<p>The football providing security was a joke, attempting to reference the '68 riots. One of the ivy blogs tried it yesterday and many seem to have fallen for it.</p>
<p>thanks for clarifying the joke! (though it would be funnier if true)</p>
<p>The field hockey team might have been more effective ... if they brought their sticks.</p>
<p>The editorial in the Spectator may be on the money. A number of students are considering going to more Republican events. The action of the socialist group may have an unintended consequence.
This action highlights the difference in attitude in the extreme right and extreme left groups. The conservatives view the ultraliberals as well intended but misguided. The ultraleft views conservatives as basically evil and therefore are less inclined to allow them the same liberties they demand for themselves, hence the defense of denying the minutemen the liberty to speak as a free speech action.</p>
<p>I wish everyone on campus could just chill with this fierce politics stuff. Yes, politics is a part of college, but it shouldn't be a violent part. There's so much fun stuff and so much more funny stuff on campus that people should get involved in. What would have happened if nobody at all had paid any attention to this minutemen thing? Would that have been so horrible? Nobody would have listened to what the guy had to say and nobody would have cared. There's so much hysterical stuff on campus, like the signs up a couple of weeks ago advertising cheerleading, but saying that anyone who wanted to participate had to bring proof of insurance. Why do people have to get so caught up with in this political stuff. Running onto a stage and in trouble can bring nothing with trouble. And although there almost certainly were some students involved, this is NOT reflective of the student body at Columbia.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with mardad. To say something like conservatives respect liberals more than liberals respect conservatives can only possibly be supported by anecdotal evidence. I can say, from my personal experience, that the conservatives in my home town most certainly vilified liberals, but that is only the experience of one person, and it can't be used to make such a far-reaching statement. Having watched Fox News for days following this incident, I could also submit the horrible conduct of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity towards their liberal guests from Columbia in recent days as evidence to the contrary.</p>
<p>Bing, I would agree that there has been a departure from the usual pattern of late, as you mention. You left out Ann Coulter who is the worst of this trend, but I would still maintain that there is more respect for political freedom of speech throughout the remaining spectrum than there is on the far left.</p>
<p>Someone remarked to me today that Columbia has hardly escaped a scandal of this magnitude erupting at least once a year for the last five years...nevertheless, all of those years had been record-breakers for fundraising.</p>
<p>The O'Reilly clip I initially posted off YouTube was apparently only the intro. It turns out there was a whole 9 minute segment on the event. O'Reilly accuses Bollinger of "hiding under his desk as he always does" when asked to appear on The Factor. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYB_OLffZN0%5B/url%5D">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYB_OLffZN0</a></p>
<p>An ex-gf of mine, who was a coordinator for NSOP two summers ago - one of the most important programs of the year, you'd think - and told me that while Judy Shapiro made herself available for questions and reviews, Lee Bollinger was virtually inaccessible to her. She barely was able to talk to him twice the whole summer. Myself and WindowShopping have both taken his class on the First Amendment in different years, and in all cases, if you wanted to talk to him, you couldn't - you had to set up a meeting with a TA, who was typically a lawyer or CLS student. Students in his class and student leaders in his school can't get a hold of him. I'm not sure why Bill O'Reilly thinks this is something personal.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Students in his class and student leaders in his school can't get a hold of him. I'm not sure why Bill O'Reilly thinks this is something personal.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You're missing the point. I'm sure Bollinger made a calculated decision to dodge the media. Just because Bollinger thinks he's too good to interact with the students at Columbia (despite portraying himself as some sort of "people's president) doesn't mean that he's too busy/important to do 8 minutes on O'Reilly. If O'Reilly, Larry King, Leno, Letterman, etc. can score interviews with many people certainly more inaccessible than Bollinger (e.g., Bush, Clinton, Hillary), that's not the reason Bollinger didn't show.</p>
<p>Having seen how Bill O'Reilly treats his guests (the liberal ones anyway), I wouldn't go on the show either. I did, however, get a good chuckle out of O'Reilly's immediate assumption that Bollinger refused to do his show because he was afraid.</p>
<p>exactly. I would say it's 20 times more likely that Bollinger didn't go on O'Reilly because he didn't give a crap and had a million things more important to do. He's not exactly hurting his university's recruitment or fundraising efforts.</p>
<p>Those politicians' appearances on talk shows are usually shoot-the-breeze obligatory pre-election fluff to demonstrate that they "have a sense of humor" or whatever, not answer scathing questions about the scandal-du-jour. Even Letterman is hardly a challenging interviewer, and none of them twist and distort their guests' commentary to the extent O'Reilly does on his show. Few Democratic politicians would dare go on O'Reilly's show. How much more embarrassing for Columbia had Bollinger been inevitably lured into one of O'Reilly's traps rather than expendable little Avi Zenilman.</p>
<p>Did Bollinger go on ANY news program or give an interview to ANY interviewer? I'm not aware that he did. All the networks covered the story. It's a fairly safe assumption that they all would have invited him.</p>
<p>It is true that the politicians go on the talk shows for self-serving purposes. That Bollinger is "inaccessible" isn't the reason he snubbed O'Reilly.</p>
<p>All this student protest tells me Columbia students are passionate about their beliefs...</p>
<p>Besides, I wrote a paper on the 1968 student riots at Columbia, so this looks like nothing. It provided an interesting conversation topic when I spoke with Joanna May from Columbia when she was at my school for a college fair, too.</p>
<p>All the rioters from 1968 are tenured professors today, and tend look back fondly on what they view as a "Golden Age" of sorts.</p>
<p>Golden Age in what sense of the word... for protest? Cox Commission report clearly explains that there were some serious issues that people were happy to have had fixed.</p>
<p>Did you hear the bit of spin on the show from Stewart about how he "heard that the banner had ARABIC WRITING on it" that purportedly said "the holocaust did not happen."</p>
<p>The banner's said in spanish arabic and english that No Human is Illegal as should have been blatantly obvious to anyone at the event.</p>