Columbia University, you may remember, was at the September 26th mini college fair we had here at Exeter. Joanna B. May visited us and had many of those very nice Blue Albums and Blue Books to hand out, not to mention lots of discussion to offer. As with so many well-known schools at these fairs, Joanna was kept fairly busy. After I had chewed some time up talking to other friendly people around the room I went on over to chat about a Columbia topic I found quite interesting: the recent hoopla on campus over mysterious insurance claims relating to abortions, basically, and then disciplinary action handed down to the club hockey team after a postering incident lacking in taste.

Let me take a moment here to thank IvyGate and IvyLeak for keeping me up to date on these miniscule but still interesting little details. Were it not for these and other sort-of-gossip blogs, I’d have to exhaustively read the school newspapers to keep up with whatever issue was sweeping campuses. Sure, sometimes they feel more like tabloids than anything else. All the same, they’re a valuable perspective.

In any event, I thought the fact that these things were issues on campus was rather interesting and said so, which led to a fun conversation about the students’ activity and level of protest. The logical progression, from there, was for me to mention my 333 topic from last spring term: the Columbia student uprisings in 1968.

To my delight, I was told to “send it along” ! I did so this afternoon, and though I don’t reasonably expect anyone to just sit through the 17 pages, I’m always happy to have my hard work read by others. I think it’s a pretty fun read, actually. It’s just too bad my history teacher last term didn’t quite agree with me.So, the real question: who else wants a copy? The epigraphs are great.

I don’t know that this is “supplementary material” –it seems to me that that concept requires a whole bevy of forms I never filled out. Still, I see sections on some applications for “please attach your second completed manuscript in this space” or something to that effect: your personally choreographed music video that appeared on MTV, the moon lander you sent to Phobos, very impressive accomplishments. From The Gatekeepers (which I’m made to understand is not so tell-all as we might all be told) it seemed that Wesleyan admissions staff, at least, did not read through everything they were sent because they were too busy. I cannot imagine Joanna or anyone else having lots of free time at this time in the fall, but if she wants to use my history paper to relax and decompress, more power to her.