Valentine's 2026 Letter from the Editor

On love as a constant.

Introductions are for small talk; let me write about the weather. 

This winter, New York City has been coated in the deepest snow that the class of 2026 has seen in their four winters at Columbia. Though at first the white layer seemed as permanent as a blank page, it didn’t lie idle for long. Snowmen sprang out of benches. Snow angels appeared on the lawns. Municipal dump trucks donned plows and struggled through graying streets. 

During the first big snow, I tramped to Riverside Park, where Columbia and Barnard students joined neighborhood children in hurling themselves headlong down the hill on a smattering of flat plastic objects, not limited to sleds. Below us, gleeful skiers cut fresh tracks on the lower path. In the distance, panels of ice collided and splintered as the tide pulsed in and out of the Hudson. Looking down on the park, which I have long considered a backdrop to my small university life, I welled with love for the city and its people. 

In the snow, what was once familiar is transformed. 

Since the end of last semester, other things have undergone transformations too. New York City has a new mayor, and residents watch his first months in office with cautious optimism. Behind the steely gates of our campus, the Presidential Search Committee selected Jennifer Mnookin as the new University president-designate. Our country is increasingly politically unrecognizable, reminding us every day that safety is something we provide for each other. 

And because we are young, and because we are human, we have changed as well. Returning to a familiar place can act as a measuring stick against which we can see that we are, in fact, a little taller. If in childhood we outgrow clothes, in college, we outgrow ideas, people, and parts of ourselves. When we look for handholds in this inundation of newness and loss, I believe love is a steady thing to reach for. This Valentine’s Day, we explore the reliably turbulent sphere of romantic love, as well as the steadier love for place, knowledge, and craft.  

This issue contains odes to the things that stick around, that persist despite the rhythmic shifts in terms, seasons, tides, age. Rocky Rūb reflects on his relationship, which has been an evolving constant in his four years at Columbia. Iris Eisenman looks critically at the time-honored collegiate confluence of alcohol and romance. Magda Lena Griffel visits CraigsList.org’s “Missed Connection Page,” in which generations of New Yorkers have derived small comforts from shouting their observations into the void. 

Other pieces in this issue embrace love in change. Luke Zinger gives a tearful goodbye to the penny, an ode to material and the joy of small value. Duda Kovarsky Rotta uses Immanuel Kant as an burdensome compass while navigating a long-distance romance. Eva Spier explores how meaning morphs between languages in her introduction to and translation of Pushkin’s Kern. 

One last note about changes and persistence: this semester, The Blue and White has new leadership, but our quintessence persists. We are still curious. We are still concerned. We will attempt to be humorous. We will strive to be humane. It is an honor to serve as editor-in-chief of such a publication. I hope that our magazine, like the snow, will help you see our University and our city with new eyes, and remind you that the winding routes we pick out for ourselves are well-tread. 

Happy (long) Valentine’s Day, 

Natalie Buttner 

Editor-in-Chief