I have a theory that I can capture why this month is insane for student life at Columbia — at least the parts people actually follow — and I can do that thanks to the Columbia Daily Spectator, which on Sunday published this newsletter.
Image of Columbia Daily Spectator’s “Wake Up Call” Newsletter issued on Sunday, including a now retracted advertisement.
The Music Wouldn't Play
The big headline news last week was that the Columbia University Marching Band would disband following several anonymous allegations of sexual misconduct and larceny were published in a student Facebook group Columbia Confessions.
In the saga of the troubled band, the news was unexpected. For decades the organization had been a fervent advocate of shock humor. Because many students wouldn’t catch themselves dead watching what was until recently the least fortunate football team in the Ivy League, the band’s most popular event was Orgo Night, which was an extended half-time show performed in the main undergraduate library with Columbia as the target. Many of these performances, by the nature of comedic medium and material, touched on sensitive issues and offended a lot of people in the crossfire. When the band would make the news, it was always over whether dunking on the football team was too mean, or over the utility of their shock humor, or more recently whether they could indeed play loud music in the library the night before finals season.
These new allegations, if substantiated, were shocking. The band in their press statement cited “sexual misconduct, assault, theft, racism, and injury to individuals and the Columbia community as a whole” as the rationale for a town hall and the decision to dissolve. The band’s alumni association denied these allegations in a statement to The New York Times, but neither organization has published anything about specific allegations at press time. Columbia Daily Spectator reports that many of their traditions revolved around sexual hazing (I don’t know how else to describe exposing “genitals to new members on the Staten Island Ferry”) and vast amounts of alcohol, which led other Ivy League bands to describe the organization as “a drinking organization with a marching problem.” (A low note to be sure.) The band’s press statement promised more details in the upcoming days, and certainly whatever the former members of the band publish will be watched closely.
The Vote of the Half-Decade
Meanwhile, students in Columbia College (one of the University’s four undergraduate schools) will be voting on a resolution to support a divestment campaign from certain companies participating in what is alleged to be apartheid in Israel.
Palestinian rights has been a culture war within academia and Columbia for decades, and intensified with the launch of the broader Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. Columbia’s Hillel, an overarching cultural organization for Jewish students, does not recognize Jewish Voice for Peace over their position on Israel. Many activist groups on campus are not welcoming to students who identify as Zionists under a collective anti-normalization policy.
Supporters of this resolution say the results of the vote are important “to satisfy one of the Advisory Council on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI)’s criteria for considering divestment proposals, namely, proof of ‘community sentiment.’” ACSRI is a Columbia committee created to handle ethical investment issues in the endowment like, say, divestment from coal companies, and a successful presentation could lead to Columbia taking action to divest. Opponents say that having this vote at all “places an inordinate amount of pressure on Jewish students and forces them to defend themselves and their identities,” and further poisons the community with anti-Semitism.
This all started in 2017, which was the first time that pro-Palestinian groups presented this resolution to the Columbia College Student Council to be approved as a referendum at all. While students rarely attend student council meetings, almost every meeting on this issue has packed the small room the student government meets in. Pro-Palestinian groups then went across Broadway to Barnard where they were able to get a similar resolution on the ballot, and that resolution was broadly supported by the Barnard student body, which led to Barnard’s president stating they will not divest. In 2019, the resolution came back to Columbia College’s student government and failed again, only in the fall to come before a newly elected student council which approved the resolution with similar language to come before the student body that following spring. Then the coronavirus hit, and the vote was delayed until this fall. Regardless of the results, Columbia’s president has already said that, without the broad support of the Jewish community, he would not support a call for divestment.
Advertised Disfunction
In that context, the advertisement that ran in Sunday’s “Wake Up Call” from the Columbia Daily Spectator is … timely. However, two hours after the publication of that newsletter, the corporate board wrote that the advertisement from a student group called Students Supporting Israel was “clearly inappropriate and did not meet our standards for distribution.”
Spectator Publishing Company has an official policy in which “ads where the primary intent is to advance an idea or perspective— essentially a paid editorial—will be deemed inappropriate for publication” except for events and books. This has been their policy for years. In fact, I reported on this policy in 2017. The problem is that back then, they published an advertisement for a conspiracy book that has since been removed from Amazon’s store. More recently, in fact at press time, they published the following advertisement on their website that isn’t political in the DC sense, but is a call to action for Columbia professor Jamal Greene from Accountable Tech, a digital advocacy group.
Image of an advertisement on Columbia Daily Spectator’s website.
The Columbia Daily Spectator doesn’t need to have this policy. Paid editorials exist. One of the most consequential media cases before the Supreme Court, New York Times v. Sullivan, was over a paid editorial, a rather important one calling out racism in the South that only had a few errors. But since they have this policy, they invite attention to themselves. I would be remiss not to point out that Students Supporting Israel does have a history of confrontational activism, especially versus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Both groups have accused the other of harassment in the past; I’ve seen a confrontation that was close to ending in a fight. However, their statement to readers ended by saying “neither The Columbia Spectator nor Spectator Publishing Company endorses Students Supporting Israel at Columbia or its products, services, or views.” For this last statement, Students Supporting Israel is asking for an apology, because the statement didn’t say anything else. Since I cannot attach a picture of the statement, the text will be in italics below.
Spectator’s Statement to Readers
Dear Spectator readers,
We write to you in light of an advertisement that was displayed on our Sunday Sports newsletter sent out earlier today. The message, which referenced the Columbia University Apartheid Divest referendum, was clearly inappropriate and did not meet our standards for distribution. We deeply apologize for giving this advertisement space on our platform and are immediately reviewing our internal processes to ensure that publication of such material will never happen again. Neither The Columbia Spectator nor Spectator Publishing Company endorses Students Supporting Israel at Columbia or its products, services, or views.