Letter from the editor.
School is so periodic and demanding that it’s hard sometimes to remember where exactly you stand in the progress of things.
I, for instance, am a senior in Columbia College, 21 years old. In seven months I will be 22, a recent graduate. A “writer.”
Who would have thought?
It’s clearer to me that tonight is a Monday. What else?
It’s chilly and octobery in the evening now. Classes are ripening. By the time this issue is on campus we’ll be significantly past midterm technically. In my experience, though, semesters start and start and start and end without leaving any time at all for a middle ground.
This amounts to saying that time flies. But that’s what time does. It flies away from you.
The undergrad years might be a particularly extreme case of this, but maybe not. I have no idea what being a 35-year-old for a year is like (not to mention all kinds of socioeconomic things—35 though, can you imagine?). An aspect of the cliché that’s rarely mentioned is how closely related that feeling, of blazing through time, is to the sense of your life disappearing in front of you.
And graduation will be a little bit like death, I think. It’s always annoyed me when students refer to the life after school as “the real world.” Maybe “afterlife” is more appropriate.
Anyway, here we are.
It’s not as if things don’t change, I guess, and this issue is meant to be a record of the last few months in particular. For instance, the illustration on our cover is a tribute to all of the groups and people who have protested on campus recently in the name of social and institutional reform: No Red Tape, Columbia Prison Divest, and SJP, to name only a few. You’re making us all stronger.
— Torsten Odland, Editor-in-Chief
Transactions
ARRIVALS
Bernheim & Schwartz
Sweater weather
CrackDel’s liquor license
Salt & vinegar chips in ButCaf
Creepy Halloween decorations all over the neighborhood
DEPARTURES
Barnard’s access to JJ’s
Havana
Computers in the lobby of Lerner
The sandwich bar from Café 212
Bwog’s institutional memory
Possibilities @ Columbia
Come Again?!
“I’ve got that Cuisinart on my desk and a produce section in my goddamn fridge. If you want to be healthy like me, come to my place, asshole, and I’ll let you try some juice for free.”
– Evan Siegal in Spectrum
New Opportunities for Leadership!
Many have sounded off at the Office of Student Engagement’s new “Columbia Leads” program, which awards students who collect enough leadership “points” with a graduation cord. But the astute voices in the undergraduate public sphere have fallen silent on OSE’s other spectacular programs. For in fact, there is more than one way to earn an extra tassel on your motorboard! Be ambitious and you could collect them all:
The Pink Cord: for accruing more than $800 in library fines
The White Cord: for abstaining from penetrative sex
The Silver Cord: for knowing what every CU abbreviation and acronym means
The Black Cord: for not pursuing a career in consulting
The Orange Cord: for problematizing race and gender
The Purple Cord: for switching your major more than once or majoring in American Studies
The Green Cord: for founding another a cappella group
The Gold Cord: for drinking urine
The Platinum Cord: for pursuing a career in consulting
The Pantone 292 Cord: for attending any Columbia Athletics Event