Valentine's-Day

Close to 400 undergraduate students were registered to vote and requested absentee ballots for midterm elections this year, following the University Senate’s decision to pass a resolution to promote civic engagement and voter registration on campus.

Graphics by Charlotte Li, Raeedah Wahid

Dean of the School of General Studies Lisa Rosen-Metsch highlighted the school’s successful Giving Day performance during an appearance at the General Studies Student Council meeting on Tuesday night.

In an eventful and historic plenary, the University Senate passed a resolution to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day to be celebrated on the second Monday of October every year, while later issuing a special election for the chair of the Executive Committee—nullifying a previous appointment for the first time in Senate history—on Friday afternoon.

In its eighth annual Giving Day, Columbia raised $22 million through 18,622 donations as of 1 a.m. on Thursday morning, surpassing last year’s fundraising totals by over $2 million. This year’s top earners were Columbia College, followed by Columbia Athletics and Columbia Business School.

On Monday, Elsa Stamatopoulou, former chief of the Secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, spoke on the developments and challenges to implementing protections for cultural rights on a worldwide scale at an event at the law school.

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.

In light of Columbia’s failure to name Indigenous Peoples’ Day as an official University holiday, Columbia’s Native American Council organized a day-long gathering at the Sundial on Monday rallying students to pen statements to the University Senate advocating for official recognition.

Columbia exists on stolen land. Well, actually, all of Manhattan exists on stolen land. It’s no surprise that before the Dutch arrived in the 17th century and Christopher Columbus 100 years before that, the land that we now occupy belonged to Indigenous peoples. And on the second Monday of October, the day that has traditionally been celebrated throughout American history as Columbus Day, we stand behind Columbia’s Native American Council in calling for the University to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

With the start of the college football season fast approaching, senior linebacker and co-captain Michael Murphy, senior defensive lineman Daniel DeLorenzi, and head coach Al Bagnoli traveled to ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut on Thursday for Ivy League Football Media Day.