Public Safety addresses campus fires

Columbia may rest in a concrete jungle, but fires remain a very real threat. Fires in Nussbaum and McBain and have caused students to doubt the safety of Columbia residence halls. CTV sat down with Jim McCormick, Associate Director of Fire Safety.

"As far as actual fires, we have very few fires at Columbia. Within residence halls, we’re looking at probably maybe 10 to 15 fires a year, ranging from food on the stove to pizza boxes in the oven," McCormick explained.

Although some fire alerts are real, students experience many unwarranted alarms.

"The fire alarm systems are very sensitive and they react to products of combustion which include steam, smoke, heat, and vapors. So if you're cooking a big pot of pasta or something and put a lid on it and open it up and there's a cloud of steam that comes up, the smoke can trigger a fire alarm. What we've done, we've tried to investigate the alarm and determine patterns and modify the systems as needed."

Some students opt to stay in their room while these alarms are going off, but the Department of Public Safety stressses the importance of leaving the building whether the fire alert is serious or accidental.

"We keep stressing to people, please leave the building because it's very important since the fire can double in intensity every 30 seconds. When the alarm goes off, it's very important to get out quickly. We ask people not to linger, wait, or hide in their rooms. Unless you have an amazing reason why you didn't leave, it is kind of hard to justify not leaving the building. This is a person's life you're talking about."

Last week's fire at McBain Hall started in front of Deluxe Restaurant. McCormick explained that Columbia will be working with store owners to prevent future fires. Compared to the number of alarms activated per year, the number of residence hall fires is relatively small.

Sudents, professors protest education cuts

On Thursday, students, faculty and parents staged walkouts and rallies across the nation. Demonstrators protested education funding cuts and increases in tuition. The so-called "Day of Action for Public Education" was organized mostly by labor unions and student government groups.

The movement began in California, where the state government cut $1 billion from the state university system. As a result, schools have increased student fees, canceled classes and cut student support programs.

Although the majority of protests were peaceful, police arrested 160 protesters in Oakland who blocked a highway and snarled rush-hour traffic.

ATLAH World Missionary Church Tries Obama & Columbia

On Saturday, members of the ATLAH World Missionary Church, led by Pastor James David Manning protested at the Columbia gates. ATLAH accuses Barack Hussein "Long Legged Mack Daddy" Obama of using his stay at Columbia University as a cover-up to travel to Pakistan as a CIA operative to assist Mujahideen in fighting Soviet the Soviet Invasion during the 1980s. Obama, who attended Columbia University as an undergraduate from 1981 to 1984, is accused of supplying arms, logistics, and money through his supposed Muslim background.

ATLAH announced that the actual trial of Obama will be held May 14th through 19th in its church located in on 123rd Street in Harlem as well as several Columbia University gates. These dates coincide with the university's graduation ceremonies. We will bring you updates as we get them.

Palestinians, Israelis attempt to tear down walls

This week, the Middle East conflict played out on Low Plaza. Israeli-Palestinian Peace Week and Israeli Apartheid week ran simultaneously.

"Israeli Apartheid Week is part of an international movement to recognize the system of apartheid that currently exists in Israel."

Students erected a wall on Low Plaza to represent the barrier that exists between Israel and the West Bank. They passed out literature to raise awareness of what they say are inequalities in the region.

"Within Israel itself, there is a completely different legal system that exists for Palestinian Israelis and for non-Palestinian Israelis who are citizens of the same country and face wide-ranged forms of discrimination because of their ethnicity."

However, students participating in Israeli-Palestinian Peace Week disagreed.

"One of the biggest issues that’s being highlighted this week is obviously the security wall that is up. That is what is being chosen to equate Israel with apartheid, and that is a big issue within the Jewish community and hopefully the larger campus community at large, just because the terminology is inaccurate."

Despite their differences, both groups agreed on one thing. More free dialogue is needed in order to reach a solution.

"There’s also been this week of programming, under the banner of Peace Week for Israelis and Palestinians, that has provided programs for all the different Hillel groups and the Israel groups in Hillel to basically provoke dialogue: to ask tough questions, and to say what is going on in Israel is not perfect, there are issues. Let’s talk about it."

"We’re here to, specifically at Columbia but also in the city at large, to talk about the situation; to talk about it, to promote this sort of discourse, to be able to actually just talk about it."

As the wall on Low Plaza comes down, students are left thinking about how issues nearly 6000 miles away affect them.

John Jay Awards

Julia Stiles has come a long way since living in John Jay her freshman year. The actress who graduated in 2005, was the youngest of five alumni honored for their professional achievements at the thirty-second annual John Jay awards. The other winners included a professor of art history, the chair of the Columbia College Alumni Association Board of Directors, a managing director at Goldman Sachs and the president of Advent Capital Management.

The event to benefit the John Jay National Scholarship Program raised over 1 million dollars.

Administration stalls gender neutral housing

As the housing season goes into full gear, Dean of Student Affairs, Kevin Shollenberger, and Dean of Community Development and Multicultural Affairs, Theresa Martinez, announced that the proposed gender neutral housing policy will not be implemented. The policy proposed to allow students of the opposite sex to room together in a double. CTV News spoke with Scott Wright, Vice President of Auxiliary Services, to address the matter.

"From the housing end of the decision, it was really a tactical question. So the question was would be able to facilitate gender neutral housing using the software system we use for the room."

There is a discrepancy between what student leaders expected and the final decision. Barry Weinberg addressed his concern with the administration.

"Barry Weinberg talks about the support from Scott Wright and the student councils in the story."

After the proposal was delayed, student leaders have seen growing support from the student body. Recently student leaders have created a petition to demonstrate the student population's disapproval of the administration.

"Sean Udell talking about the petition that has gotten over 400 students."

Since this interview, the number has increased to over 900. Dean Shollenberger and Dean Martinez did not comment but Dean Moody-Adams and Dean Pena-Mora expressed interest in a proposed pilot program.

Sports Roundup

Both Basketball teams ended their Ivy League Season on a high note. On Senior Night at Levien Gymnasium, Junior Judie Lomax scored 20 points and grabbed a school record and career-high 27 rebounds, lifting the women's team to a 54-41 win over Brown on Saturday. The men's team also celebrated a victory. Trailing by three with nine minutes left, the men regained the lead and held on for a hard-fought 65-56 victory over Brown in their season finale.

The men's tennis team began its Ivy-season with a 6 to 1 win over Cornell on Saturday. After beginning with a loss in doubles, the Lions swept the Big Red in all six singles spots to take the win. Also in tennis, the women's team fell to Maryland 6 to 1 but scored a 4 to 3 victory against George Washington.

And congratulations to the men's swimming and diving team which finished third in the Ivy League Championship, pulling ahead of Yale and Penn during the last few events.

Festival of Wind

The Columbia University Wind Ensemble is turning music into money. The second annual Festival of Winds is going on right now in Roone Arledge Auditorium. The eight-hour event brings together New York City wind ensembles to benefit public school music education.

Last year, members of the Wind Ensemble founded Making Music Matter, a program which provides free after-school music education. Each week, members of the organization work with fourth-graders at P.S. 125. Last year's festival raised money to rent instruments and buy books and reeds.

Columbia challenges students to serve

This spring, the Columbia community learned of the two earthquakes in Chile and Haiti that devastated thousands of lives. These disasters inspired students, faculty, and administrators to take action. In January, Columbia joined other universities in the NYC Service Challenge, a program that tracks student participation in volunteer service.

David Stone, the Executive Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs, said, "What the mayor's office has done, the Office of NYC Service, is had what we all think is a really friendly and good-natured symbolic competition among the colleges and universities in New York to try and see which is the most civically engaged."

Stone explained how this program, where students log their volunteer-hours on a website, encouraged students to become engaged in taking action for the two recent earthquakes.

"In the cases of natural disasters, quite often what we're doing here at Columbia, is usually raising and donating money. The Service Challenge and the idea of national service taps into the same spirit," said Stone.

Many undergraduates created their own initiatives to raise money for the people of Haiti who are still suffering from the aftermath of the earthquake.

First year Sarah Gitlin, the primary organizer of this initiative said, "As soon as we came back from winter break, we got started and got local delicatessens to donate a lot of these containers and we got some volunteers together to put on the Haiti cards. Then we went out to local businesses and we put these in over 100 stores to collect money from the patrons to send to relief efforts. We were able to send over 9,000 dollars."

Volunteerism also spread to Columbia's graduate schools. Students at the School Of International and Public Affairs helped launch the Chile Ushahidi project in response to the current crisis there.

Anahi Ayala, the Director of the Situation Room of the Ushahidi Chile project said, "Ushahidi is basically a public platform which is based on the principle of crisis mapping, and what we do is collect information from the media but also and especially from networking tools like Twitter and Facebook. We collect this information and translate them from Spanish into English and then we put them on this website, and they appear directly on a map as a dot. This is helpful because you have a lot of range of information coming normally from people."

Although the Challenge ends in April, students intend to further promote volunteering and fundraising. The spirit of service will continue on the Columbia campus through both individual student projects and group initiatives, ready to respond to any future crises with assistance and compassion.