It's a truth universally acknowledged that, with the exception of, like, Bob Jones University, institutions of higher education are generally more progressive than the world outside their gates. But all the idealistic hippie students who came of age in the '60s and later became idealistic hippie professors are now retiring. The younger professors replacing them still disproportionately vote Democratic, but they are "less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate": 17.2% of the 50-64 age group define themselves as "liberal activists," versus 1.3% of professors 35 and younger. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a 31-year-old professor, told the New York Times, "My generation is not so ideologically driven" and the article credits the rise of civil discourse over fractious infighting. Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps finally noticing that someone put a bunch of tents on their lawn, the Columbia administration has responded to the Hunger Strike. In a University-wide email, they mainly cite initiatives that they're "already taking," including hiring some new ethnic studies faculty that they were already hiring anyway and talking about the Core curriculum in Task Force meetings they were already having. It may seem like their offer is basically, "How about we change nothing?" but consider this: When the hungry raised their voices to cry for a Vice Provost for Multicultural Affairs, the administration said that their ongoing review of that office "will be extended to incorporate consideration" of that. Guess incorporating consideration wasn't the pipe dream we all thought it was.

The Columbia College Student Council has formally stated its support for a less ludicrous version of the Strikers'demands. It almost makes you wonder if the representatives that Columbia students actually elected are more reasonable than those who appointed themselves through the alternative "pitch a tent and stop eating" method.

Of course, the student council doesn't have the media savvy to put a giant paper octopus in front of its tents. Somehow representing Columbia expansion, the octopus lasted about a day before it was covered with a besloganed banner to protect it from rain. Ah, Hunger Strike demands: the thin shield between reality and a melodramatic, confusing spectacle.

And the best news of all? The Hunger Strikers met President Bollinger outside his classroom to hand him some slogan-heavy balloons He gave half of them to a stranger on 117th Street before, as Spec has it, he "carried the remaining balloons into his compound." Striker Victoria Ruiz, CC '09, responded with what may be the best cryptic threat of the whole Strike: "This is the first of many things he will be receiving."

Possible other things he will be receiving:

• Party Hats painted as black as Bollinger's soul
• Cotton Candy as substantive as his response
• One of Those Things You Blow at a New Year's Eve party... painted as black as Bollinger's soul
• Tootsie Rolls

So, remember how we made those pro-ana jokes about the Columbia hunger strikers, whose demands were so vague we figured they were just anorexic kids looking for attention? Upon the hospitalization last night of hunger striker Aretha Choi, Barnard '10, an article from last spring's Audrey (an Asian-American women's magazine) came to light:

Aretha Choi, a Korean American freshman at Barnard College in New York City, began watching her weight in middle school. ... By her junior year [of high school], she was anorexic. At 5-foot-7, she withered to 90 pounds. Doctors pleaded with her to be hospitalized...

Oh. Shit.

Aretha's post-strike statement expressed shame and invoked God in the name of starvation-related-medical catastrophe:

I felt utterly ashamed and I felt that I had let the four other strikers, the many supporters, and myself down. Only 4 days? Only 4 days? Only 4 days? That was the question plaguing me until I was laying with fluids running into my arm.

Lying in the starchy hospital bed, I was covered in self-disappointment. I could not help but wish God had given me more strength so that my body would have held out longer. I wanted to go back out to the tents. I felt like I had given up.

Does this mean Aretha's "supporters" were actually "enablers"? Speaking of which, how weird is it that Gandhian scholar and Barnard professor Dennis Dalton joined the strike? Having previously starved in protest of noble causes like ending apartheid, Prof. Dalton now seals his activism and physical wellbeing with a group of eating disordered undergrads. Must take the winds out of the sails a little, huh.

After the jump: Aretha-relevant portion of the article (including some damning Phillips-Andover discussion), which is actually pretty heartbreaking. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Three Columbia and two Barnard students started hunger striking yesterday, drawing a candlelit vigil of 70 and tummy rumbles all around. Drawing from the 520+ word "Statement from the Strikers" posted on the hungry kids' kinda-pro-ana blog, the Spec reports, "Among the litany are issues including alterations in the proposed Manhattanville expansion plan, more support for the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and stronger administrative response to bias incidents."

Funny how rebels with too many causes end up rebels without a cause. Bwog reports that a sixth striker dropped out last night, presumably because he got hungry. Also, starvation-ville is

Festooned with banners and full of cushions and survival supplies--we noticed a few jumbo rolls of toilet paper--the three-ring tent complex has seen a steady flow of visitors and curious passersby.

Nifty hunger strike bonus: Fewer bathroom breaks, reduced likelihood of soiling protest-tent. Meanwhile, administrators are kinda confused by the cluster of angsty starving kids in the middle of campus. Barnard prezzie Judith Shapiro points out that, though hunger strikes work for political prisoners under totalitariasm, they "may not always be a necessary strategy in a particular situation." Like rich brats on a liberal college campus in the most media-savvy city in the world, in the country that invented free speech. But the real gem from the Spec's coverage was Mark Lenger SEAS '09:

"It's too cold for a hunger strike," Lenger added. "When Gandhi was doing hunger strikes, he was doing it in a balmy, sub-tropical area. ... Unless we can see your ribs sticking out, then it's, really, in a PR perspective, sub-optimum."

May I propose an alternative: Hunger strike bikini babes calendar!