The summer before I started at Columbia, an incoming first-year in Spectator’s summer program interviewed me about COVID-19 guidelines. My quotes about wanting to make friends and safely socialize—based on my small-town understanding of college life—snowballed into a slew of comments on “Columbia Buy/Sell Memes,” the (now basically defunct) Facebook group. I thought I’d been canceled before I even got to campus and, more importantly, that my opportunity to pursue journalism at Spectator was over. So, I gave myself a semester to settle into the realities of pandemic-era campus and New York City before I applied to Spec.

Columbia boasts a student body that is known for being politically engaged. How did the institution earn the label? And does it still deserve the title today? In this episode of The Ear, reporters Nicole Sandrik-Arzadi and Lara-Nour Walton explore these questions and more.

Welcome back to The Ear, Spectator’s podcast dedicated to documenting, excavating, and investigating Columbia’s past and present. In this episode, Claire Burke and Claire Schnatterbeck investigate what makes a rural student. How do Columbia and Barnard define “rural”? Does the quintessential “rural student” actually exist? Schnatterbeck and Burke use their own rural backgrounds as a starting point and begin to explore what it means to be a rural student at an elite institution.

Resident Advisors, otherwise known as as RAs, navigate a complex role in a residential community. They are students like any other, and yet they are also responsible for ensuring the well-being of their peers, and even policing them when necessary. The complexities of the role are complicated even further by financial considerations, time commitment, and so much more. In this Ear episode, reporter Abby Thayananthan speaks with current and former RAs to discuss the job as well as the unionizing, a hot topic on campus right now.