Breaking My Silence/Ending My Terror - May 20th, 2026

On today’s agenda: Coming back to the beginning, reiterating that I love making fun of people, and taking something sincere or reflective and ultimately corrupting it. 

By Rocky Rūb

Illustration by Isabelle Oh

I bet no one thought they’d see the day that I shut my computer and stop emphatically punching away at the keyboard whenever a Columbia College Student Council member mentioned their shoe size or said a slur—OFF THE RECORD, of course. To be honest, I’ve outgrown student politics and am moving on to bigger and better journalistic endeavors, like ghostwriting Hillary Clinton’s new memoir, What Happened II: Why I Rejected The Columbia University Presidency. So on the cusp of commencement, I’m sealing away my final testament of diplomats young (18) and old (22), and what I’ve collected in this strange social experiment reporting and satirizing the many discussions held in the weekly CCSC general body meetings. It is to be opened only on May 20th, at 9:00 p.m., when the senior council members and myself have officially graduated, and the latter group is too intoxicated to be able to read! 

If you can believe it, in the very beginning, this all started quite earnestly. I meekly tiptoed my way to the Press section in the Jed D. Satow room on the fifth floor of Lerner, and looked to the veteran Spec writers (barf) for tips on how to report campus politics seriously. Unfortunately, the Spec staff are about as good at teaching as they are at not talking about Spec, because I ditched the sincerity of it all and zealously began scribbling punchlines next to council members’ quotes, and vice versa. 

In all seriousness, I began attending these meetings as a new Blue and White staff writer, hoping to finger the pulse of campus happenings in order to pitch hot topics to my editors. At that point, I was willing to sit through the grueling, hour and a half long, often unnecessarily trivialized dialogues during Sunday night anxiety hour (8:00 p.m.) every week, simply because I wanted to write more. Then, I really started to observe. 

In the first meeting I attended on February 2, the E-Board made their annual introduction to Glass House Rocks scheduling, discussed finding more money for senior class student activities, and planned the class of 2028’s crewneck distribution. But the following week, Dean Sorett joined us for a conversation where the council elected to go off the record for the entire meeting to promote transparency during their conversation. 

In a parallel universe, the humor of this isn’t lost on anyone and there is no need for my expert attention to detail and quick witted pursuit of justice! But in this same universe, Lee Bolinger is an old drag queen named BB Lexa who won’t give up the microphone and I’m writing Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes fanfic on Sunday nights instead of making fun of my peers. 

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that I’ve also observed in this group a fascinating resolve to commit so much of their undergraduate experience to the betterment of their representative class—even if they write their emails with AI. In fact, the project of student government is admirable. Where would we all be without someone to organize Lerner Pub, Halloween at Slate, or Tree Lighting? And it takes guts to advocate on behalf of their peers for more activities funding, free menstrual products in dormitories, and organized student resources in the midst of campus catastrophe. I’m referring, of course, to the meals, email templates, and divestment referendums collected and distributed for Columbia students in light of Minouche Shafik’s mobilization of the NYPD on campus. Or the following year, when CCSC members advocated against the University Administration’s attempt to reduce student involvement in the University Senate. In this case, CCSC drew mass support by petitioning against Claire Shipman and the Board of Trustees’ threat to remove students from the University Judicial Board, reconstructing “Shared Governance” on campus to reject any real student involvement. 

It’s hard to believe that this noble advocacy was organized by the same students who spent almost an entire meeting fighting over the name of the “Sandwich Ambassador.” Nonetheless, what I’ve most enjoyed during my tenure instilling fear in my peers (an effect of my presence assured to me by one E-Board member), is getting to join in on this game of make-believe under the umbrella of Columbia’s heterotopia. 

While my peers pretended to be politicians, I got to pretend to be a journalist, and despite my proclivity to parody, I’m very grateful that everyone (except Sarayu Bethemcherla, CC ’26), was a great sport on the playground. So before I sign-off for the very last time, I want to say one thing to my politically minded peers: 

If you ever run for public office, I’ll be expecting hush money.