By The Class of 2026 Illustration by Em Bennett John Jay Evan Rossi Columbia’s campus is filled with symbols. There are the obvious ones—Alma Mater, Scholar’s Lion, the Crown—and the ones whose meanings need to be teased out. For this senior vignette, I was tempted to find a campus location that would neatly encapsulate these particular four years. I began to take images from daily life and consider what symbols they could become. I thought about transience as I walked across

What I came and left with. By Zayna Jamil Illustration by Ines Alto On Tuesday, March 24, I was selected via lottery to attend dinner at Columbia College Dean Josef Sorett’s apartment through the Undergraduate Community Initiative. I was among about 20 students and 15 alumni faculty members from various fields of study gathered to talk about our experiences in the College thus far. I stepped foot into the apartment feeling a little hesitant. I searched for friends or familia

A Night at the Columbia vs. NYU Law Dean’s Cup. By Ana Sorrentino Illustration by Ines Alto As if this were any usual Columbia basketball game, I smuggled my Chef Mike’s sandwich along with three bags of hot cheetos into my purse as I entered Levien Gym. I took my usual seat on the left, angled for a clear view of the scoreboard. As Columbia has never been known for its abundant school spirit, I expected only thin, uneven waves of baby blue-clad attendants and more empty rows

A Landmark Upper West Side Cinema gets back to its roots. By Liam Curedale Illustration by Isabelle Oh Walking down Broadway, past CVS, Absolute Bagels, and Smoke Jazz Club, you also pass by a piece of New York City history. Squeezed between a beauty parlor and a thirteen-story luxury condo locals call “the spike” sits the ruins of the Metro Theater. A few rusty letters are all that remain of its once-iconic art deco marquee: the “_ET_O” Theater. The Metro’s two-hundred light

Confessions of a graduating digital hoarder. By Erica Lee Illustration by Kathleen Halley-Segal My google drive is color coded, with the spring months in shades of green, fall months in yellow and orange hues, and one miscellaneous folder in mountain gray. That’s nine folders in total, 23.34 gigabytes carrying the weight of my college career. With my impending graduation, I am confronted with a question all seniors must answer: what will I do when CUIT reduces my Google Driv

A study abroad assumption. By Marianna Jocas Illustration by Iris Pope If I recorded and then overlayed each conversation I’ve had about my time abroad, the resulting stream of chaos would eventually synchronize to ask: “You’re keeping a journal of all this, right?” On its surface, the question is benign, which is why it may seem odd that it gives me a pang of anxiety. That’s because the question references a larger, more disconcerting notion that good experiences—and maybe o

Media we think you would enjoy — but likely not as much as The Blue and White Magazine Natalie Buttner, Editor-in-Chief: Bernardine Evaristo, Mr Loverman. “Fish Night,” Love, Death, and Robots, Netflix. “The Other Man”, This American Life. Duda Kovarsky Rotta, Managing Editor: Barbara Fields, “So You Want To Be a Historian.” Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It. Cameron Winter, “Take it With You.” Caio Fernando Abreu, “Carta ao Zézim.” Nnema Épée-Bounya, Deputy Editor: M

On seeing the world through funny glasses. By Rocky Rūb Illustration by Kathleen Halley-Segal Patty Marx is a writer and humorist at The New Yorker, Adjunct Associate Professor in the undergraduate creative writing department, and most recently, my inspiration for all things humor. I met Professor Marx in her highly waitlisted class, How to Write Funny, in which I’ve cultivated, sustained, and have now attempted to transcend a parasocial relationship with her. She is a forme

How a scrappy underdog won a unanimous moral victory By Chris Brown Illustration by Ines Alto Sparks were flying on a beautiful day in Morningside Park as The Blue and White lined up against WKCR in their first meeting on the kickball diamond. The long-awaited match between Columbia’s two favorite student journalism organizations arrived on a crisp late April morning. Hard rain the day before did nothing to dampen either team’s spirits, and the game kicked off at 12:30 p.m. T

BOARD NATALIE BUTTNER, BC ’27, Editor-in-Chief DUDA KOVARSKY ROTTA, CC ’28, Managing Editor NNEMA ÉPÉE-BOUNYA, BC ’28, Deputy Editor LUCY SPENCER MASON, CC ’27, Publisher INES ALTO, CC ’28, Illustrations Editor IRIS POPE, CC ’28, Illustrations Editor JEREMIAH BARRON, CC ’28, Layout Editor AUDREY WANG, CC ’29, Web Editor ELIKA KHOSRAVANI, BC ’27, Literary Editor LUCIA DEC-PRAT, CC ’27, Crossword Editor HANNAH LUI, CC ’28, Crossword Editor Senior Editors ELI BAUM, CC ’26

By Hannah Lui This crossword's themed (starred) entries feature cryptic clues. Across 1. Band with hits Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! , Money, Money, Money , and I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do 5. One's predecessor? 9. Misstep 14. Tattled 15. "__ beast be lord of beasts" ( Hamlet) 16. Scalp pest 17. Hammer or sickle 18. From where to best view a Monet, say 19. Letter-shaped support 20. How one might describe a relationship that's been over for ages… or a hint to the answers to the starre

By Rocky Rūb and Maya Lerman Illustration by Selin Ho Saturday, April 4, 2026 5:00 a.m.: Affirmative: I’ve just concluded my five-step bedtime skincare routine and am tucking myself into bed after a lovely night at BASEMENT. There’s something serendipitous about the fact that the mushrooms have exited my system at the exact moment I wanted to go to sleep! And it’s not every day that a gay boy finds Trade with free K in Brooklyn! Well, maybe it is everyday, but because the tra

Thinking about Ambedkar by thinking beyond Ambedkar. By Maya Lerman Illustration by Truman Dickerson In May of 1916, a 25-year-old Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar wrote and presented a paper, entitled “Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development,” for a Columbia anthropology seminar. “ Subtler minds and abler pens than mine have been brought to the task of unravelling the mysteries of Caste,” Ambedkar remarked, “but unfortunately it still remains in the domain of the ‘un

By Kiera Baird who makes the spark, the rock or the stick? the wood that’s fragile with texture, soft with jagged ends, weak with pointed pricks or the solid, sound, smooth surface of the cold and hard, composed and round and ready to be struck? one breaks with two fingers but cuts when it snaps in dying, it lies in the blood of its killer. the other is defended from touch but is broken when dropped, in shattering it is so distant from the hands that let it go down,

By Marvin Cho Chapter 1: The Play P. thought he felt an itch at the tip of his nose, but he did not have the time to remove his mask to scratch it. The director had already finished introducing the University Classical Drama Company and P. was to enter the stage in just a moment. He thus resorted to wriggling his cheeks about, trying to rub the coarse cardboard of the mask against his face. As the audience obliged the director’s request for an applause, the stout junior who p

New York State announced this month that it is now (mostly) safe to eat (some) fish caught out of the Hudson River. Obviously, many anticipate some uproar from our sister school under-the-Hudson, Carpumbia. The television news crews have relocated from the islands in Broadway to the river’s muddy shores, all eyes on our intellectual brethren under the surface. To get a better understanding of the cultural ripple effect, I arranged a rendezvous with my counterpart at Rivermud

Lessons from the Lab By Jack Bradner Illustration by Selin Ho At the beginning of my first American Modernism class with Professor Rachel Adams, she asked the room for a quick show of hands: how many prospective or current English majors were present? Aware of a heavy majority of the class, I tentatively raised my hand. Professor Adams then asked how many STEM or Biology majors were present. No hands this time. Before getting into the details of the course, Professor Adams n

The Amazing Dr. Scott By Willow Bradford Illustration by Audrey Wang The first time the fantastical was bestowed upon me, I began by imagining the title of my favorite movie, per Kaufman’s instruction. Kaufman then proceeded to ask me a series of questions like “what is the first letter of the title” and “is the title of the movie one word or two words?” From there the weird turned weirder as he shifted from me to my friend. He asked her to take a wallet out of her pocket and

Contestations of feminism, academic censorship, and Barnard’s shifting relations to its research center By Sayuri Govender Illustration by Iris Pope “I have to talk about passion in the future... Will our political theories hold a place for women like me in the future? Maybe I’ll be an odd piece of history/old dinosaur bones that women in the future find fascinating and bizarre.” – Amber Hollibaugh, Diary of a Conference on Sexuality, 1982 In February, the Barnard Center for

Reflections on privilege and performance through the Ivy League Solidarity Memorial on Feb. 7, 2026. By Rocky Rūb Illustration by Ines Alto On Dec. 13, 2025, an active shooter entered a Brown University building and killed two students, injuring nine others. The gunman remained at large for nearly a week after taking the lives of Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook, aged 18 and 19, respectively. Over the 48 hours following the shooting, Instagram was flooded with posts an