After months of YouTube workouts, chilly runs, and reorganizing dorm rooms and childhood bedrooms to make space for a yoga mat or weights, Columbia students will soon have another option. Dodge Fitness Center will reopen for limited student use for the first time in over 10 months on Tuesday. The Dodge reopening will begin with a maximum capacity of 320 online reservations per day, a fraction of its typical usage.

Normally, hordes of students crowd College Walk on the morning of University President Lee Bollinger’s annual Fun Run. In 2019, 1,350 participants chatted with friends, bemoaned the early start time of the race, and ran, jogged, walked, or shuffled the three-mile path around Morningside Heights before admiring the geeky commemorative T-shirts distributed upon completion.

The Ivy League is considering multiple schedules for football’s return as schools across the country attempt to put together opening plans for the fall semester. As the number of COVID-19 cases rises across the United States, the conference may potentially delay intercollegiate football games until April 2021, and practices may not start until March.

Men and women’s swimming at Columbia operate under a long shadow, that of Ivy League heavyweights Harvard and Princeton. It’s been 48 years since Harvard and Princeton were both denied the championship on the men’s side, and only one women’s team has broken the seal in the last 20 years. This means, effectively, that the Lions must battle it out for third every year.

The first question prospective lightweight rowers ask when they get to Columbia’s campus is not necessarily about the team’s championships, extensive meditation, technical training, or even about the team’s lack of a boathouse in the spring.

This decade in Columbia rowing was one of contrasts: coaching turmoil against stable leadership, championships against conference-bottom finishes. As the men’s lightweight rowing team brought the first modern national championships to any Columbia rowing team and the first-ever lightweight title, the heavyweight men fought to qualify for the National Championship Regatta, peaking with a top-10 finish in 2010. The women’s team struggled to find consistent plans and coaching; despite standout individual performances, the team could not make it out of the bottom half of the conference.