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What would you like to see on The Blaaag? Tell us at theblaaag@gmail.com.

OK, more like the Chinatown bus.

Most of the Blaaag staff (though Mar and David are the only consistent Blaaagers...*is ashamed*) will be in Boston this weekend for Boston BASIC. In fact, Christina and Ryan are holding their own NAASCon workshop on Asian American Studies!

Hopefully, when we return, Columbia will still be here.

Due to, I gather, the evident inadequacy of everything President Bollinger has done in the last week, Vice President Dirks and Deans Quigley and Navratil have come together the craft this master statement, perhaps the fifteenth that we've read in the last three days but perhaps also the best so far. With this said, please, no more statements. Do something.


Dear Student,

We are all appalled to confront again in our community a number of acts of bias, prejudice, and intolerance. It is, perhaps, tempting for those not targeted in these incidents to downplay or dismiss them as the actions and attitudes of only a few, unrepresentative individuals. At times like this it is essential for everyone to try to understand the seriousness of these incidents and how they are experienced by members of targeted groups. Repeated administrative statements deploring these incidents are an essential part of Columbia’s response to their occurrence. But we must seek not only to prevent these incidents from recurring, but also to understand the vulnerability and isolation felt by those at risk, taking collective responsibility for each other’s security, well-being, and full membership in our University community.

Columbia strives continually for an academic community of inclusiveness and excellence in every imaginable way. It is what brings so many of us to Columbia. It is a privilege we all share to belong to a community in which a vital part of our excellence derives from our inclusiveness. It is thus everyone’s responsibility to sustain and nurture our diverse community, to understand what it means to say that an attack on any one of our communities is an attack on all of us, and to do whatever we can to demonstrate that sense of acceptance, empathy, and respect for others that enables our diverse community to thrive. We are all the poorer when divisive and threatening acts take place, and we all must do our utmost to strengthen the whole community fabric that can, when we all pitch in together, enable us to be Columbians at our very best.

This email comes with an understanding that many of you will rightly feel we are preaching to the already converted, but it is partly directed to those who may not have yet grasped the full extent of our community responsibilities, and particularly to those individuals whose involvement in recent abhorrent incidents indicate that they just don’t get it at all.

"Not on our campus" our student activists have been chanting this week. They speak loudly and emphatically for us all.

To those of our students who need special support at this time, the staff of the Division of Student Affairs and the Office of Multicultural Affairs are there to serve you individually and to link you to other campus resources as needed. Their work will be even more successful if we all find ways of building our entire community upon mutual respect, solidarity and support.

Thank you for doing all you can to make our community one of which we can all be proud.

Nicholas Dirks
Vice President for Arts and Sciences

Austin Quigley
Dean of Columbia College

Gerald Navratil
Dean of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science

I just got word that anti-Semitic graffiti was found today in a bathroom stall in Lewisohn Hall. While I don't have any more information, we'll be sure to update the situation as details arise.

This is the third hate crime on campus in 2 weeks. What the hell is going on?

***

UPDATE: Bollinger just sent out an email:

Dear member of the Columbia community,

I am saddened to report that one of the bathrooms in Lewisohn Hall was sullied with an anti-Semitic smear. It has been promptly removed and is now being investigated.

I want to make two points. When words are the offender, as in this incident, I am reluctant to draw attention to them and will exercise restraint in doing so going forward. I do not want to broadcast, in any way, the message they attempt to send or empower those behind them. Despite the irrational, destructive hatred that persists in our society and world, we do not accept this anywhere at this University. No one among us should feel marginalized or threatened by words of hatred. We are one community; and as one community, we will overcome these hateful acts and hold each other to the highest standards of respect for the dignity and diversity of every individual.

In response to questions students have raised, I also want to reassure you that we have utmost confidence in our Public Safety officials and in the NYPD. Not only do they have well established communications protocols in place when there is an immediate threat of harm; they distinguish crimes that threaten our physical safety from incidents like the one that occurred today.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger

(When PrezBo makes opinions and sends out stuff this fast... you know it's serious.)

Interested in building progressive power here at Columbia? Young People For is a leadership training initiative made by People For the American Way, a national progressive advocacy organization. The Young People For Fellowship provides motivated individuals across the country seeking social change the resources necessary to effect change on their campuses. All fellows receive an all-expense paid trip to the National Summit for Young Progressive Leaders in Washington, D.C. from January 17-21, 2008.

Applications are due Monday the 15th of October!

Many former fellows are now powerful members of our student body, including the presidents of the Black Students Organization and the Columbia Queer Alliance. (And they are pretty kick ass people.) As for us, both Mar and I are thinking seriously of applying.

Join us!

Just wanted to congratulate CU Democrats for their performance in the debate last night on immigration against the College Republicans. With the coming of the ostentatiously racist Islamo-Fascism week, we're glad this fight is starting already.

If you want a live-blog of the debate, here's the link to perhaps the only other campus blog to use a lame Blogger template. (Or do you?)

Alas, we couldn't be there (teahouse with Conchita's Collective!), or we would've submitted our own questions. As Howard University Professor Frank Wu writes in Yellow, all debates regarding immigration are ultimately debates about race. (And his word is absolute truth. Duh.)

Our favorite part:

9:35 Greer just took the Republicans to task for pretending not to see xenophobia in immigration issues while at the same time inviting speakers like Jim Gilchrist to campus.
Good job!

I arrived in Roone Arledge only at 1pm (The Blaaag needs to be better staffed), but got some interesting tidbits. The admins present were Dean Colombo, Dean Quigley, and Dean Friedman.

- Quigley thought that diversifying the faculty body could substitute the race and anti-oppression training that various student groups are proposing to those who teach the Core. Diversity in faculty and staff in higher level academia is indeed important, but can it substitute more efficient solutions to the problem? We don't think so.

- Colombo sounds a lot meaner than Quigley. Maybe the British accent throws us off.

- Vice Dean Friedman of SEAS says that students should be talking to administrators when hate crimes do not happen. "We might not agree with you, but we're listening."

- Quigley says that in the longer term it is a culture that we are trying to change at this university. At least we agree on something.

(The admins, you might have been able to see, under the Roone Arledge spotlights look so white.)

- We hear the meetings yesterday with PrezBo and the deans went strangely. Evidently, there is administration tension, added to the fact that PrezBo cannot do anything but spew the same old sh**. Just rumors.

- Today, October 11th, is also National Coming Out Day. Columbia Queer Alliance and Queer Awareness Month is hosting an event titled, "Coming Out Against Hate: One Columbia - United", a Q&A with administrators about the recent hate events on campus. The event will feature deans Austen Quigley and Chris Colombo, and will take place at noon in Roone Arledge Hall. Please attend and support your/our friends and allies.

- Also, tonight get dinner from 6:00 to 7:30pm in the newly inaugurated safe space: Earl Hall. Also a QuAM/CQA event, "United Against Hate" will focus on a broad range of hate-based attacks and bigotry at Columbia. Join the common meal and restore a feeling of community. (Might be the closest thing we come to one for a while... I don't know.)

- If you've been keeping up with the 114th St. police brutality incident on Sept 14th, stay tuned. We're meeting on Monday with administrators of multicultural affairs, student activities, and public safety. They seem to want to connect this to a larger trend with NYPD insensitivity, but we'll do our best to make them see the importance of this one case. We'll have more news soon, and are certainly not letting this go anytime soon. (Do we say this too much? Administrative red tape is a pain in the ass.)

The gunman trend

It started with Columbine in 1999. VTech in April (which hit the Asian American community hardest). Then there was St. John's in September (near many of my good friends). The Wisconsin party three days ago. Now this?

A student opened fire inside a Cleveland high school today, shooting and wounding several people and creating moments of sheer terror for students, school officials and parents. He then apparently shot and killed himself, Mayor Frank Jackson said.

This is not specifically an Asian American issue, but it is an issue of public security on school grounds. Sound familiar? It should, because this is also what incidents like the noose found on Prof. Madonna Constantine's door are about: ensuring the security of our students and faculty.

As found on Columbia News:

This is an assault on African Americans and therefore it is an assault on every one of us. I know I speak on behalf of every member of our communities in condemning this horrible action. I also want to express our full support of Teachers College and President Susan Furhman in dealing with this matter.

Never did he quite say what the incident of bias was. To this, we say "grow some cojones".

Update: Our very own Heiroku writes,

"and all of us must confront acts of hate whenever they occur within it."

Soooo, Bollinger, where was your comment on the SIPA incident? Is it because the news covered THIS one? And, uh, doesn't that mean we should confront you when you seemingly implied that the entire country of Iran wasn't part of 'civilization'?

To the Barnard Community -

By now most of you may have already heard of an appalling racial incident that occurred at Teachers College yesterday. I am forwarding the message that went out from President Susan Fuhrman to the TC Community. We at Barnard share the shock and outrage that friends and colleagues at Teachers College must be feeling.

We may find it unbelievable that such a thing could have occurred within an academic community like ours. As we reflect on the impact of hateful acts such as this, we need also to be aware of the unintended hurts that may pass beneath our notice. We must be mindful of all of the small violences we may inflict upon one another in the course of daily life. We must, of course, reject and condemn overt and senseless acts of bigotry, but it is only when we are able to confront as well our less obvious aggressions that we will begin to change the fabric of our community.

Judith Shapiro

---

PrezBo, where is your public e-mail?

Please read:

I received a facebook message from a close friend who is a part of Proxy Magazine. She told me that Proxy is starting a blog as well! The blog is called "the (pro)be". Here is what "the (pro)be" will cover:

day-to-day life on campus as well as highlight activities and meetings hosted by different student groups. Whether you're looking for information on how to get more politically or socially involved or you're just interested in hearing about bizarre or funny things that happen around campus, the (pro)be is here to keep you updated and informed...
Our blog will feature everything from campus events like the World Leaders Forum to restaurant reviews and information on Manhattanville Expansion.

So you are wondering: What is the Proxy Magazine?

Answer: It an on-campus publication that strives to tell the many stories that emerge out of the African Diaspora—-stories ranging from the hip-hop scene in Europe to the faces of Harlem to the Afro-Latino experience of the Caribbean.

So what? Who cares? This isn't about Asian Americans?:
If that is what you are thinking. That is not true. Asian Americans are a part of a united body of people of color. Our struggles, their struggles... there is no such thing as "our" and "their." When it comes down to it we are all in the same struggle against injustice; and we are all striving for a country that does not marginalize but embraces..

What do you want me to do?
We all need to educate ourselves and never forget that education is not defined by just textbooks and does not end at a certain moment. With that said we need to communicate with each other. When I say, "each other" I mean we must communicate "between different organizations, different backgrounds, different anything." One great way to communicate and to learn is the WEB! Blogs! Websites! So check out the proxy blog at http://theproxyprobe.blogspot.com or check out the website at htpp://www.theproxyproject.org! And if you are interested in blogging, the (pro)be is looking for more staff reporters and bloggers to help keep it fresh and up-to-date.


Just do it! Use the resources we have so we can be that much closer to a unified body.

Proxy Blaaag Love!

8:05 PM. A mass e-mail is sent out to listservs for SCEG, SPEaK, SHOCC, USCC, CSSN, Lucha, AAA, AAA PC, and Student Capital Campaign. It reads as follows:

This morning a noose was found on the office door of an African American faculty member at Teachers College.

A few undergraduate students from different communities were notified about the recent events through e-mail and phone calls this evening. Because these events do not only affect the students at Teachers College, but the entire University student body, we are calling a gathering at Earl Hall tonight at 9pm for any and all students as a place for support and discussion.

Following is the email sent to the student body of Teachers College today:


To the TC Community:

The police were here this morning because a hangman's noose was discovered on the office door of one of our African American faculty members. The incident has been reported to the New York City Police Department (Detectives Bureau of Manhattan) and is under active investigation by the Hate Crimes Task Force.

The TC community and I deplore this hateful act, which violates every Teachers College and societal norm.

Anyone who has any information about this incident is urged to immediately contact (anonymously or otherwise) any of the following:

The 26th Precinct Detective Squad (212 678-1351);

Crime stoppers (1 800 577-TIPS);

John DeAngelis, Chief of Public Safety (212 678-4180);

Janice Robinson, TC General Counsel and Executive Director,
President's Office of Diversity and Community (212 678-3732).


Susan Fuhrman

[Note: According to various attendees of the meeting, the targeted professor was also female and worked under a 10-year contract]

-------------------------------------------------------------

11:10 PM. Chants echo over cobblestones glistening in the rain. Outcries run from Earl Hall to Teacher's College. These are cries of "unity and solidarity" that, uttered by twenty-something students (some holding instantly made cardboard signs), hold just a fraction of the emotions expressed by over a hundred students that gathered in a room with terrible acoustics in an emergency meeting responding to "The Noose Incident".

-------------------------------------------------------------

What can you do about this NOW? Here are a few general ideas:

  • MARCH tomorrow from Low Steps to Teacher's College, starting at 2 PM. We undergrads should show our support to our fellow Columbia colleagues.
  • E-MAIL President Bollinger at: bollinger@columbia.edu. Spamming does wonders; get on that.
  • CALL the Columbia hotline: 212-854-1754

-------------------------------------------------------------

Words for thought:

Was this an isolated incident, or a pea in an entire pod of racial hate crimes?

Let's look at Columbia's recent publicity:

9/14: An Asian American student is confronted by NYPD officers for drinking on public grounds with no ID. Two white students walk by with 40s; the officers tell them to put their drinks in brown bags and walk away.

9/24: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes to speak on campus as part of what Prezbo calls an example of "free speech at Columbia". Protests spark anti-Muslim sentiment.

9/27: Racial graffiti is found scrawled in a SIPA bathroom stall targeting people of Middle Eastern and African descent, just three days before the National Walkout for Jena 6 commences.

In less than one month.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Let us not overlook the fact that racism and oppression happen everyday, if not always in such explicit forms. We must fix the community and administration which has created an environment that makes individuals feel comfortable to say and do such things. If you think that this doesn't involve you, think harder.

Just take a look at this article by Xiaochen Su '10 from the Yale Daily News. In this article, he blames a decrease in US living standards on immigrants and the poor, deplores government resources for the disadvantaged, and proposes the enactment of "child tax credits" and "entrance fees" for poor parents and immigrants.

Su, if your piece is in some way a satire of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, I hope you will realize that putting it in your school newspaper is totally ridiculous on any day other than April Fools. And if your piece was never intended as satire... well, good luck with your internalized self-hate issues.

Congratulations for being the first person in the APA Hall of Shame from the Ivy League. It's important to make this point because, evidently, messed up thinking escapes no one. Even people who will one day lead our society, as scary as that sounds.

(Can we say something about the fact that the YDN even let this be published?)

Yes, it's October 9th. A little late on a post deserving of yesterday.

We'd like to point you to a book by a Gavin Menzies, who wrote a controversial work about how imperial China must have discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

For us to seriously introduce the 1421 hypothesis would border a bit on overflowing yellow pride, but the point is this:

The spirit of Decolonization Day (formerly known as Columbus Day), is to recognize the imperialist aggression that New World explorers like Columbus instilled in the conquest of the Western Hemisphere. This way of thought, that other native cultures are more naturally more barbaric than their own, led to the displacement, enslavement, and eradication of these native peoples. Hence, there is little rationale in celebrating the conquest and oppression of other people of color.

This type of thinking is not lost on this society today. That privileged, wealthy professionals are more "entitled" by their net worth to inhabit new gentrified establishments in poorer neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves (typically communities of color) is the 21st century version of Columbus' aggression. We must be able to see this.

(This blog post had long lost its track. But to bring it back, consider this.) If Gavin Mendies is right, we can be sure that the Chinese discovered America first and didn't bother to exterminate the natives. (Would Chinese explorers have enslaved an entire native people for the purposes trade and colonization? There is strong evidence that Chinese seamen also reached Africa and created unoppressive, mutually consenting communities.) We hope that all of this makes you think a bit about racial dynamics, aggression and, ultimately, racism.

So now you know why you heard that word racism shouted so often from Low Steps yesterday.


AAA at the Jena National Student Walkout last Monday, standing in solidarity. If the person who took this photo is reading this post, thank you.



After a Saturday night Finishing The Game screening at the IFC Center, I took 17:37 minutes to sit down with stars Sung Kang and Roger Fan to talk about acting, Asian Americana, and our favorite hair products.


David Zhou/The Blaaag: My first question for you guys is, what is your favorite film?

Roger Fan: I think my favorite film that influenced me the most was Trainspotting. The first time I saw it, I went out and shaved my head. It was interesting just because it was a film about rebellion, questioning society, 401k, that kind of stuff. Finally I just sat down and said, "Oh my God." So I went an bought the book by Irvine Welsh. That's my favorite film.

Sung Kang: My favorite film was The Goonies. Really inspired a sense of adventure and exploration, you know? I think it reminded me of my childhood, but we never really found the same treasure. We always went out and explored... it really encourages imagination for kids.

DZ: I think in a way these movies illustrate you guys, where one film is a quest of a guy finding one's life and the other is comedy and adventure. Did you guys have any source of inspiration for your acting? Any actors from your childhood that has inspired what you do?

RF: The funny thing about it is when you first conceive of acting, you think it's all about you. It's like, you're going to be actor. Then you realize you're going to Hollywood, and it's a full team sport. And if it's not a team sport, chances are you'll get annihilated. My inspiration is being a part of a team more than anything else at this point.

SK: Everybody tends to say so-and-so person inspired us to be actors, but...

DZ: Yeah, I guess it's a question that a lot of actors get - like whom did you want to be when you started acting?

SK: As a kid my role models on television were the typical American role models... the typical western, John Wayne, James Dean, the action adventure, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, that's just how it went... whereas when you get a little older, you realize that there's really no one with your face up there. Unless it's from a kung fu movie, and I can't really identify with Jet Li or Jackie Chan. They were never my heroes. So as an actor, to go, "I really aspired to be like him," I don't think that really hits it. I think that there are a few people of our age, of our generation, working inspires me to give it a shot, but can you name any heroic Asian American males out there? It's really tough.

DZ: In your careers as actors, what was the most interesting audition that you've been to?

RF: I think it's a wake-up call when Asia comes to cast in L.A... I came about five, six years ago - you would walk in to do a typical Hollywood audition, and it's like no matter what you do, you're just not in the minds of the people in the room. Every now and then, Asia comes in to cast something in L.A., even for something as basic as a car commercial. And the second you walk in, everyone in the room has a unanimous agreement that you are a leading guy, you are the person who should be the face of this product. That for me was an eye-opener. In Hollywood, you're always going to be that Asian person; in Asia, there's just nothing holding you back.

SK: Yeah, I agree.

DZ: This is a question my co-editor and I have been dying to ask. We're big fans of Heroes-

SK: Yeah, Heroes.

DZ: Right, with Masi Oka. And he's become, along with you guys, the next step in Asian American actors. So we were talking about the fact that Masi Oka, while being a part of this new step, he's also in a way pretty typecast.

RF: It's great that there are Asian Americans in mainstream television that actually have a prominence. The issue is, there always are - the same three or four guys that are rotated through. The question is, can we expand upon the existing archetypes that are happening right now? Masi Oka - I went to college with him, great guy - happens to be a really amazing actor that fits a very specific archetype. At the end of the day, Masi Oka is a perfect English-speaking American (born in Japan), but he's forced to speak with an accent. The great thing is, he plays a cool and heroic guy. But he's still a foreigner. Daniel Dae Kim - perfect English-speaking guy on Lost - has to speak Korean. Masi should be out there, doing what he's doing. I think Sung's and my job is just to create more archetypes out there. We just have to understand what the lay of the land is. Hollywood is never going to create a role where Sung and I get to be leading guys. We have to do it on our own.

DZ: Through independent filmmaking.

RF: Yeah.

DZ: So we're seeing that you guys have to resort to independent filmmaking to spread your message, to create more archetypes. Do you think that this is different with mainstream television - that it might have more freedom with creating certain characters that aren't being seen in Hollywood right now? If so, what kind of leeway might this be?

SK: I think that there's actually less leeway on television. It's quicker, shorter medium. It's thirty minutes to an hour. Break that down - a sitcom would be eighteen minutes, an hour episodic would be forty to forty five minutes. The reason is that they have to fill these spots. The reason why the show exists is because of the ad space that they have to sell. If Tide or Honda pays millions of dollars for that space, they want a successful show that millions of people across America are watching. So at the end of the day it's still a lot like film. Film, though, has more pipelines available to take more risk. You're not trying to redefine an archetype on television - you don't have the time. That's why those characters are safe. You don't have eighteen minutes to explain to middle America who these character are. They want easy, relatable, and identifiable. "I like you and I'll watch you next week." There's no explaining three dimensional backstories of who you are.

DZ: Wow. Certainly adds something new to what I thought was the difference between film and television. So, this is the last really substantial question I have for you guys. Through AAA, we talk a lot about what it means to be an Asian American in our society. For you guys, I guess you have the added burden or role of saying something about what it means to be an Asian American in media and acting. Do you have any thoughts or messages you try to get across about this?

SK: As an Asian American actor? It's such a tough question to answer because at a lot of Q&A sessions, someone always asks, "Do you think that Asian Americans in the media are responsible for positive representation in our community?" I think it's a heavy burden to place on someone. I'd like to say that if someone is in front of the camera, I wish this person would take on some kind of responsibility, but I don't expect him to. It's on an individual basis. For myself, I have high standards for the kind of person I want to be: the kind of friend I want to be, the kind of future husband I want to be, the kind of father I want to be. It goes into the kind of actor I want to be. At the end of the day, I'm responsible for Sung and what he wants to be remembered as. I don't think I can put on the burden of Asian America.

RF: At the end of the day, there is not a general national Asian American pride. I think it has to do a lot with the fact that Asian Americans have adopted assimilation as their way of becoming part of the fabric of American society. This means adopting a set of rules to be successful that were already set in American society that were not set by their own people. They have to play by rules of the system. In a way, you're going to somewhat abandon your self-identity of what it means to be an Asian American. Asian American identity is still not formed yet. If we're not careful, we may be assimilating it away completely. Ten to fifteen years from now what is Asian American won't be Asian American, but is really mainstream preferences.

DZ: Like the product of another identity.

RF: Yeah. Ultimately, it requires more effort to be proud of who you are, create opportunities for your community, and come together on a national level so that we have a voice. Right now our voices are almost silent. That's not good for politics, entertainment, business, or life in America. It's really up to our generation to wake up, take ownership, and help define what it means to be an Asian American.

DZ: Alright. The last two questions are pretty loose. What is your spirit animal?

RF & SK: What is that?

DZ: In [stereotypical] Native American culture, there's an animal that symbolizes who you are. Mine is a puppy.

SK: Mine's an anaconda.

DZ: But anaconda don't have hair.

RF: It's alright, man. Mine, too, would be an anaconda.

DZ: Alright. And lastly, because I'm sure the girls want to know this, what hair products do you guys use?

SK: Hair products? I'm a big fan of, uhhh, cashew oil.

DZ: Don't worry - eventually some company will call you and ask you to be the spokesman for their cashew oil.

SK: I used to be a gel guy, but then I think that whole wet thing didn't work.

DZ: Yeah, I tried to be also.

RF: What do you use?

DZ: I just use shampoo.

RF: You don't put anything in your hair.

DZ: It's pretty wild sometimes. I realized before that gel doesn't really work. Just doesn't stay.

SK: It's too hard.

RF: Try the cashew oil. You'll see.

SK: You'll see the difference overnight.

RF: It'll look chaotic, but it's manageable. Manegeable chaos.

I think I'm about to try the cashew oil.

Transcribing the interview right now. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment!












 

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