Dear Grim Readers,

“When I teach in a place like Hamilton,” begins Nicole Gervasio, clutching her frail, sweatered terrier to her chest, “I’m honestly so alienated from it that I’m not humbled by it.”..

The New Student Orientation Program is difficult enough when you don’t have a name that runs off of federal forms. My heart sank a little when I received my ID card that first day: Arminda Downey-Mavromat, it read. During my time here, I’ve often had to correct the error with an email alerting the school that such a person doesn’t go to this school, but that an Arminda Downey-Mavromatis does. A clerical error, I know, but an error that I’ve found on most official forms...

“The King of Free Speech would be absolutely cool as hell,” Prem Thakker, a first-year at Columbia College, says when asked whether he would like to interview Columbia University President Lee Bollinger...

We’re awkwardly positioning ourselves around a gigantic, expensive-looking machine when Tomas Vu-Daniel says, “You can actually climb up onto this press. Really.”..

It’s become something of a tradition to cut your hair short when attending a women’s college. Not everyone does it, of course, but it’s a common enough occurrence to have earned its place as a familiar trope, a well-known part of Barnard culture. When I first got here, I didn’t feel such an urge—but now I sit, a month and a bit into my sophomore year, ready to chop it off. But I’m not here to mark my entrance into a new kind of womanhood, as is often the case when it comes to the “Barnard Chop.” Rather, I’m marking an exit from it...