POWER LUNCHERS A note posted outside of Vine reads: “SORRY, WE HAVE TO CLOSE BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE GAS DUE TO NEXT DOOR—OLLIE’S FIRE. SORRY AGAIN FOR ANY INCONVENIENT. MGT. VINE SUSHI” *** CUCR is switching their pizza from Famiglia to Dominos, starting next semester. Change is inevitable, it would seem. Meanwhile, at their election, CUIDs were checked at the door by a student bouncer. *** LET THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME A student’s Class Day award was revoked for their role

These excerpts were culled from documents left on Columbia’s lab computers.

A conversation with William Deresiewicz.

A Blue and White reporter goes to Korean Church in Lerner.

Empedocles Fragment Here’s old destiny’s deal, the god’s decree, a pregnant promise and a proper oath: if ever a perennial, imperishable spirit strikes out in strife and stains his dear body falling in failure by fraudulent oaths, he must meander three myriad seasons coursing down byways banished by the blessed transmuting in time through all mortal forms, supplanting one painful path for another. The passionate spirit first splashes to sea, sea drags the poor devil onto the

Travel Desk, May 2015.

Morningside Heights’ two restaurant dynasties.

In search of their inner children, Mabel Taylor and Channing Prend took a gander to some neighborhood playgrounds.

It is the stated goal of Curio Columbiana to cull from Alma Mater’s obvious and less obvious collections of great works.

The J protests lavatorial incivility.

The early days of the Office of University Life.

In which our hero embraces mediocrity.

Affirmative By Luca Marzorati This is it. Once I sit back down in my folding chair, diploma in hand, I won’t have anything to celebrate. My dad always said, “Get a college diploma, it’s like a ticket.” When he says ticket, he’s thinking of the first-class one he’s got in his pocket, marked for a flight that leaves for Grand Cayman in two hours. But my ticket? It’s like a crumpled receipt for overnight bus service. Even if the bus comes, you don’t want to go where it’s going.

You might not know the following figures—but you should. In Campus Characters, The Blue and White introduces you to a handful of Columbians who are up to interesting and extraordinary things and whose stories beg to be shared. If you’d like to suggest a Campus Character, send us an email at editors@theblueandwhite.org. By Mabel Taylor Luke Foster, CC ’15, may have been twenty minutes late for our breakfast interview at Ferris, but I took the Lord’s name in vain five seconds a

You might not know the following figures—but you should. In Campus Characters, The Blue and White introduces you to a handful of Columbians who are up to interesting and extraordinary things and whose stories beg to be shared. If you’d like to suggest a Campus Character, send us an email at editors@theblueandwhite.org. By Sean Augustine-Obi Cutouts of Eva Longoria’s face plaster the walls of Haylin Belay’s East Campus living room. Haylin, a Columbia College senior, is the co-

Once a week, Kirby, Yoshi, Jigglypuff, and their Nintendo friends come to life on a motley assortment of old cathode ray TVs in Lerner’s Satow Room. In front of each TV, members of Columbia’s Super Smash Bros Club manhandle their joysticks with incredible dexterity as their formidable onscreen avatars fight to the death. The clicking of thirty controllers combined with the soundtracks of ten simultaneous games gives the room a frantic atmosphere. Nowhere in Morningside Height

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR At the end of every spring semester, Columbia has its glorious last hurrah. The weather suddenly turns nice. Half the population emerges from hibernation to tan on the lawns. Late-night classes stop finishing when it’s still dark outside. Every performing group puts on a show. Free food abounds as clubs attempt to spend unused funds. Certainly term papers, exams, and job interviews hang over everyone in some combination. But they simply conspire to make