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From the Columbia University Alumni Association, Spring 2025
Dear Fellow Alumni:
As you know, it has been an eventful spring at our beloved alma mater! The campus has been enjoying the high-spirited shenanigans and mischievous pranks that traditionally precede the end of our academic year.
This year’s Alumni Association Tomfoolery Prize was awarded to the Critical Studies Collective for burning down the Hillel Center. Afterward, city fire authorities insisted on giving the Collective a stern talking-to. But good feelings were immediately restored by the university’s Trauma Healing Department (formerly the Campus Police Department), who swooped in with stuffed animals and chocolate milk for all!
But not everything at Columbia is high-jinks and horseplay. Our university faces challenges that call for the help of our generous alumni.
First, there have been unusually large maintenance expenses which are an unavoidable result of the right of free speech. These include the costs of debris removal and decontamination, along with excavating what remains of Butler Library.
Also, a class action lawsuit has been brought by a handful of disgruntled former students who claim to have somehow been offended by the continued postponement of classes and other campus activities. Although the case is obviously frivolous, our attorneys assure us that it can resolved in return for an estimated eight-figure settlement. Or nine, tops!
Each of us should consider making at least a modest contribution – no more than what you might pay for, say, a summer in Tuscany or a month’s skiing in Gstaad.
And don’t forget to order your football tickets so you can cheer for our beloved Lions this fall!
Although some opposing teams have been dropped from the schedule due to their failure to meet Columbia’s standards of fair play (i.e., a policy of affirmatively recruiting diverse team members without discrimination as to size, athletic ability, or interest in the rules of football), it’s going to be a great season!
Published in General
If that school is still named after the first colonizer Christopher Columbus, then justice has been denied. It should be renamed Genocide University.
Or Indigenous People’s University.
My favorite line!
Presenting today’s proud graduate of the Columbia School of Social Work.
But I bet she’ll still tell prospective employers that she has the degree/credential. Destroying the paper diploma doesn’t change that.
And she runs to the registrar and asks for a replacement because reasons….
Honestly, it is hard to further devalue a degree in Social Work.
I have to stand up for social workers, with whom I work closely. Most of them are intelligent, hardworking, brave, and willing to try to help truly desperate people whose problems – like all of our problems – are at least partly of their own making.
Although social work professional associations are notoriously left-leaning, the same cannot be said for many rank-and-file social workers. For example, they regard the notion that social workers can replace police officers as frankly insane. No one who takes this idea seriously knows anything about either social work or law enforcement.
I know nothing about Columbia’s School of Social Work, but as a profession they have my respect.
After the coming financial hit from litigation and declining applications, the key will be to recruit even more students from wealthy families in Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic states to make up the shortfall and complete the rebranding. Go Desert Lions! Beat the Yale infidels!
Soon, surveys may show that taking new hires who have recently completed a stay in a mental hospital or rehab is more likely to produce a sane, productive team player than an Ivy League graduate.
The Yale Infidels game would probably not draw as big a crowd as when the Columbia Desert Lions play their arch-rivals, the Cornell Unbelievers. The beheadings are always a highlight of the half-time show.
But of course a lot of this is just about the credential, whether it actually means anything or not. If you can’t get the/a job without the/a credential, then you better get the credential.
I thought I heard on some podcast (hence not reliable, but possibly indicating a direction) that some large percentage (like 30%) of Columbia students were on student visas, indicating tuition revenue may already be very dependent on foreign sources. Which may also partially explain Columbia’s reluctance to having the police restore order on the campus. Not that the Biden administration would revoke their visas, but it is a possibility. Can’t afford even the possible loss of those high revenue students.
The LGBTQ+ Toss at halftime is always a crowd favorite.
“Trauma Healing Department (formerly the Campus Police Department), who swooped in with stuffed animals and chocolate SOY milk for all!”
Has to be artificial chocolate flavor, doesn’t it? Real cocoa is probably bad for the planet.
When Hunter S. Thompson ran for Sheriff, one plank was that he’d rename Aspen CO to Fat City.
Good point. Columbia students are notoriously intolerant of lactose as well as Jews.
Thanks for the upgrade.