Students and faculty erupted in protest this weekend after Columbia announced that it would require graduate students to return to the United States to keep their teaching and research positions regardless of their citizenship status. Following widespread criticism, the University has since announced that it is exploring other options to the policy, though no update has been released.

Student Financial Services started issuing registration holds for graduate student tenants on July 21, which barred them from registering for academic classes in the fall term until they paid their outstanding rent.

Following the decision from most Columbia faculty to hold classes online, the University encouraged instructors in an email last Monday to offer more in-person classes. The request has drawn ire from professors and instructors, who pointed to the letter as insensitive to the health risks that in-person teaching poses to themselves, students, and community members.

When Columbia switched to online instruction in March, Eduardo Vergara Torres’ computer died. His aging laptop could not handle the bombardment of videoconferencing, and he could not afford to fix or replace it. Normally, this would be a major inconvenience for a Spanish instructor and second-year Ph.D. candidate in Latin American and Iberian cultures—but in a world transformed by COVID-19, a broken computer spelled catastrophe.

Welcome back to The Ear, The Eye’s podcast dedicated to documenting, detailing, and excavating Columbia’s history!

Tamara Hache was supposed to spend her summer researching 19th-century literature in Argentina. The third-year Ph.D. candidate in Latin American and Iberian cultures had secured a research grant and planned on subletting her Columbia-owned apartment, hopping on a plane to her hometown of Buenos Aires, and working on her dissertation while spending time with friends and family.

I’ve always liked Sundays. Weekdays are packed with obligations and Saturdays quickly fill up with activities, but on Sundays I have time to exist alone—long mornings, complete breakfasts, and productivity on my own terms. March 8 was shaping up to be a pretty good Sunday. Sure, my anxiety had me on edge—the coronavirus headlines were inescapable and rumors of classes moving online after spring break were rampant—but the sun brightened the farmer’s market stands on Broadway, so I basked in the fragile optimism that the virus might not hit New York too hard.

At the end of his final year teaching at Columbia, Michael Rosenthal, a professor emeritus in the English department, received a gift from his Literature Humanities students: a hardcover copy of “Tales from Shakespeare” with its pages hollowed out. Inside sat a bound booklet titled “If I Could Be Permitted a Totally Ridiculous Statement”—a compendium of Rosenthal’s one-liners for each book on the syllabus. In a section of general “Rosenthalisms” lies the following quote: