Last November, Columbia was beset with a number of students, dissatisfied with the response to bias incidents, formed an "anti-racist coalition" and wrote a list of demands to improve campus. Eventually this coalition began a hunger strike to push the administration into action. Now, nearly a year later, the effects of the strike are still being felt. Bwog takes a nostalgic step back to look at both the events of the strike and its aftermath.

• Diluted Gatorade and bathroom scale in hand, the strikers set out on a chilly November evening. Supporters formed a negotiating committee to talk with administration.

• Later, Gandhi expert and political science professor Dennis Dalton agreed to join the strike despite worries about age.

• One student was CAVA'd and two quit after eight days, Community Board 9 told the strikers not to starve for Manhattanville.

• Then, it ended, tents were torn down and strikers answered questions posed by their adversaries.

After the jump, Bwog has collected the main changes that have occurred since the strike.

Do you increase Columbia's net worth? Or should the admissions officer have accepted Joe State in your place?

Capitalism: keeping America on top! What's that you say China? You are going to launch the Bird Nest into space?

Money: keeping the J-School on top! But are there going to be any newspapers left?

Manhattanville's consumer confidence decreases: losing property and can't afford public transit. But worry not, fair reader, Prezbo did a little work while chilling in Vermont.

Meet Nick Sprayregen -- that's him over there on the right, alongside anti-Columbia propaganda. For three years, he's upheld a solemn vow to rally against the University's expected use of eminent domain by holding onto his Manhattanville storage company, Tuck-It-Away Storage. He's also the subject of an Observer profile from earlier this week (and one from the Times earlier this year), which chronicles his Sisyphean battle against Columbia.

Specifically, Sprayregen's opposed to the University's imminent use of eminent domain, and in the past has tried to make a deal with Columbia in hopes of convincing them to drop it from their game plan. But Bollinger and his Legal All Stars wooed Harlem politicians with promises of low-income housing and an increase of jobs, so Columbia's plan was approved by the state, Manhattanville was deemed "blighted", and Sprayregen's hopes of warding off eminent domain looked bleak.

So yesterday the Empire State Development Corp. voted to approve Columbia's $6.28 billion expansion expansion into Manhattanville.

In doing so, the state designated the area as blighted, which is necessary in order to invoke eminent domain.

The decision came as a result of a blight study by AKRF Inc., which found that Manhattanville consisted of "aging, poorly maintained and functionally obsolete industrial buildings with little indication of recent reinvestment to revive their generally deteriorated condition."

The New York Times is reporting this morning that Anne Whitman, who up until very recently was one of three Manhattanville landowners who refused to sell to Columbia, has decided to throw in the proverbial towel and has agreed to turn over her land to Columbia. In exchange for selling the property currently home to her moving storage company (now located on 129th/130th on B'Way), Whitman will receive a stretch of property in Washington Heights, which Bwog hears is quite lovely.

A few years ago, Whitman had the following to say when CU offered her $4 million: "'No way Columbia is going to steal this property right out from underneath me. Remember that man who stood in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square? That's me.'"

Which, of course, didn't turn out to be quite true -- probably-unintended anti-Communist implications non-withstanding.

Nonetheless, that leaves just Nick Sprayregen and a conspicuously unnamed family as the only two landowners resisting the charms (re: money) of PrezBo.

Along Broadway this afternoon, a hodgepodge of Harlemites and Columbia students staged a small-scale demonstration between wooden police divides. The protest was centered around a lawsuit filed by Nick Sprayregen, Manhattanville businessman, and Norman Siegel, his Madison Avenue lawyer trying to get the City to revisit the Manhattanville plan that they already approved in light of environmental concerns.

It just so happens that in the basement of the Manhattanville campus there will be a hazardous biotech lab on, according to the protesters, a flood plane and earthquake fault line. His lawsuit is primarily demanding that the board wait until they can read the engineering studies that are in progress before finalizing their decision. Sprayregen said that in a "3000 page document," the City was not able to look at every very minor detail of the document vetted carefully. "We're not against expansion. We only think that biohazard research doesn't belong in Manhattan," he said.

Remember Manhattanville? The Renzo Piano campus Columbia is planning to drop onto a 17 acre swath of West Harlem? Well, the City Council vote, the final step in the relay race that is the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, (which will only decide the fate of the entire project) is rumored to be later today. The timing was a little sneaky -- the City Council technically has until January 15 to make its decision -- but the Community Benefits Agreement listing what Harlem gets out of the deal, is well on its way even if not everyone is agreeing. Traditionally CBAs are finalized just hours before the final vote. (Also see the Observer's speculations about some of the back room dealing.)

Even if you think today's a foregone conclusion (or that it won't actually happen), protest (or counter protest) on the steps of City Hall at 1:00 pm.

The affordable housing octopus, wherever it is, is probably a happy one right now. Today, the City Planning Commission (CPC) approved Columbia's Manhattanville expansion plan by a vote of 10 to 1, with one abstention. And to make matters more interesting, it also approved Community Board 9's plan. According to Amanda Burden, the Chair of the City Planning Commission, the commission has modified both plans to make them more alike. Read her statement here.

Although this Times article was very polite, you can be sure that the Coalition to Preserve Community and other groups that oppose Columbia's plan caused quite a ruckus today—they're fantastically irritating hissers and booers. And they certainly had time to rally the troops—there wasn't a soul in the city who didn't see this coming. After the CPC's November 13^th public review session, Burden's minions issued a statement containing this amazing line:

"While the community board has prepared a highly thoughtful set of recommendations for the area covered by the heart of the Columbia proposal, the Department believes it has a fundamental failing:
It limits the extent and manner in which Columbia can grow."

Yes Amanda...that was kind of the point of the plan.

He may have baby-sat New York as the crack epidemic left pipes and vials all over city sidewalks and the Crown Heights riots fissured West Indian-Hasidic relations in that neighborhood, but David Dinkins' opinion still holds sway. A politician with firm roots in the Harlem political establishment, Dinkins wrote an op-ed in support of Columbia's Manhattanville expansion in the City section of this Sunday's Times.

"Columbia's Manhattanville proposal takes the best of these ideas to gradually create a new kind of open, urban campus that will improve local streets; bring back commercial life to Broadway, 125th Street and 12th Avenue; and better connect the residential areas of Harlem with the waterfront park now under construction along the Hudson River."

As the Neighborhood Retail Alliance (a.k.a momandpopnyc) points out in an item published Monday (that curiously does not mention the Dinkins op-ed), Dinkins is also on SIPA's payroll -- he teaches classes and has hosted a forum on urban policy there for the last dozen years. Meanwhile, other Harlem politicians, community groups, and Borough President Scott Stringer (who actually has some measure of oversight in this whole process) remain skeptical.

Gothamist has a handy little digest of the op-ed with some links.

If you've been oblivious to the many attention-grabbing efforts on campus (the chalked stairs in Hamilton are a nice touch), you may not have heard about the SCEG/Postcrypt gallery show going on right now, "Expanding Perspectives: West Harlem," which opened Friday in the basement of St. Paul's and features art by both Columbia students and members of the greater community. Together with the lavish Robert Moses show in Wallach (more on that later), the exhibition forms one half of a complementary duo of timely campus happenings that expound on unique angles regarding Manhattanville expansion-- the human and the historical-- with extraordinary effects.

Bwog stopped by the gallery during Friday night's opening, which was abuzz with organizers, friends, artists, and critics (we noticed an august gentleman perambulating with an electronic critique notebook). The event, of course, wasn't just about the pieces, many of which are stunning, but rather the things people were saying about them. On one work, entitled, "Semiotics, Smoked Fish, and Scotch Tape," gallery-goers were actually encouraged to write personal messages in black Sharpie, resulting in notes like, "A place of beauty, strive, and strength. I love Harlem, it's in my blood and veins," mingled with personal tags and other comments.

After observing three female dancers performing a dirge-like routine with an orange electrical cord, we managed to get some photos before our camera battery blinkered out. Then, cool kids that we are, we chatted briefly with Sophie, who's been doing some of the wheatpaste art you see around campus, about her work. "It's just a character that I draw," she said, about her forlorn, blight-affected owls. "When I started, I didn't know what I was doing. I found a wheatpaste recipe online... It's just newsprint and Sharpie markers." And famous, mind you.

Hillary Clinton Has a Blog Adviser.

Squirrel Sets Fire to Dartmouth...

...and in unrelated rodent news...Don't Go Barefoot Anywhere Anymore

Eminent Domain Still on the Table. Suburbia Still Not for Judy Zuhusky.

Meanwhile, is there an opinion section today?

And God said, let there be opinion:

"Who the fuck takes cabs?"

It's amazing that the Greene Foundation would pony up $200M. Last
year's IRS 990 reflected $80M in assets (pdf):

If I had to guess, my guess would be that this is the Greene
Foundation's close-to-last hurrah. There's been a philanthropic
philosophy ever since the 1950s and 1960s that Greene probably
subscribes to that says a Foundation has to spend out all its assets
within a generation so the Foundation keeps within the original
philanthropher's vision. The Olin Foundation closed this year for that
very reason.