Columbia Eclectica

Kevin O’Connor, Despair Fest, and the Columbia of years past

By Neda Ravandi

Illustration by Iris Pope

In the darkest recesses of the Columbia University Digital Archives, beyond famed fine art collections and architectural vignettes illustrating a newly constructed Butler Library, there lies something even more Columbian: “Kevin M. O’Connor Student Life Collection, 1988-2022 [Bulk 1988-1992].” The lengthy name does little to inform what fills up pages and pages of “fliers, printed matter, clippings, programs, correspondence, artifacts, and A/V content.” On one page, O’Connor’s bashful smile beams off a Columbia ID card dated “01/02/70,” below an image of the 1992 class directory, a physical hardcover titled “Facebook.” On another is a scan of a merchandise brochure distributed to freshmen by the CU bookstore, which cautions new students to “band together in a group even more tightly knit than their sweaters.” Yet another displays a Polaroid of two students at a dorm party, grinning and posing with a life-size cardboard cutout of Edward Said. After finding a scanned photo of Alma Mater captioned “Earn college credit for being punched in the nose,” I knew I had to learn more about the man behind such a strange, expansive collection.

It rained just before I arrived, forcing me to duck awkwardly under the dripping awning to a two-person table safely tucked under a clear plastic tent. O’Connor, now a literary agent, rose to shake my hand with a smile. He’d brought a copy of a client’s recent publication, a beautifully illustrated picture book, with the declaration that any meeting with a literary agent ends with a book being slid across the table. Much of our conversation revolved around New York’s publishing world, but when I asked him about Columbia, his eyes lit up. He needed to get home, though, and suggested meeting another time. “There’s so much to share,” he told me. “College was a really special part of my life.” He lived near campus, so we were heading in the same direction. “Perfect,” I said to him. “We can walk and talk.”

Kevin O’Connor came to Columbia from a quiet town in central Connecticut, his two parents scandalized by his decision to attend college in New York City. He met most of his closest friends at the start of his sophomore year; he’d signed up to be an orientation leader for the COOP program and it was there, in the Catskills, that our eclectic cast of characters would first make contact. Together with the friends he’d met at COOP—Bob Guay, CC ’92, Josh Marguiles, CC ’92, Ollie Garcia, CC ’92, and Ben Appen, CC ’92—O’Connor lived in a five-person suite at 616 W 116 Street. When I interjected to note that that was now a Barnard dorm, O’Connor laughed and said that it had always been a Barnard dorm. “Back then they really emphasized that we were all one big university,” he told me. 

O’Connor and a couple of friends wanted to start an art funk band called Existential Despair; their one song was called “Vomit on the Sidewalk.” “We wanted to make art and destroy it,” O’Connor told me. “It’s 1988, you know? The Russians were still there; you felt that pressure.” Though the band’s musical career was short-lived, the name stuck around. On the first day of classes, Guay covered the walls of the suite with old newspaper and painted everything black. Over time, clippings, articles, and art were hung up around the makeshift gallery, which was soon christened “The Existential Despair Suite.” 

Their first party, or “Despair Fest,” was themed around the concept of bringing your own invitation. Top contenders included a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas-themed invite—complete with a striking convertible sketch and the instruction: AS YOUR ATTORNEY, I ADVISE YOU TO GO TO THE PARTY AT TOP SPEED—and an invitation scrawled across a court summons after they got caught buying beer at Shea Stadium (which is now parking lots for Citi Field). The latter read, in a haphazard scribble over the typed warning, “If you are convicted, not only will you be liable to a penalty, but in addition you WILL BE SENTENCED TO A WEEKEND OF POWERFUL AND POSSIBLY HALLUCINATORY DRUG WITHOUT THE OPTION OF PAROLE.” Often, the parties were shut down within thirty minutes, but Barnard security was allegedly forgiving, so the revelry continued with a boom box right outside the building.

The artistic and unconventional hijinks of this motley crew extended well beyond the walls of their suite. In the spring of 1990, according to O’Connor, poet Allen Ginsberg was in a relationship with a freshman in Carman Hall. That student knew O’Connor’s friend, who put him in touch with Ginsberg. After some deliberation, O’Connor put a whopping $600 ad on the back page of the Village Voice, announcing an Allen Ginsberg reading at Columbia’s St. Paul’s Chapel in March of 1990. At the time, O’Connor worked at Postcrypt Art Gallery, and he used the space for the reading. His ad worked; the show sold out and people from all over the city flooded into the basement of St. Paul’s Chapel to hear Ginsberg speak. He read “America” and “Two Boys Go Into a Dream Diner,” but said the spirit wasn’t right for “Howl” when pressed. I laughed when O’Connor relayed this scene, but something didn’t make sense to me. How was Ginsberg so easily able to waltz around Carman? How was the lower half of Manhattan so quick to catch a reading in the bottom of the chapel on campus, a student-organized reading no less? Simple, O’Connor told me. The gates were open.

That same year, New York had the highest recorded rate of violent crime in the city's history. O’Connor recounted two separate incidents of mugging on his way from dorm to campus. In August of 1989, the summer before his sophomore year, a cannibalistic serial killer terrorized Tompkins Square Park.

As he continued regaling me with stories of Columbia past, I noted many names that were not students at the time. There was Miss Dee, an eccentric woman who put up flyers around Morningside Heights offering to type up students’ papers, despite her notoriously error-riddled typist skills; Dorothy, an older woman living on 115 and Broadway, who often sat in the sun with her little dog; and Anna, a lady in Earl Hall who had lived in Vienna before the second World War and was, allegedly, an acquaintance of Freud’s. Even Kurt Vonnegut, who lived around the neighborhood, was often spotted strolling along college walk. 

Near the end of our interview, O’Connor asked if I was familiar with Bob Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue. On my walk back to campus, I surveyed the people around me; students, yes, but also dog-walkers and parents, shop owners and artists and all the myriad characters that make up Morningside Heights. I thought of the lyrics O’Connor had recited to me: “All the people we used to know / They’re an illusion to me now / Some are mathematicians / Some are carpenters’ wives / Don’t know how it all got started / I don’t know what they’re doin’ with their lives.” “That, to me,” he’d said, “is college.”