When my editor in the fall of 2023 first asked me to consider applying (“shooting”) to succeed her as Arts & Culture editor at Spectator, my instinctive reply was, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

The Zora Neale Hurston Trust held the inaugural Zora Neale Hurston Summit on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 on Barnard’s campus in honor of Hurston’s “life, legacy, and work” as a writer and anthropologist. The two-day summit involved self-guided art exhibits, theater and music performances, and panel discussions of Hurston’s recent posthumous novel, “The Life of Herod the Great,” which was published on Jan. 7.

Within the intimate and dimly-lit Ailey Citigroup Theater, dancers emerged from the stage’s wings in cloth ballet shoes, pointe shoes, and a myriad of costumes, bringing the Columbia Ballet Collaborative’s Fall Gala to life on Saturday against backdrops of blue, green, and white.

Student group performances for this year’s Tree Lighting celebration were canceled due to gale force winds, the four undergraduate councils announced in a joint Thursday Instagram post.

The Hinds House Collective, a group advocating for “divestment from genocide and the liberation of Palestine,” opened an exhibition from "the belly of the beast” at Alpha Delta Phi’s brownstone Saturday.

As Homecoming weekend approaches, students are searching for the right Columbia blue to wear to the big game—from Pantone 290, to Pantone 292, to any shade in between. Luckily for them, there are a plethora of options available for students to buy merchandise without leaving the comfort of Morningside Heights.

Following the April 30 occupation of Hamilton Hall, the University restricted access to the Morningside campus to students living in on-campus residence halls and “essential personnel.” The restrictions to Morningside campus access for the past week left many Columbia students with limited dining options.

It is 40 degrees and around midnight, and students are bundled up in the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” A documentary on the 1968 protests against the Vietnam War and segregation on campus, “Columbia Revolt,” rolls from a small projector onto a screen.