HAMILTON HALL — On Tuesday morning, at 8:33 A.M., Columbia students woke up to a friendly email from Professor Beck Hall. Hall, a professor from the History Department, frantically decided to cancel his scheduled Zoom lecture for his notorious seminar “History of the U.S. Criminal Justice System.” Instead, he attached the link to his Tik Tok account, “WAP with Beck Hall.” WAP standing for “Watch and Probe,” that is.
When asked for their reactions to Hall’s decisions, students shared varied opinions. One student, who chose to remain anonymous, immediately dropped the class. When asked why, he exclaimed, “I am not kiddish like these other millennials and Gen Z-ers.” In the end, though, it worked out for him because he realized that the course actually did not fulfill his Global Core requirement after all.
Caroline Johnson (CC’22), a fanatic of Tik Tok stars Bryce Hall and Noah Beck, saw Hall’s course on her For You Page and immediately decided to add the class because she loved the professor’s name. She hopes that Bryce and Noah will duet one of her professor’s videos in the future.
Even Dean Valentini provided his input: “I can only hope that other professors will follow Hall’s Beginner’s Mind attitude or the ‘shoshin’ mentality when handling their virtual courses. Perhaps, they could use this app to assist students when they shop for classes.”
While many people praised Hall, there were a few who blasted him on social media. President Trump labeled Hall a “thug working for a disgraceful liberal institution.” Trump even took a step further and edited his tweet from May 29th, 2020 and changed “CHINA!” to “Columbia University = CHINA!” When we contacted Hall for his thoughts on the tweet, he declined to comment.
