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QuickSpec: Big Changes Edition
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The Mystery of Pain.

Asked to legitimize the illegitimate, GSSC Elections Commission resigns.

Barnard Voting: The eBear Necessities.

Congestion plan coughed up.

Bob Dylan meet Joe Pulitzer.

How safe are we really?

In other Columbia-related news: the NYTimes captures the different views on the boy arrested in the recent death of a grad student.

See also: Barnard, Gssc, Minghui Yu, Public Safety, Pulitzer Prize

April 8, 2008 @ 10:16 AM | Comments 16 comments | Add comment Post a comment | Link to this article | | | Share on Facebook

Posted by What does Obama: #1 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 10:23 AM (from campus)
say when he's begging on the street?

Can I have some change?
Posted by Thank you: #2 (in reply to #1) · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 11:05 AM (from campus)
Onion
Posted by So so.: #3 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 11:07 AM (from campus)
Since I'm curious, where is the image from? Obama-related? Looks like a commercial or the opening credits to a tv show.
Posted by artsandletters: #4 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 12:28 PM
"Outside of journalism, Junot Diaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao took the Pulitzer for Fiction, and Tracy Letts’ play August: Osage County won for Drama."

way to go with that afterthought of comprehensive coverage, spec.
Posted by EAL: #5 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 12:31 PM (from campus)
I love how Anthony Kelley missed the point of the weekend's tragedy entirely. Why is this nutjob allowed to write for the Spec?
Posted by peep game: #6 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 12:46 PM (from campus)
I just got this email:

Hey guys,

This may seem random but we'll get straight to the point. We are a group of 6 seniors going into suite selection with a terrible housing number – and you are a group of 6 seniors with a good housing number. We are assuming that you guys are planning on signing up for an EC suite of 6 singles. In short, due to special circumstances among our friends, we are extremely eager to obtain an EC suite as well. We talked to housing and they said that groups of 6 can swap other groups of 6 after housing registration is over. Obviously, we know that there would be no reason for you to help us out, but we were hoping that with monetary compensation some of you would consider a swap. We would be able to get 6 good rooms in Broadway (or very possibly a 6-person suite in EC with 4 singles and 1 double), so if you are interested in swapping rooms/suite for a decent monetary compensation (at least $200 per person, but price is completely negotiable), please email us back and we will talk more about details. Also, please email back ASAP, because this is a very time-sensitive issue. Thank you for your time.

-Columbia Students

haha no fucking way am i giving up my lottery number

Posted by kelley's article: #7 (in reply to #5) · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 12:47 PM
is the essential bait and switch and is the disgusting meme for the 'anti oppression' group whenever an incident like this happens

yeah there are idiots who say racist things where they conflate being black or poor with being criminals and they shouldn't be taken as credible points

by the same token however, the utter ignorance and washing over of the fact that crime rates are higher in racially or economically segregated parts of the community in this particular area (despite the fact that this isn't characteristic of all races or even of all communities of similar economic standing) is reprehensible and is why voices like Kelley's are just as irrelevant when one tries to have a serious 'discussion' about race

there should certainly be a variety of perspectives when trying to examine this crime and others in the context of where and why it happened involving the communities/ethnicities/social conditions it did, but the first and most prominent view should be introspection by a community and a set of apologists whose first reaction is to always spin to attack or offer grandiose theories of collective guilt or to never ever have to accept personal ownership or culpability

and mr. kelley is most certainly interested in creating a race war--he has the gall to suggest that fear of crime in an area where a peer just got killed is an institutionally or media driven fault that one can possess because of their ignorance of the actual area-never mind that even those who do believe there is large scale institutional racism and oppression can recognize the problem after having been a part of the community:

There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. -- the Reverend Jesse Jackson
Posted by that third paragraph: #8 (in reply to #7) · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 12:49 PM
parenthesis should say that it isn't (characteristic of all of that race or similar communities of economic standing)
Posted by cc'er: #9 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 12:55 PM (from campus)
From the NY Times article on the 14-year-old involved in Yu's killing:

“He’s a very good boy,” the [boy's] aunt said. “He’s not a thug."

...Mmhmm, because even good boys occasionally forget themselves and senselessly attack passing strangers. Causing those strangers to flee. And die.
Posted by and just to be clear: #10 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 12:56 PM
'thugs' is not a word of 'white supremacy' or 'elitism' unless sheldon's own mom is part of that group

[external link to www.nydailynews.com]
Posted by So...: #11 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 12:56 PM (from campus)
I have a friend who tried to tell me that Yu's attacker never actually went after him, that Yu ran into the street because he saw a group of young black guys nearby and automatically thought that they would try to assault him.

Is it ridiculous to find that (blatantly false) statement just as racist and polarized as the sort of things cited in Kelley's article?

Gah.
Posted by Oh God: #12 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 1:35 PM (from campus)
Help us all if Keith Hightower becomes GSSC President. All Columbia student life that relies on inter-council funding is fucked.
Posted by Ah yes: #13 (in reply to #9) · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 2:00 PM (from campus)
The good old "he plays xbox" defense.
Posted by Also: #14 · reply · track
April 8, 2008 at 2:07 PM (from campus)
Anthony Kelley pisses me off. Why are black people, in his view, allowed to feel a collective indignation toward and fear of "whites," whatever that means, but when white people cross the street to avoid young men who look dangerous, we're "racist?" We don't cross the street because someone has dark skin...we cross the street because these people dress, talk, and walk like hoodlums. Anthony Kelley needs to recognize that there is a difference between racism and the avoidance of the type of people who time and time again perpetrate these acts.
Posted by while i don't: #15 · reply · track
April 9, 2008 at 1:17 AM (from campus)
know how i feel about the kelley article and the way he phrased things, it's like... yu's death is a tragedy. and if there was anti-asian sentiment involved, then that's horrible and makes me feel very very sad and upset. at the same time, kelley has a point about some of the bwog points... maybe not the ones he cited in the article, but calling a whole generation of black youth "savages" or calling for a 14 y/o boy, however wrong or cruel or unspeakably fucked up his actions and their repercussions might have been... to be "drawn and quartered"... aren't productive. we need to let yu's family and friends grieve and offer them our kindness, not incite racial tensions in an attempt to deal with the senselessness of what happened.
Posted by gevalt: #16 · reply · track
April 9, 2008 at 9:45 AM (from campus)
Okay, but can Anthony Kelley please stop calling me a white supremacist? I'm really not. Like, really really pinky-swear cross my heart.
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