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adgeek: The thing I like(d) about Columbia's identity (as nebulous as that sounds) was that it seemed to be above trash-talking.
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I don't know why anyone should be above trash talking, college is no fun without it.
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concoll: It's not about censorship or freedom of speech. Referring to students of another school as "bastards" in the headline of a Columbia-associated publication is not classy no matter how you slice it.
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I honestly don't see this as trash talking (as in look at me look at me, I'm better than you). I think you misunderstand the connotation. It's just hyperbole and making fun of a stereotype. We don't actually think Princeton students are bastards, but we don't treat everyone as if they're made of glass, so making fun of other schools (and our own) is very much part of Columbia's identity. If you follow our blogs many headlines are highly self-deprecating. With that, we also call chicago students nerds, brown students damn hippies, MIT students geeks, harvard students arrogant trust fund babies, penn students legacy investment banker wannabes, cornell students farmers who go to state school, barnard students loose, seas students devoid of social skills, and CC students unemployable etc. Other schools probably treat Columbia as crazy liberal activists who won't see a sliver of a paycheck in the next couple of decades. It makes for somewhat of a camaraderie and requires a slightly thick skin. Just readjust your sense of humor and take things less seriously.
In terms of why blogs like spectrum serve a valuable purpose, they can say something provocative from time to time, and sometimes it offends people, other times it's funny and other times it reveals a hidden view because newspapers were too conservative to say it.