, now 1-1 on the season
after edging LIU last weekend, will
host the Leopards on Friday, looking
to win its second consecutive game
after opening the season with a loss.
Scientists at Columbia and the
University of Maryland have just
released the app DogSnap. Take a
photo of yourself and find out what
dog you are. Pretty much it. Pretty
much amazing.
facebook.com/
columbiaspectator
PAGE 2
NEWS / SPORTS
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
Klein defends pro-charter schools policy Men’s basketball to face Michigan State
HAMILTON
from front page
BY MUNEEB ALAM
“The most important thing
is—to those living in Harlem as
well as on the East and West
sides—that every kid gets a
world-class education,” he
said.
As chancellor under Mayor
Michael Bloomberg from 2002
to 2011, Klein took on teachers unions, implemented new
teacher performance standards, and opened hundreds of
charter schools around the city.
University President Lee
Bollinger lauded Klein for
launching Columbia Secondary
School, a public, Columbiasupported middle and high
school on West 123rd Street that
focuses on math and science.
“When you speak about
children and what they need,”
Bollinger told Klein, “there’s
nobody who can compete with
the inspiration you carry.”
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, a
longtime critic of Bloomberg’s
education policy, has vowed
to roll back some of Klein’s reforms, including annual letter
grades for all city schools and
the dramatic increase in charter
schools.
“He’ll make his own policy,”
Klein said of de Blasio in the
interview. But he defended his
record.
“Families are desperate to
find great education for the
On Friday night, the men’s
basketball team (1-1) will face
what is almost certainly one of
the most daunting tasks of the
season: a visit to
men’s
No. 2 Michigan
basketball
State (2-0).
While the
Lions lost a
tightly contested affair with Manhattan on
Tuesday night, the Spartans are
fresh off a 78-74 win Tuesday
night over the preseason pick for
best team in the country: No. 1
Kentucky.
After the Wildcats rallied
back from a 12-point halftime
deficit to tie the game with a
little under five minutes to go,
the Spartans went on a quick run
to take the game out of reach.
Guard Keith Appling nailed a
three, guard Gary Harris had a
steal and made a layup, and the
Spartans hung on for the win.
AMPLIFY THIS | Columbia College Dean James Valentini holds
up an audion—an early amplification device—to make a point
about Amplify, the News Corp education division Klein heads.
kids—they want more charters
and more choice,” he said.
Klein said his advice for de
Blasio is “to make sure you put
the children of New York first.
There’s a lot that needs to be
done to improve the outcomes
of these kids.”
“We’re just not getting the
job done,” he said of the school
system in his speech.
Klein called “the challenge
of our generation” making sure
that “the American Dream
doesn’t become the American
memory on our watch.”
Kids across New York would
“do anything to stand where I’m
standing tonight,” Klein said.
“They have the talent, and given the opportunity, they will
succeed.”
casey.tolan
@columbiaspectator.com
It was a brief role reversal
for the two guards. Lions head
coach Kyle Smith noted that
part of the difficulty in guarding the two is the difference in
their preferred scoring locations—Appling around the net
and Harris on open looks around
the floor. And those are just two
of the Spartans’ weapons—
Michigan State has four players
averaging in double figures in
the young season.
“We have to keep them out of
transition, take care of the ball,”
Smith said. “And when they do
get rebounds, we gotta be able
to sort out, get back.”
The Lions did have some
success slowing the tempo
of the game in their loss to
Manhattan. But it ultimately
wasn’t enough—Jaspers guard
Michael Alvarado drew a foul
on a desperation three with four
seconds to go, eventually leading
to guard George Beamon’s gamewinning three-point play.
The Light Blue, moreover, committed 30 fouls on
Tuesday—two more than
Michigan State has drawn in its
two games combined.
“The fouling situation has
forced a lot of coaches to rethink
how they’re doing things,” Smith
said, alluding to rule changes
that were approved over the
summer regarding hand checks.
“We’re no different. We’re still
getting adjusted to the changes.”
Smith also said that while
the team tries to approach each
game similarly, it is difficult not
to be excited about playing in
the 14,000-plus capacity Breslin
Center.
“It’s a fun experience, of
course, a little different environment. You really challenge
yourself,” he said. “This is part
of the pageantry of college basketball. … If they can handle this,
if we go to Harvard, or Jadwin
[at Princeton], or Penn, it helps.”
Tipoff is at 9 p.m. The game
will be aired nationally on the
Big Ten Network.
muneeb.alam
Students divided over BC guest policy
HOUSING from front page
any non-resident visitor including friends, family members, and
significant others,” Aversa said.
“There are students who might
have trouble being straightforward about discomfort with frequent guests, as well as students
who might feel that any guest for
any length of time is an imposition. These can be sensitive matters for roommates or suitemates
to disagree about, and the policy
intends to help students navigate these situations and arrive
at resolutions that are fair and
reasonable.”
Joseph said that this explanation is directly tied to students
having sex, even if administrators claim otherwise.
“They’re saying it’s about people feeling uncomfortable about
people sleeping over, which is
about sex. Don’t say it’s not about
sex,” Joseph said.
Several Barnard students said
they agree with Joseph’s critique
of the policy, but others said they
felt differently.
“I think they didn’t do it to police student sex lives. They did it
to make people feel safer,” Maria
Geba, BC ’14, said.
Some students said that they
would not need a policy to help
them communicate to their
roommate or suitemates about
an issue with frequent guests.
“I do see both sides to it, and
I understand why they enforced
it, but at the same time, we’re in
college. Those rules make me feel
like I am not as free as I should
be, like I’m a baby,” Gaby Noveck,
BC ’15, said. “But we’re adults. We
should be able to talk about these
issues ourselves.”
“Barnard is trying to raise
women leaders, and part of being
a leader is being able to advocate
for yourself and being able to articulate your views and opinions,” Kwong said. “The question
is: Should we be making it so that
students don’t have to communicate, or should we be encouraging
students to talk these things out
and negotiate?”
Students also raised additional questions about the policy,
asking what time frame determines if a guest has been over
for a full night, and if the limitation of nights applies to a specific
guest or to all guests.
“The overarching concern here
is not implementing a stringent
definition of ‘overnight’ or setting
a number of individual guests,”
Aversa said in an email. “We trust
that Barnard students are mature
enough to interpret these aspects
of the policy appropriately.”
Aversa also said there are no
plans to alter the policy at this
time.
Kwong pointed out that regardless of the Barnard administration’s intentions, the issue has
now expanded beyond the college
and into the public sphere.
“Res Life has said their goal is
not to police sex lives, but somehow that does get affected by
the policy, and so it is starting to
become what kind of reputation
does this policy give Barnard?
And I think that is important,”
Kwong said.
emma.goss
KIERA WOOD / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
AIR ALEX | The Lions, including junior forward Alex Rosenberg, will have their work cut out for
them against No. 2 Michigan State this weekend.
Men’s soccer to face
struggling Big Red
BY MUNEEB ALAM
For the first time in three
years, the finale will not be
meaningful in the Ivy League
standings.
The men’s
soccer team (8men’s
5-3, 1-2-3 Ivy)
soccer
travels to Ithaca
this weekend to
close its season
against Cornell (7-5-4, 1-4-1 Ivy).
Unlike two years ago, when
the winner of the Lions-Big Red
finale could have won the Ivy title—the teams drew instead—or
last year, when Cornell clinched
the Ivy championship with a
win at Baker, the only thing the
teams have left to play for this
season, standings-wise, is positioning near the bottom.
Currently, Cornell is in seventh place in the Ivy League, and
the Lions are in sixth. If Cornell
wins, it will jump over Columbia
to take sixth place, while the
Lions will fall to seventh. If
Columbia wins and Yale loses
to Princeton, the Light Blue will
move up to fifth, and Yale will
take sixth place. If the Lions win
and Yale loses, though, the Lions
will remain in sixth place in the
league.
Any scenario represents a
disappointing outcome for both
teams, which, before Ivy play began, looked poised to make a run
at the conference championship.
Cornell, an offensive powerhouse last year and solid in
nonconference play this year,
has struggled to put together
chances over the past seven
weeks. It has scored only three
goals against Ivy opponents. Last
weekend, the Big Red generated
only two shots against conference cellar-dweller Dartmouth,
but did make one of them count
in a 1-0 win.
Columbia did not have too
much success offensively when
it hosted Harvard a week ago.
After a slow first half, Harvard
took advantage of Light Blue’s
mistakes to score twice early in
the second half, and although
the Lions were able to generate plenty of chances later in
the half, they were not able to
find the twine. The loss pushed
Columbia down to .500 for the
first time in nearly two months.
Kickoff is at 7 p.m on Saturday.
muneeb.alam
TIANYUE SUN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
GOING GREEN | Jessica Prata, assistant vice president of Office of Environmental Stewardship,
said she is “constantly looking for new ways to connect with students.”
Admins tout green student project fund
SUMMIT from front page
“We are constantly looking
for new ways to connect with
students,” Prata said. “We would
like to be viewed as not only a
resource, but a partner.”
OES representatives also
stressed Columbia’s efforts to
reach standards set by PlaNYC,
a citywide program started
in 2007 by Mayor Michael
Bloomberg to reduce carbon
emissions.
Recent efforts have included
the University’s transition from
fuel oil to natural gas and the
optimization of chiller plants.
Since PlaNYC’s inception,
Columbia has decreased carbon
emissions by 17 percent, Prata
said, and administrators hope
to reach the goal of 30 percent
by 2017.
Students said they were
pleased with the event.
“There are so many great
groups here,” Diana Montoya,
GS ’14 and secretary for the
Columbia University Coalition
for Sustainable Development,
said. “Some of them I didn’t
even know about until tonight.”
“This kind of forum is unique
in that it brings together so
many different types of people,”
she said.
“I’m particularly excited
about the Green Fund,” Angeline
Kang, SCE ’15, said. “I’m really
interested to see what projects
will come out of it.”
Drew Sambol, SCE ’14
and a member of Women and
Sustainability, said she was surprised by the diversity of the
participants.
“Look around at the people
here,” Sambol said. “There are
undergraduates and graduate students from a wide variety of schools and academic
programs.”
“At the end of the day
though,” she said, “we’re all
supporting the same cause.”
[email protected]
CLOSING TIME | The Lions, including senior Henning Sauerbier, will try to return to .500 in Ivy play in Saturday’s finale.
Early in the
season, a big
weekend for
the Lions
BY IKE CLEMENTE
KITMAN
Spectator Staff Writer
The men and women’s swimming and diving squads have full
schedules this weekend.
The Light
Blue men’s team
will open its season on Friday at swimming
Penn (0-1) before
hosting Yale (1-0)
and Army (2-1) on
Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
Meanwhile, the women’s squad
(1-0) will not face Army this weekend, but will challenge Yale (1-0) on
Friday and Penn (1-0) on Saturday.
The men’s squad went 8-2 in
the dual-meet season and 5-2 in
the Ivy season, and will try to
replicate that success in the pool
this year.
Penn fell 153-147 to the
University of Connecticut on
the road in its season opener last
weekend, while Yale opened its
season by demolishing Southern
Connecticut State University,
210-88.
Meanwhile, Army, after opening their season with two consecutive victories, fell big time to
Connecticut, 107-192 and 112-188
last weekend.
Last weekend, women’s swimming and diving opened its season
by defeating Harvard for the first
time in program history.
While the Crimson set five records in Uris Pool, the Light Blue
persevered for the 163.5-136.5 victory on Saturday.
The Yale women also dominated Southern Connecticut State,
204-77. The Bulldogs topped the
Lions, 158-142, when the two
teams faced off last year.
Penn also opened its season by winning big, defeating
Connecticut, 172.5-127.5, on the
road. The Quakers took first place
in 10 events.
The men’s events will begin in
Philadelphia at 6 p.m. on Friday,
while the women’s team will begin its weekend and look for its
second win of the year against
Yale at 5 p.m. on Friday in Uris
Pool.
[email protected]
GAMEDAY
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
Other
Ivy Games
Dartmouth at Brown
The Big Green, now 3-2 in Ivy play after its 34-6
victory over Cornell, will face the Bears, who are
2-3 in Ivy play, on Saturday at Brown Stadium
in Providence, R.I.
Penn at Harvard
Both the Quakers and the Crimson will need
to win to keep alive their chances for the Ivy
League title. The Quakers stand 3-2 in Ivy
play, the Crimson 4-1.
Yale at Princeton
The Bulldogs will look for their third
consecutive victory as they face the
dominant Tigers, whose 7-1 record is the
best in the Ivy League, on Saturday in
Princeton.
KEYS TO
THE GAME
#9
1:
Ivy FB: Columbia at Cornell (-22.5)
2:
Ivy MS: Harvard at Penn (1.5)
3:
Ivy FB: Penn at Harvard (-12.5)
4:
NCAAB: Columbia at No. 2 Michigan
State (-24.5)
5:
NBA: Memphis at L.A. Lakers (-4.5)
6:
NFL: Kansas City at Denver (-7.5)
Muneeb
Alam
(18-30)
Columbia
...Nope,
we do not
get the
Big 10
Network.
Penn
Harvard
Columbia
Pemm
The Light Blue has lost three of its
starting defensive linemen from its
opening day roster. Without seniors
Nick Melka, Seyi Adebayo, and Wells
Childress, the Lions’ substitutes, Toba
Akinleye, Hunter Little, Charles Melka,
and Chad Washington will have to step
up big time for the Light Blue to win.
Stop Jeff Mathews
Jeff Mathews is one of the most talented
quarterbacks in the Ivy League. The Big
Red quarterback leads the Ivies with
2,486 yards and ranks second with 18
touchdowns. He has a great arm and
serious accuracy, and the Lions will need
to shut down the pass to edge the Big Red
on the road on Saturday.
Big game from WRs
Since returning from injury against the Big
Green, sophomore Chris Connors, who
had a very promising season last year, has
caught 13 passes for 114 yards. The Lions
have shown inconsistency at the WR position all year, so it’s important that Connors
and other WRs perform well.
Rebeka
Cohan
(22-26)
Light Blue
Sigh.
Cornell
Penn
Harvard
Bring it,
Sparty.
Andy Reid
Penn
ROAR
FRIDAY
FIRST DOWN
No
comment.
Penn
Columbia
Lakers
Lakers
Broncos
Kansas City
POINTS
COLUMBIA
7.1
41.2
Yards Gained
519.5
CORNELL
489.9
Cornell
Big Red
Penn
Quakers
Mich. State
Lakers
COLUMBIA
These
picks
speak for
themselves.
Denver
Quakers
CU
LA
made 13 catches for 114 yards.
Mangurian said Connors is
still a little hampered from
his injuries, but added that the
wide receiver is a tough guy
who can and will play through
it.
“I think there’s a guy that’s
a proven player,” Mangurian
said. “Chris Connors has
made a bunch of plays, made
a bunch of catches, and made
some critical plays when they
needed to be made. And I think
the younger guys see that, so
when he holds them accountable, it’s got some teeth to it.”
As for the Lion who will
be throwing him the ball,
Mangurian said it will most
likely come down to a gametime decision, as both quarterbacks—sophomore Trevor
McDonagh and first-year Kelly
This is
going to
be one
long trip.
CU
Penn
Penn
Crimson
Denver
Roar?
LA
The volleyball team (5-16, 3-9
Ivy) will play its final matches of
the season at home this weekend
against Harvard
and Dartmouth.
Harvard has
volleyball
enjoyed a strong
season, becoming the first team
to beat Yale in
over two seasons, and is currently
fighting to keep second place. On
the other hand, Dartmouth has
struggled throughout the season
and is currently tied for last place
with Columbia and Cornell.
“I think we really have to focus on Harvard first,” head coach
Jon Wilson said. “Both teams are
tough opponents, so if you try to
take them two at a time, they’ll
only get better.”
Even though this is the last
we have to maintain our energy
against. They can get really frantic, and that can control the energy on our side as well. We have
to battle that, and we haven’t been
great at that all season.”
Despite the fact that these are
the last two games of her Light
Blue career, Brennan views this
weekend as important not only for
the context of this season, but also
for the larger picture of the Lions’
volleyball program.
“You got to go out fighting, especially as you get to the end of the
season,” Brennan said. “I would
make the case that the last two
games are the most important because you have the spring to think
about, and that carries over to the
next season.”
The Lions play Harvard on
Friday at 7 p.m., and will then host
Dartmouth at 5 p.m. on Saturday
for Senior Night.
[email protected]
Let’s
go, CU
football!
Penn
Denver
Hilinski—have had good weeks
of practice.
Still, the Lions will have a
significant challenge to win
their first road game since
2009 and claim the Empire
State Bowl for the second
straight year.
“They’ve got a big-time
player at the quarterback spot,
so that always makes a huge
difference,” Mangurian said.
“But again, I say it every week,
but it’s really about how we’re
going to play and what we’re
going to do. And can we string
enough good plays together to
put a good drive together to
put some points on the board?”
The action in Ithaca,
N.Y., will kick off at 1 p.m.
on Saturday. The game will
be televised on Fox College
Sports.
myles.simmons
CU
LA
KC
the slate
cross country
friday, nov. 15
NCAA Northeast Regional
Championships
Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx, N.Y.
men’s swimming
& diving
friday, nov. 15
at Penn, 6 p.m.
Philadelphia, Pa.
saturday, nov. 16
vs. Yale, 5 p.m.
Uris Pool
sunday, nov. 17
vs. Army, 1 p.m.
Uris Pool
women’s swimming
& diving
friday, nov. 15
vs. Yale, 5 p.m.
Uris Pool
saturday, nov. 16
vs. Penn, 1 p.m.
Uris Pool
Volleyball looks to end frustrating
season on high note in Levien
week of the season, Wilson still
views the next two games as opportunities or progress.
“Every individual has areas
of the game they need to get better at,” Wilson said. “So, you try
to maintain what each individual
does well, and you’re trying to help
them still make progress in areas
where they still need to make progress. Sometimes you do get an uptick in focus from the team when
they sense the end, and there’s no
next week to get better.”
The players are looking to end
the season with some solid matches and to send senior captains
Colleen Brennan and Savannah
Fletcher off on a good note.
“We do want to end really well
on an emotional high,” sophomore Bailey Springer said. “For
us as a team, and especially also
for Colleen. She’s been such a
huge part of the team these past
four years. Dartmouth is a team
Ryan
Turner
(26-22)
Cornell
ONLY TWO LEFT | Senior captain Colleen Brennan and the Light Blue volleyball squad will try to
end the Lions’ frustrating season on a high note against Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend.
BY ERIC WONG
356.4
Ryan
Young
(30-18)
Light Blue faces Big Red
on the road in Ithaca
FOOTBALL from back page
189.8
CORNELL
Daniel
Radov
(22-26)
Melissa
Cheung
(30-18)
Harvard
24.5
37.9
AGAINST
COLUMBIA
Redemption is
sweet.
CORNELL
FOR
Yards Allowed
Alex
Bernstein
(24-24)
Peter
Andrews
(23-25)
Hope my Cheaters
Odyssey State School
is worth Light Blue
it this
LAL
weekend.
Denvard
1
2
3
More solid D-line
PAGE 3
volleyball
friday, nov. 15
vs. Harvard, 7 p.m.
Levien Gymnasium
saturday, nov. 16
vs. Dartmouth, 5 p.m.
Levien Gymnasim
women’s basketball
friday, nov. 15
at Lafayette, 8 p.m.
Easton, Pa.
men’s basketball
friday, nov. 15
at Michigan State, 8 p.m.
East Lansing, Mich.
football
GAME TIME | First-year quarterback Kelly Hilinski and the
Lions will only have two more chances to win a game this season.
saturday, nov. 16
at Cornell, 1 p.m.
Ithaca, N.Y.
EDITORIAL & OPINION
PAGE 4
Education in conflict
The 137th year of publication
Independent since 1962
CORPORATE BOARD
SAMMY ROTH
Editor in Chief
FINN VIGELAND
Managing Editor
ALEX SMYK
Publisher
MANAGING BOARD
JEREMY BUDD
Campus News Editor
CASEY TOLAN
City News Editor
YASMIN GAGNE
Editorial Page Editor
LESLEY THULIN
Arts & Entertainment Editor
ALISON MACKE
Sports Editor
MYLES SIMMONS
Sports Editor
MEGAN KALLSTROM
Head Copy Editor
DAVID BRANN
Photo Editor
STEVEN LAU
Multimedia Editor
REGIE MAURICIO
Design Editor
RYAN VELING
Design Editor
EMMA FINDER
Spectrum Editor
RIKKI NOVETSKY
The Eye, Editor in Chief
DOUG BIENSTOCK
Online Editor
ISAAC WHITE
Online Editor
MICHAEL OUIMETTE
Chief Operating Officer
ROB FRECH
Chief Development Officer
WES RODRIGUEZ
Chief Revenue Officer
ALAN SELTZER
Chief Marketing Officer
REBEKA COHAN
Staff Development Director
DEPUTY BOARD
News
Abby Abrams, Samantha Cooney,
Avantika Kumar, Chris Meyer,
Tracey Wang, Christian Zhang
Opinion
Daniel Garisto, Nika Madyoon
Arts & Entertainment
Charlotte Murtishaw, David Salazar
Sports
Muneeb Alam, Caroline Bowman,
Molly Tow
Copy
Nicole Santoro
Photo
Justin Chan, Kimberly Flores,
Douglas Kessel, Alice Mahoney,
Kiera Wood
Multimedia
Wilfred Chan, Megan Cunnane, Lisa
Huang, Eli Schultz
Design
Alanna Browdy, Karen Nan, Burhan
Sandhu
The Eye
Laura Booth, Alison Herman, Suze
Myers
Online
Albert Cui, Karen Nan
Spectrum
Jillian Kumagai, Shira Lerner,
Alessandra Poblador
Social Media
Max Marshall
Nonprofit Development
Audrey Greene
Events
Madeleine Schwab
Sales & Monetization
Nicolas Sambor
Product Development
Frederic Enea
Staff Development
Lillian Chen
ASSOCIATE BOARD
News
Luke Barnes, Ben Gittelson, Emma
Goss, Eva Kalikoff, Jillian Kumagai
Opinion
Antonia Blue-Hitchens, Karl Daum,
Sofia de Leon, Supriya Jain, Matteo
Leibowitz
Arts & Entertainment
Rachel Dunphy, Carroll Gelderman,
Yvonne Hsiao, Noah Jackson, Emily
Neil, Sarah Roth, Allison Schlissel,
Alexandra Villarreal
Sports
Theresa Babendreier, Mollie Galchus,
Ike Clemente Kitman, Robert
Mitchell, Kyle Perrotti
Copy
Camille Baptista, Katie DeChant,
Molly Doernberg, Ruby Dutcher,
Augusta Harris, Do Yeon Grace
Lee, Rukmini Mahurkar, Amelia
Pitcherella, Ben Sheng, Rosa Smith,
Emily Sorensen, Neha Sundaram,
Jong In “Jim” Yoon
Photo
Peter Bohnhof, Robert Holland,
Alexis Liu, Tianyue Sun, Qiuyun Tan
Design
Chancellor Agard, Sarah Batchu,
Benjamin Bromberg Gaber, Allison
Henry, Grace Kim, Will McCormack,
Moriah Schervone, Daniel Stone, Lea
Thomassen, Ione Wang
Online
Katie Lin, Noah Stebbins, Daniel Stone
Social Media
Malcolm Flynn
Nonprofit Development
Peter Bailinson, Zander Daniel,
Marc Heinrich
Event Management
Alekhya Mukkavilli, Josh Kim, Abby
Carras
Sales & Marketing
Devin Bergstein, Jane Ma, Madeleine
Schwab, Emily Sun, Sam Waters
Product Development
Allison Kammert, Omeed Maghzian
Staff Development
James Horner, Kiana Khozai,
Jane Ma
EDITORIAL BOARD
Peter Andrews, Nathalie Barton,
Nicole Bleuel, Nelson Castaño,
Gabriel Falk, Margaret Mattes,
Rachel Smith
THURSDAY NIGHT STAFF
Copy
Olivia Alex, Matt Buck, Ben
Gittelson, Madeleine Larson, Tatini
Mal-Sarkar, Ali Sawyer, Sarah Scarr,
Audrey Shi, Isaiah Thomas
Design
Connor Fraser, McKenzie Fritz
CONTACT US
2875 Broadway, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10025
[email protected]
@ColumbiaSpec
Daily Spectator (212) 854-9549
Business (212) 854-9550
Business Fax (212) 854-9553
For general comments or questions about the newspaper,
please write to the editor in
chief and managing editor at
[email protected].
CORRECTIONS
The Columbia Daily
Spectator is committed to
fair and accurate reporting.
If you know of an error,
please inform us at editor@
columbiaspectator.com.
EDITORIAL POLICY
For more information about
our editorial policy, visit www.
columbiaspectator.com/about.
BY COREY FREEMAN AND AVIVA PRATZER
This week, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine
joined the Right to Education Campaign. The movement
seeks to raise awareness of the claim that Israel denies the
right to education to Palestinian students. As with any aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the situation is more
complex than either side would like it to be and the issue
therefore requires a close examination of the facts and realities involved. We wish to provide another perspective on
this story.
Israel supports education for all its citizens; it has made
tremendous strides in providing its citizens with equal opportunities for education. Today, Jewish, Arab, and Druze
students all receive quality educations in state schools. This
is a significant improvement over what the situation used to
be. When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, there was
only one Arab high school in the country. Today, more than
300,000 Arab students attend Israeli schools. Moreover, Arab
and Jewish students often learn side by side, breaking down
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
the cultural boundaries that often create so much tension
between the two sides.
Israel’s efforts to create a more equal education system
have allowed its Arab citizens to achieve academic success.
On last year’s standardized tests, middle-class Arab students
scored higher on average than middle-class Jewish students,
reversing the previous trend. This kind of academic success
by a minority segment of the population is almost unheard
of in America.
The truth behind CSJP’s claims can
be difficult to assess.
But Israel has not stopped there. Seeking to better integrate Arabs into higher education, Israel announced just two
weeks ago that it will launch an Arab scholarship program.
The government plans to invest $62 million in the program
over the next six years. Initiatives like this demonstrate
Israel’s commitment to providing all of its citizens with the
right to education.
While Palestinian education remains under the control
of the Palestinian Authority, Israel has helped improve that
system as well. The PA has started using textbooks published in Israel that include sections teaching the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
The truth behind CSJP’s claims can be difficult to assess. The conflict is more complicated than it appears on
the surface. The only way to create productive conversation about the conflict is to acknowledge and address the
faults that occur on both sides. While it has not always been
the case, LionPAC is now ready and eager to engage in this
type of discussion. However, CSJP refuses to participate in
a dialogue with any type of pro-Israel group on our campus, regardless of its political perspectives. While CSJP
has the right to call attention to any issues that it may find
concerning, it also has the responsibility to educate itself by
listening to, and trying to understand, other perspectives.
As CSJP promotes the value of education this week, we call
on it to embody this value and participate in constructive
and open exchange.
Corey Freeman is a first-year in the joint program between
Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is an
associate fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Aviva Pratzer is a junior at Barnard College majoring in
political science. She is the president of LionPAC.
STAFF EDITORIAL
Defining
our lack of
community
T
his week, Spectator published a two-part series on the discussion about community, or
the lack thereof, at Columbia. The articles detailed
the various facets of community and student perceptions surrounding them. It is clear that there is
a general consensus—community is lacking—but
administrators are at a loss for specific reforms
that might fix the problem. Columbia College
Dean James Valentini remarked, “I’m not sure
what actions I could take right now.”
In order to move forward with the discussion,
toward real change, we have to define community.
Communities come in many forms, are composed
of myriad factors, and most importantly, are experienced subjectively. Because of this, we must be
specific about what we mean by community. Until
we do that, we can’t know what we want to fix.
So the onus is on us. What do we
mean by community?
Administrators are far from powerless when
it comes to matters of student life, but we can’t
expect deans to solve issues that we have trouble
articulating. Valentini’s confusion is perfectly
understandable—even expected. Students are
the only people who directly experience the undergraduate community and thus are the only
Columbians who truly understand the issues.
Expecting administrators to understand our troubles without clearly explaining them is unrealistic.
So the onus is on us. What do we mean by community? Is it a sense of belonging? Our common
interests? We must pin this down. Then we can
suss out what kind of community is lacking. Are
we looking for a better social community? A less
competitive intellectual community? A more insular college experience? Next, we need to enumerate the factors and facets that form communities
and turn them into a reality—physical space, spirit,
athletics. Only when we are clear about these issues can we reasonably ask for changes.
A willing administration guided by focused students can easily accomplish many changes. With
the administration’s help, we could create better student spaces, make academic reforms, and
change the way schoolwide events are funded,
planned, and publicized.
Of course, there are limitations. We will never
agree completely on our definitions, but we can
try for basic consensus. A more focused approach
to these issues would be better than our current
disjointed battle over semantics.
There are also practical limitations about the
nature of community at Columbia. We are in New
York City, for better or worse. Space is limited.
We are constantly dragged in different directions,
away from Columbia. But we can be pragmatic
within our constraints.
This debate has already begun, but we need to
continue it. We need to attend town hall meetings,
publish op-eds about the subject, and sometimes
just have late-night conversations about community. But we also need something official. We need
something that the University creates whenever
it really needs something done—we need a committee. Not just any committee, but one with real
undergraduate representation, focused on real
undergraduate problems, with real potential for
effecting change. Such a committee could clarify
what constitutes a community and inform administrators of what they can do to foster one more
effectively.
Together, we can work to understand what we
collectively want in our community, and when we
next bring the issue to our deans, we can tell them
exactly what needs to be done.
The Columbia Daily Spectator accepts op-eds on any topic relevant to the
Columbia University and Morningside Heights community. Op-eds should
be roughly 650 words in length. We require that op-eds be sent exclusively
to Spectator and will not consider articles that have already been published
elsewhere. Letters to the Editor should be no longer than 350 words and must
refer to an article from Spectator or The Eye or a Spectrum post. Submissions
should be sent to [email protected]. Please paste all submissions into the body of the email. Should we decide to publish your submission,
we will contact you via email.
illustration by darializa avila-chevalier
The cruelest month
N
inety-five years ago, T.S. Eliot described my day perfectly:
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
LUKE
FOSTER
It’s getting dim outside. It’s a
little grim to have the sun set before
Foster
five—and the days will only get colder. Winter’s clutching Morningside
the Core
Heights more tightly. My sinuses have
been trying to tell me I’ve got a cold, and my weary frame
demanded so much sleep this morning that I missed
class. I’m already looking forward to spring.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Spring brings hope—intimations of rebirth, signs of
renewal and rekindling. But there’s a sharp edge of sorrow to the sight of new shoots springing out of the dead
ground. (Of course, we’ll barely get to see those lovely
things here in the concrete jungle.) But beautiful, natural,
everyday reminders of peace and joy have a devastating
effect on me. New life always heralds new death. The
new shoots of April will just wither in their turn. Beauty
is ephemeral, yet it awakens longings for a wholeness
in myself and a flourishing in the world that I’ve never
known and don’t expect to.
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
It’s easy and natural, I think, to hope that another
person can complete us, make everything whole and
right, bring us to a contentment and fulfillment that
would make us feel most completely ourselves. Columbia
gives us the chance to befriend kindred spirits from all
over the world (and even from SEAS!), and it’s one of the
greatest blessings and joys of studying here.
Friendship is a wonderful and noble thing—Confucius
began “Analects” by calling it a delight, and Plato sang its
praises in “Symposium.” The great adventure stories all
include comrades-in-arms: Frodo and Sam, Tintin and
Captain Haddock, Roland and Oliver.
But there’s also that exquisite restlessness for romantic
love, for total and mutual self-giving, that defies rational
explanation. C.S. Lewis pointed out, “If we had not all
experienced this ... we might boggle at the conception of
desiring a human being, as distinct from desiring any pleasure, comfort, or service that a human being can give.”
Yet we know that, great and good as it is, all too often
romantic interest flares and dies, leaving heartache or
heartbreak. Even deeply wonderful, loving marriages
require tremendous self-sacrifice and effort. Eros does
connect us to future generations, but it can’t ultimately
save us from the decay and death of winter.
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
The dying days of the semester are an anxious time.
There are plenty of the ordinary pressures of studenthood, with term papers and finals just around the corner.
Many of us have to worry about getting a job or landing that coveted summer internship. The incessant
career fairs on campus don’t make it easy to forget that
pressure.
We also live in a time of national and global anxiety. We
haven’t known the world-shattering brutality of World
War I as Eliot did, but we rarely think of this as a period
of peace and prosperity. Americans sometimes call the
deepening sense of division, bitterness, and distrust in the
nation’s political culture the worst in history. This country
has known worse—there were canings in Congress in the
years leading up to the Civil War—but this is pretty bad.
I think we’ve got to work to cultivate trust and renew
the relationships to buoy us through the fleeting days of
winter and finals. As Harvard’s 75-year study on happiness showed, relationships really are the key to a meaningful life. We should prioritize the people in our lives,
even if it means losing sleep because of that amazing 4
a.m. conversation.
Cultivating trust—in friendships, in relationships,
and in political opponents—takes commitment, which
means an initial loss of freedom. But in the long term,
the rewards are wonderful, enriching and deepening life,
leaving us freer. It’s a particularly valuable virtue to learn
now, for our generation will be responsible for soothing
an anxious body politic.
And trust begins with a profound honesty. T.S. Eliot
was relentlessly honest about his anxieties and insecurities. He came of age in the shadow of World War I and
cared for his mentally ill wife for decades.
His poetry invites us to a vulnerability about just how
empty and lost the human spirit can feel. And even the
bleak “Waste Land” holds out some hope, asking “Who
is the third who walks always beside you?” We are cast
as the disciples on the road to Emmaus at the end of the
Gospel of Luke, our despair overturned because death
has been overthrown.
Let’s have a bold conversation about wellness—from
our everyday frustrations to our longings for transcendent meaning provoked by the turning of the seasons.
Luke Foster is a Columbia College junior majoring in
English. He is the president of the Veritas Forum and a
member of Columbia Faith and Action. Foster the Core
runs alternate Fridays.
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
CLASSIFIEDS
CLASSIFIED AD RATES:
$8/00 per first 20 words.
25¢ each additional word.
Ad in all boldface $4.00 extra.
All ads must be pre-paid.
2 business day deadline.
Call 854-9550 for information;
or fax ad to 854-9553.
BUYING, SELLING OR RENTING AN
apt? Expert negotiator/marketer, Josh
Nathanson (CC’94, SIPA’99) will save
you save time, money and stress for
all of your Real Estate needs. www.
joshnathanson.com. Email: [email protected]
TO YEARN FOR ETERNAL harmony
when the chords are wet with tears
of suffering children? A Child’s Tear
by Leo Tracy. Amazon.com Books.
PROFESSIONAL EDITING by Columbia Ph.D. Dissertation and academic
style expert (APA, Turabian, MLA, etc.).
Typing services available. (941) 3667680.
DO YOU WANT to reduce the stress
of your student loan? Looking for egg
donor. Very good compensation. Contact soon (646) 508-7239.
EARN $8000 A CYCLE
NYC healthy women 19-29 needed as
egg donors. Help someone create a
family. Confidential. Apply at MyDonor.
net
DINING TABLE: L 60” x D 36” x H 30”
- $159. Desk: L 63” x D 31.5” x H 29.5”
- $159. Wooden chest: L 45.25” x D
22.5” x H 24.5”. Call (212) 316-2777.
COHEN’S FASHION OPTICAL
seeks flyer distributors to advertise retail locations throughout NYC. Flexible schedule and top pay! All locations
accessible by mass transit. Must be
responsible and punctual. Please contact Shannon Johnson at shannons
@cohens.bz or call (212) 792-8100
for more information.
GROWING COMPANY LOOKING for
Sales/Project Manager who will be involved in business development and
developing of marketing for a paid internship. Call (646) 772-8203.
PSYCHOTHERAPIST
Sensitive, knowledgeable for individuals and couples dealing with relationship, infertility, adoption and third party
reproduction issues. Contact Phyllis
Lowinger, LCSW at (212) 666-3400 or
email: [email protected]
PAGE 5
$$SPERM DONORS WANTED$$
Earn up to $1200/mo and give the gift
of family through California Cryobank’s
donor program. Convenient Midtown location. Apply online at: SPERMBANK.
com
SPERM DONORS WANTED
Healthy males between the ages of
18-39. Earn up to $160 per week. Call
Reprolab, Inc. 332 E 30 St, NYC, NY
10016. (212) 779-3988. Email: info@
reprolabinc.com
REMOVE UNWANTED TATTOOS
Board Certified Dermatologist specializing exclusively in Laser Tatoo Removal. Columbia alumnus, Class of ‘81.
www.TattooRemovalExpert.com. Call
(212) 358-7500.
LOVE CATS? TRY FOSTERING
Flexible and easy. You increase chances for adoption while keeping cats out
of the shelter. Call Carol: (646) 6750082.
GAMEDAY
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 • PAGE 6
COLUMBIA (1-1)
at LAFAYETTE (2-0)
friday, 8 p.m., easton, pa.
RADIO: WKCR 89.9 FM, WWDJ 970 AM
Women’s basketball takes its ‘swag’ on the road to face Lafayette
BY KYLE PERROTTI
PURE SWAG
|
The Columbia women’s basketball squad, led by senior guard Taylor Ward, will look for its second win of the year against Lafayette on Friday.
Football heads to Cornell, continues search for first win of season
BY MYLES SIMMONS
The football team (0-8, 0-5
Ivy) will go for its first win of
the season for the ninth time
on Saturday,
this time in the
Empire State
Bowl IV at football
Cornell (1-7, 0-5
Ivy).
Though the
Lions were shut out for the second time in their winless season last week against Harvard,
head coach Pete Mangurian
said Wednesday that he
thought the team played better.
“You recognize progress, but
by no means are we satisfied
with it,” Mangurian said. “I
think it was a step, and I think
we just need to continue building on it and not get wrapped
up in all the distractions.”
Columbia’s defensive line
has been hit hard with injuries in 2013, and now another
senior is done for the year.
Defensive Nick Melka will miss
the remainder of the season after sustaining an injury against
Harvard last week. That makes
three of the Light Blue’s four
opening-day defensive linemen
who have suffered season-ending injuries, as Melka joins seniors Seyi Adebayo and Wells
Childress.
“That’s part of the game. It’s
next man up. That’s the way
you have to be,” Mangurian
said. “Some years you get
through the season relatively
injury-free, and some years you
don’t. And it all tends to balance itself out over the course
of time, so you don’t get a false
sense of security when you
don’t get hurt, and you don’t
make excuses when you do.”
In Melka’s absence,
Mangurian said first-year
Charles Melka, Nick’s brother,
should get some playing time
this weekend. But sophomore
Toba Akinleye will get the start,
with juniors Chad Washington
and Hunter Little also rotating
in at the position.
“Toba made some plays in
the game [against Harvard],
but he gave up some plays too—
some big plays,” Mangurian
said. “That’s what happens
when you’re young with talent.”
The defense will be going
up against one of the best quarterbacks in the league in Jeff
Mathews. The senior leads the
league in passing by a wide margin with 2,486 yards and ranks
second with 18 touchdowns.
Mangurian called Mathews a
special player with a big arm
and big-time accuracy.
“It’s hard to sit in the zone
against him because he’s so accurate that he can put the ball
in the soft spots,” Mangurian
said.
Three of the Big Red’s players rank in the Ancient Eight’s
top 10 in receiving yards—running back Luke Hagy along
with wideouts Grant Gellatly
and Lucas Shapiro. Gellatly
leads the league in receptions
with 71 and receiving yards
with 909.
“He’s got receivers that
are used to catching him,”
Mangurian said of Mathews.
“They know what he does best,
and that’s the kind of passing
game that they run.”
But the Lions have one of
their best receivers back and
performing at a high level as
well. Since sophomore Chris
Connors returned from injury against Dartmouth, he’s
SEE FOOTBALL, page 3
XC looks to continue hot
streak at NCAA Regionals
BY TRUDI PATRICK
On the heels of an Ivy
Championship for the men—and
with a big push to get students
on a rare fan bus
going north of
Baker—the cross
cross
country teams country
are looking for
a big win at the
NCAA Northeast
Regional Championships this
weekend.
Last weekend, the men’s team
triumphed with its fourth Ivy
League title, scoring 48 points.
The women’s team finished fifth
in Ivies with a score of 101.
The No. 8 men’s
team will try to continue its success in
the men’s 8K race.
Top finishes from senior
Nico Composto, senior John
Gregorek, and junior Daniel
Everett secured Columbia’s firstplace position, overcoming the
rest of the Ivy League, including
the strong No. 15 Princeton men’s
team at the Championships.
On the women’s side, junior
Waverly Neer finished second,
leading her team to its fifth-place
overall finish, behind Princeton.
Following one of the best
Heptagonal performances in
program history, the No. 8 men’s
team will try to continue its success in the men’s 8K race this
weekend while the women will
do the same in the 6K race.
The Northeast Regional race
will feature fellow Ivies Brown,
Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard,
and Yale.
The top two teams from each
regional competition will automatically advance to the NCAA
Championships in Terre Haute,
Ind., on Nov. 23. Last year, four
Ivy teams—two men’s teams, two
women’s teams—qualified for the
NCAA Championships.
At the 2011 Regional
Championships, all of the Light
Blue men’s runners finished in
the top 17 percent of the overall runners, narrowly missing
an automatic bid to the NCAA
National Championships. Yet,
with their strong 2011 performance, particularly at the
Ivy League Heptagonal Cross
Country Championships and at
the Regional Championships,
the Lions earned one of the 13
at-large bids for the National
Championships.
The Lions also returned to
the National Championships
in 2012, so they will be seeking
their third consecutive appearance this year.
Northeast Regionals will
be held in the Bronx at Van
Cortlandt Park on Friday.
The men’s race will begin at
11:45 a.m., while the women’s
event will begin at 1 p.m. Buses
depart from Amsterdam Avenue
and 116th Street at 10:45 a.m.
[email protected]
The word is swag. Jay-Z
claims to have invented it in
the song “Otis,” and now the
Columbia women’s basketball
team (1-1) is lookwomen’s
ing to master it.
“We
have basketball
talked about
what it looks like
to have swag,”
Light Blue head coach Stephanie
Glance said. “Nobody can give
you confidence. So if you don’t
have confidence, you have to act
like you do because it doesn’t
work the other way.”
The Lions played with confidence at LIU last Friday, which
enabled them to edge out a team
that walked all over them last season at Levien Gymnasium, and
they are hoping to see that confidence return to the court this
weekend against Lafayette (2-0).
Besides skill sets and conditioning, the major focus of the
week has been growing into the
attitude Glance describes.
Senior Courtney Bradford
thinks the team has done a good
job of adopting this paradigm, but
that they have also managed to
have fun with it.
“We jokingly messed with [junior guard] Miwa [Tachibana] today, asking, ‘What’s your swag?’”
she said.
Glance is optimistic
about the Lions’
future.
Friday night, the Light Blue
heads to Easton, Penn., to take
on the Leopards, who possess a
formidable frontcourt that boasts
size, length, and skill.
“They have great size. Their
front line is big and long, so we
are working a number of things
into our defensive system to offset that,” Glance said.
The Leopards are led by forward Emily Homan. The junior
was awarded last week’s Patriot
League Player of the Week award
after a pair of dominating performances during which she averaged 21 points and 10 boards per
game.
“Once she gets the ball, chances are, we need more than one
person guarding her,” Glance
said. “So the first thing is trying to not let the ball come inside. Second thing is once she
does catch it, she needs to feel
surrounded.”
The Lions’ post players have
been prepping hard all week to be
able to better defend the size and
skill of the Leopards’ frontcourt.
“We are definitely playing
more physically and increasing
ball pressure. We’ve been doing
a good job of that, but that has
been emphasized even more,”
Bradford said. “We are going to
especially focus on fronting the
post and having our guards pinch
in.”
Glance is excited to see her
players practicing with high energy levels and confidence, and
she hopes they can carry it over
to this weekend.
“We can’t just wait until we
feel like doing something or we
feel confident,” she said, “especially in our situation where we
are trying to turn things around.”
Regardless of how Friday’s
game pans out, Glance is optimistic about the Lions’ future.
“I’m very pleased with how
this team works and the effort
they give and how coachable they
are,” she said. “I really couldn’t
ask more from them. They are
still developing, and they give
their best every day, and that’s
the biggest thing for a coach.”
The Lions and the Leopards
take the court on Friday at 8 p.m.
[email protected]
Weekend
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 • PAGE B1
Nightmare on Varick Street:
New York City Horror Film Festival comes to town
BY ALEXANDRA WARRICK
Imagine traveling down a shadowy alley and stopping at an eerie chapel. When you enter, cherubs with
chipped paint leer down at you from the ceiling as you
carefully tread on the soon-to-be-bloodstained floors.
You don’t know exactly what you’re there for, but you
know you will soon be faced with grotesquerie—the
likes of which you’ve never seen. This is the experience
that the New York City Horror Film Festival aims to
recreate this weekend: that of famed Paris horror venue
Le Theatre du Grand Guignol—a venue that specialized
in horror theater—but in Tribeca Cinemas. The fourday extravaganza, which was established in 2001, will
feature horror films and shorts.
A tradition of the Grand Guignol is the douche écossaise, or “Scottish shower.” The term derives from a therapeutic practice of a shower that alternated between hot
and cold water; it refers to the theatrical choice of alternating sex farces and horror plays in order to make the
sexy parts appear sexier and the scary parts scarier. Many
films in the festival’s lineup appear to be reviving this
tradition of combining the titillating with the gruesome.
A devotee of the Grand Guignol, Shade Rupe, the codirector of the underground spook show “Play Dead,”
finds its preservation necessary.
“I love the Grand Guignol because it actually happens in front of you,” he said. “It’s an incredible visceral
illusion.”
Despite the Grand Guignol’s dedication to the grisly,
Rupe says that horror’s source is not the gross-out quality
but the shock and immediacy of live theater.
“It wasn’t about close-ups on the gore,” he said. “It
was about the bizarre cognitive dissonance of actually
seeing this stuff happening in front of you.”
For director Scott Schirmer, the Grand Guignol appeals to our base instincts and attractions. Schirmer’s
film, “Found,” which follows an outcast in the fifth
grade, will screen at the festival.
“Horror, even life itself, is pretty much about sex and
death,” he said. “So I don’t think there’s any shame in
exploring our baser instincts in art and storytelling.”
But Schirmer believes there are two ways of going
about a Grand Guignol homage.
“You can do it in a tacky manner that reeks of exploitation, or you can try to ignite some conversation about
our relationships with sex and death,” he said.
Blair Erickson, the director of the chilling CIA thriller “Banshee Chapter,” believes in the timelessness of
the Grand Guignol.
“It’s a style that never dies and seems to pop back
up for another gory romp every few decades,” ready to
make new generations think on their mortality, he said.
What makes a good horror film, and what makes
a good horror performance? From the amount of unoriginal, mild, and simply schlocky horror movies out
there, this is a question that has proved elusive for many
a filmmaker and actor.
“A good horror film to me is much more about mood,
lighting, shadows, darkness, performance, fear, and unsettling situations,” Rupe said.
An effective horror film also relies—unsurprisingly—
on excellent acting.
“A good horror performance is usually by someone
over 30 who isn’t pretending to be a teenager,” he said.
“How many actors do you remember from 95 percent
of today’s horror films? You see ‘Rosemary’s Baby’
or ‘The Exorcist’ or ‘The Omen’ and you remember
those characters and the actors’ performances. Just
having characters walk through a loose building constructed of jumpy scares is much less effective than
someone who is paranoid or imagining things that
are not there.”
A good horror film can be stripped down to a compelling story with provocative ideas, according to Schirmer.
“It helps to have some aesthetic merit and craftsmanship in the execution,” he said. “But if it ain’t on the page,
it ain’t on the screen.”
Ultimately, Schirmer doesn’t believe horror actors
receive enough credit for their work.
“Horror is one of the most physically demanding
genres, both physically and emotionally,” he said. “The
characters are usually in a constant state of heightened
awareness, hyperventilating, screaming, running—it’s
hard work. It takes stamina and gall to play that kind of
material.”
And a horror film worth its salt brings the audience
on the ride, according to Byron Turk, the director of the
grisly flick “The Bates Haunting.”
“You experience what your hero or heroine experiences while simultaneously wanting to be or be with
him or her,” he said. “You need to create a kickass roller
coaster of frights and laughs that everyone wants to
take a ride on.”
Although Turk admits that there’s a lot that’s silly
about the genre, he says that a good horror experience
is one in which the audience buys into and causes them
forget about the outside world.
“It’s a great form of escapism and fantasy,” he said.
Part of horror’s appeal also lies in the thrill it produces in an audience.
“People just like the particular excitement that
comes with strange, bizarre, unusual, violent, gory images, and that visceral connection keeps people coming
back for more,” he said.
For some directors, horror possesses certain qualities unlike any other genre.
“I think horror has an ability to boil the human dilemma down to its essentials,” Schirmer said. “You can
confront huge issues, like what it means to be human or
what it means to be alive, to be in or out of control—over
your surroundings or even yourself,” he said. “Drama
and other genres, except maybe sci-fi, are often too
weighed down by reality and suspension of disbelief,
whereas horror has the license to go there. It’s freeing
to work in horror, and it has the potential to be a very
provocative genre.”
It is this particular freedom that allows horror to be
smarter and more subversive than other genres, according to Erickson. “It gets to play with messy ideas, crazy
premises, and unconventional endings,” Erickson said.
“It lets us comment on the darker aspects of our culture
and society in a more accessible way.”
Part of this accessibility lies in horror filmmakers’
willingness to play with the genre.
“Horror is just goddamn fun,” Erickson said.
Think, for example, Wes Craven’s “Scream.” The
1996 slasher delivers scares and laughs in equal measure, due to its self-awareness. The film gestures toward
films like “Halloween” and “Friday the Thirteenth,”
and one of its principal characters is a professed horror
freak. At one point he outlines the rules for surviving
a horror movie: “And number three: never, ever, ever
under any circumstances say, ‘I’ll be right back.’ Because
you won’t be back.”
Horror movies also have the potential to encapsulate
“the complete spectrum of human emotion—fear, love,
hope, the desire to triumph against all odds,” Turk said.
But he also recognizes that the joys of horror may be
more lowbrow, admitting that “a lot of people like to see
pretty girls and crazy maniacs run around.”
Whatever your motivations are for participating in
the spectacle, swing by the New York City Horror Film
Festival and watch the tradition live on.
The New York City Horror Film Festival will be held
through Sunday at Tribeca Cinemas.
[email protected]
FILM PREVIEWS ON PAGE B2
This Weekend in $8.99
Inside…
1. The Bean macaron ($3, p. B2)
2. ‘Gilded New York’(free, p. B3)
3. ‘Artpop’ ($5.99, p. B4)
WEEKEND PAGE B2
Neighborhood Watch
By Yvonne Hsiao
Graphic by Burhan Sandhu
The Lower East Side may seem a bit out of your comfort zone for those who have grown used to the confines of the
Columbia campus (read: Butler), but the East Village is worth a visit for several work-, stomach-, and shopper-friendly
places. While at first glance a slightly dark and dingy, a closer look reveals several spots for intellectual stimulation,
authentic regional cuisine, and local fashion for sale. So go on—hop on the 1, transfer at 14th Street to the L, and
head over to the East Village this weekend.
XI’AN FAMOUS FOODS
81 St. Marks Pl., between First and Second avenues
It started out in Flushing, but Xi’an Famous Foods has opened its second outpost
in the East Village, much to the delight of all lovers of authentic Chinese food. Try
its Liangpi “Cold-Skin” Noodles—tossed lightly with rice vinegar, sesame oil, and
cilantro—or the big, floppy, hand-sheared noodles tossed in roasted lamb chunks.
Whether or not it’s a hangover meal, at about $7 per dish, this is a slurpy, greasy,
and delicious meal with generous portions. (Note: There’s no sweet-and-sour beef
or General Tso’s chicken on this menu. Also, there is almost always a long line, but
you can eat at one of the nearby bars if you tip generously.)
EAST VILLAGE BOOKS NYC
99 St. Marks Pl., between First Avenue and Avenue A
The first store to catch and turn in a book thief, this
used book store has remained a favorite among thrifters
looking for hidden gems. East Village Books features
anything from old Latin texts to textbooks. (Want a
dissertation written in 1290 about the Bhagavad Gita?
They’ve probably got you covered.) This cozy shop is
smaller and more disorganized than The Strand, but it’s
not lacking in variety or availability for its sometimes
niche selections.
e. 13th st.
THE BEAN
MACARON PARLOR
111 St. Marks Pl., between First Avenue and Avenue A
Offering traditional fillings like buttercream and ganache for classic flavors such as pistachio, hazelnut, and
chocolate, Macaron Parlour earns its place in New York
City with other novel combinations like Sriracha paste,
sugary maple cream cheese with some candied bacon,
and honey and cognac. I recommend the tiramisu and
earl grey or the seasonal offering of apple cider. The
shell cracks delicately as you sink your teeth through
the soft center, engulfing a full bite of the smooth,
creamy center. Carefully baked, piped, and selected
through a rigorous game of elimination, these macarons
can be a treat to yourself or a gift to others.
1st avenue
54 Second Ave., between Third and Fourth streets
With Wi-Fi, numerous seats, and lots of drink options, this is a decent study spot that’s open until
midnight when you want to hang out late in the
East Village. The Bean is known for its expensive
but fresh juices. Ranging from acai to kale to wheatgrass, there’s something for everyone on this extensive blackboard of juice options. Although the
pastries are not that good, go for the filthy chai and
either snuggle up with a friend in a laptop-free zone
or program away at any of the other tables with comfortable wooden chairs and widely available outlets.
T VILLAG
S
E
EA
ry
bowe
t’s tech week. Tech week is
an emotional, draining, but
wonderful experience for actors, writers, and the production team. It is high stress.
There is lots of waiting, work,
KRISTA
laughter, and tears.
WHITE
When it’s over, you are
filled with both relief and
post-show depression. Usually N o s h i n g
you have time to recuperate.
o n th e
Unless, of course, you have
B i g Ap p le
shows for three weekends in a
row. That’s my November. As I
bubble over with excitement, anxiety, exhaustion,
and deliriousness, I feed myself with a haphazard array of foods at all hours. Proper meals are
thrown out the window. Even when I’m not in rehearsal, the preemptive and residual stress drives
me to my bad eating crutches, namely chips, Dr
Pepper, and chocolate.
As I write this before class, I’m sitting in
Barnard Hall with my freshly vended snacks
and debating whether or not to save the peanut
M&M’s for later. I will probably eat them right
now. Such dilemmas plague me during tech week,
a time more fraught with crazy eating schedules
than finals week. I’m full of show-week anxiety,
wondering about ticket sales and whether I’ll remember my cues. Between classes all day and rehearsals from 6 p.m. to midnight, I’m not left with
much time for balanced meals. I end up scavenging, eating the cookies that someone’s wonderful
mother baked for the cast or devouring the pizza
ordered by a kind stage manager.
Last week, I performed in King’s Crown
Shakespeare Troupe’s “Henry IV, Part 2” and
was moderately well-fed, but this week I’m doing lighting for The Black Theater Ensemble’s
“Bulrusher” (shameless plug) and there
hasn’t been a free cookie in sight. I had oatmeal for breakfast (while watching “Parks and
Recreation,” instead of doing the work I woke up
early to do), so that was a good start.
But dinner... dinner is a whole other issue. I’m
in the booth for the entire rehearsal, and when I
get out or have a break, I’m most likely hightailing
it to Ham Del. I tried a Twister for the first time
last night and it almost made me forget that I had
just sat in a dark box for several hours. But the
crux of the problem is the whole late-night dinner thing. It’s better than nothing, but when I’m
stressed and tired from the day I tend to eat a lot
more—and buy chocolate-covered pretzels that I
definitely don’t need. Between tech week and the
holidays, RIP healthy eating. It’s a disaster.
Update on my peanut M&M’s: They’re gone,
and they were delicious. If you were curious, the class I was waiting for was Acting the
Musical Scene, which allows non-singers like
me to pretend they are Broadway ingénues. I’m
doing a scene from “Legally Blonde”—a musical that I would never in a million years be cast
in—which is fantastic. On Tuesday, Santino
Fontana, a friend of our instructor who just
happens to be playing the Tony-nominated role
of Prince Topher on Broadway’s “Rodgers &
Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” visited the class.
I love it when I get to meet or be in the presence of fabulously successful actors because it
reminds me why I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s
all for the show, the story, the characters, and,
most importantly, the audience. We’re not just
eating junk and staying up for no reason. We’re
making theater. And sometimes, theater needs a
couple chocolate-covered pretzels.
lafayette st.
I
broadway
Bite me, tech week
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
THE SHAPE OF LIES
127 E. 7th St., between First Avenue and Avenue A
Peek in the back room of this jewelry store, and you’re likely to see someone working on handmade pieces. The woman behind the counter can
offer you the history behind necklaces, earrings, or rings (some of them
feature an eye reminiscent of Big Brother, arms embracing your finger,
or people on a bench sitting across two fingers). Carrying an innovative
array of jewelry for men and women, the Shape of Lies sells gifts ranging
from traditional to trendy. (Pssst: Its “Wise Guy Whisper Sale” offers 15
percent off until Nov. 30.)
st.
stanton
Krista White is a Columbia College senior
majoring in theater. Noshing on the Big Apple
runs alternate Fridays.
Best
of
Best of: Old NYC murders
Getting away with murder was easy in the 1800s. Anyone who couldn’t get away with it was pretty
stupid. These are all rookie mistakes committed in our dear ol’ New York City. —RACHEL DUNPHY
Highlights from
the New York City
Horror Film Festival
Here’s a sampling of films to check out this weekend.
(Dead) Stranger on a
Train (1871)
A porter is loading a trunk onto a Chicagobound train at a Manhattan railroad depot
when his boss notices that it smells and makes
him open it. Obviously, this is because it contains the dead body of a young woman who
died from a botched abortion but appeared to
have still been alive when she was stuffed into
the trunk. The delivery man who dropped off
the trunk kindly directs police to the Second
Avenue office of her hack abortionist, Jacob
Rosenzweig. The decomposing body was displayed in public as a performance art piece.
The Jigsaw Puzzle
(1897)
A bag washes up at the Navy Yard and has
a body in it—but not even a full body. (It’s just
the legs.) The same day, some boys find half a
guy’s torso while swimming in the East River,
and the next week, New Yorkers start finding
feet, a pelvis, arms, and fingers all over the city—
everything except the head. A reporter for the
Wall Street Journal recognizes the body and
authorities track down the killer, who was jealous of his girlfriend or something else boring.
The Nanny (1900)
Someone should have noticed that Alice
O’Donnell—a 20-something who took a
job as a nanny in some fancy house in
Palmetto Court—was a bit off. Two months
into the gig, as the loving homeowners are
relaxing on the patio, O’Donnell quietly
kills their 18-month-old child with a razor,
changes her clothes, and leaves. After the
initial tragic discovery, O’Donnell is found
at home, where she immediately confesses, alleging that she impulsively killed the
baby. (Irrefutable proof that it’s really better to think these things through.)
BANSHEE CHAPTER
Friday at 9:40 p.m.
In order to find their missing friend, a pair of
young writers are sucked into the high-stakes
world of governmental chemical experimentation. This thriller explores real documents and
interviews about secret CIA operations.
PIECES OF TALENT
Friday at 9:40 p.m.
Charlotte dreams of acting but mostly languishes in her job as a cocktail waitress in Bright
Leaf, N.C. Serendipitously, she meets David Long,
a director who is taken in by her and casts her in
his latest film. Attraction turns to obsession and
David soon begins to act out his passion in violent
ways, picking off members of the neighborhood
one by one.
PLAY DEAD
The Sweet Young
Thing (1904)
Nan Patterson, the rich and beautiful chorus
girl from the Broadway hit “Florodora,” and
her gambler boyfriend, Caesar Young, are
cabbing it to the pier where Young and his
wife plan to board a transatlantic ship. A shot
rings out as they drive along West Broadway
and Young dies in Patterson’s arms. Though
experts said the angle of the shot was incompatible with Patterson’s claim that Young
shot himself, she was never convicted because the jury thought she was too pretty
to be a murderer.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY IONE WANG
Saturday at 5:15 p.m.
“Play Dead” is a spook show that riffs on the
Grand Guignol tradition, featuring ghostly apparitions and nudity.
THE BATES HAUNTING
Saturday at 7:15 p.m.
Agnes Rickover’s visit to the Bates Motel and
Haunted Hayride takes a horrifying turn when
her best friend Lily dies in a fiery freak accident.
Agnes is consumed by the accident for the following year. Finally, she returns to the morbid scene,
and this time, she plans to get to the bottom of her
friend’s mysterious death.
FOUND
Sunday at 3 p.m.
Model student Marty has a difficult life. He’s
picked on by his peers, his parents reprimand
him… and his older brother is a serial killer. As if
middle school weren’t hard enough.
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
WEEKEND PAGE B3
My life would suck
without you
T
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
GOLD SOUNDZ
|
The Museum of the City of New York’s latest exhibit showcases the glamor of New York’s Gilded Age aristocracy.
Not all that glitters is gold, but ‘New York’s Gilded Age’ still shines
BY SARAH ROTH
Diamonds are indeed a girl’s best friend in the
Museum of the City of New York’s newest exhibit. Sponsored by Tiffany & Co., “Gilded New
York,” which opened on Wednesday, pays homage to the excess glamour of New York’s Gilded
Age aristocracy.
The American Gilded Age ushered in the 20th
century with a renaissance in American politics, art, and design. This was the era of John D.
Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Jacob Astor, a
period whose very name is painted gold, reflecting both the possibility of wealth and the idyllic
ambitions of those who sought it.
With wealth came prestige and the creation
of an American aristocracy, based not in land and
inheritance but in the labor of industry. “This was
the first real generation of Americans who felt
that they, as well as New York, had arrived as a
great capital to rival Paris and London and Rome,”
Jeannine Falino, guest cocurator of “Gilded New
York” said. “They didn’t have any models, except
for Europe, and they were styling themselves after
the great houses there.”
Walking into the exhibit is like stepping back
in time: Lit by a central chandelier, the purple
damask-lined walls provide the ideal setting for
the story of the Rockefellers and Astors. Upon
their entrance, visitors are greeted by a massive
portrait of Cornelia Ward Hall and her children
by Italian painter Michele Gordigiani. Every aspect of the painting, from the choice of attire to
Hall’s string of pearls to the foreign painter, was
intended to demonstrate the family’s extreme
wealth and prestige.
Glass cases nonchalantly display some truly
jaw-dropping jewelry—courtesy of Tiffany’s,
Marcus & Co., and other Gilded Age jewelers—and
exquisite pieces of domestic life, including a silver
calling card case complete with elegantly printed
ladies’ cards and John D. Rockefeller’s dressing set.
“For a lot of these individuals, they were considered noveau-riche, and these were the kinds of
wealth accoutrements to enhance their standing
in New York society,” Falino said.
Even more enticing is what lies beneath the
glimmering exterior. A Tiffany’s diamond tiara
shines just as brightly today as it did 119 years ago,
when it was commissioned in 1894 for the wedding
of pharmaceutical heiress Julia Kemp. Kemp’s father emigrated from Ireland and founded a pharmaceutical empire, giving his daughter the life of
excess that he built with hard work and dedication.
This tiara-adorned bride was not just emulating
the aristocracy on her wedding day; she was proving that she was indeed one of them.
On the other hand, the exhibit gives far less
facetime to the extreme poverty of the era. While
the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts lived in a fantasy world of ball gowns and diamonds on the
Upper East Side, lower Manhattan was the realm
of Tammany Hall, tenements, and child labor.
Reveling in the wealth, Manhattan’s high society
chose to ignore the work behind it.
Perhaps the promise of success, of making it
onto Fifth Avenue, continues to drive America today. The lavish success of the Gilded Age showed
the possibility for all Americans to achieve extraordinary success.
Although this exhibit ignores the poverty
and squalor located just five or so miles south of
“Ladies’ Mile,” it represents the glint and glamor
of the age’s image.
This exhibit is not an homage to the excess
of the era; rather, it is a tribute to the American
Dream, the possibility of success and wealth, and
pulling yourself up by your bootstraps until you
can hire someone else to do it for you, an idea that
still resonates today, an idea that still resonates
today.
“In some ways there isn’t a difference,” Falino
said. “You think about these dot-com billionaires.
They’re just changing the numbers from millions
to billions.”
[email protected]
he English subjunctive is
like a building on campus
you’ve heard of once or twice
but never visited. You know it’s
a part of the University, but you
don’t know what gets taught
SINCLAIR
there or how to find it. For me,
TARGET
that mysterious building is
Fayerweather, but I suspect that
On
puts me in an abnormally clueTarget
less minority. Otherwise, think
Chandler or Knox, which I have
been assured are real places with classrooms and
everything.
Like that building, the English subjunctive is
neglected. However, in French, the subjunctive
requires that newcomers to the language learn
a whole new set of conjugations: For example,
French replaces “sais” with the obviously different “sâche,” or “aimons” with “aimions.” But in
English, the subjunctive only survives in the thirdperson singular and the infinitive verb “to be”: One
would say “I go,” “you go,” and “he goes”; in the
subjunctive that would be “I go,” “you go,” and “he
go.” One would also say “I am,” “you are,” and “he
is”; in the subjunctive, those phrases translate to “I
be,” “you be,” and “he be.” The difference is small,
and in 90 percent of all cases that warrant the subjunctive, you would be right even if you’ve never
given any thought to the subjunctive before.
But what exactly is the subjunctive? If you
speak a Romance language, you probably have
some idea already. Technically, the subjunctive
is not a tense but a mood: Where the familiar
indicative mood simply tells you what is happening, the subjunctive mood tells you what could
happen. Thus, it is primarily used to express six
things: suppositions, wishes, demands, suggestions, statements of necessity, and conditions contrary to fact. People can be especially upset when
you don’t use the subjunctive for that last one.
Write “if I was in charge” for “if I were in charge”
in a cover letter and you risk it getting discarded
in a huff of grammatical over-sensitivity.
The question, of course, is whether we ought
to be concerned by the slow death of the subjunctive. Once upon a time it was a more visible
feature of our language. In Shakespeare’s day,
the “-est” termination meant that the subjunctive was obvious in the second person as well
as in the third-person singular. An Elizabethan
would have said “thou sattest,” but “thou sat”
in the subjunctive; he or she would have also
used the subjunctive for any hypotheticals, and
not just for those six I listed above. But in the
last century or so, the subjunctive has quietly
retreated from English writing, prompting alarm
in sticklers like Ida Mason, who wrote hotly to
the editor of the New York Times in 1924:
“How many Americans are alive to another
sinister and subtle danger that is threatening a vital prop of the nation, viz. the frequent
disregard of the subjunctive mood, from the
pens of those who should know better? In these
parlous times, what comfort is there to take
refuge in a book only to be jarred by ‘If I was
thus and so, I would do this and that’? I demand
a Congressional investigation to discover what
sinister propaganda is at the bottom of this new
peril.”
I would be surprised if Mason were serious. But, there are good reasons for keeping
the English subjunctive around (and Knox, or
wherever). Occasionally, it really does make a
difference: Consider what “I insist that he is
here” means and note how “I insist that he be
here” means something else altogether. Or consider the rhythm of something like “thy kingdom
come, thy will be done” and how “we hope thy
kingdom will come and thy will will be done”
doesn’t quite have the same elegance. I don’t
believe we should call people out for their neglect of something as moribund as the subjunctive. But maybe we could get together and start
a charity to keep this forgotten fragment of the
English language on life support.
Sinclair Target is a Columbia College junior
majoring in computer science. On Target runs
alternate Fridays.
‘12-12-12’ documents benefit concert for Hurricane Sandy relief, features big names
BY CARROL GELDERMAN & BROOKE
ROBBINS
About a year ago to date, Hurricane Sandy
wreaked havoc on the tri-state area, displacing
families and causing billions of dollars of property
damage. On Dec. 12, 2012, media magnates James
Dolan, John Sykes, and Harvey Weinstein brought
together a remarkable compendium of celebrities
for a benefit concert, raising $50 million in a single,
astonishing musical feat. The documentary film
“12-12-12,” a nonfiction tribute to the event coming
out in select theaters today, highlights the tenacity of the New York state of mind and offers the
nation a glimpse of light amidst the storm’s tragic
consequences.
When producer Meghan O’Hara announced the
participating talent, including legends such as Paul
McCartney, the Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton,
she knew there was a film to be made. She had just
finished working with Weinstein on “Seal Team
Six,” so she was in contact with the film executive.
“I immediately emailed him to his personal address and I said, ‘You know that you’re sitting on
one of the greatest rock and roll documentaries
of all time, right? I hope you’re going to do something,’” O’Hara said in an interview with Spectator.
“He wrote back, probably within 30 seconds,
‘Sounds good, who’s going to direct?’”
Soon Amir Bar-Lev and Charlie Lightening
were attached to direct and the filmmakers faced
the challenge of having a few mere weeks to organize the shoot. “It was all very, very last minute,”
she said. “The night of what really mattered was
what we covered, who our characters were, who
we would shadow all night so that there was some
kind of narrative and not just behind-the-scenes
shots.”
O’Hara said that the most valuable asset during
the shoot was stamina. “I think we started rolling
at about 9 a.m. and Amir, Charlie, myself, and all
our crew were literally on our feet until 1:30 in the
morning,” she said.
During the editing process, the filmmakers
worked to strike a balance between the documentary’s many subjects: backstage drama, the
performances and rehearsals, Sandy itself, first
responders, and the event’s organizers.
“We had such an embarrassment of riches,” she
said. “It took us a while to find the balance and it
was not easy. It was really a lot of back and forth,
but ... in the end I think that we found the right
formula.”
It was important to the filmmakers to strike this
balance in order to create a celebratory film rather
than a depressing one.
“I think for both Amir and I it was really important that we didn’t make a film that felt exploitative
in any way or a film that was—to use a term Amir
coined—‘disaster porn,’” O’Hara said.
“We wanted to make a film that was reflective
of the night—and the night was really joyous,”
she said. “It was one of those experiences where
it was like, ‘This is the best of New York. This is
what New Yorkers do and what they’re capable
of.’”
‘12-12-12’ opens in select theaters in New York
on Nov. 15.
[email protected]
COURTESY OF THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY
ROCK ME LIKE A HURRICANE | Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton were
among the talent that performed for the Hurricane Sandy benefit concert on Dec. 12, 2012.
WEEKEND PAGE B4
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
Flipside
Guide
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Julie Taymor’s take on Shakespeare
could use more finesse
WHERE IT’S AT
Cost: $5.99 on Amazon
Rating: »»»«
ILLUSTRATION BY IONE WANG
BY REUBEN BERMAN
Spectator Theater Critic
Every theater in New York seems to want a piece of the Bard
this season. With an all-female production of “Julius Caesar” at
St. Ann’s Warehouse, Mark Rylance doing both “Richard III” and
“Twelfth Night,” Orlando Bloom in “Romeo and Juliet,” and a complete “Hamlet” on Bleecker Street, there is no dearth of options.
However, none of these productions are directed by the legendary
Julie Taymor, of “The Lion King,” “Spider-Man,” and “The Magic
Flute” fame. Until Jan. 12, she brings her craft to Brooklyn, inaugurating the brand new home of the Theatre for a New Audience with
her interpretation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
If you can’t sit still upon hearing that news, well, neither could
the actors who work under her. Dynamism is the watchword and
restraint the enemy within this production. In a trick that gets repeated once too often, the performance opens with a person lying
down to sleep, only to be lifted up by sheets and cut away from the
waking world. On an empty black stage that juts into the audience
like the prow of a ship, we are transported to the dream world of
fairies, lovers, and gods.
Shakespeare’s masterful comedy needs little explanation. While
promised to Demetrius, the beautiful Hermia loves and is loved by
Lysander. They elope to the forest only to be followed by Demetrius
and his lover, Helena. Meanwhile, Titania and Oberon, queen and
king of the fairies, fight for possession of an Indian prince, and
Oberon, incensed that he cannot have his way, plots his revenge
with the help of Puck. In that same forest, players from Athens
prepare a performance for the soon-to-wed king and queen of the
city. A love potion is introduced, mistakes are made, hilarity ensues,
and all ends in weddings and happiness.
Among the lovers, Jake Horowitz and Zach Appelman, as
Lysander and Demetrius, are well-matched as competitors for
Hermia’s love. Their banter is fluid and their motions amusing,
especially when they are trying to impress the lady. Unfortunately,
the same can’t be said for the women. While Mandi Masden’s
Helena evokes the pain and humiliation of rejection and brings fire
to her words and deeds, Lilly Englert as Hermia lacks the power
or urgency to compete and emerges more whiny than passionate.
While she might be adorable in love, Englert is pitifully outmanned
in her conflict with Helena.
Tina Benko (Titania) and David Harewood (Oberon), dressed in
incredible but ridiculous costumes, walk the stage with magisterial
authority and are unafraid to show the full range of love and hate.
Puck, played by the mischievous Kathryn Hunter, brings out some
of the best slapstick humor, while the bombastic and overbearing
Max Casella as Bottom (whose donkey’s head is quite impressive)
brings verbal jocularity.
While we might wish for direction that truly brings out the most
creative and cohesive elements of Taymor’s prodigious abilities,
there are undeniable moments and flashes of brilliance, uncut
diamonds that could have used just a bit more polishing.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” plays at the Theatre for a New
Audience through Jan. 12. Tickets start at $75.
[email protected]
WHERE IT’S AT
Time: Through Jan. 12
Place: Theatre for a New
Audience, 262 Ashland Place,
Brooklyn
Cost: $75
Rating: »»
courtesy of es devlin
WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE | “A Midsummer Night’s
Dream” inaugurates the Theatre for a New Audience’s new location.
‘Artpop’
Lady Gaga’s latest album
otherworldly, experimental
BY ALEXANDRA WARRICK
It’s May 2010, and I am furiously painting a plastic lobster white.
Lady Gaga had just worn a lobster-shaped, Philip Treacy fascinator,
and my devotion to the pop star was reaching a fever pitch. I might
have looked like a dweeb with a piece of plastic trash wired to my
head, but in my mind, I was a goddess. The ’Ga has the power to
make the dowdy feel dramatic and the dorky feel divine. And when
she’s not exploring the joys of hallocinogenics, Greek mythology,
and taffeta, she explores the nature of feeling fabulous in her new,
fittingly bizarre album “Artpop.”
Gaga’s modus operandi on this album is the following: Pick two
or three major themes—sex, murder, glamor, or Hollywood—combine them with the oddest Euro techno sample you can find, and
fill the spaces between choruses with strange noises or German.
Somehow, this recipe works in “Aura,” if only for the song’s sheer
audacity. “Aura” segues from swaggy guitar into a truly baffling
section in which Gaga maniacally cackles before growling over
weird techno burps like a witch from a Disney movie. Par for the
course, the song finishes with Gaga screaming in broken German.
“Venus” is similarly daring: The track opens with a quote from
jazz musician and cosmic philosopher Sun Ra, and it continues
to assault the senses with 808 drums and spacey vocals that are
layered over thumping French electro-disco. The first in a litany
of odd lyrical choices on the album, Gaga begins to simply list
the names of planets. Another track that seems otherworldly is
“Artpop,” which has a beat that sounds like the inside of a spaceship’s control room. With an alien beeping “Free. My. Mind.
Artpop,” Gaga chants, “You. Make. My. Heart stop.”
“Sexxx Dreams,” the album’s crown jewel and a personal
November anthem, is also synthy. Gaga’s voice takes on a woozy,
seductive quality as she plays the coquette, giggling infectiously as
she explains her scandalous admissions: “I can’t believe I’m telling
you this, but I’ve had a couple of drinks and, oh my god...” With its
propulsive synths and breathless chorus, this song has potential
single written all over it.
Gaga experiments a great deal with genre in this album, beginning with a disappointing foray into trap music in “Jewels n’
Drugs.” The track is bland and undistinguished, and Gaga’s irritating drone in the chorus amounts to nothing but empty noise.
Nevertheless, you should appreciate Gaga’s genre experimentation,
and her risk-taking continues with a solid marriage of R&B and
electronic music in “Do What U Want.” This song is noteworthy
for an awkward appearance by R. Kelly, who promises, “You’re the
Marilyn, I’m the president.” (Smooth.)
Gaga—who fancies herself a rock musician when not doing her
usual glossy pop—has several tracks that feint in the direction of
punk, including “MANiCURE,” a hand-clapping, foot-stomping
rock song. Her vaguely accented shouts are reminiscent of X-Ray
Spex’s late Poly Styrene, but the track still falls short of greatness.
Her next rock-meets-electronic experiment is “Swine,” an emotionally significant song for Gaga that isn’t a languishing ballad
(like many emotional songs tend to be.) Instead, it’s a thumping,
angry, vicious indictment of piggish individuals in the songstress’
life. Gaga vents her aggression over a hiccupping EDM beat, her
screams rivaling those of seasoned death metal frontmen.
Similarly shunning categorization is “Gypsy,” produced by the
baby-faced teenage EDM prodigy Madeon. Just when it’s beginning to sound like the theme song for a dorky ’90s TV show, Gaga
bursts into a rousing belt. “I’m a man without a home,” she croons,
“but I think/with you I could spend my life.” The album concludes
with the explosive “Applause,” a dizzy, irrepressibly theatrical
German techno masterpiece that’s part Nina Hagen, part sci-fi
villain, and all Gaga.
“Artpop” is a deliciously deranged experiment, one in which
Gaga threw a bucketful of sonic and lyrical concepts at the wall to
see what stuck. The album is uneven, but you have no choice but
to admit that it’s obscenely entertaining. Listening to this album
will make you feel like a space deity from Venus, so don’t forget
your crustacean hat.
[email protected]
‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’
Metropolitan Opera presents season
highlight in Strauss production
BY CHRIS BROWNER
Spectator Opera Critic
On the surface, Richard Strauss’ opera “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (“The
Woman without a Shadow”) is a fairytale about an empress’ mythical
quest. Upon further inspection, however, it is a musing on the nature
of humanity, the trials of love, and the importance of one’s legacy. This
season’s production at the Metropolitan Opera combines a breathtaking
production with a vocally outstanding cast and masterful orchestra to
offer one of the best performances of the year.
The opera follows a mystical empress who casts no shadow. If, after
being married for 12 months, she has not acquired a shadow, she must
return to her father, the otherworldly deity Keikobad, and her royal husband will be turned to stone. To find a shadow, the empress and her nurse
descend into the domain of the human laborers, and they encounter a
couple whose infertility has put a painful strain on their marriage. As the
story progresses, each character seeks a peaceful resolution within the
collision of these two worlds.
The standout of the evening was easily the late German director
Herbert Wernicke’s staging. The story unfolds in the celestial realm of
the nobility and the grimy world of the working-class peasants. The
production matches this contrast with two aesthetically opposed sets.
The realm of the empress is represented by an expansive room covered completely with polished mirrors. The effect is pure magic: Light,
color, and shapes reflect off the walls and ceiling, transforming the simple
space into an variety of endless locations.
The second set is the cluttered, filthy dwelling of the dyer Barak
and his wife. While this environment has none of the elegance of the
empress’s abode, it is nevertheless incredibly detailed, down to a refrigerator stocked with beer. Both sets are incredibly compelling on their
own, but it is the juxtaposition of and transition between the two that
is most impressive.
The cast of “Frau” rises to the production’s incredibly high standard. As the shadowless empress, debutante Anne Schwanewilms gave
a spellbinding performance with a silvery tone that was perfect for
Strauss’s lustrous long lines. In addition to effortlessly pure quality
throughout, Schwanewilms delivered a powerful spoken monologue
in Act 3 as her character makes a difficult choice.
As an emperor whose fate lies in his wife’s quest, tenor Torsten Kerl
tackled the demanding role with confidence and lyrical beauty. Strauss
is famous for composing unbelievably taxing tenor roles that sit very
high in the voice. Despite such a challenge, he executed his musical part
with ringing high notes and a small but warm sound.
The vocal star of the performance was American dramatic soprano
Christine Goerke, who played the Dyer’s wife. Like Schwanewilms,
Goerke’s performance showed no signs of strain. Instead, her voice
soared into the immense auditorium and imbued the role with a full
range of emotional and musical colors. This masterful vocal display
was well-matched with poignant acting. Her character was neither
WHERE IT’S AT
Time: Through Nov. 26
Place: Metropolitan Opera,
Lincoln Center
Cost: Tickets start at $75
Rating: »»»»»
courtesy of the metropolitan opera
MY SHADOW “Die Frau ohne Schatten” follows the story of a
mystical empress who casts no shadow.
|
shrewish nor one-dimensionally nasty; this was a woman who was
struggling with unhappiness and regret.
Goerke was paired with baritone Johan Reuter as the dyer, Barak.
Reuter balanced forceful and hefty singing with moments of gentle
expressiveness. His characterization was equally complex as he communicated Barak’s brutish exterior and his potential to be sensitive
and compassionate.
Despite her vocal instability, Ildikó Komlósi, who plays the Nurse,
brought power and unceasing energy that was appropriate for her
desperate and manipulative character. Richard Paul Fink’s robust and
gravelly sound was suitable for the Messenger, and dancer Scott Weber
brought fluid acrobatics to his silent role as the Falcon.
A team of almost two dozen talented singers filled out the opera’s
many supporting roles, and the Met’s orchestra, under the direction
of Vladimir Jurowski, evoked Strauss’ myriad of orchestral nuances in
this outstanding performance.
Words can do only so much to describe this production’s riveting
theatricality; it must be experienced in person. With that said, the opera
itself is not for the faint of heart. The music is incredibly intense and
the emotions are raw. This is certainly a piece that rewards those who
get to know it before heading to the theater. But for Columbia students
who are willing to wade further out into the depths of the operatic repertory and allow themselves be captivated by a thrilling performance,
there is no better opportunity than this run of “Die Frau ohne Schatten.”
“Die Frau ohne Schatten” runs at the Metropolitan Opera through
Nov. 26. Tickets start at $27.
[email protected]

11-15-13 WEB - Columbia Daily Spectator

Transcription

Similar documents

Top 10 reasons to love Columbia, Mo.

YLC JAN2-4 brochure - Greater Forsyth County Young Life

THE COMMUNICATOR July 1, 2014 - Columbia United Church of

OAK HALL LANE - Merritt Properties

October 13-19, 2014 The Mayor`s Walk Against Domestic Violence

BP Columbia ParCar Enlargement.indd

Presentation Slides

One Minute Scare the Crap Out of Me

Roscoe`s Chili Challenge