Eye: features

When Maria Ordoñez, a rising Columbia College senior, talks about her favorite small businesses in West Harlem and Morningside Heights, her joy is palpable. The Hungarian Pastry Shop makes her smile so much that she mentions it twice. When she tells me about Mofongo del Valle, a Dominican restaurant in West Harlem, she beams about the owners’ kindness—something she has experienced firsthand as she attended school with their daughter—and she describes just how much she loves the smell of 5 Estrellas Bakery in Washington Heights, exclaiming “Oh my gosh, I love it.”

Julián Pérez—or, a pixelated approximation of Julián Pérez—appears in a video box on Zoom. We “meet,” or rather, both of our faces populate my laptop screen. This is just the way things are now. Normally, I could notice the subtleties of our interaction—their body language, clothing choice, the setting—and describe them here. But all I can see is what anyone could see of Pérez in a driver’s license photo. Pérez sits (or stands, or reclines) in front of a plain white wall. The camera only captures their head down to the tops of the shoulders. I only know that they are in their Columbia dorm room because they tell me so. Pérez and I, like so many others during the COVID-19 pandemic, are isolated from each other, but for Pérez, that might not be such a bad thing. Isolation during the pandemic has given Pérez an unprecedented opportunity to explore what gender means to them.

In the fall of 2018, I was a typically overwhelmed first-year searching for creative outlets to balance the intimidating trainee work I did as a Spectator photographer. Predictably, I followed hundreds of creatives on social media for inspiration; my favorite at the time was Brooklyn-based photographer Bảo Ngô (@baohngo), whose work appears on the cover of Mitski’s critically acclaimed album “Be the Cowboy.”

As Mallory Bechtel, GS ’24, sits in her childhood bedroom, I see four posters from musical theater productions behind her: Les Misérables, White Christmas, Bring it On!, and Whistle Down the Wind. The last, she tells me, was her first professional show—at the ripe age of seven, she was pulled from the training program to join the ensemble for the Houston leg of the 2007 U.S. tour.

Andersen Gu, a Columbia College sophomore, knows what it means to navigate New York as a Chinese American. Growing up in a predominantly Chinese-immigrant community in Queens, surrounded by people who looked like him, Gu found comfort in the community in the city; hearing people around him speak different languages made him accustomed to diversity and attending Chinese school connected him to his origins and community.

In many ways, March 22, 1987, was an ordinary Friday night. A crowd of students congregated in Ferris Booth Commons, with the usual noise and rush of excitement in anticipation of the weekend. On any other Friday night, you might not have noticed Mike Jones, a junior at Columbia College. Jones’ friends describe him as short and unassuming in build but with a toughness and sense of self-assurance. But on this particular night—a night that would shape the months to come—Jones walked into the dining hall with the urge to be heard.

For Calin Lisenbee, a student at the School of Nursing, Columbia held the promise of financial stability and success. Lisenbee dreamed of becoming a nurse and midwife, and Columbia’s competitive doctoral program was the key to kick-starting her career. While she was initially hesitant about the high cost of tuition, Lisenbee felt that the world-renowned education and the promise of good job prospects after graduation were worth it.