Reflections of a First Year

First-years: We can now begin the grieving process. Responses to admissions decisions from the incoming class of 2012 are now all in order. Roughly 1,500 eager high school seniors are officially set to join the Columbia community, thus stripping us of the “first-year” title and tossing us out of the south end of campus.

Though was told that this year would go by very quickly, I am still in shock that we are already at the end. It seems like just yesterday that I was eagerly joining the “Columbia ’11 works hard but parties harder!” Facebook group, and posting all of my different expectations for the social and academic scenes that I was to soon experience. Oh my—how can a year have already passed since I had my first creepy solicitation by some random junior looking for fresh meat? Was it really nine months ago that I was running around Greenwich Village looking for clothes that would clearly establish my new status as a New Yorker?

Yes, it was. Gone are the days when it was acceptable to introduce yourself to any person in the Carman elevators. We have moved past the many instances of walking into random rooms for the purpose of making friends. First-year meal plans and classwide residence halls will soon be a thing of the past. For all of these losses, we grieve.

Okay, so I’m obviously enjoying a teensy bit of hyperbole here. I do not anticipate missing the twice-daily meals at John Jay all that much, and I know that the transition from Carman to McBain will go just fine. That said, I still have some concerns for the coming year: I can’t help but wonder what will happen to the class dynamic of 2011 in the fall.

And now we reach the point in this article where some will toss this paper aside and scoff at my naiveté. I’ve read it on the Bwog and heard it many times in person: Once students pass their first year at Columbia, class unity does not exist. In fact, some go as far to say that class unity never existed, and the attempts of class officers to make it seem as though 2011 pride ever was present simply demonstrates how frivolously foppish they really are. These opinions have been expressed innumerable times, perpetuated to such an extent that they have come to loom large over Columbia culture.

But I refuse to accept this as the fate of 2011. Before we set foot on campus in August, we showed everyone the extent to which we could embrace the “silly” and the “naïve.” We joined Facebook groups and we were excited! It didn’t matter that the people posting on Bwog were already passing us off as ”tools”—networking with the rest of the class was fun and gave us bright hopes for what was ahead.

Beyond the Facebook frenzy of last summer, the class of 2011 rang in its first semester with an indisputably loud roar. We broke it down on Ellis Island, we swamped the frats and made regrettable decisions, we painted ourselves blue and ate some (Penn) Quakers, we put Lerner Party Space at maximum capacity for the Highlight dance. Even events that were accused of dividing our student body, such as the hunger strike or Ahmadinejad’s visit, helped make our class more involved. Our spirit was strong, and our presence was noticed.

This leads us to the “so what” question: What is class spirit, and why does it even matter? I can’t confidently give answers to these questions, but there is one observation I’d like to throw out there before we all break for the summer.

Rallying around something produces excitement, and this excitement generally makes for some very fun times. Just take something as seemingly small as the recent weather shift—we all decided that enjoying the sunshine and uncovered grass beat the hell out of going to class. Taking over the campus and making our own urban beach, we all came together over a common love of sunshine. With this came a noticeably positive shift in the overall mood of our student body.

I think it would be worthwhile to discover other ways to sustain this schoolwide unification, so that we can still be happy and unified during the parts of the year where we don’t have random elements like the sun to bring us all together. To do this, though, we need to find something that we can all coalesce around. Finding that “something” should be one of our goals for the coming academic year.

The author is a Columbia College first-year and a representative in the Class of 2011 Council.