Debate on Columbia smoking ban continues

This past April, the university began considering making the Columbia campus an entirely smoke-free campus. Columbia held several public forums to gauge student opinion. Current smoking policy prohibits smoking inside all university buildings as well as in areas within 20 to 50 feet of building entrances. Student opinion on expanding this ban across the entire campus is mixed.

"It doesn’t bother me that people smoke on campus and actually it is nice to see people gathering together and having conversations."

"The thing I don’t like about smoking on campus is that with second hand smoke you don’t have the filters. Smokers, they got … have nice filters when they smoke so all the really bad stuff that gets out of cigarettes but second hand smoking is worse than actually smoking. So I think that campus should have smoking areas that are really far away from buildings."

However, some students find that giving up the social aspects of smoking will be difficult.

"It’s one of the unfortunately, like, great things about cigarettes is that people, now that people can’t smoke inside, they’ll stop and have a conversation with somebody. It’s just unfortunate that it has to happen around that and I wonder what the campus could sort of do to create other spaces where people can stop and talk to each other that they don’t know."

Despite complaints that the current policy is not sufficiently enforced, campus residents may receive the smoking ban more favorably.

"I think it would make people feel a bit more uncomfortable by doing something that’s against the rules."

A decision regarding the smoking ban is expected later this year, but for now the University Senate continues to work on its recommendation to the central administration.

New Multicultural Affairs Dean

The post of Dean of Community Development and Multicultural Affairs has officially been filled by Theresa Martinez. The news came by way of email on Tuesday from Dean of Student Affairs Kevin Shollenberger following a nation-wide search for a viable candidate. Dean Martinez brings with her experience in student affairs and diversity initiatives from a variety of schools including Ithaca, Wells College, SUNY Old Westbury and St. Joseph's college in Brooklyn.

First-Year Election Results

On Thursday, Barnard and Columbia College councils announced their first year election results. After a fairly smooth election, presidential and vice presidential candidates Alexander Jasiulek and Karishma Habbu of the Impact Party emerged victorious, earning 228 votes out of the grand total of 356 votes cast in the final round of voting. The newly elected officials will be working with representatives from various parties, including Dylan Lonergan from the Let’s Party, Ryan Mandelbaum from the Karma Party, and Kyle Schmidt from the Lion’s Initiative. Over at Barnard, Jung Hee Hyun was announced president of the Barnard class of 2013 after a runoff of three candidates.

Outside food moving in

Wedged between Furnald and the School of Journalism, Brad's Cafe, a new campus eatery has opened to serve the nutritional needs of Columbia students.

"We try to do things differently than big established corporations or companies," explained Jeremy Wladis, President of The Restaurant Group. "What we try to do is really make everybody feel special. We're trying to ingrain within the people that work that the most important thing is to be friendly, outgoing, and do everything possible for the guest."

While other off campus eateries have left campus, students are hoping that the new cafe will offer competition.

"Hopefully, it will add a little bit of healthy business competition and maybe drive the prices down at the Blue Java places."

"I think it's a good idea. It's going to stimulate the competition between the food that is actually provided by Columbia and the food provided by the outsiders."

Although the eatery is open to undergraduates, Brad's has yet to accept Flex or Dining Dollars.

"If it doesn't take flex dollars or dining dollars, I probably wouldn't go but if I ran out of dining dollars and got sick of the meals, I probably would start going."

"If they offered flex of dining dollars, Columbia students would be more likely to go the because it's so much more convenient. But if the food's good and it's cheap, then people might be willing to go there with cash."

"As far as the dining dollars, we've contacted the University and begged and pleaded and asked that we really want to take this dining dollar and they've told us flat out: No."

"The first thing I try to do when I come to Brad's and try and ask people if they're enjoying everything and seeing what we can do differently and making sure our team is smiling and is and keeping our price point as low as possible and keeping our quality as good as possible."

Great authors attend Great Children's Read

As you may have seen from the banners and tents up on South Lawn, Columbia once again hosted The New York Times Great Children's Read. Quite a few celebrities, including Jerry Stiller, Natalie Morales, Sarah Hughes and Roberto Clemente Jr., graced the stages to read the latest in children's books for the event which has developed into a much anticipated annual event for families in the community.

Columbians celebrate new GI Bill

On Thursday, New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, an alumnus who came to Columbia on the 1944 GI Bill, addressed veterans in the School of General Studies. The cause for cheer? The Yellow Ribbon Program, a part of the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, which sees the Department of Veteran Affairs matching tuition wavers or grants provided by institutions to student veterans. Columbia is now part of participating private universities which covers the entire tuition cost for student veterans.

Latinos unite for LHM

Each year, National Hispanic Heritage Month begins September 15th – the day five different Latin American countries celebrate their independence. Here at Columbia, the celebrations began September 29th, with the Latino Heritage Month Opening Ceremony.

Isaac Lara, the Co-Chair for the Latino Heritage Month Committee, described the theme of Latino Heritage Month as “‘Es Pa’ Lante Que Vamos,’ which loosely translates to ‘We Move Forward.’ This October let’s celebrate our community’s accomplishments and rejoice in our successes but let’s also understand that’s there’s more work to be done.�

Though the speakers acknowledged the valuable contributions of current Hispanic figures, such as Hilda Solis and Mark Sanchez, an equal emphasis was put on Hispanic pioneers such as Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez and Juan Gomez.

“Latino Awareness Month is about celebrating the achievements that our community has made throughout American history,� reaffirmed Isaac Lara.

The keynote speaker at the event was Al Alvarez, Deputy Chief of Staff for New Jersey’s Governor Corzine. He reiterated the value of the Hispanic heritage, as well as the importance “that during this month we reflect and honor those contributions and we recognize that there has been a tremendous amount of work; none of this happened over night, none of these tremendous successes have happened in isolation.�

A recurring topic throughout the night was the recent confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Mr. Alvarez encapsulated the value of her selection to the Hispanic community: “President Obama’s election was a game-changer for youth across the board for minorities, particularly for African-Americans but also for all minorities. I think Sonia Sotomayor’s elevation to the Supreme Court is the same thing for Latinos. It’s an opportunity to say, ‘Yes, you can be a Supreme Court Justice if you’re a Latino or Latina, you can be at the highest rungs of our Constitution.’�

Despite Justice Sotomayor’s prominence, the speakers at the ceremony agreed that there is still much work left to be done. Mr. Alvarez maintains that “it’s an important time and opportunity for everyone to recognize the tremendous contributions that are being made every day in the United States of America by Latino-Americans, and it’s hopefully an opportunity for us to showcase our talent and our capacity to non-Latinos.�

Meanwhile, Mr. Lara also admits that there is a need for “more awareness,� highlighting the significance of Latino Heritage Month.

“You know, I think part of the reason is because our community is so fragmented into different cultures…I think it’s great right now in the university, but I think that there could be a lot more of a presence of Latinos taking part in Columbia.�

Provost and Psychologist Steele on Stereotypes

On Tuesday evening, Provost Steele reprised his role as a former professor of social psychology to give a lecture at Low Library. Entitled “Identity and Stereotype Threat: Their Nature and What to do About Them at School and Work," the lecture was based on his upcoming book, “Whistling Vivaldi.� Provost Steele is best known for his theory of stereotype threat, which addresses the threat implied in any situation by virtue of a predetermined stereotype’s existence. He discussed experiments on social stereotypes in schools and fielded questions on stereotypes associated with gender and religion.

Building Queer awareness on campus

Wednesday marked the beginning of October, a month that has become synonymous with Queer Awareness here at Columbia. We asked asked representatives of groups advocating for queer issues on campus for their perspectives.

Miranda Elliot, QuAM Co-Chair: "Queer Awareness Month is a month devoted to queer events, we have events pretty much every day, and the goal is to raise awareness and also to call attention to communities that aren’t necessarily well-represented."

Learned Foote, CQA Social Chair: "I think this is a great place to be, in New York City at Columbia. It’s a school that gives us tons of resources, you have an amazing student body, so I’d say that people are aware of LGBTQ people, they know them in their classes so I think that they’re very aware."

Madeleine Lloyd-Davies, QuAM Co-Chair: "We really want to see a lot of people at our events who we don’t know and we want to get their input and see how we can make this community even more integrated with the greater Columbia community."

QuAM, the Queer Alliance and other LGBT groups on campus will host a series of events throughout October to celebrate Queer Awareness Month.

Public Safety report shows safer campus

On Friday James McShane emailed the Columbia community regarding public safety's release of the “Annual Security and Fire Safety Report for 2009.� The 28-page report outlines public safety policy as well as lists reported incidents between 2006 from 2008. The number of on-campus crimes appears to be declining, but discipline for drug and alcohol activity has been steadily increasing since 2006. You can read the report yourself online or pick up a hard copy at the public safety office.

Science building rises on Broadway

By the fall of 2010, science will have a new home on campus.

The Northwest Corner building, which is expected to cost $179M, will provide 188,000 square feet of space for a number of Columbia's science and engineering departments, currently housed in buildings spread across campus.

University administrators hope that putting the departments under one roof will foster collaboration, as the various disciplines unite to face new challenges. The building is also expected to provide modern lab facilities and help ease the current space crunch.

The building's lead architect, Rafael Moneo, says he tried to understand the original Morningside Heights campus plan, to come up with a design which not only integrates the building into campus, but also opens Columbia to the city outside the gates.

At a reception on Wednesday, he explained his concept of the building. "The McKim, Mead, White, gave me and idea of how the University should be in the city of New York. What is perhaps my very first sense of the thrust of this project for a sense of where the project was."

Although the new building may not look like the existing buildings on campus, the architects are confident in their design.

Mark Wigley, dean of the School of Architecture explained, "if each new building simply superficially imitates existing ones, then the students and the faculty of the new generation are not being respected. What they're getting is a postcard. "

There was one challenge, which the architect and the engineers working on the project turned into an opportunity. Because the gymnasium over which the building is being constructed was not designed to hold any weight from above, the upper floors of the new facility are supported on massive trusses which are in turn supported by columns at the perimeter of the building, leaving a large open space for the campus-level library.

However, the installation of the truss and supporting columns proved to be a major challenge.

Charlie Whitney, a project executive for Turner Construction explained the assembly process: "We had a pretty detailed plan; and you don't want to just drop the building. These are pretty big columns and what we ended up doing was we actually cut the web of each column out and then slowly burnt the flanges, and the building settled."

As construction on the building continues, students and faculty dream about the discoveries that may be made inside.