Alma's Lucky Day

Credit: Billy Hathorn

One of our first ideas for the blog was a photo shoot with Alma Mater, a bronze statue by Daniel Chester French that sits in front of Low Library. Indeed, Alma is well taken care of at Columbia, as she always remains in shining brilliance, rain or shine.

We, at Hoot, have the utmost respect for our mother goddess (also known as the mother soul of our lovely academic institution) -- and we wanted to treat her to a designer makeover for the image to be used as our blog header. After all, who wouldn't want to be draped in Hermès scarves and Prada bags?

Credit: Anna Cooperberg Gonzalez (CC '12)

So, on an early Saturday morning, we trekked over to our dear Alma with bags of our very best clothing and accessories, from Jimmy Choo bags to Christian Louboutin pumps to Missoni knits. One student thought we were selling the clothes, and tried to buy a pair of Betsey Johnson pumps!

Credit: Noel Duan (CC '13)

As we started carefully climbing Alma and draping her in stylish ornamentation, representatives of the Columbia University Department of Public Safety arrived, questioning our motives and telling us to stop defacing this revered statue.

We collected our items and left Low Steps shortly afterward.

Unfortunately, they didn't buy our argument that giving Alma a Chanel bag was far from statue defacement. What's chicer and more respectable than Chanel, after all?