Mary Kohlmann

blahIn a year whose first enduring image was of the frenzied protests surrounding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s September visit to Columbia, student activism has played a large and multifaceted role. From marches to campaign trips and from division to unity, students’ “extracurricular activities” set the tone for a whole campus.

As clouds faded into sunshine Saturday afternoon, Chicano Caucus and supporters gathered on Low Plaza to celebrate an early Cinco de Mayo with mariachis, dancers, and the New York Times-approved Super Tacos truck from 96th Street.

After a weekend of nostalgia and remembrance, the 1968 commemoration drew to a close, as former students honored those who had since passed on by celebrating the accomplishments of both alumni and the whole of the University.

It’s April at Columbia. The trees are blooming, the air is warming, and the steps of Low are once again covered with students. But instead of smoking the University president’s cigars, today’s occupiers carry laptops and bubble teas.

Just as April showers bring May flowers, spring brings academic hires—especially at Columbia Law School, where four new professors have recently joined on as part of an ongoing initiative to broaden the faculty and course selection.

When visitors enter the Church of Notre Dame, located at 114th Street and Morningside Drive, they pass a picture of Pope Benedict XVI, smiling and dressed in full Church regalia. Usually, such images are as near as parishioners can reasonably hope to come to the man believed by Catholics to be the Vicar of Christ. But during the Pope’s recent visit to New York, some churchgoers got a closer look.

Penis-shaped cookies in hand, members of Columbia and Barnard’s Take Back the Night spent Wednesday afternoon tabling outside of Lehman Library as part of their 2008 version of the sex-positive festival Sexibition. “We wanted to promote a culture where sex can be talked about openly,” coordinator Robin Broder, BC ’09, said.

Dancer Alicia Graf, GS ’03, will serve as the alumna speaker at the School of General Studies 2008 Class Day on May 19, the school announced Tuesday evening.

Surrounded by plates of traditional goodies and a hookah full of sweet-smelling tobacco, members of Turath—Columbia’s Arab students’ organization—spent Monday afternoon behind a table on Low Plaza to publicize activities planned later this week for Arab-American Heritage Week. Aimed at celebrating and raising campus awareness of Arab culture, this week’s events will include a panel discussion of business, an evening of free hookah, and various other events.

Over 500 gathered in Roone Arledge Auditorium Friday night for the Asian American Alliance’s annual CultureSHOCK showcase, which included performances by both Columbia groups and off-campus talents, such as the hip-hop duo Magnetic North.

You’ve probably seen the posters: clad only in sunglasses and a tactfully-positioned sign, a well-muscled man perches jauntily on the sundial. Columbia’s Asian American Alliance is hosting its annual show CultureSHOCK on Friday night—and this year’s theme is “Exposure.”

Entering Altschul Auditorium to a rousing round of applause and the sounds of their own video, the Obama Girl and her two colleagues of the humor Web site Barely Political sat down to discuss their success and its implications in front of Eisenbach’s popular class, “The American Presidency Since 1898."

“Being a straight ally is very much about me,” Saffiyah Madraswala, BC ’09 and Respecting Ourselves and Others Through Education facilitator, explained Tuesday night to a small group in John Jay Lounge, “but at the same time, it’s not about me at all.”

Excerpt. “I’m smiling,” Albert Miller, SEAS ’11, said Saturday afternoon, lounging on Low Steps after spending the day volunteering at a nearby park. “I’ve got a happy feeling inside.”

Miller was one of roughly 1,000 participants in this year’s Columbia Community Outreach, an annual, one-day event that sends teams of Columbia students, alumni, and faculty members out to volunteer at non-profit organizations across the city.

In the wake of her resignation as an adviser to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign earlier this month, activist Samantha Power spoke Tuesday night to an eager crowd on the subject of her recently published book and her former boss’s presidential ambitions.

It’s one thing to come to Columbia and join a campus group, but quite another to get quality housing out of it. Special Interest Communities range in tone from commune-like to scholarly, and the houses work with faculty advisers to explore passions from food to economics. The application processes closed in February, but be sure to watch for the many events each of these and other 2008-2009 SICs will be hosting next year.

A room overcrowded with students and members of the general public burst into applause following Rashid Khalidi’s pronouncement that “we owe reparations to the Iraqi people,” Tuesday night.

Alba Mota, listed in the Columbia directory as a student at the School of Social Work, was arrested Wednesday afternoon and released Thursday evening after being arraigned on charges that include forgery and grand larceny, according to a spokesperson for the Bronx Arraignment Clerk’s office.

Humvees, Seabees, and Howitzers were on the table Monday night as two combat-tried members of the armed forces told a crowd of about 25 students what they do in the military and why.

Although the roughly 100 attendees at Friday night’s Black Alumni Council Heritage Award Reception were diverse in age, pride in both school and legacy gave them common ground to celebrate their peers and the announcement of the first chaired faculty position of African-American studies at Columbia.

Three months after the end of a hunger strike that demanded an increase in Office of Multicultural Affairs’ allotted resources, the office is undergoing an expansion which many say can’t come too soon.

Although some of the promised faces were absent Friday at “The Real Face of Immigration,” about 125 students from a broad coalition of campus and city groups offered up their own stories in what became a open forum on Latin American immigration.

This weekend, 130 students from across North America will converge on the Jewish Theological Seminary to discuss topics ranging from “Gender Neutral Organizing on Campus” to “Leviticus 18:22—Who is Laying with Whom?”

“Go Green” apparently doesn’t have the same ring as “Go Giants.” Only 15 people showed up for Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s Monday night book signing of a new East Harlem health cookbook, and most in attendance were involved in the book’s creation.

Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the Reserve Officer Training Corps’s removal from the Columbia campus. But in a wartime election season rife with debate, some wonder whether that decision will hold.

American history professor and longtime feminist Alice Kessler-Harris is torn. As much as she eagerly awaits saying the title “Madame President” for the first time, she cannot decide how much she should allow the fact that Senator Hillary Clinton, a Democratic candidate, is a woman to impact her vote.

“I know you all came here to hear me sing, right?” Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs joked in front of a packed Roone Arledge Auditorium crowd at an anti-poverty event he headlined with Grammy-winning recording artist John Legend Monday night.

Sexist graffiti was found on the message boards of two sixth-floor residents in Barnard’s Hewitt Hall Monday morning.

Despite the blow that the New York City Council’s approval of Columbia’s rezoning plan represents for those who challenge the University, activists have not given up hope.

Professor William Harris received a prestigious award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for outstanding scholarship on ancient Rome and Greece.

The pastor of a West Harlem church urged church members and local residents to support a rent strike he hopes to launch early next year at the ATLAH World Missionary Church on Thursday night.

Despite a semester marked by hate crimes, controversial foreign leaders, and fierce student protests, prospective students said that this semester’s activities have not tainted their image of Columbia as a “dream school.”

With the primary season looming, ubiquitous “Students for...” political groups are abuzz with plans to attract student votes to the presidential candidates that they champion.

“Did you ever really think that there was going to be just one tooth fairy?” Gregory Maguire, author of the novel Wicked, asked a group of about 30 fans at the Bank Street Family Center Auditorium on Saturday. “Think of the workload!”

After exploring Oz, Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author of more than 25 books including the wildly popular Wicked, from which the hit musical was adapted, has turned his creative eye to the culture of tooth fairies.

Campus Jewish organization Hillel, Columbia’s largest student group, has elected its new executive board.

In the wake of the student hunger strike, students have expressed mixed opinions about the methods employed by the campus activists.

As a hunger strike in protest of University policies completes its first week today at noon, two students have decided to join the ranks of the four remaining strikers.

With one striker down, the hunger strike on Low Plaza enters its sixth day with new support and looking forward to a fresh round of negotiations with administrators.

One cold morning on South Lawn, several Columbia students and supporters curled up in tents and swore off food in an attempt to effect major changes in University policy.

Aretha Choi, BC '10, was rushed to St. Luke's Hospital Saturday evening, three and a half days after she and four other students began a hunger strike to pressure the University into enacting a laundry list of reforms.

More than 75 students convened Thursday night in Hamilton Hall to hear activists from across the city condemn the effects of gentrification on communities of color.

The New York City Marathon marks first year reporter Mary Kohlmann’s first time exploring the city—all of it—on her own.

A journalist discussed controversial issues including racist sports mascots as members of the RedHawk Native American Arts Council danced at the opening reception for Native American Heritage Month on Thursday night.

A format and attendance policy of Barnard’s diversity program for first years which requires, among other things, students to guess the ethnicity of the person to their right, has drawn fire from some students.

Students on the ninth floor of John Jay Hall have yet another factor making them late to class—a broken elevator reader leaves them guessing whether the wait is worth it. The reader panel designed to indicate the current floor level and direction of the left elevator has been broken since residents moved in.

On Tuesday, an African American professor at Teachers College, the nation’s top-ranked education school, came to her office to find a noose hanging on the door.

A hangman's noose was found pinned to the door of an African-American professor's door at Teacher's College, administrators said today.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s declaration that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” served as the catchphrase of yesterday’s campus walkout protesting incidents of racial injustice, both nationally and at Columbia.

Organizers expect at least 200 students to participate in a walkout and rally at noon today to support the Jena Six and to protest what they call an atmosphere of intolerance at Columbia reflected by an incident including the racist graffiti found last week in an International Affairs Building restroom.

More than 100 students representing a wide range of campus groups held an emergency meeting last night in Lerner Hall to respond to the graffiti found Wednesday in an International Affairs Building restroom stall and to discuss how to prevent similar incidents.

Racism and how to fight it were the topics for discussion in the Malcolm X Lounge in Hartley Hall last night, as over 100 students from Columbia and other area schools met to consider ways of mobilizing on the Jena Six controversy and other issues of racial injustice.