Tree-Lighting-Ceremony

The class of 2021′s Commencement ceremony will be held online this April, the Commencement Office announced on its website today. The ceremony will take place on Friday, April 30, at 10:30 a.m.

Senior spring was never supposed to be like this. I had 14 experiences left on my senior bucket list, like dining at a professor’s home, modeling nude for an art class, and sneaking onto the roof of Mudd Hall to watch the sunrise. And then there’s Commencement. I would have walked proudly across a stage to receive my diploma: Jordan Allyn, Barnard College of Columbia University, class of 2020, majoring in american studies with a concentration in visual and performing arts.

Just one day after the Columbia Tree Lighting, student Caitlyn Lee has already begun a downward spiral.

The Leslie Marmon Silko Reading and Open Mic began with an acknowledgment of the stolen Lenape land on which Columbia’s campus resides. This moment of bittersweet resilience, brought forth by the tragedy of Indigenous land occupation and the triumph of reclaiming a lost voice, imbued the room with life. From that complex mix of emotions poetry, music, and art arose.

The 103rd Annual Pulitzer Prizes— the highest national honors in journalism, literary achievement, and musical composition— were awarded by University President Lee Bollinger on Tuesday in Low Library.

For the nearly three seconds that I sailed down the world’s tallest raftable waterfall––a 40-foot curtain of water gushing over and around my arms and legs, the guide shouting at us to cover our heads, nothing but a rock-strewn river below us––I had time to think. About that TLC song, of course, and how suddenly painful its wisdom was, but also about my strange new habit of extreme adventure sports. I’d greeted the day on a rickety mountain bike, careening down a sheer cliff face the width of a shopping cart, punctuated by boulders and the occasional aggressive ram. The next weekend, I would leap from a glorified gondola off one of the highest bungee platforms in the world, plunging 440 feet into a rocky canyon. My quest for adrenaline had led me here, to this waterfall. But it had also led me here, to southern New Zealand, the unofficial capital of adventure sports and about as remote of a relatively comfy place as you can find.

Every year when the temperatures start to dwindle, the leaves discard their beautiful spectrum of sunset shades, and the noise of chirping birds begins to fade, my heart sinks a little. But it’s the Sunday when I have to turn back my clock that I despise more than anything else.

The American Jewish community was attacked on Saturday morning. Just as Shabbat morning services were beginning, a man entered Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue and opened fire on the congregation, crying out, “All Jews must die!”

The Columbia Tree Lighting Ceremony provides a welcome moment of respite amid the chaos of the end of the semester. If you’re tempted to take a break from Butler, here are some ways to make the most of this year’s edition of this tradition, whether it’s your first or your fourth.