Valeria Escobar

Avichai Assouline, a third year student in the Film M.F.A. Program at the School of the Arts, has died, School of Arts Dean of Faculty Carol Becker and Dean of Students and Alumni Affairs Laila Maher announced in an email to the student body on Monday morning.

Over 300 faculty, students, and alumni called on Columbia to end its $150,000 contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection for emergency medical services at the border, condemning the partnership as a legitimization of CBP cruelty in a faculty-led petition sent to administrators last week.

The Second Circuit ruled Tuesday that President Donald Trump violated the first amendment by blocking people whose views he disagreed with from his Twitter account. The case, brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, could have broader implications for standards of free speech in a social-media driven public.

Book Culture, a beloved local chain and a reliable hub for Columbia students in need of textbooks, faces an imminent threat of closure unless it receives at least $500,000 in funding, owner Chris Doeblin announced in an open letter last week.

Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness received $150,000 from the U.S Customs and Border Patrol to devise medical protocol for assessing individuals in the process of crossing the southern border, according to center director Irwin Redlener. The contract agreement will continue through November 2020.

Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer resigned from her appointment as part-time lecturer at Columbia Law School on Wednesday following official statements from the Black Student Organization and the Black Law Student Association demanding that Columbia hold her accountable for her role as prosecutor in the 1989 “Central Park Five” case, the convictions in which were later overturned in 2002.

Jed-Joan Edziah, SEAS ’19, knew that with her scientific inclination, she could become someone important. Her trajectory was set—she would change the world, cure cancer, and earn a Nobel Prize.

The winter break of her first year, Emily Sun, CC ’19, represented Columbia on Jeopardy! College Championship. Paired with her fresh-faced aura, she felt that her undeclared major status weakened her sense of self—otherwise, she would have been able to speak into the camera screens more eloquently.

As Shreya Sunderram, BC ’19, sat in the living room where she holds her most valuable college memories, she thinks to how often the one-on-one interactions with her friends, peers, professors, and students have shifted her understandings of the world.