Long-Island

With Black History Month in full swing, many galleries showcasing Black art and culture are just steps away from Columbia’s campus. Harlem galleries that have reopened for in-person visitors are featuring pieces that tell stories often underrepresented in the art world. Many of the galleries that remain closed have expanded their online presence or transitioned to outdoor art exhibits and installations.

Imagine a gothic thriller written with microscopic attention to detail. In the world of that story, fear is measured in millimeters of pupil dilation, and you can hear the forest hum. This is the world of “Radio Island.”

Every year, the United States has a national holiday called Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. Traditionally, Thanksgiving is a holiday spent with family, so many Columbia students use the long weekend to travel back home to do so. This year, Columbia’s Thanksgiving break is from Nov. 25 to 29, and as some students celebrate, international students may be left wondering what the holiday entails.

In a time of social distancing and widespread museum closures, the Wallach Art Gallery, located at 129th Street in the heart of Columbia’s Manhattanville campus, has taken advantage of digital mediums to preserve aspects of an in-person gallery setting by embracing the challenges of creating an engaging online experience.

As I sat in my hot car on a sunny morning, eager to surprise my boyfriend with homemade cinnamon rolls, I had no idea that he had a much grimmer surprise for me.

I’m sitting on the couch in the living room next to my older sister. We just met. Her name is Anna. We study each other’s fingers, which are skinny and long, with rounded tops. After a pause, we ask each other about food allergies and lactose intolerance. We’ll ask each other about shared feelings, but that’s later. She asks me if I like purses. She tells me that she has a collection. I’m not much of a purse person. She’s not into wide-leg pants.

In a lot of ways, being the Midwestern golden child who left the humble fields of Daleville, Indiana to pursue the endless possibilities of the Big City feels like playing a part in a Broadway production: the cut-and-paste ingenue that’s thrust into the whirlwind of urban life and somehow manages to keep her footing. There are bragging rights in excess; it’s a quintessential Columbia student luxury to be trekking to the Met on Saturday, catching a matinee on Sunday, and topping it all off with a Brian Greene lecture bright and early Monday morning.

While other schools may have highly attended football games, tailgates riddled with red Solo cups, and fraternities allowed to party, Columbia has the 1 train.

My first weeks at Barnard were terrible. I was rejected from multiple clubs (and wrote a Spec article about it), I missed home, my family, my friends—and I missed my girlfriend. But there was a silver lining—although we went to different colleges, I had someone to share those first-year experiences with, who was going through the exact same changes and uncertainty. Rather than growing apart because of our distance, we grew together.

David Helfand does not drink coffee for three reasons.