Theater-of-War

Two children play by the hammock in the back of the hut, yelling and looking into the camera. Piti sits on the ground, preparing traditional cloth while recounting her struggles and successes. This Brazilian terrain has become her home. She reflects on how her life now is very different from her upbringing in a white Brazilian family, yet her attraction to this indigenous group and terrain led her to start her life anew.

“Men are nothing but trouble!” Jennifer, a resident at Selinsgrove Center in Pennsylvania, exclaimed, inciting laughter from her interviewer and caregiver. Her interviewer had asked if she had found a boyfriend during her eight years at Selinsgrove, a live-in care institution for intellectually disabled individuals.

Jay-Z was met with a standing ovation upon entering The Forum on Columbia’s Manhattanville campus. While Beyoncé—yes, you read that right—slipped inconspicuously into her seat in the audience, Jay-Z sat down to speak on topics ranging from his musical influences to prison reform to his controversial partnership with the National Football League to his historic role in the landscape of hip-hop.

After two hard-fought wins over No. 20 Oklahoma State and No. 16, Tennessee, the No. 13 Columbia men’s tennis team came home to the Dick Savitt Tennis Center to sweep the University of South Florida 7-0, marking first-year head coach Howard Endelman’s win at home at the helm.

Columbia is the only Ivy League institution with an undergraduate school dedicated to fostering a community of “nontraditional” students from diverse backgrounds who have delayed their educational experience for a year or more. Named the School of General Studies, it promotes “experience and maturity” as prime features of the school’s community.

Following almost two decades of back-and-forth for union recognition, Columbia announced its decision to negotiate with the Graduate Workers of Columbia in November 2018. Negotiations started in February 2019, proceeding the creation of a 10-point outline of the conditions for collective bargaining. Notably, the bargaining framework includes an impending deadline: a clause that prevents the union from striking until April 6, 2020.

Water and the treasured manuscripts archived in Butler’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library don’t usually mix, and for good reason. On Tuesday evening, however, the library combined the two in an exhibition titled “Awash in Books: Books for the Year of Water,” featuring a variety of pieces to celebrate and explore how we use Earth’s most precious resource.

A select number of low-income students at the School of General Studies will now have access to subsidized meal plans, according to an email sent to students from the General Studies Office of Educational Financing.

In 2018, the first line of Spectator’s XMAS!13 review read, “This year Santa Claus is retiring. Microphone substituted for candy cane, the announcement came moments into the show.”

“They took our language.”