By Juliet Brooks She went to the gym every night, buying bruises So that she could watch some part of herself heal. In the evenings the sun bled in the west, impaled On the buildings and the telephone lines along the road. When she drove home the stars smiled at her or grimaced, Then disappeared. Some unnamed god or loving dead guided her wheel And she sobbed, blinded by the weight of absence. Finally there was nothing except her driveway But the last fteen steps drained mo

Postcard by Kristine Dunn

In the hours prior to this Blue Book’s creation, our hearts were wracked with grief over the cohorts of sign- ups that never gave us a chance and salty, graduated students which submerged our humble listserv in a tsunami of requests asking to be removed from “bwstaff.” This compilation is a tribute to their time with us. They grow up so fast… The Original Culprit: “Hope you all had great breaks! Do you mind please removing me from your listserv as well? Best of luck in the fu

“Dear fellow members of the Columbia Community, I am pleased to inform you that there will be a new development at the Columbia University that will bene t all of it’s members.” – Prezbo, a.k.a. gkeesling@nettlecreek. k12.in.us, in a recent phishing email

Affirmative By Virginia Ambeliotis Yes, I’m still Premed. I’m sick of people who look at me in a pitying way and offer me some crap about needing to “find myself” when I tell them that I haven’t given up. They drone on about the path they took to choosing their shishi majors. They talk about tough it was, how stressed out they were, but how now they’re nourished all the time even though their four-day week of classes is sooooo hard. As if books were real nourishment. As if th

ARRIVALS Uncomfy tables outside Ferris Sorority rush “Terrific” Our dashing new Editor-in-Chief (not at all written by said editor) Alternative Facts DEPARTURES JJ’s (indefinitely) Obama Everything Obama has ever done Lionshare

Writing my first Editor-in-chief’s letter a day after the inauguration of President Trump puts me in quite the odd position. The syzygy of my appointment and Trump’s election is fortuitous, for now the public has become once more acquainted with sophistry, the idle and empty lyric of the deranged. This is something that I intend to use fully to my advantage. Like all men of questionable worth but grandiose character, I employ words to dazzle and stun with spectacle. It is my

A conversation with Victor P. Corono.

What Milo’s presence will mean for campus discussion.

The future of student council funded food.

On January 21 st, hundreds of thousands of women, non-binary people, men, children and dogs (yes, even the dogs had signs) descended upon East Midtown Manhattan to participate in the Women’s March on New York City. The march had a different tone than that of the protests I witnessed and took part in right after election night. The earlier protests were full of grief, shock and anger. The Women’s March, however, was characterized predominantly by hope. There were people of all

This December, the pro-Israel group Students Supporting Israel (SSI) hosted an event entitled “Indigenous People Unite.” The event included a line- up of what SSI leadership described as indigenous activists, including Tibetan and Native Canadian individuals as well as an Israeli citizen. Shoshana,* a dual-degree first year in Barnard and the Jewish Theological Seminary, was one of many in the politically divided crowd. An Israeli citizen, Jewish student, and pro-Palestinian

Politics had our hero in a very bad way—he hadn’t been able to muster the strength to attend class since at least All Souls. “How could I?” He dictated to his nurse from the divan, “When the noble tradition of democracy to which I am heir is disintegrating before my very eyes? Surely, there are many who justifiably fear for their well-being in such a political climate,” he continued, wiping away a tear with the tassel of his silk throw, “but none so much as the haute-bourgeoi

By Caroline Hurley I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I met Jeff Coby CC ’17 last month–I knew he would be 6’8” (assuming the Columbia basketball team does not inflate their roster heights), so that was not altogether shocking. What surprised me the most about Jeff was how smiley he was. I had heard he was outgoing, social and all the descriptors that generally go with those. There is definitely a difference between being a social person and a happy person; Jeff C

“It was supposed to be silly,” Daniel Stone recalls. However flippant in intention, in March of 2016, Stone together with Jeremy Liss, Alex Randall, and (ex-B&W Editor-in-Chief) Hallie Nell Swanson made indelible marks on Columbia discourse, writing fervently against the installation of Reclining Figure, Henry Moore’s “hideous sculpture,” in front of Butler Library. Their impassioned criticism, incarnated in a co-written Spec op-ed, quickly became national news and was picked

By Gage Hodgen Gabi Mayers, CC ’17, is a Film Studies major originally from Washington, D.C. “Film has always spoken to me,” she told me. As she grew up, she spent entire days in movie theaters. “I didn’t know until I was nineteen that you actually can’t stay in a cinema all day if you only bought a ticket for one movie.” To Gabi, film is crucial to the way society conceives of its own and other cultures. “The way that we understand other people, especially as presented throu