In Defense
of Orgo Night #3
On Thursday, December 15, 2016,
at midnight, the Columbia University Marching Band (“the cleverest band in the
world™”) performed a show of music and satirical comedy in sub-freezing
temperatures on the steps outside Butler Library on the Columbia campus. Since 1975 the Band has performed a similar
show, dubbed “Orgo Night,” (because the show happens on the eve of the organic
chemistry final) in which the Band skewers university administration, other Ivy
schools, rival student groups, and the world in general in a witty and often
raunchy program. The location of the
show on December 15, however, was unusual.
Traditionally the band marches into the main College Reading Room inside
Butler Library, known as Room 209, to the strains of the school fight song
before launching into its program. This
scheduled study break for the assembled students who choose to study for finals
in that room typically lasts between 30 and 45 minutes. This fall, however, Vice-Provost and recently
hired Head Librarian Ann D. Thornton, with the support of President Lee Bollinger
and Columbia College Dean James Valentini, banned the Band from the
library. The ban, which was not
discussed with the Band or with university students in advance, was announced
only days before the scheduled event.
Ms. Thornton stated that the reason for the sudden change in tradition
was a desire to maintain quiet study space inside the library, and President
Bollinger publicly maintained that it was based on “complaints” from students
about the Orgo Night show. University
officials claimed that the ban was not related to the content of the shows and
that they were not trying to censor the Band’s speech. The university offered to permit the Band to
stage the show in a different location at midnight, but the Band chose to stage
its show outside the library as a protest, which was attended by several
hundred students.
Since the sudden and unexpected
eviction of the Band from the library, all four undergraduate student councils
have called for reversal of the decision, the editors of the Spectator and BWOG
have issued statements of support for the Band, and many alumni have sent
letters of protest. University officials
have remained resolute in their decision, however. This series of essays, drafted by concerned
alumni, addresses the university’s claimed reasoning for its decision, the
process by which it was implemented, and the reasons why the decision should be
reconsidered.
(Links to earlier essays can be found on the right margin of this blog.)
H
Columbia
Administrators Have Failed To Properly Weigh and Balance the Competing
Interests of the Relevant Stakeholders.
President Bollinger, Dean Valentini,
and new Head Librarian Ann Thornton have decided that the interests of a few hypothetical
students who might object to having their quiet study in the Butler Library
Reading Room (Room 209) interrupted by the Marching Band’s Orgo Night show are
more important than preserving the Orgo Night tradition. This also means that the Columbia
administration values the preferences of these “Quiet Study Requestors” over
the preferences of the students who look forward to the Orgo Night show and who
would prefer to continue the tradition in Butler 209, including the students in
the Band. Even putting aside whether the
Quiet Study Requestors really exist, which will be the subject of a later
essay, this decision to end the Orgo Night tradition is an incorrect choice
based on a balancing of the relative interests of the involved students.
Suppose two hundred orthodox Jewish students
told the head of the athletic department that they were offended by their
inability to watch Friday night basketball games and protested that the men’s
basketball games on Fridays should be moved to 3:00 p.m. start times to
accommodate their religious observances.
And then let’s say that the AD, being sympathetic to those complaints,
went to her superiors at the university and lobbied for a change in the start
times for Friday basketball games to 3:00 based on these sincerely brought
complaints. Do you suppose that the
powers that be at the university would say “sure, let’s do that” and agree to
the change? No? Why not?
Women’s games routinely start at 6:00 p.m. and even have included an
11:00 a.m. start time on a weekday. Soccer
games often start on weekdays at 5:00. Swim
meets start at noon or 2:00 without problem.
Of course, starting at 3:00 would guarantee smaller crowds and lower
revenue. And so, the university would
have to balance the legitimate and sincere objections of the orthodox Jewish
students (and other students whose religious observance includes Friday nights)
against the competing interests of the athletic department, alumni, and the
university generally.
A balance is always necessary in
such cases. Merely because one, two, or
a hundred students complain about a particular issue does not mandate that the
university take action to satisfy their complaint or objection, or grant them
the precise remedy they request.
Certainly, the number of those complaining is one factor in this
balancing exercise, as is the seriousness and significance of the
objection. If, for example, a dozen
students from African countries objected to a newly placed sculpture on the
grounds that it was offensive and demeaning toward Africans (readers can use
their imagination as to what kind of image might generate that reaction), the
university would undoubtedly take the complaint quite seriously because it has
racial/cultural overtones and although someone in the university administration
approved the purchase and placement of that sculpture, significant
consideration would be given to removing it.
The balancing of interests would include how difficult it would be to
remove the sculpture and replace it with something else, how much bad press the
university would absorb if the complaints were ignored, and how likely future
students would be to similarly object to the sculpture. There are likely more factors that would be
considered, but the point is that there would be a weighing of interests and
the students’ concerns would be weighted quite significantly. There would also likely be public debate and
discussion about the issue.
Now suppose that a different group
of a dozen students advised a vice-provost that they were offended by the
statue of Alma Mater because of the existence of some symbolism within the
statue that is demeaning and derogatory toward their cultural heritage. Here, university administration would likely
utter statements of sympathy and understanding, but there would be not the
slightest discussion about removing Alma Mater from her perch in front of Low
Library. The feelings of these students
would be given little weight. Why? Because Alma has occupied that space for
several generations and is an established iconic part of the university
landscape. It was there when the
students matriculated, and although the university regrets their hurt feelings,
they are just going to have to get over it because the value to the university
of maintaining Alma far exceeds the concerns of those students. It’s still a balance, but in this case all
the weight is on the side of not removing the sculpture.
A mere objection, offense, or
inconvenience does not automatically trigger action when there are other
considerations, no matter how sincere the complaint and no matter how many
students share the same feelings. While
some types of claimed offense will certainly be weighted more heavily, none are
so overwhelming that they trump all other factors.
In the present Orgo Night discussion, on one side of the
scale is the value of Orgo Night. Another
essay has addressed this factor at greater length, but for present purposes
all sides in the discussion must agree that maintaining the tradition of Orgo
Night has value to the university, which promotes it as a venerated Columbia
tradition. And at least some students
enjoy the program and appreciate the brief break from their studies. We will call this group the “Orgo Night
Audience.”
On the
opposite side of the scale is the value of having quiet study time during finals
week, which is interrupted by the Orgo Night show for those students who prefer
to study in Butler 209, but who don’t want to see the Band’s show. We have already dubbed this group the “Quiet
Study Requestors.” We will further
assume that these hypothetical students have no objection to the Orgo Night
program content, but only with the disruption to their studies that accompanies
the program. The value of accommodating
the Quiet Study Requestors weighs in on the other side of the scale. How many such students exist is a question, and
will be addressed in another essay, but we will assume for now that they are
real and that their concerns are not immaterial.
If Butler 209 were the only
available study space, the requests from the two competing groups would be
mutually exclusive and the value of each side’s interests, along with the
costs, would have to be weighed against each other. Perhaps reasonable minds could differ as to
the proper outcome of the balance, but, the available alternatives must also be
weighed and factored in.
The first question that should be
asked is whether there is alternative quiet study space for the Quiet Study
Requestors. The answer is yes. Space is already available in Lehman library
and in the Science and Engineering Library as well as in dedicated study space
in dormitory buildings after midnight on Orgo Night. This space has undoubtedly been used for many
years by Quiet Study Requestors.
The next question should be whether there is
any reason to think that the alternate space is not sufficient to accommodate
the Quiet Study Requestors. A
competent Head Librarian would surely have usage statistics about her library
space and would know for a fact when and where students are using the spaces
and whether there really is a shortage at any point in time. Surely a competent Head Librarian would
conduct a survey, or at least dispatch some minions to eye-ball each of the
open libraries at midnight on Orgo Night to see how much space is really
available. In this case, Ms. Thornton
came to a conclusion, without any support or data, that midnight study space on
campus is “in even higher demand,” presumably as justification for the need to
free up space in Butler. The absence of
any data to support that statement suggests that it is speculation and not an
actual fact.
But, even if this
were a true problem, it is easily accommodated by alternative options. If there really were a shortage of midnight study
space, other libraries that are already open until 11:00 or midnight on Orgo
Night could be kept open an extra hour or two so that there would be no such
shortage. The cost to the university of
a few extra hours of open library space in Avery, Mathematics, or Business and
Economics is a minor factor in the equation.
Moreover, since the university was willing
to absorb the cost of opening the Roone Arledge Auditorium as performance space
for the Band, the cost of keeping another library open for a few hours would be
substantially less and so the university has conceded that the cost of providing
alternate study space is not a problem.
So, there is other quiet study space
available for the Quiet Study Requestors, or alternate space could be easily
made available on Orgo Night. But, there
would be some amount of inconvenience to the hypothetically disrupted students
in having to study somewhere other than Butler 209 for one night. Of course, it is necessarily true that these
hypothetical students, unless first semester first-years, have in the past
studied somewhere other than Butler 209 on Orgo Night, so for them the status
quo is already an alternate location.
Changing the Band’s location would allow those hypothetical students to change their historic studying location
and move to Butler 209 instead. This is
the remaining value and cost on the side of changing the Band’s venue – the
number of Quiet Study Requestors, the minimal cost of providing some extra
library hours outside of Butler (if that is even needed), and the inconvenience
factor of not permitting them to study in Butler 209, where they have never
studied before on Orgo Night, but where they presumably would prefer to study. While these values and costs are not zero,
they are not substantial.
On the other hand, a change in venue
for the Orgo Night show would inflict a great inconvenience on students who
want to attend the program – the Orgo Night Audience. They would be required to exit the library
and move to some alternate venue at midnight, and then return to the Library
afterwards if they wanted to continue studying in a library environment. Or, they would have to forego attending the Band’s
show and miss out on its value. The
balance would seem to favor not
changing the Orgo Night venue simply because the relative inconvenience to the Quiet
Study Requestors of choosing an alternate location is significantly less than
the inconvenience to the Orgo Night Audience of having to get up and move
across campus at midnight and then come back again. Thus, even without factoring in the value of the
tradition of Orgo Night, a change in venue would not be warranted solely based
on the balancing of interests of the two affected groups.
We know that the Orgo Night Audience
is substantial. On December 15th,
hundreds of students came outside in the freezing cold to watch the show. Despite Ms. Thornton’s off-the-cuff
observation that the audience for Orgo Night has “declined in recent semesters”
(which we seriously doubt about that assertion in the absence of some actual
data that Ms. Thornton certainly does not have), the most recent Orgo Night
audience dispels any idea that the size of the Orgo Night Audience is
insignificant. Certainly, it is larger
than the hypothetical Quiet Study Requestors.
And, even aside from the interests
of the Orgo Night Audience, the Orgo Night show has independent value to the
university, as noted in Pamphlet
#2. Moving Orgo Night out of Butler
209 fundamentally changes the nature of the event and alters the
tradition. The whole point of Orgo Night
is to interrupt the grind of studying
with a funny and irreverent show that reminds the audience of students that
there is life beyond their finals and that it’s a good thing to take a few
minutes to laugh. The alternate location
for Orgo Night, therefore, substantially diminishes the value of the Orgo Night
event and destroys its essence.
The balancing of interests, then, is not
close. The interests of the hypothetical
Quiet Study Requestors can be wholly satisfied by other quiet library space
with minimal inconvenience to the students and minimal cost to the
university. When the alternatives
available to satisfy the interests of the Quiet Study Requesters are taken into
consideration, the value of the continuation of Orgo Night in its traditional
Butler 209 location for the Orgo Night Audience far outweighs the minimal
inconvenience to the other group.
Did university administrators engage in a
reasoned and careful balancing of these values and costs? It is difficult to know, since the decision
was made behind closed doors without any input from the Band or from
students. We can only assume that a
careful analysis was not conducted,
since there appears obvious that kicking the Band out of Butler 209 was neither
necessary to solve a real problem nor the correct option given the weight of
the competing interests. An intelligent
and impartial administrator, without some ulterior motive, could not evaluate
these facts and reach a conclusion other than to accommodate the Quiet Study
Requestors by providing alternate space and maintaining the status quo for the
Orgo Night show. Since it seems that a
proper evaluation of the interests never happened, it should be a simple matter
for the administration to re-evaluate the issue and reach a different
conclusion for the spring semester.
-
Hamiltonius
H
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