You might not know the following figures—but you should. In Campus Characters, THE BLUE AND WHITE introduces you to a handful of Columbians who are up to interesting and extraordinary things, and whose stories beg to be shared. If you'd like to suggest a Campus Character, send us an e-mail at theblueandwhite@columbia.edu.

George Krebs

Student council election day on Low Plaza is like any other early spring afternoon. Some students prematurely sun themselves, others scurry off to class, the plaza hums with activity. But cutting through the hubbub is the yawp of a single voice, coming from a broad shouldered, bear-jawed figure with an impish grin. "I'm George Krebs, your '09 class president. Vote for me today!"

The introduction, though boisterous, is largely superfluous. Were a scientific study commissioned on the subject, it would likely find that over the course of Krebs' time at Columbia, he has high-fived, back-patted and glad-handed most of campus. For him, every stranger is the perfect stranger.

Then again, no one can be a stranger for long. Krebs has a knack for pulling crucial personal information out of his sleeve, as if by sleight of hand. He can recall your significant other, your activities, and your hometown on command. One former opponent suggested that he keeps index cards of people's lives to make them feel as though they're in his inner circle.

Club Krebs is an inclusive place. So inclusive that the fine line many politicians maintain between the private and the public persona simply doesn't exist for him. Asking his closest friends about the real George A. Krebs -- the man behind the suit and jeweled plastic crown -- produces the same results as asking his acquintances. He is gregarious, he likes to show people he works hard, and he seems like a guy you'd want to get a beer with. Completely at ease with having hundreds of friends, he'd want you among them whether he gets your vote or not.

His critics, however, believe that Krebs makes it his business to be an expert in people and is insincere in his affection -- at root, ambitious. There is some evidence for this: last year he wrote a paper for a seminar on how presidents got their political starts in college. (On a less serious note, his phone's playback tone is "The Worlds Greatest" by R. Kelly.) But ask him what he wants to do after graduation and he'll throw up his hands. Maybe law school, maybe not. "You're the fourth of I'm sure a thousand people who will be asking me and every other senior that question," he said. For all his campaigning, he doesn't appear to have an ulterior motive, which is probably what drew students to him in the first place.

Unlike many of his peers and predecessors, Krebs didn't tidy himself up for the campaign. He didn't paint himself as responsible or exceptionally competent. Instead, he ran his campaign for what student government elections are -- popularity contests. One former rival remembers talking to students about campus-related issues during her freshman year, frequently coming across the response, "I agree with you on these issues, but I'm friends with George."

Krebs attracts every kind of person to him exactly because he avoids high-falutin' stump speeches and refuses to tell classmates that he's smarter than they are. In a school filled with specialists working to get 4.33 GPAs or writing full length musicals, he enjoys playing basketball, singing along to every word at a John Legend concert, and throwing up gang signs in his campaign's rap video.

Whenever you see him at a student event, turning wildly in every direction to acknowledge people, there's nothing conniving in him. He looks more like a wide-eyed child visitng FAO Schwartz for the first time. Krebs said, "When I first arrived at school my dad was leaving me with some wisdom and he sayd, 'You know George, there are going to be a lot of opportunities for you at Columbia. I just want to tell you to drink from the water fountain, not from the fire hose. Take it a sip at a time, don't try to overwhelm yourself and try to take it all in.' I've rejected that advice almost entirely and I've really tried to drink from the fire hose during my time at Columbia."

Ashraya Gupta

While hosting WKCR's soul show, "Across 110th Street," Ashraya Gupta, C'09, received the phone call of a lifetime. "I picked up the phone and this sort of deep voice said, 'Hi, this is Al Green. What's your name?" I just completely lost it and starting making no sense on the phone, which is probably what led him to hang up on me. I think I actually said 'I love you.'" She says she's still not sure if it was real or not, but she was so flustered she forgot the name of the album she was playing.

At 5'1'' and often clad in boat shoes and spectacles, Ash may seem an unlikely authority on soul music. Coming from a musical household, Ash started hosting the show when shejoined KCR her freshman year and now possesses a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the genre. In another one of her favorite calls, Ash remembers, "This woman requested a song and then said, 'Mymother and I have been having a debate. Are you black or are you white?' And I just started laughing because I'm Indian. I asked her what side she was on, and she said, 'I thought you were European, bu my mom said you couldn't play this kind of music so well if you weren't black.' I guess it means I know my stuff," she laughs.

Born in New Delhi, India, Ash moved to England with her family when she was four, and after three years relocated to Cincinnati, before settling in Sayville, Long Island. Devoted to her adopted hometown, Ash proudly describes its "huge parking lot full of Deloreans," aware-winning main street, and Long Island's tightly connected community of musicians. Despite her appreciation for soul music and small towns, she only took her American citizenship oaths in March of her freshman year. "I feel like everyone gets their notion of what it's like to be Indian in America from Jhumpa Lahiri books, and I feel like that's true, but not for me. My memory of Indian get-togethers is everyone getting really drunk and my dad playing guitar and my falling asleep."

Those same activities have earned Ash the nickname of Snorah Jones, a comparison to the soft-jazz vocalist in honor of Ash's husky singing style and narcoleptic tendencies (as she puts it, "I sing a little jazzy and I sleep a lot.") She may be best known around campus as the lead singer of The Kitchen Cabinet, an experimental folk band that formed in 2007. "This past year, I had decided to get myself together and do pre-med. I was all intent on being practical about things and instead I wound up playing shows every weekend," she says. Though none of the band members expected The Kitchen Cabinet to take off, after playing their catchy songs at ADP and releasing a free EP on their website, the band has garnered quite a following -- nearly 200 Facebook fans as of printing. This summer they played Todd P's Silent Barn with Megafaun, a band they met at the WBAR-B-Q. "It was the sweatiest I've ever been," Ash says of the show.

Ash remains realistic about the future of The Kitchen Cabinet. "We're not the kind of band where this is it for us." After much internal debate, she still has plans to go to medical school. "I didn't want to be another Indian girl who went to a good school and became a doctor, but I've always wanted to feel like I'm accomplishing something tangible. If that's what I want, I have to stop worrying about being a cliche."

Still, she's not walking away from music anytime soon. "I can't see myself not writing songs...I just wake up and I pick up the guitar. It's not like I could ever stop doing that." And if Al Green ever calls back, she'll be ready.

Two years ago, Blue and White writer Amanda Erickson presciently profiled '08 valedictorian Maxim Pinkovskiy. But don't show this article to your parents--they'll probably trade you back to the stork for a child like Maxim.

"He's always right. Not almost always. Always," says his former Professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin.

Every student in his macro class last year knows his name, and most perk up slightly at its mention. Maxim Pinkovskiy, C'08, was "that kid."

"He always sat in the front," one student quickly replied when I asked him what he knew about Maxim. "Always answering everything."

Some imitate his nasal voice, his plunking, Russian, almost-sounds-put-on accent, and the way he bobs his head as he speaks. Some immediately bring up his white loafers or his pants, which reach midway up his chest.

Campus Character:
Jeffrey Hunter Northrop II
By Alexander Statman, Illustration by Maxine Keyes

Wise men have said that what is closest is also most distant. So for social and holistic learning, I sought a teacher as widely known as he is little understood. From the hallowed halls of Butler to the fertile fields of the South Lawn, there could be no greater guide along the way to self-improvement than Jeffrey Hunter Northrop II, CC '08.5.

Like most success stories, Jeffrey's began on a wayward path. And like many such paths, it began in Connecticut. As a first-year in 2003, young Jeffrey arrived in the big city and, like St. Augustine, was drawn toward debauchery and sin. "I own up to my actions of freshman year. I deserved a lot of the shit I've been given," Jeffrey recalls.

The five-year-old rumors still fly: St. A's parties and sleepless nights, Barnard girls and Barnard dorms. Everything was out of control, and Jeffrey's life became "unmanageable." So he took a one-year medical leave to put his affairs in order, and has been sober since December 2004. His only remaining chemical vice is a daily hookah habit—one that he indulges morning, noon and night.

Remember Reni Laine? Frontiers of science girl? The blonde wasp?

Well she ended up on Gawker again, this time for some suspicious "Webby" awards. The occasion's not important, but you know what is? Her nipple!

While some would be mortified, Reni seems to take it in stride...

UPDATE 10:37 EST: Stop complaining the first picture shows too little nipple (you dirty dirty people), here's more scandal, enjoy.

Frances Howorth

"YOK-na-pa-TAW-pha." Frances Howorth B'07 politely corrects my pronunciation of Yoknapatawpha County, the fictional setting of many William Faulkner novels, which encompasses Howor th's hometown of Oxford, Mississippi. This leads to a story. "I ran into a guy the other night at a bar," she recounts, "and he's like, 'Where you from?' And I told him, and he spent the rest of the night trying to spell Yoknapatawpha for me." I look at her—strawberry blonde, can't be less than 5'9"—and decide that the guy in the bar was after more than an A on that night's spelling test. (Not that she'd fall for it: she's been happily boyfriended for over two years).

Howorth has just started baking peanut cupcakes, with a recipe from Joy of Cooking, to sell that Saturday night at the Relay For Life. Wearing an apron, she shuffles around the kitchen of her airy suite in 620 W. 116th. Barack Obama stares at me from the New Republic on her cluttered table.

"It's really an incredible town," Howorth continues in her light Southern accent. "It actually has a town square, with a courthouse in the middle." She lived in Jackson, the capital city 150 miles almost due south of Oxford, until she was 10, moving upstate after her uncle's failed 1996 gubernatorial run. Why did he lose, after serving as secretary of state for 12 years before that? "Democrat."

Really. Last time Bwog posted gossip, a tipster's professor singled him out in class; he was very flustered.

A stressed-out student declared,
"This year I will either die or become a Campus
Character."

Professor Eric Foner, commenting on how the Immigration and Naturalization Service's U.S. citizenship test accepts two answers to the question of what caused the Civil War:
"The INS is a postmodern institution. Don't tell them, 'cause they won't know what that means."

Professor Melnick testified today that the room in Pupin in which Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered the chromosomal theory of heredity has now been divided and remodeled into a janitor's closet and a men's bathroom.