Letter From the Editor, February 2018

Recently I remarked to a friend how it felt to visit Carman 10 after almost two years since I moved out. Looking out the window by the elevators, onto College Walk below, felt like an entirely different scene, even though nothing about the view was especially changed. Same view, different perspective.

I can’t believe I’m a junior, I said to him.

Caroline, don’t be dumb, that’s how time works, he said. And don’t think because you read one Cormac McCarthy book one time you don’t need to use quotation marks anymore.

Fair point. But now that I’m a big-time magazine editor, I feel the need to be more aesthetically motivated.

My experience with the passage of time differs in no way from other young persons who can suddenly drink alcohol legally. Still, I am struck by how my perspective on this place has aged with me.

Especially at Columbia, it can be hard to think critically about our own worlds while we are so wrapped up in what is going on in them. One of the biggest problems about this place is that it is easy to think having three midterms in a week qualifies as a tragedy, until a real tragedy actually strikes—a friend suddenly loses a parent, another shooting in the news—and puts everything in perspective. All of a sudden, life here isn’t that bad.

This issue is all about perspectives. Hugh and Virginia share their takes on love (pg 10), Jasmine collects differing views on affirmative action (pg 16), and we chronicle five different experiences of the historic 1968 Columbia protests (pg 18).

This is my first issue having to write this letter, and all I can do is reflect on the countless perspectives that I have been confronted with while a part of The Blue and White. I hope that over my year as editor, this magazine confronts you, boldly, with the same.

— Caroline Hurley