Nader drums up support at Getz

During a recent visit to Columbia, Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said that the U.S. government could save enough money to provide free tuition to all American students at public universities if it pulled troops out of Iraq.

Nader spoke to a crowd of nearly 300 in the Getz Theatre in the 11th Street Campus Building, 72 E. 11th St. on April 6.
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Secondhand stairway
Students need to self-police stairwell smoking, officials say

Those intrepid students who opt to take 13 flights of stairs to class instead of elevators, suffer through fatigue, exhaustion and, maybe worst of all, second-hand smoke.
Take the stairs in the South Campus Building, 624 S. Michigan Ave., any day of the week and count the cigarette butts littering the cement steps.

Student smokers across the campus have adopted Columbia’s plentiful stairwells as unofficial vertical smoking lounges, while convenient for the smokers—is a nuisance for those who don’t smoke, students told The Chronicle.
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Local chef dishes out competition and cuisine
Culinary connoisseur becomes head of staff at Pili.Pili

In May, Fred Ramos will spend four hours confined to a small cubicle while thousands of spectators watch his every move—all in the name of cooking.

Ramos, 29, former chef at the Printer’s Row restaurant, 550 S. Dearborn St., and currently the executive chef at Pili.Pili, 230 W. Kinzie St., is one of two Chicago chefs who will be competing in the Bocuse d’Or USA Concours, where he will spend four hours preparing various food dishes within a cubicle while bystanders and peers observe.
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Homeless census draws criticism
City plans to end homelessness within 10 years

Despite the city’s recent formal headcount of homeless people in Chicago, the recorded number may be an inaccurate estimate according to homeless coalition representatives.

On March 25, hundreds of volunteers flooded city streets to count and survey nearly 1,000 homeless. The count did not include those housed by local shelters. The final number was 958 homeless.
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Columbia is a college in flux. The past few years have seen new leadership, a new administration, new dorms and recently added a new directive for the future.
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Editorial: No moral equivalency in Israel

They’re at it again.

After much deliberation and hijacked peace talks, the Israel Defense Force decided to target the hierarchy of Hamas leadership, starting at the top. Citing the 377 Israelis murdered in hundreds of attacks, including 52 suicide bombings over the past three and a half years, Israel was quick...
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Get inked without all the pain
Hollywood makeup artist makes sporting tattoos as easy as getting dressed

Have you ever wished you could erase a painful memory from your mind—wiping out its existence as you know it? When a relationship ends, those involved often say they wish they never met their ex— but the consequences are never thoroughly considered, since, of course, it’s impossible. Or is it?
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Columbia students funk it up
Hippa-Funk-Tronica Productions is taking Chicago's underground music scene by storm

It’s where sexy meets sweet, where trendy chic meets the good old-fashioned ’50s, where very hot-pink polka dots meet some very old school Converses and where a very masculine shade of pink meets a very, um, masculine kind of guy.
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