Emmett Werbel

Six nights a week, two or three Columbia student volunteers walk down Broadway wearing red North Face backpacks filled with sandwiches, socks, toiletries, and feminine hygiene products. They share these items in an effort to create and sustain relationships with members of their community who are experiencing homelessness.

As I follow Barnard sophomore Sara Morales around Ferris Booth Commons, she chats in Spanish with the dining staff, calling them by name. She later tells me that she relates more to the hourly employees who serve her food, swipe her ID, and clean her dorm at Barnard than she relates to most of her fellow students.

I first heard about the Dodge sauna in the second week of my first year, when a friend invited me for a late night sweat. We wore bathing suits, uncomfortable with the idea of being naked together. But as we sat there amid the heat, sweat, and bare flesh, I was quickly hooked.