Disclaimer: The following post was written by Taylor Walsh and Avi Zenilman, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Bwog editorial staff. We also apologize to any readers upset at us for taking ourselves too seriously, and promise at least three fart jokes by Monday evening.

It's been an intense week and a half around here. As Bwog sifts through the fallout from October 4th , the endless debate over whether it was right or wrong (we think it was wrong, if anyone is still counting) for students to go on stage has crowded out two important, unanswered questions: Why won't President Bollinger stand up for his students, and when will he speak out against the Minutemen?

Bollinger's first statement in response to the brawl—nearly two days after the fact—placed blame squarely on the shoulders of students who stormed the stage. But the release of new Univision footage last Sunday changed the terms of the debate: video evidence showed a Minuteman kicking a student in the face, most definitely not in self-defense. Students may have disrupted a speech, but violence belonged to the outsiders.

And yet, faced with an attack on one of our own, the administration said nothing. At a Tuesday meeting with student leaders, Bollinger did not acknowledge that Columbia students should be able to protest without getting kicked in the face. Instead, he launched into an academic discussion of a university's "core value," free speech.

Free speech may be the most important value of a university—and Bollinger has exercised it poorly. In last Thursday's second statement, he buried a mention of the assault on Columbia students at the end, saying only that those outsiders found to be violent wouldn't be allowed back on campus.

When the College Republicans announced that they had scheduled the founder of the Minutemen—a nativist fringe group that President Bush has decried as "vigilantes"—to speak on campus, we wondered, "why are those wackos coming?" and went on with our lives. Bollinger defended their right to speak, and said nothing more.

But Jim Gilchrist's presence would affect Chicano students in a way similar to the way a visit by Iranian president and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have affected Jewish students. Driven by a real fear that an Ivy League stage would grant legitimacy to the Minuteman style and worldview, activists deluged inboxes with calls for protest, and an anti-Minutemen facebook group garnered over 600 members.

Yet the administration failed to take its students' anger seriously, providing only a handful of public safety officers despite the presence of several members of the Minutemen's local chapter and a protest swollen by outsiders.

Bollinger has followed up this miscalculation by failing to admit error, stand up for his students, or call out the Minutemen—unlike three weeks ago, when he called Ahmadinejad's views "repugnant." Bollinger has also not chosen to take a milder stance, like when he told New York magazine in January 2005, "I want to completely disassociate myself from those ideas," in response to the writings of MEALAC Professor Hamid Dabashi.

Bollinger should defend free speech, but he should also defend his students. And it is possible to do both at the same time.

Taylor Walsh
Managing Editor, Bwog

P.S. If anyone has a better name than "October 4th" (10-4! 10-4!) for the Minutemen events, please email us. Any proposal that uses the word "gate" will be immediately disqualified.

As of 3:06 am, that girl who sat ahead of us in high school biology is
no longer single. Some photos of our little sister in potentially
compromising situations have been unjustly revealed. Some guy we
barely know has just friended some girl we never knew. And now the world knows the groups we just joined. And the friends we have.

Some may say the new changes still permit voluntary membership to the
digital world. But who has the time to individually delete each trifle friendship or relationship announcement, a group membership, a photo tag, from his or her "mini-feed?" Such a lifestyle would give new meaning to the word "heinous".

"Make it stop!" Bwog says. "This time Zuckerberg, you've gone too far!"
You can quit your facebook account and rejoin whenever you like--you go to "My Account," scroll to the bottom, and quit. After doing so, any time you wish to rejoin, you simply sign in, they send you an email, and you will have your same profile, with your same groups and your same friends.

Everyone: go quit. In the message you are required to send, tell them that they have ruined facebook. Tell them you want no part of it. And tell them you will rejoin when the new changes are eliminated.