An investigation into Columbia Daily Spectator reveals no staff constitution or written HR policy. By Caroline Hurley When the 143rd Managing Board of the Columbia Daily Spectator was announced in a post on their website on Dec. 8, one position was noticeably absent from the new board: sports editor. That is because there is not currently a sports editor at Spectator, nor is there much of a sports section staff. The majority of the sports staff resigned following an unusually

A conversation with Paul E. Olsen. By Mary Elizabeth Dawson Paul E. Olsen is the Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia. Olsen currently teaches Dinosaurs and the History of Life, but his research focuses primarily on the evolution of continental ecosystems. He is particularly interested in mass extinction events and climate change. For this month’s Conversation, Olsen sat down with Mary Elizabeth Dawson to discuss everything from

By Caroline Hurley You think you know someone until it comes time to buy them a Christmas gift. You’re frantically browsing Oprah Winfrey’s Amazon gift guide, realizing that you actually have no idea what the perfect gift would be because you actually might not know this person well at all. And though Oprah probably does not know your friend better than you … she also might. I don’t mean to generalize–maybe I am just bad at giving gifts. Similar, but unrelated to the holidays

Not all residents in 620 go to Barnard. By Ursula Murray-Bozeman When Victoria Sullivan moved into 620 W 116th St. in 1965, it was like any other residential building in Morningside Heights. But when Barnard bought the building just a year later, things started to change. “They, early on, were very aggressive in wanting people out because they wanted to make it into a dorm,” Ms. Sullivan said. She said that although she was never made an offer, the tenants understood that the

A look at De Maria’s perplexing Earth Room. By Gaby Edwards A room full of dirt? Art? I asked myself as I made my way down to SoHo. My destination was the Earth Room, an interior sculpture installation by Walter de Maria that has been on the second floor of a building on Wooster Street since 1977. While I knew the basics of the Earth Room—a 3600-square-foot room filled 22 inches high with dirt—I hadn’t expected the exhibit to impact me in such a meaningful way. Part of the ap

She served the coffee black to me, he said. And I heard the cicadas hissing from outside and the slurp of his noodles and I stared at the stained rim of his mug, which was printed with Japanese I wondered if the cement hissed, if there was an audible rise of smoke off the burnt, black ground I doubted that there were many people who paid attention to the sounds of black cement He looked at his wife adoringly when she passed the mug to him Like he saw an image of her that I

The culture and controversy of Columbia’s marching band. By Grace Adee and Billie Forester The Columbia University Marching Band may sardonically call itself “the cleverest band in the world,” but lately it has become one of the most underfunded: in October, the administration announced its decision to cut $15,000 of the organization’s $25,000 budget for next academic year. CUMB, the organization’s affectionate and suggestive acronym, is nothing like the massive militaristic

Columbia, in its good judgement, has given the space formerly belonging to the Columbia Daily Spectator to the Alumni Development Office and the School of Professional Studies. Someone decided to play Kerbal Space Program in the back of a Columbia lecture with an external mouse, going boldly where no student has gone before. Walgreens will be open 24 hours throughout Christmas and New Years, like it was open this Thanksgiving. Reports say these hours were really popular with

Coffee on campus was not always Joe and go. By Ryan Mohen Coffee is often a purchase made in motion, in most cases necessarily so. Endless nights and frantic mornings give way to brief gaps between classes, study sessions, and overly scheduled social plans, making spontaneous sharing of lunches and coffees next to impossible. Enter grab-and-go coffee, a model which continues to be replicated in establishments on campus and close to Columbia. Caffeine dealers have the needs of

A little jingle to get you in the holiday spirit. Hum in Butler to the Michael Bublé version of “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas.” It’s beginning to look a lot like finals Even through your daze; Take a look at SSOL It’s just about to yell With GPAs and Core audits ablaze. It’s beginning to look a lot like finals Kids are very irked But the prettiest sight to meet is the review you’ll submit To your class CourseWorks. A pair of 40-malt shots and a cheat sheet that

Frantic first-years stow contraband on the eve of dormitory raids. By Sam Needleman Among the residents of John Jay Hall who spent Tuesday evening preparing hastily for the following day’s room inspections, perhaps the most disconcerted was Karish, a betta fish who normally enjoys a lovely view of 114th Street from his perch in an eleventh-floor single. His owner, a first-year in the College, appeared desperate as she described her plans to stow him in a drawer between 9:00 a

New signs prohibiting animals on Columbia’s lawns may make caring for emotional support animals even harder for students. Columbia defines an emotional support animal as an animal that provides “therapeutic support to an individual with an identified disability.” Typically, emotional support animals can range from dogs to smaller animals like birds. Identified disabilities typically relate to mental health, though there is no definite list of disabilities that emotional suppo

“The funny story I always tell people is that in eight grade, I went online, and I looked up history and sociology and how I could study both in college and the first thing that popped up was anthropology… and ever since then I knew that I was going to major in anthropology,” Elise Fuller, CC ’19, says. We met in Lerner Piano Lounge, and Fuller arrived with coffee in one hand and her Ferris dinner in the other. Fuller, a sociocultural anthropology major, is the Vice President

Affirmative Tell me one thing: when it’s a cold Saturday night in late January, who’s going to join you in opening a bottle of wine, turning on Netflix’s Dogs, and having a violent, convulsive cry? Not your stupid friends. Trust me, they won’t feel eager to strap on pounds of clothes and trudge through the gray slush flows lining Broadway, all while struggling to breathe air that isn’t even a real temperature. Neither is any fuck buddy or FWB or whatever going to make that jo

In which our hero gets E. coli. Verily was eating a salad when his phone buzzed.Excited to hear back from his doctor about a particularly painful anal fissure with which he was dealing, Verily called unto his muse: “Siri, what notifications have I received?” “Hello, Verilyhandsome. You have one new notification: from The New York Times: ‘FDA warnsAmericans to avoid romaine lettuce potentially tainted with E. coli.’” Verily looked down at his fork, half-raised, which carried t

In April of 2019, Mo Crist, BC ’19, and the Barnumbia slam poetry team will head to the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) in Houston to compete with slam teams from across the nation. Crist, who joined as a freshman, is now a coach for the slam team. They will help poets on the team prepare for CUPSI 2019 by editing work, facilitating the writing of collaborative slam poems and more generally being a leader. Crist is majoring in English and CreativeWriting at Bar