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3 Within the Family
4 Letters to the
Editor
6 Around the Quads
Columbia hosts Dartmouth
at Homecoming on Saturday,
October 20.
16 Roar, Lion, Roar
DEPARTMENTS
Celebrate Homecoming 2012 on Saturday, October 20.
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44 Columbia Forum:
College: What It Was,
Is, and Should Be
A reflection on college and
the role it should play in our
challenging times.
By Andrew Delbanco
49 Message from the
CCAA President
Kyra Tirana Barry ’87 on
the successful inaugural
summer of alumnisponsored
internships.
50 Bookshelf
52 Obituaries
56 Class Notes
85 Alumni Sons and
Daughters
Alumni Profiles
70 Robert Shlaer ’63
91 Macky Alston ’87
99 Alexandra Epstein ’07
Robert Shlaer ’63
WEB EXTRAS
ALUMNI NEWS
5 More Minutes with Robert Y. Shapiro
Listen to Performances by Anthony da Costa ’13
Ai-jen Poo ’96 Speaks Up for Domestic Workers
Gallery of Daguerreotypes by Robert Shlaer ’63
Watch the Trailer for Macky Alston ’87’s
Documentary Love Free or Die
Overtime with Football Coach Pete Mangurian
Thank You to Our Fiscal Year 2012 Donors
college.columbia.edu/cct
104 Alumni Corner
Ben Ratliff ’90 rediscovers
the haven of Butler Library,
especially the stacks.
Pete Mangurian is the 10th head football coach since
I came to Columbia as a freshman in 1967. (Yes, we
were “freshmen” then, not “first-years,” and we even
wore beanies during Orientation — but that’s a story
for another time.) Since then, Columbia has compiled
exactly three winning records in 45 seasons of football.
So what makes Mangurian think he can succeed where Buff Donelli
(with the 1961 championship team — alas, before my time —
as a striking exception); Frank Navarro; Bill Campbell ’62, ’64 TC;
Bob Naso; Jim Garrett; Larry McElreavy; Ray Tellier; Bob Shoop;
and Norries Wilson largely did not?
“I’ve been doing this for 33 years,” Mangurian
said in August as he prepared for the start of his
first season at Columbia. “I’ve been fortunate to be
around some very successful programs. I’ve been to
what people in the football world would consider
the pinnacle, the Super Bowl, and I’ve worked in
organizations that are arguably the best in football.
Hopefully, I’ve picked some things up along the way.
“One of the biggest lessons you learn in this
game is to evaluate the situation objectively, have a
clear idea of where it is you actually want to go and
what you want to accomplish, then use your experience
and the experience of others to put together a
road map to get there.”
Mangurian, a former assistant coach with five
NFL teams and head coach at Cornell from 1998–2000, is not
about to accept the status quo.
“I’m not a believer in ‘That’s just the way it is and it’s always
going to be that way,’” he declared. “I’m not really interested in the
pitfalls and the things that have come before. Believe me, every day
I face, ‘Well, that won’t work’ or ‘That’s not the way it is’ or ‘Those
people won’t cooperate with you.’ It’s myriad things every time
we turn around. My answer to that at this point is, ‘Why?’ And I
usually don’t get a very good answer, because the person I’m talking
to wasn’t even around when that problem took place.”
One example, he said, is the misperception that the Columbia
faculty does not support athletics.
“That’s not true,” he said. “The faculty is more than willing to
help reach the objective, which is to make sure that these young
men get the education they need and have experiences they need
and still be successful at football. They have no problem with
that. There’s no difference between going to practice and doing
your homework — you’re practicing for the test. When you put
things in that perspective, it’s easy to see.”
Mangurian, whose Cornell teams went from 1–6 in Ivy play
in his first season to 5–2 in each of the next two years, values the
journey as well as the destination.
“If there’s anything that really defines how I approach things,
it would be this: It’s great to have a goal, everybody has them,
but the real work is how you get there. A lot of times we focus
so much on the goal, we don’t focus on how we are going to get
W I T H I N T H E F A M I L Y
Déjà Vu All Over Again or
The Start of Something New?
PHOTO: EILEEN BARROSO
there, the methods to achieve that goal. The goal will happen if
you do the other things along the way.”
Still, there’s no substitute for the goal, what Mangurian calls
the “W word.”
“The bottom line is winning,” he said. “I’m not going to mince
words on that. It’s winning. That’s life. I have three kids and I’ve
been through this ‘everybody gets a trophy’ deal. And I get it,
to a certain extent. But the real world doesn’t work that way. It
doesn’t work that way in business, it doesn’t work that way in
the classroom. You get an A or you get a B, and it’s hard to get an
A. A’s are special.
“It’s about winning. It’s about being successful.
But what everybody has to understand is that if
you do win, then you learned a lot and accomplished
a lot along the journey. It wasn’t just the
destination.”
The Lions began their journey with 12 days of
spring practice, where Mangurian got to see returning
players firsthand, and continued through
preseason training camp, where he focused on the
32-member class of first-year players. His objective
in both, rather than to install specific schemes or
plays, he said, was to find out which players he can
depend upon.
“We put a lot more emphasis on finding out who
we could trust,” he said. “Who’s going to do the
things we ask him to do when we ask him to do it? Who can we
count on? We believe in putting more pressure on them in practice
than they’ll probably have in a game. I guarantee you there will be
a little bit of relief when these guys get to go out and play and we’re
not standing right behind them, getting on them. But I think you
have to harden them. You have to put them on the anvil and hit
them with the hammer and make them harder, so that when it gets
tough they’ll be able to respond. It’s no different from a professor
who teaches his or her class and makes them study. It’s no different.”
Columbia’s first exam, if you will, comes against Marist on
September 15, with its first Ivy League test against Princeton on
September 29, both at home. The offense figures to revolve around
quarterback Sean Brackett ’13, the team’s leading rusher as well as
passer last season. Mangurian is hoping some of his young players
will bolster a defense that features linemen Seyi Adabayo ’13
and Josh Martin ’13 and linebacker Zach Olinger ’14, but which
allowed 32.8 points per game last season.
The Lions were 1–9 last season, the lone victory being a 35–28
decision over Brown in two overtimes in their season finale.
“We’ll be better,” Mangurian said. The journey will determine
how much better.
For more from CCT’s interview with Mangurian, go to Web Extras at
college.columbia.edu/cct.
FALL 2012
3