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Gothamist doesn't know whether or cry, so we'll settle with rolling our eyes. Some Columbia students created an online contest, Ms. Columbia, to judge who was the most attractive female Columbia student, and of course they had to shut it down due to a "hostile and inappropriate response from the Columbia community." The thing is, the two students - from the Schools of Engineering - who created mscolumbia.com, Ang Cui and Alan Severin, also had a sister site, mscusiteb.com, which had "photos of eight of the women, some of them in lingerie or wet tank tops." What? The Columbia Spectator has the details:
About 65 women applied for the contest in January and February, after Cui and Severin flyered dorms. Applicants’ headshots and cover letters helped the organizers narrow the field to about 30, then they recruited three female students to help them with the in-person interviews in February and March. After meeting all the applicants, they chose 15 finalists. Those finalists each got a free photo session during April under the understanding that they would be part of an online beauty contest and did not own the rights to their photos. On the original site, one could click a woman’s headshot to read her bio and see more pictures, and if they voted, they were given a link to siteb.Of course the sites got bombarded with critical comments, such as "ewwww you guys are pervs." And by bombarded, that's 15 negative comments. Ha! Walk a mile in any other blog's shoes, babies, and you'll see what negative comments are! Oh, and one cultural group threatened to kick out a student who was on the site - must have been one of the more religious ones. Cui told the Spec, "We didn’t make siteb as a place to look at smutty pictures," and Gothamist laughs laughs laughs -
We are, however, impressed that it was called "Ms. Columbia," because there's nothing like keeping the indepedent woman's spirit alive while objectifying her.
Update: Gothamist is sorry for jumping to conclusions about the contestants not knowing what they got into - of course we realized that the female students that signed on should have known what they were getting themselves into. Read the comments as the creators of the contest take serious umbrage with some of the coverage (not just ours). That still doesn't mean this was a good idea, but we'll talk again when the Mr. Columbia contest happens.
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aw, those poor, objectified ms. pretties.
They just need to balance it out with a Mr. Columbia. I'll volunteer. C'mon ladies, don't be shy.
… ladies? hello?
Sigh…
What, no Ms. Barnard?
;)
fools! they should have made up a name for the school! like hudson university or something.
The best part is the unintended name for the second site; mscusiteb.com, which can be read as:
Ms. "Cusite" B.com
"Cusite", if anyone here knows arabic or hebrew, is slang for "slut", and literally means vagina.
You have to wonder if they'd have gotten as much flak for this if they'd put up a matching Mr. Columbia contest. Here's a followup article with corrections: http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/05/02/4275e105bf2bd
Look. If your only source is another article, at least quote the right article. The full Spectator article is here:
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/05/02/4275e105bf2bd
For the record, Site_B was not a 'perk'. It was a public site anyone can view. All girls on Site_B wanted to be there, and believes strongly in the project. You can READ their personal statements at
http://www.mscusiteb.com
The Ms. Columbia project had a 5 person selection panel (2 male, 3 female. 2 seas, 2 cc, 1 barnard). They determined the 15 finalists. The final decision was to be made through an CAMPUS WIDE election.
We did not kill the project because of 15 negative remarks. We stopped the project because our models were being HARASSED by other people on campus.
Ms. Columbia was open to all Columbia schools. We had 3 Barnard women, 3 SEAS.
The purpose of the Ms. Columbia project is not to "judge pretty girls". You should read AT LEAST the MISSION STATEMENT.
Do your homework next time.
See www.mscusiteb.com to read statements from the creators and models involved.
Oh. By the way. We ARE doing Mr. Columbia next year.
It is beyond hypocrisy that the week before ms. columbia was shut down, Columbia was papered with fliers for "Take Back the Night" bearing slogans to the effect of "March because women should be allowed to wear whatever they want." (The ones I saw were written in Spanish so I can't remember exactly, but this was the message.) Who exactly gets to determine the "feminist" agenda nowadays? Moreover, when did feminism (and liberalism, ostensibly) become about a select few pre-determining choice of identity and expression for the rest? Who are these people and how did they get this job? I feel like if I proved myself to get into an Ivy league school, I have at least a couple brains to decide for myself whether or not I'm offended by something; I don't need high and mighty feminists censoring for me. Also, your article is very poorly written.
As a contestant in Ms. Columbia, I have to say that I am rather disgusted with the pathetic job of investigative reporting (and proofreading) done here. Please, before you judge people, at least TRY to find out more facts. Had you even glanced at the now-infamous "Site B," which you ostensibly claim is simply a place to look at smutty pictures, you would find eight statements from intelligent women explaining that they were not, in fact, objectified, and that the community's respone was truly quite inappropriate.