What's the Matter with Kids Today? Nothing!

Liz and Roar-EE just can't escape the paparazzi


Just when you thought the Columbia student body was hopeless, and there was no school spirit or interest in athletics... in comes senior Liz Strauss.

Liz is the President of the Undergraduate Engineering student council and she's also a key liaison between the athletics department and the students as the work to improve school spirit continues at Columbia.

Liz was a revelation in my search for good news about athletes and non-athletes at Columbia and she graciously agreed to do a short interview:


JAKE: Where did you grow up and go to high school, and why did you choose Columbia?


Liz: I grew up in the tiny little town of Glen Rock, NJ and went to Glen Rock High School. I chose Columbia because of two major balances: the campus feeling within the greatest city in the world and an engineering program with liberal arts components.



J: How do you run for office at CU these days, and why did you decide to do it?


L: Running for office varies based on what you are going for. Running for general Engineering Student Council is done with online voting in the spring. The executive board is elected internally. I’ve been involved in student life program initiatives since High School. I think it is your first chance to get students invested in the school. And as for why I ran, that’s a good question. I swore for a year that I wasn’t going to, but then I just wasn’t ready to let go during my senior year.



J: You've been really supportive of the athletic teams, was that a no-brainer for you or did you come to it after some time and experience at Columbia?


L: It’s nice to hear athletics thinks I’ve been supportive. It was kind of a no-brainer for me. I come from a big football town. I can’t imagine Saturday’s without football. I really started getting involved with athletic programming after Baker-gate. I had been to Baker Blast, Homecoming, and Midnight Mania as a first year, but I felt that Baker-gate was going to hurt the connection between student athletes and student non-athletes. I wrote a really long letter to Diane Murphy about it, and next thing I knew I was on the planning committee for Midnight Mania. This will be my third year chairing or co-chairing that event.


We’re trying to add more events based on athletics this year. I am on the residential life staff in one of the upperclassmen buildings and we are working to provide breakfast on Homecoming morning to encourage people to wake up and get on the buses. There is also great push from the programming people on the SEAS and College councils to try and make Homecoming a bigger thing on campus, so we've been talking about that a lot.


J: For old-timers like me, all we hear is how today's students don't go to the games and look down on the athletes. Is that what it's like right now, or are students more favorable than we know?

L: This unfortunately isn’t a campus where everyone gets up on Saturday to go to the games, but that doesn't mean that there are not students there to support our athletes. The number of students that are at games should speak to that. It’s been growing so much since my first year, that you have to fight for a good seat in the student section at football or basketball games now. As for the other issue, I think the problem is that the negative people are the ones being vocal; the rest of us just keep our mouths shut and go to the game. Our athletes don’t need to defend themselves against that. We have athletes in the 4.0 club and those being named to the Academic All-Ivy list all the time, but they just don’t seem to feel the need to point it out to everyone.



J: I visit campus with my family 5-6 times every year and I have to say it seems like networking and setting up communal events of any kind would be impossible. I see most students with their ears glued to cell phones or otherwise doing stuff on their own.


L: We are a very independent student body, but I think we still like good old fashioned events. The one problem is that it takes a little more to impress us now. The big name events, the ones that are proven to be fun, always have a good turn out. Glass House Rocks, Midnight Mania, and BBQs on campus always have great turn outs.


J: When I was at CU, free beer pretty much guaranteed a good turnout for student events, but that was just for seniors. What does it take now?


L: Free beer still works. I don’t think free beer will ever not work. Free t-shirts do pretty well too. Free food. Free anything is really great.


J: What do you think it would take to get more students to come to the football games? What do you think are the biggest reason why many don't?

L: I think the free beer is a good start. I think more of us need to know about the free beer. (Note: all fans 21-and-over get up to four free beers in the picnic area before every home football game at Baker Field). I also think that the team winning is a big help. The .500 season last year is a great selling point for this year.


Columbia fans like Liz are fighting for the program



J: A number of Ivy administrators and even some football coaches at other schools have told me they think football attendance numbers are down because of the increasing number of foreign students on campuses who, as we say in Yiddish: "don't know from football." The engineering school has always had a huge foreign enrollment, do you think these students can be indoctrinated?


L: Well first of all, I think that is bull poop. Our undergraduate population is about 15% international. I don’t think the other 85% of the students are all out at the games. I don’t think we need to indoctrinate anyone to football, I think we need to indoctrinate them to COLUMBIA football.



Nothing gets between Liz and her man!


J: Admit it, you kind of have a crush on Roar-EE, right? (Don't be ashamed, so does my daughter and she's only 4).


L: It’s not even kind of. I TOTALLY have a crush on Roar-ee! Not to mention that red-headed guy who is always walking around with him (Hi Danny!). But since I promised my friends I would work it in somewhere, I need to mention that in my personal opinion the hottest Columbia football player pretty much ever is Henry Louis Gehrig. Roar-ee is a close second though…


J: What's your average day like?


L: An average day for me has about five to seven hours of class, three to five hours of meetings, two or three hours of emails, three or four hours of homework, and then at least eight hours of sleep (because I like sleep). Oh, and I eat at some point during that. Hmmm…that’s 27 hours…let me think about this some more…



J: What are your post-graduation plans and how could a well-connected CU alum give you a "hand up" not a "hand out" right now?


L: I’m still trying to figure out post-graduation. I would love to do something in higher education. I’ve always been really involved in recruitment to the University, especially the recruitment of women and underrepresented minorities to engineering and the sciences. If well-connected alums have suggestions on what I could do, I’m totally open to that. open to that. I still kind of have no idea (sorry Mom).