covid-19

Vocalizing stories about mental health can destigmatize seeking help and initiate honest discussions about these issues.

For many Columbia students, the last time they ate indoors at a restaurant was in early March. Delivery apps like Seamless and UberEats have become their best friends, along with cherished recipes for banana bread and chocolate chip cookies.

The Columbia Community Health Compact will be tested this semester as the University welcomes approximately 1,800 undergraduates to campus, nearly double its on-campus student population from the fall semester.

With a quick click of the “Leave Meeting” button, students return to the monotonous rhythm of life in a pandemic. Largely empty libraries are void of the whispers that used to echo off the walls. The silence is deafening.

Thousands of Columbia and Barnard students are returning to New York after Columbia partially reopened on-campus housing this semester. For the majority of these students, it has been almost a year since they’ve lived at Columbia, and for some, it will be their first time stepping foot on campus. While students are eager to return to a “normal” college experience, some Morningside Heights and West Harlem residents worry that Columbia’s reopening plan may put Morningside Heights residents at higher risk for COVID-19.

Since 1894, The Varsity Show has brought laughs to Columbia students, faculty, alumni, parents, and Morningside Heights residents by satirizing life at Columbia. With tickets sold out each night at Roone Arledge Auditorium, the shows featured hilarious plots complemented by coordinated choreography and staging, intense lighting, elaborate set design, and a live pit orchestra. This year’s show, however, will be much different.

Columbia College sophomore Vivian Jackson shares a one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen with her family. When Columbia went remote last spring, she struggled to attend Literature Humanities while her mother, a ballet teacher, taught plies and how to stand en pointe a few feet away from her laptop. While the commute would have been easy, the opportunity to have her own room, reliable Wi-Fi, and an on-campus job compelled her to live in the dorms this fall. As one of many students who requested on-campus housing this fall, Jackson identifies as a first-generation, low-income college student. On August 14, Columbia reversed its initial decision to bring up to 60 percent of undergraduates back to campus and instead opted for a semester entirely online. Only students who needed on-campus housing to “pursue their academic programs successfully” were provided dorm rooms; Jackson was one of them.

Columbia School of the Arts promotes its film master’s degree program with a skillfully produced trailer that offers a seductive sales pitch to prospective applicants. The school boasts that students’ films play at “every major film festival you can think of: Telluride, Berlin, South by Southwest and Tribeca, Cannes.” Deans and professors tout the program’s focus on practical training and portfolio development set students up for industry success: The school proudly announces that students are “making things from the first day they come here and they’re making things as they walk out the door.”

On Dec. 11, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that indoor dining will be suspended in New York City restaurants starting Monday, dealing a major setback to the city’s already struggling restaurant industry. The decision comes as the city faces rising hospitalization rates; as of Dec. 11, 1,668 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in New York City, which is on a trajectory to hit 90 percent of its hospital capacity.