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With most classes and club meetings being held according to Columbia’s East Coast time zone, international students have been left to study or find community during the wee hours of the night. Most first-years and transfers haven’t even had the opportunity to explore campus or experience college life in daylight.

Messages between members of the Columbia chapter of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, nicknamed Fiji, have circulated over the past week, implicating several students in racist comments targeting a Black woman photographed in The Denver Post after being tear-gassed by police. One fraternity member’s concerns were dismissed when he expressed disgust with a joke that compared the tear gas—a toxin linked to chronic respiratory diseases and miscarriages that has been used as a weapon against protests—to semen.

Besides being a much needed break from school, and for some of us, an opportunity to lounge in the warmth of home while consuming copious amounts of stuffed turkey and mashed potatoes, Thanksgiving serves as a reminder to give thanks for all the good that has come our way this year and give back to the community that has contributed to your wellbeing and success.

Nathan Farrell arrived at Columbia with a vivid picture of what his life would look like. Like many Columbia students, Farrell, now a sophomore in Columbia College, had been heavily involved in extracurriculars in high school—he founded and led an a cappella group (“The Passing Notes”), played saxophone, was a member of student government, and was a peer leadership mentor, all while maintaining his spot in the top 1 percent of the class. But still, Farrell felt like his life would only truly begin when he got to college, where he saw himself “hopping around in all of [his] passions.”

In collaboration with the Office of Multicultural Affairs, a group of six student facilitators will be hosting a dialogue series—titled Respecting Ourselves and Others Through Empathy & Dialogue—with the goal of building “solidarity, empathy, and authenticity” amongst the Columbia community. The first day of the series will focus on discussions about racism, white supremacy, and the Core, in direct response to the bias incidents at the end of last semester.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs has appointed Vanessa Gonzalez-Siegel, TC ’17, to serve as the associate director of multicultural affairs and LGBTQ outreach, and Alison Jackson to serve as associate director of multicultural affairs and international student support following several months without permanent representatives for either position.

In light of newly available spaces on Barnard’s campus due to the recent opening of the Milstein Center, leaders of seven student organizations voiced their needs for dedicated space at a Student Government Association town hall on Tuesday.