In the year of Ahamdinejad, hunger strikes, faculty uprisings (don’t remember that one, huh? Well, check out the Comm.’s Year in Review this Wednesday and Thursday!), noose-hangings, plagiarists, hate crimes, tenure battles and irritating websites, it was encouraging to see that the lede of the Spectator’s last top story of the ‘07-08 school year reads as follows:
As neighborhood criticism of the West Harlem Local Development Corporation subsides, members of the corporation say they are four months into developing a full community-benefits agreement.
It was equally encouraging to see that the writer of these lines was Daniel Amzallag, who was involuntarily catapulted into Spectator lore by the front fender of an oncoming car. But his leg has healed, and the recipient of one of the truly horrific on-the-job injuries in Spec history is now healthy enough to write a comfortingly innocuous news story about the University’s relationship with the Harlem community. It turns out this year wasn’t fated to end in massive student and communal retaliation against the University, for better or for worse. So for Dan, for the University, and for fans of moderation and compromise, everything turned out all right.
Could that turn out to be the last word on one of the most tumultuous years in Fair Alma’s history? It’s easy for a self-important journalist like myself to get stuck on the notion that everything he’s covering is the most significant thing ever to happen, ever. But the hunger strikers were only with us for ten days, Ahmadinejad for a couple of hours, David Horowitz for even less time than that. I submit that these events were thrilling at the time, but perhaps ephemeral in retrospect; footnotes dotting an otherwise-undistinguished era of footnotes. I’m not sure this year has changed Columbia in any fundamental ways, but I’m not sure it hasn’t–for now, I’m content with leaving Amzallag’s lede as an optimistic coda to an often-infuriating year.