Misguided optimism abounds on Columbia's campus as many of its 25,000 students plan on entering the ticket lottery for the McCain-Obama ServiceNation Presidential Forum -- and, ugh, "day of remembrance" -- next Thursday, September 11th.

Heads of the student governing boards, taken by surprise about the entire event, wrote a joint letter to President Bollinger asking that the lottery "not favor any one group of students over another," but the Spectator reports that "there are 200 seats in the lottery for full and part-time students for admission," so most will have to settle for a Jumbotron on the lawn, a la Ahmadinejad.

It's safe to say that Obama, CC '83 and communist-consorting, drug-quaffing elite flaneur, will receive a more enthusiastic reception than McCain, who was heckled during his Class Day speech in 2006, unless friends of his daughter Meghan (CC '07) turn out in force. Read the rest of this entry »

This Labor Day weekend, I interviewed Lauren Salz, Executive Director of the Columbia University College Republicans, for a Q&A with Youth Vote '08. According to her, all of the right-wing groups on Columbia's campus have a budget smaller than the International Socialist Organization. This *exclusive* IvyGate iteration has bonus questions and a picture. Swanky!

NS: Why did you get involved with the CUCR?
LS: I wasn't originally planning to join any campus political group. I had just taken a year off from school and worked on a campaign [Tom Kean for U.S. Senate] and I had enough of partisan politics. But then I got to Columbia and realized I needed to have an outlet to talk to other conservative students.

Did you anticipate feeling politically isolated at Columbia?
Not at all. Maybe I was naive, but I thought that since Columbia was such an elite university, I would find people willing to listen. I also had no idea about Columbia's radical activist tradition. Prior to my first week of classes, I had never heard of the events in '68, although I did hear about the Minutemen incident. Read the rest of this entry »