Ballot-Initiative

Columbia College Student Council will vote on whether to allow Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s referendum on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement in the upcoming election cycle next Sunday.

Barnard College has been awarded $1 million dollars by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch the Public Engagement Initiative, a social justice-oriented project that will facilitate collaborations between Barnard faculty, students, and partner organizations to develop real-world solutions for challenges faced by local communities. The organizations will center around the general themes of immigration, poverty, and labor rights.

When one watches a love story unfold slowly in a musty cinema, listens to a singer’s voice build in an unearthly crescendo, or stands stunned before a mural painted with startlingly bright colors, it is possible to pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and step back from reality. It becomes possible to succumb to the incalculability of life—suddenly, one can reclaim the right to feel.

Founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver and former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., CC ’73 and Law ’76, discussed the upcoming Democratic primary race and 2020 presidential election in a panel on Tuesday.

This weekend, I cast my first ballot in a general election. I, like many Columbia undergraduates, registered to vote at my family’s home address—all the way in Los Angeles. And so, with that first vote comes a certain removal, a political homesickness. My first step into political adulthood is to mail in a ballot to a state I’m no longer sure I can call home.

As the new academic year begins, sexual respect is front and center in discussions on- and off-campus, as allegations regarding sexual misconduct pervade the news in all sectors, from media and the arts to government and academia. The good news is that we, as a community, are talking about these issues more than ever before—and that much of the conversation on campus is about how best to make positive change.

Editors’ Note: This is the first of a two-part series on special interest communities at Columbia.

Panelists discussed the negative impacts of voter suppression on members of disenfranchised demographics in America at an event hosted by the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights on Monday evening.