Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, in New York. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Join us for our monthly General Body meeting on Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 from 6:45pm to 8:15pm at the Columbia Alumni Center located at 622 West 113th Street, New York, NY 10025.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP

To participate via conference call, please dial-in:
domestic: 1-877-228-3600
international: 1-719-457-0862
passcode: 839904#

The Columbia University Gospel Choir will be hosting its annual Spring concert and  is inviting the BAC family to come out and enjoy an evening of live gospel music.

The Gospel Choir consists of undergraduates, graduate students, alumni and staff representing 8 of the University’s schools including Teacher’s College, the Law School and the Business School.

Event Details:

Date: Saturday, April 2

Time: 7PM

Location: Party Space, Lerner Hall, Columbia University.

Tickets: $7( w/o CUID), $5 (w/CUID)

Purchase tickets online:  https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/9669384  or at the Lerner TIC.

For more information about the concert or joining the choir, email gospelchoir@columbia.edu.

Columbia Spectator

By Nataly Sauceda, Michelle Rosales, Jennifer Alzate, Devyn Tyler, and Daniel Valella

Published April 8, 2012

Last Monday, President Lee Bollinger announced a new $30 million commitment to support the recruitment of “outstanding female and underrepresented minority scholars” in the ongoing effort to diversify Columbia faculty (“Columbia commits $30 million to increasing faculty diversity,” Apr. 2). Following their reports of the announcement, Spectator and Bwog’s comment sections exploded with debates over the existence of institutionalized racism and the value of actively recruiting women and people of color.

As members of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the writers of this piece are personally implicated in debates over diversity. MMUF is an international organization which addresses “the serious shortage of faculty of color in higher education” by intellectually and financially supporting young scholars of color who plan to pursue graduate degrees. As CC students and MMUF fellows that represent academia’s underrepresented minorities, we hope to convince others that faculty diversity helps the entire university environment.

Diversity initiatives can be controversial because we are taught that hiring somebody based on their gender and/or race is always discriminatory and wrong. According to this logic, the ideal hiring practices should be gender- and race-blind, making it equally possible for people of all identities to attain faculty positions. Anything short of this merely reaffirms the second-class status of women and people of color (POC for short).

READ MORE

“The regeneration of Africa means that a new and unique civilization is soon to be added to the world.”

Pixley ka Isaka Seme (1882–1951)
Political Activist
BA 1906, LLD 1928

Seme and three colleagues laid a foundation of modern South Africa when they organized the South African Native National Congress in 1912. Renamed the African National Congress in 1923, the group has led the struggle for political, social, and economic rights for black South Africans. Seme was a major force in the Congress, serving as its first treasurer and as president-general from 1930 to 1936.  He also launched its newspaper Abantu-Batho, the country’s first for black readers, and led the movement to buy land for black settlers.

Seme was the first black South African to graduate from Columbia, earning his BA in 1906 along with the George William Curtis medal, the University’s highest oratorical honor.  (The quotation above comes from his prize-winning address.) He later studied law at Oxford, and in 1928 received an LLD from Columbia.  Of the University, he wrote, “I enjoy hard work, and I have always desired to be in the center of things. This is why I came to Columbia. New York City is the cynosure of all American life; the greatest interests of the country are directed from this center. A glance through the city’s records is enough to convince any mind that Columbia is a force behind the throne in the greater movements of New York life.”

Read the Offical Release HERE

Join us for our Spring happy hour!

Date:  Thursday, April 12, 2012

Time:  6:00PM – 9:00PM

Location:  Slate Bar & Billiards (54 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10010)

Join us for a game of pool or ping pong, great networking and drink specials:

$4 beers
$4 well drinks
$5 wine
$6 House Martinis

We will also be raffling off of great raffle prizes including Knicks Tickets, Yankees Tickets, Alvin Ailey Tickets, Complimentary Bottle Service, Free Happy Hours, and gift cards to Dinosaur BBQ, Hill Country BBQ, Calle Ocho and other great restaurants and retailers. All proceeds from the raffle will benefit our scholarship fund.

The Black Business Student Association will be having an alumni mixer on Wednesday, February 29 to close out Black History Month.

We strongly encourage Business School Alumni to attend.

Event details:

Tillman’s - http://tillmansnyc.com/
165 W. 26th (between 6th and 7th)
7-9pm

Ursula Burns, CEO Xerox

The leadership organizations of both undergraduate and graduate students at The Fu Foundation School of Engineering at Columbia University are pleased to announce today that alumnae Ursula M. Burns, chairman and chief executive officer of Xerox Corporation, will be the keynote speaker for Columbia Engineering’s Class Day ceremony, which will be held on May 14, 2012. The Engineering Senior Class Council, representing undergraduates, and the Engineering Graduate Student Council, representing MS, PhD, and professional degree students, jointly selected Ms. Burns as their graduation speaker for 2012.

RSVP here

The Gospel Choir consists of undergraduates, graduate students, alumni and staff representing 8 of the University’s schools including Teacher’s College, the Law School and the Business School.

For more information about the concert or joining the choir, email gospelchoir@columbia.edu.