October 2026 Letter from the Editor
This fall, I suffered from a time-loop. Ultimately, I estimate I spent just over two months trapped in Sept. 14. Sept. 14 was a Monday, and initially unremarkable. I had two classes. I saw a young man spill a Pret coffee down his girlfriend's sweater while crossing Broadway. I forgot my ID in the library, and valiantly fought my way back in to retrieve it. During the weekly Blue and White meeting that evening, our intrepid publisher disclosed that we had received a relative pittance for campus funding—a combination of the drying up of COVID-surplus funds and the withdrawal of Barnard’s contribution to the Activities Board at Columbia has caused University clubs across the board have been cut by 43.15%.
Publications have been hit especially hard. She warned that things look dire. I went to bed.
You know what happened next. I woke up on Sept. 14. It wasn't until 10 minutes into class number one that I was sure I had heard the lecture before. Class two. Pret coffee down sweater. I grabbed my ID when leaving the library. Magazine’s defunded. Bed. Wake up: September 14th. Class one, class two–I ask a question that my professor calls “a perfect transition into our next topic.” I know. Dark brown splash on what appears to be cashmere. ID in back pocket. Blue and White. Bed. Sept. 14.
People get trapped in time-loops because they need to learn something. By day five, I had developed an inkling that my learning outcome was economic–the club allocation fiasco was the only notable thing about Sept. 14.
On my 15th Sept. 14, I figured out how to win the lottery. Via trial-and-error across days 17-21 I found which middle-aged man walking down Amsterdam was both rich and crisis-ridden enough to donate exorbitantly and quickly. On my 27th Sept. 14, I blackmailed President Mnookin into doubling our production budget.
I spent day thirty-one wandering Riverside Park in quiet contemplation. It has always been a bit of a blemish that The Blue and White is printed by the same university we report on. The university has restricted our editorial decisions–I fear any important readership we have finds us unthreatening.
Why should the university support student journalism? There are practical reasons: we teach undergraduates how to write for an audience of peers, and our product is a draw for potential applicants. I like to believe that these things are the wooden horse through which critical, thoughtful, informative writing gets into the hands of Columbia students.
But, more than this, our coverage of the University is a project of cohesion and complication, of creating a vision of the undergraduate experience. When everyday blends into a blurry amalgamation that we will one day label ‘college’, The Blue and White aims to slow down each moment and examine the experience for all its disturbing, wonderful, and unlikely wrinkles. We aim to learn something from the mundanity of every day.
Every day ended with our staff meeting. By Sept. 14, Elika Khosravani had returned from her sorority’s national convention in Dallas, Texas, and was crafting her dispatch in the form of a Greek Tragedy. On the same day, Marianna Jocas was crafting a rejection text after what had been the first of 10 dates detailed in her love column. Jack Bradner was scheduling his interview with Mr. and Mrs. Mirza, an older couple who have lived in his new dorm for four decades.
On my 72nd Sept. 14, after spending an exorbitant sum on breakfast and blowing off both my classes, I stopped Mr. Sweater-Coffee from spilling. The next morning I woke up on Sept. 15. Once again, the extracurricular was a distraction.
May we all escape our loops this month,
Natalie Buttner
Editor-in-Chief