Posts Tagged ‘neil fitzpatrick’
This article is about you
No not this article. Hold your horses. I’ll get there.
On my way out to visit my brother at Northwestern this weekend, I picked up the most recent issue of New York Magazine because I was intrigued by the promise of an article on “coming of age in post-hope America.” I’ve always been interested in people’s efforts to attribute certain far-reaching characteristics to our generation. I couldn’t tell you why, except that the idea that some broad set of shared social conditions could result in millions of people sharing specific personality traits is pretty far-out. The fact that I almost always find such explanations to be flawed (or just plain wrong) only increases my interest in new attempts.
Part of the problem with the previous explanations I’ve encountered is that they’re usually put forth by middle-aged sociologists who probably still text their kids in all-caps. The phrase “it takes one to know one” comes to mind, and Noreen Malone, the author of “The Kids are Actually Sort of Alright,” is one of us. She does a pretty incredible job of describing our “screwed, coddled, self-absorbed, and surprisingly resilient generation,” and manages to come out of the project with a bit of optimism about where we’re headed. I’m big on optimism (at least when I’m not feeling misanthropic).
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Staying sane
For this week’s Quick and Dirty, we asked bloggers for tips on de-stressing during midterms.
Emily: Drink peppermint tea. Do as much as you can and no more. Sleep. Repeat as necessary.
Will: I don’t always take history classes . . . but when I do, I prepare for my midterms with Drunk History.
Neil: I’ve heard dropping out does wonders for your skin.
Caroline: 0:54 seconds.
Naomi: We have midterms? (Denial.)
On leaving New York, part two
Like many of you, Columbia seniors, I’m applying to grad school this fall. Unlike many of you, however, I’m applying to get an MFA in creative writing. This has a couple consequences. First, my suite-mates have been asking for my advice every time they hang a poster or pick a shirt, insisting that they need my “mastery” in fine arts. Second, according to everyone in the MFA-getting business, my main criteria for picking a school to attend are supposed to be location and funding.
I’m not sure how it goes when picking a graduate program in, say, political science, or dentistry, but I suspect the nature of the creative writing MFA makes the process for that program somewhat unique. The logic is something like “you’re getting 2-3 years to read and write, after which you will be qualified to do precisely nothing in the professional world, so pay as little a possible and go someplace where you’ll be able to spend most of your time in front of a computer screen and still be mildly happy.”
I’m thinking Montana. Or Orange County. Or Brooklyn. Or Tallahassee. More »
Administration should pay (Bacchanal) for their mistake
Bacchanal is down $18,000 in its budget, Columbia, which means I may have to resurrect my high school funk band for the Spring concert (normally I’d be excited at this prospect, but due to a green room altercation at the sophomore talent show, I haven’t spoken to the other members of Cornelius and the American League Funkstars in half a decade).
For the first years out there, Bacchanal is the student group that is best known for inviting such artists as Wiz Khalifa, Vampire Weekend, Ghostface Killah, and, last year, Snoop Dogg, to perform on the steps. More »
May I interest you in yet another post on the potential smoking ban?
Well, I was going to write this post as respectful disagreement with Neil FitzPatrick, but Caroline Blosser respectfully disagreed with him yesterday. So now I am going to respectfully disagree with this whole discussion.
Because my main problem with the proposed new policy for a smoking ban isn’t that it will ban smoking. It’s that it’s a new policy. More »
No more blowing smoke
Yesterday, my friend and fellow Spectrum blogger Neil FitzPatrick posted a passionate rebuke of the proposed campus-wide smoking ban. I respect him bringing a less orthodox opinion to the debate, which requires cleverness and courage. Still, I find some fundamental flaws in his argument.
The public opinion question
I heartily disagree with Neil’s plea to the USenate to ignore public opinion—this contradicts both the concept of the USenate itself, and the nature of the issue at hand. The USenate is representative of the student body, and rules and regulations regarding the use of “public” spaces are made (hopefully) in regard for the public welfare. As such, public opinion is vital to such policy making. Furthermore, the smoking ban issue is one that will affect the day-to-day experience for students on campus, no matter how it is resolved. Thus, ignoring public opinion is not only unwise, it’s unethical. More »
Occupying Wall Street
For this week’s Quick and Dirty, we asked bloggers to give us a snapshot of what they think about Occupy Wall Street. Here’s what we got:
Will: Let’s just hope this doesn’t result in a leftist version of the Tea Party. But if that’s the case, C-SPAN is about to get a hell of a lot more interesting.
Caroline: It has a wikipedia entry, so, I guess it’s legit now.
Naomi: It seems like relatively reasonable people are banding together to have a say in their government, which is generally both good and necessary for progress. I do think this article presents points worth a read.
Emily: I just think that the Beatles song “Revolution” should be blared around Wall Street. Everyone would learn something—capitalists, students, Maoists, lovers of English rock. Everyone.
Neil: There’s no easy message, but the protests seem to be about the balance of power. More »
Why the ‘public health’ argument for a smoking ban is flawed
It’s October, Columbia, which, aside from meaning good things on the baseball and pumpkin fronts, means that the University Senate’s town hall on a campus-wide smoking ban is coming up. I’ve written on this topic before, but I wanted to write again and offer one more point on why I don’t think this silliness should be passed.
My biggest problem with the ban is that it would make being a smoker on Columbia’s campus extremely difficult. I can understand bans on smoking in public places like restaurants or parks, because people don’t live in those restaurants and are not required to enter those parks (or not required to smoke there, anyway). But many Columbians who smoke live on campus, and all of them are required to spend vast amounts of time here. In making it so difficult to be a smoker on campus, the University Senate is interfering with the right we all have to choose to smoke, and is sending a very hostile message to certain friends and colleagues of ours. More »
The dirt on hygiene
In light of Darron Kinney’s “Awkward at CU: You and your hygiene” post, for this week’s Quick and Dirty we asked some of our bloggers to tell us the grossest thing they’ve ever witnessed here at Columbia. It was pretty rough. More »