March 20, 2006
Columbia Gets Biggest Present EVER
Columbia University excitedly announced that the Jerome L. Greene Foundation was donating $200 million for a brand new neuroscience center, The Jerome L. Greene Science Center, to study the mind, brain and behavior. This is the largest private gift ever to a university to create one facility. We say, hoorah for the alma mater, and while more research for the human mind is wonderful, we do wish more could be done to lower tuition. At any rate, Columbia President Lee Bollinger continues to love the life sciences. (On a Bollinger tangent, Gothamist doesn't think he'd ever open up his house to a thousand happy Columbia students after a big football win the way he did in Michigan because we doubt that many students even go to the games and the NYPD would probably have a heart attack.) And we're interested in knowing how the Greene Foundation is so loaded - sure, he was a real estate lawyer, but those must have been some sweet investments.
Check out this diagram of how the Jerome L. Greene Science Center will be at the core of whatever Columbia does! And Mayor Bloomberg was on hand for the announcement (so was Representative Charles Rangel); Bloomberg donated $100 million to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins, but that was split between four programs.
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that is the cheesiest diagram ever.
And I thought that email from Bollinger was meaningless:
To the Columbia Community,
I am writing to inform you of a transformative development for the
sciences -- indeed, for all areas of learning -- at Columbia...
Maybe I would have continued reading after that
In other Columbia news, the 2nd homophobic incident since December occurs over spring break as the president of the Queer People of Color organization finds anti-gay graffiti scrawled on the whiteboard in his dorm.
Hooray for New York City! This will surely help income inequality in the city. Who needs manufacturing jobs? Those new buildings should add nicely to the tax rolls. Oh wait. At least there will be union jobs building luxury condos for the additional scientists Columbia is going to hire. And the Wall Street bankers and venture capitalists will need livery cabs to take them uptown.
some people here are seriously bitter.. my premed friends at CU are pretty interested in it, and to me it's great to have more research facilities to compliment CU's lackluster science/engineering programs... let's hope it actually goes to the building and not into presbo's pockets....
Look for the full story in tomorrow's Columbia Spectator.
That's your idea of the "full story." Wow. Anyway, NYU, not to be outdone says they will announce a similarly-sized gift today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/education/21gift.html
"At least there will be union jobs building luxury condos for the additional scientists Columbia is going to hire."
take, oh, 30 seconds to think about all of the jobs which have opened up in just the last ten years due to advances in science and technology, not including periphral benefits.