(Re)-Education: A Matter of Tradition
January 27, 2004

Sitting on my desk as I write is one of this year's now infamous Orgo Night fliers. "Who Needs Ethnic Studies?" reads the caption above a caricature of Michael Jackson. If only because I don't quite understand it, this flier is not as objectively offensive as others from this year or years past. For truly offensive material, one could look to this year's flier mocking the recent death of the late University Professor Edward Said, or to the phone mail message sent to the entire campus two years ago—a song with the refrain of "big black balls." What I find striking about the ethnic studies flier in particular is that it represents not so much the Columbia University Marching Band's deliberate attempt to be obnoxious, but rather the way in which ethnic studies is viewed by the majority of people on campus.

Ethnic studies is treated as an easily dismissible joke that caters to the whims of minorities with identity crises, and rarely as a serious intellectual commitment that the University owes its student body. Orgo Night, along with other arenas in which humor comes at the expense of marginalized populations, are indications of the cost of such an approach.

Orgo Night is often described as Columbia's oldest, or only tradition. However, like so many other traditions on this campus, it is one that caters only to a specific segment of the student population, while isolating and alienating other groups on campus.

Even before anything about Orgo Night offended me, it never struck as me as something I wanted to be a part of. When the event was taking place my freshman year, I heard the commotion beneath my window and asked a junior suitemate what was going on. "Orgo Night," he replied. "It's like, a lot of white people screaming or something." Now, those of you who plan to write in and tell me that it's hypocritical to preemptively classify Orgo Night as an event for "white people" while simultaneously complaining about the alienation of minority students on campus need not exert yourselves. My point is that many Columbia students feel excluded from or offended by the event, but at the same time many others wonder why such people can't shut up and let the CUMB have its fun. This gap in perspective indicates a larger divide on campus, one that the University actively, if not intentionally, promotes.

The discipline of ethnic studies—the study of the experiences of minority groups—is low on the list of Columbia's academic commitments. Students majoring in areas related to ethnic studies (a formal comparative ethnic studies major does not yet exist) often find that courses they need to graduate don't exist. Even in the more developed programs in that area, a rotating faculty makes it difficult for students to anticipate their long-term schedules or to build relationships with their professors. New faculty appointments are bogged down in a lengthy bureaucratic process. A Comparative Ethnic Studies major has been continually rejected by the Committee on Instruction, meaning that would-be majors are often deterred from pursuing the field.

Although these problems with pursuing a course of study in ethnicity and race may deter students who already have an interest in the field, the real danger is to those who have no interest in ethnic studies whatsoever—often the students who could most benefit from the information and intellectual framework provided by such courses.

In order to ostensibly combat the problem of getting such students into an ethnic studies classroom, Columbia instituted the Major Cultures requirement, the stepchild of the Core Curriculum. The broad range of courses that fulfill the requirement, the fact that in any given year half of those courses are unavailable because of the problems detailed above, and the fact that the fulfillment of a two semester sequence is used to justify the trivialization of minority experiences in other Core classes—implicitly reinforcing the false binary between the imagined "west" and everywhere else—indicate that ethnic studies is not a serious concern for the University.

The academic trivialization of ethnic studies and minority experiences at Columbia both contributes to the widespread ignorance of the history of race in this country and the role that even "humorous" events play in that history. It also serves to reinforce the idea that students are justified in not taking the complaints of students of color seriously. Why should they, when the administration doesn't?

Last year, at a forum on the Core, I alleged that it was morally and intellectually irresponsible for the University to graduate students who neither had an understanding of the fact that non-white people think about the world in a meaningful way, nor of what it means to be marginalized. While generally sympathetic, administrators present seemed to think that this was a gross exaggeration. Now, faced with the continued tolerance of Orgo Night's advertising, I wonder what the administration makes of the fact that racist, sexist, and homophobic fliers continue to draw crowds of students, who find nothing wrong with the situation and are offended by criticism of the event.

During a recent meeting with a University official, an upset student was asked to keep in mind that the Orgo Night was a "tradition." It is about time that Columbia addressed its real tradition of isolating minority students and exacerbating the problem with its approach to the study of marginalized groups.

So who needs ethnic studies? Michael Jackson may, and if Columbia wants to graduate educated and responsible citizens, or is concerned about the social climate of its campus, so do we all.

(Re)-Education: Everybody Wins
February 10, 2004

"Everybody wins" seems to have become the unofficial motto of Columbia University's planned expansion into West Harlem. Manhattanville, the story goes, is a wasteland, while Columbia is a world-class institution with a need for space. Students who have questioned this representation have in large part been kept out of the official conversation—written off as ill-informed activists who have romanticized the 1968 student riots and don't want to graduate without having locked themselves in a building.

In fact, student and community activists challenging the official University line are refusing to romanticize Columbia's history or avoid the issue of gentrification. Gentrification involves the development of space such that the character of neighborhoods changes; poor and working class people in and around these new developments must contend with changes in price and the neighborhood itself. Let's agree that gentrification is a complex phenomenon with a number of implications, some of which are welcomed by most members of a given community. But let's also put on the table that, whatever verbal commitments Columbia makes to historical or community preservation, gentrification is the inevitable consequence of having a rich institution like Columbia in a neighborhood like West Harlem.

We should be realistic and not pretend that we are only talking about the 10 block area of Manhattanville. This plan will affect not only Manhattanville, but the surrounding communities as well. The University has called this the first phase of a 30-year plan, which, if unchallenged, will lead to continued space acquisition, formal and informal. At present, the University is acquiring and seeking to develop property not only in Manhattanville, but also in Washington Heights and around 110th Street. So, instead of romanticizing what gentrification is, let's be frank about what it's not.

Gentrification is not the only or inevitable solution to the problems of urban communities. While not unlivable or unused to the extent that some people seem to believe, the Manhattanville area certainly has its problems, among them unemployment, underemployment, and abandoned buildings. But it also has its own community organizations, with strategies for addressing the needs of the area. The proposed expansion has been the subject of lively debate among community residents and activists. Community Board 9 is currently proposing an alternate development plan, the 197-a plan, emphasizing the needs of the community rather than the needs of Columbia University. In short, Columbia may need Manhattanville's space, but Manhattanville does not need Columbia to speak for it.

Gentrification is not a simple question of neighborhood "improvement." Even to those who support the expansion, or accept its inevitability, aspects of Columbia's plan have been troubling. Columbia officials have been reluctant or unable to commit to the preservation of affordable housing on Columbia property, or to the training of local residents for new jobs that will require skills different from those that local residents and displaced workers currently possess. New security measures, including the mounting of surveillance cameras throughout the area, have been the subject of some debate. Columbia's stated desire to collaborate with community groups has been undermined by a lack of transparency in the planning process—plans have generally been made public in their final stages.

Gentrification is not a numbers game. We cannot look at the before and after figures and say, for example, that expansion will be successful if the net total number of jobs increases. What we are dealing with is not a change in numbers, but a change in lives. The difference between being a self-employed mechanic and being an unskilled employee of Columbia University is not simply a change in income. Institutionalized space is quite different from a familiar neighborhood. There are real people involved in these transactions, and it's not up to Columbia students or administrators to decide what changes are necessary or desirable in other people's lives.

Ultimately, the University holds the balance of power in this situation. The power dynamics are not so different from what they were in 1968—a large, rich, white University and a neighborhood that is none of those things. Anyone who thinks that interactions between powerful and powerless entities always result in their mutual benefit should pick up a CC text or a newspaper.

Luckily, we have the power to be vocal, to be skeptical, and to change the terms of the debate by introducing new perspectives. We, as students, can demand transparency, and wonder whether the advantages of expansion are worth the cost. If the University cannot publicly acknowledge the validity of such critiques, it is either naïvely myopic itself, or disingenuously counting on the myopia and naïveté of its student body. I am skeptical of this University's ability to carry out a project like expansion in a way that does not rely on and perpetuate the existing power imbalances. Unless student and community members continue to insist upon their inclusion, and the public release of information related to the expansion, it will benefit a limited few at the expense of the residents and employees of Manhattanville and the surrounding areas.

(Re)-Education: Déjà Vu?
February 24, 2004

According to Albert Einstein, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I couldn't help but think of this quotation as I sat down to write yet another defense of affirmative action. Yes, there are facts and figures, and legal, moral and logical arguments that can be made—I have made them in daily conversation, in debate forums, even in the pages of this very newspaper—yet after four years, I am still facing the same demand I faced at Days on Campus: prove that you belong here.

Confronted with that silent and ever-present demand, I cannot help but be reminded of James Baldwin. He wrote, "Any Negro who is born in this country and undergoes the American education system runs the risk of becoming schizophrenic. . . . It does not matter whether it destroys [the black child] by stoning him in the ghetto or by driving him mad in the isolation of Harvard. . . . It is an absolute wonder and an overwhelming witness to the power of the human spirit that any black person in this country has managed to become, in any way whatever, educated."

I must wonder, when I find myself and other students of color repeating the same explanations and thinking they'll mean something, attending the same meetings with the same people and thinking it will change something, whether we are all crazy for perpetually attempting to answer the same question and explain the same circumstances, even in a situation where we have no other option.

It is with this in mind that I set out to answer the question, again. First, I will try to expound the logical argument for affirmative action. Any insinuation that some people are less "qualified" to be here than others hinges on two central falsehoods: that there are such things as "objective" standards, and that there can be such a thing as color-blindness. In fact, every measure of success is, at a minimum, arbitrary and, at worst, biased by the fact that it is created and enforced by the people who hold the most power in this country (hint: not minorities).

Then there is the reality that everyone, including the legal minds defending affirmative action, tends to ignore: racism still exists. These days even the pro–affirmative action crowd has shunned citing case studies and statistics on institutionalized racism, and made an argument that essentially boils down to "diversity is a compelling interest because it gives the white students colored people to eat lunch with."

Meanwhile, racism continues to exist in both subtle and blatant contexts. It exists in the form of the often cited pervasive economic inequality that plagues minority communities, but it also exists, at times more directly, in suburban neighborhoods and high schools and all of the other places from which middle-class black students who supposedly do not "deserve" to benefit from affirmative action come. Yet, affirmative action, championed by civil rights leaders in order to fight the residual and ongoing effects of racism, is ironically called the last form of racism.

I must confess, however, logic is not always the first response to what feels like an attack on your right to be at a place that you have given four years of your life. For every smug individual who fake-politely inquires about your test scores, for every loud publicity stunt urging that only "qualified" students be admitted to Columbia, for every 25 cent brownie that implies your life has been handed to you where white men have struggled for theirs, there is a part of you that wants to scream something like: "I belong here because I have been here for four years and learned to function on three hours of sleep daily so there would be time to finish two majors and a concentration while working and never serving on less than three club boards at any given time. If you really want to be embarrassed let's talk about my GPA and my test scores because I bet they're higher than yours. That's in spite of the fact that I spend half my life at meetings, even when I need to be working on my thesis, because I am forced to be angry even on days when I have absolutely no time to be black and female in addition to everything else, and it's a good thing I have nothing left to prove because I am tired and running out of things to give."

Such rants are ultimately ineffective, because they give in to the impulse to seek other people's validation. All I can do is come to the conclusion that I owe explanations to no one but myself. To the extent that this means I am not fulfilling my "compelling interest" obligation, the administration will just have to deal with it, because the diverse group of people I choose to eat lunch with are people who don't need my value explained to them.

By my standards, an understanding of the past and present realities of racism, and an understanding of what kinds of harmful actions in which you shouldn't engage, even if you can, ought to be qualifications for coming to college. I'm waiting for a lot of people to start proving that they deserve to attend Columbia.

Are You Qualified?
March 10, 2004

While politicians weigh in on affirmative action and students debate the merits of race-conscious admissions, universities have begun to roll back their affirmative action policies, starting with the elimination or retooling of programs targeting minority students. The backlash against affirmative action is coming even from universities that have filed pro–affirmative action amicus briefs in the University of Michigan case. In light of these drastic measures, Columbia's chapter of the Ivy Student Affirmative Action Coalition is working to address misconceptions about affirmative action, and is raising money to bring Columbia students to the Supreme Court on April 1, where thousands will gather to tell policymakers that affirmative action is necessary and valuable. Critics of affirmative action implicitly argue that race is no longer a meaningful category. They laud the introduction of "merit-based" programs that rely on "objective" criteria like GPA and test scores. Many refer to themselves as followers of Martin Luther King, which is ironic both because King's contemporary status as the barometer for political correctness belies the fact that he was demonized by most of the country during his life, and because King piloted one of the first affirmative action programs and stated explicitly that color-blind treatment would never be enough to address the legacy of race in this country.

An honest assessment of the world reveals that he was right. It is a ridiculous moment in which to argue that affirmative action is the last arena of formal race-based policy and institutionalized racial privilege. George Bush, who was elected in part through the disenfranchisement and deception of black voters, is about to send disproportionately black and brown troops to fight a war in which other brown people will be killed. Communities of color are hardest hit by both the economic recession and the repressive policies that have given the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the criminal justice system a tighter reign over them.

Evidence of this phenomenon can be seen nationwide. A black or Latino adolescent is more likely to go to prison than to college in New York, and more blacks and Latinos enter the state prison system than the state colleges every year; in California, there are five blacks and Latinos in prison for every one in college, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. These facts seem less than accidental when one points out that New York State removed from the education budget almost exactly what it put into the prison budget, California ended affirmative action in state institutions but cut funding for everything except the state prison system, and the Indiana State Corrections Commissioner has recommended estimating the number prison cells needed in the future based on the number of second graders who can't read.

The racialized world doesn't stop at the college gates (if it did, Columbia might not feel the need for iron gates in the first place). When critics of affirmative action argue that minorities are taking the spots of qualified white applicants, they reveal the depth of their unexamined white privilege. In what world is a student so entitled to a competitive college admission that another person can "take" it? Furthermore, the notion of "qualified" begs an examination of standards.

So-called "objective" criteria depend on myriad subjective factors. Race—and institutionalized racism—affect what courses are available where, and who is placed in what courses even where advanced classes are available. Race often affects teachers' perceptions of students' abilities, grading policies, and school districts' enactment of disciplinary policies. A standardized test is not an objective measure of anything when the standard is set by a privileged group. Studies of standardized testing indicate that such tests are imperfect predictors of success and are ineffective at predicting the success of minority students.

Given such realities, there can be no color-blindness, even if schools do begin to meaningfully address class discrepancies. While class-conscious admissions are valuable in their own right, it is ludicrous to argue that middle-class minorities somehow cease to be impacted by racism, as if there is no such thing as race in the suburbs. It is not "objective" to take a person who has been treated as black for eighteen years and imagine that he or she is race-neutral when admissions decisions are made.

Of course, race is not a perfect category. Recognizing the necessity of affirmative action should not mean accepting racial identity as rigid. There is room for more nuanced readings of the roles that race plays in people's social and educational experience. There is a particular need to explore the ways that broad racial categories marginalize or misrepresent certain groups' experiences.

Additionally, if colleges are to acknowledge the value of diverse campuses, they must realize diversity means more than making sure that an overhead shot of the campus could be used as a Benetton ad. If the presence of minority students adds to the academic and social life of a university, administrators must value their input. Despite decades of student protest, ethnic studies courses are still woefully inadequate, tenured faculty of color are lacking, and multiculturalism quite often takes the form of watered down catch-phrases and a social environment in which students of color become mentally and physically worn out by the institution's constant demand that they perform race, "be" diversity, and essentially do for the campus what the university should be doing itself. Clearly there is room for improvement, but the Supreme Court and the American public must realize that there is no room, and no time, to move backwards.

(Re)-Education: Shock Value
April 06, 2004

Several weeks after the public demonstrations calling attention to institutionalized racism and its impact on the Columbia community, the dialogue on race and racism on campus has dwindled, particularly among those not actively involved in the ongoing negotiations with the administration. This silence, while predictable given the amnesia that midterms and spring break annually induce, is a shame. Among the people for whom the conversation about race was newest and most crucial, it has stopped before it started. This is not to say that everyone responded to the silent protest by seriously engaging the issues that organizers were raising. Leaving the demonstration one afternoon, I heard one student say to another, "Not this bullshit again," while walking past. Earlier in the week, as I was getting my mail in Lerner, I overheard a student saying, "If they don't get that this was just a joke, they really aren't smart enough to be here." It was this attitude of dismissiveness—sadly, neither new nor surprising—that principally motivated my own involvement in the demonstrations. Not to make a habit of quoting James Baldwin—though as habits go, it's better than most of my other ones—but here, once again: "It is the innocence that constitutes the crime." What is most troubling about the still unfinished conversation about race on this campus is the repeated denial of the problem, the continued insistence that no one was responsible for or obligated to address people's anger and injury if it didn't resonate with them.

From my perspective—and I speak only for myself, not in any official capacity—although the silent protest derived a great deal of energy from public incidents like the CCCC bake sale, Orgo Night, and The Fed cartoon, it was ultimately about much more. Frustration among marginalized segments of the student body has been present for quite some time. Many students of color at Columbia do not and never have felt that they are equal members of the university community. The frequency of ignorant and racist comments, challenges to their very right to attend the university, and neglect by university officials who write off most of these complaints have led to feelings of alienation and anger among students of color that are easily awakened by events like these, even when they are framed as satire.

We do not all enter the university on equal footing; we cannot pretend we are united enough or familiar enough to mock each other and pretend it is "all in the family." Rather, we deal daily with manifestations of privilege, in classrooms, on our syllabi, and in our public spaces, and when we attempt to confront them we are generally greeted with the glib rhetoric of diversity and tolerance that assumes slogans are enough, and ultimately insists upon its own innocence while dismissing criticism as emotional or irrational.

At a point when I was spending a great deal of time thinking and talking about these issues, a friend interjected, "I'm not saying that you're not right, but aren't there more important things to worry about?" During that time I was also watching and re-watching war documentaries for my thesis. Certainly, while looking at explosions and dismembered bodies flicker across the television screen, it was at times hard for me not to see this action, like most other campus action, as somewhat trivial.

However, while watching people our age describe explosions or battles as "just like in the movies," and then return to fight them, I was struck by the casual acquiescence to the perpetual inevitability of hostility, even when its result was death. It was a dismissive attitude not entirely unrelated to the attitude exhibited on our own campus—the attitude that some people's anger can be written off, that some conversations about difference cannot or need not be entertained, that we will engage certain people only when shocked into thinking about them, and will do so only from the perspective that we are innocent victims of their naïve or willfully malevolent irrationality.

As someone who will be leaving Columbia in a little over a month, and already feels very little attachment to it, I certainly understand that there is a world bigger than what lies within these gates. However, at the risk of falling into the trap of "the left is always conflating separate issues, and thereby confusing them," I continue to believe that if Columbia University graduates people who are unwilling or unable to tolerate a critique of their campus, who believe change to be impossible, and who are able to ignore or ridicule the injuries of their classmates and deny their own responsibility in creating them, it is graduating irresponsible world citizens.

I hope that negotiations on the proposal submitted by student organizers result in serious commitments on the part of the University, but also that, regardless of administrative action, students are willing to finish uncomfortable conversations and be troubled by the stress and distress of their fellow students. We must all take responsibility for the problems in our own community—of which racial privilege is only one—even if treating them as serious problems implicates all of us.