Valentine's Day

V-Day isn’t just an issue of belittling the non-partnered among us. It symbolically institutionalizes traditional gender and sexual paradigms which often serve few of us and hurt many more of us. We would do ourselves and our national holiday of love a great, loving service by seeing through its limitations and reinventing it.

It’s Valentine’s Day and, while some students are showing off their bouquets of red roses or trying to guess which secret admirer sent them a candygram, Barnard dance professor Lynn Garafola is receiving a truly romantic Valentine’s Day gift. Her husband, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History Eric Foner, is returning home from his scholar-in-residence program in London to spend a precious few days with his wife and daughter.

The sky was gray and bluish bleak that February day:
All chocolate hearts and greeting cards and freshly-trimmed bouquets.
The air was filled with promises of roses and of wine—
Except for those unlucky folks who had no Valentine.