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

By Neda Ravandi The horse is very old and has dark eyes. I did not know it would be here when I arrived. It lives in a stable in the furthest corner of the farm, far beyond the guesthouse in dry, unweeded brush. It is summer here but still grows cold quickly in the evening. Sometimes I visit the horse after nightfall, when everybody else has fallen asleep. My bed is narrow and creaks when I rise. I keep the black rubber boots I was given next to my door. It gets very loud her

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

On Susan Sontag, the Wild West, and spring break. by Luke Zinger Illustration by Em Bennett Up until about a month ago, my vision of “the West” was a hazy ideal constructed by half-remembered scenes of galavanting cowboys in network television Westerns, and a hedonistic, rambling set of passages I’d earmarked in my copy of Kerouac’s On the Road. I had dreamlike imaginings of shriveled tumbleweeds crawling down horsetrod desert paths in New Mexico, and giant, thundering tornad

On Filipino connection at the corner of 5th Ave and 46th St, and across the Pacific By Selma White-Pascual Illustration by Jacqueline Subkhanberdina It is 30 minutes past the 2 p.m. start time when the program begins. The protesters gathered in front of the General Consulate of the Philippines on 5th Ave joke, “It’s actually early for Filipino-time!” An organizer steps forward and tells us through a large megaphone that we will run through the chants together. I share a print

Living in 1440 Amsterdam By Audrey Keer Illustration by Kathleen Halley-Segal Getting into Barnard as a transfer student gave me a month to find housing in New York City, and I was frantic. 1440 Amsterdam appeared in my feed on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media akin to Instagram and Pinterest, as a modern building within walking distance of the University. It seemed like the best option available: it was close to campus, rent was reasonable given that the living room would

The True Story of a Prospective Intern. By Sepp Zammuto Illustration by Jiaying Geng Stuck on the 6th floor of Butler Library last October, working tirelessly on my internship applications, I saw a ghost. An ad sent from heaven appeared between my reels: an Enron billboard that read, “We’re back, can we talk?” Enron, formerly the world’s largest energy trader, was back in business? I couldn’t believe my eyes. Checking their profiles, I was astonished to find that they had rei

Media we think you would enjoy — but likely not as much as The Blue and White Magazine Natalie Buttner , Editor-in-Chief: “A Bright Room Called Day,” Tony Kushner. Future Library Project , Katie Paterson. Sleater-Kinney, “Modern Girl.” Duda Kovarsky Rotta , Managing Editor: Paul Celan, Todesfugue. Willie Colóon, “Oh Qué Será?” Gilberto Gil, “Drão.” Pink trees. Nnema Épée-Bounya , Deputy Editor: FKA Twigs, “Sushi.” Cultura Profética & Bebo Dumont, “Llévame.” Tapas e Beijos

Lessons from Barcelona’s movement for Palestine, and how the Global Sumud Flotilla built power By Caroline Nieto and Talia Reiss Illustration by Ellie Lin This piece was published in collaboration with The College Hill Independent , a Providence-based publication run by Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design students. On the evening of October 1, 2025, Arnau Rot was drinking tea at a bar in Barcelona. He was gearing up for an early morning and a long day of prote

By Lucia Dec-Prat and Elika Khosravani Across 1. Counter to decr. 5. Steps up? 11. ___ House, dining hall with a new “World Tour” dinner menu 14. Not false 15. Latin “of the earth” 16. UN agency focused on working conditions 17. German Chancellor Friedrich 18. Birthplace of nickels and dimes 19. Jerome Powell’s ex-employer, for short 20 Not pregnant, just mortified – a feeling this puzzle's spellchecker knows well 22. NY private university, along with Columbia, the New School