on-campus

College away from campus is a new but not impossible concept. With this semester taking a remote form, we lose the in-person aspect of socializing. Luckily for you, we have compiled some tips and resources to help you make friends from a distance.

Social media has always been one of those things I’m unable to use consistently. While this may be obvious from my sparse Instagram posts, it is no secret to those who know me that I prefer the familiar intimacy of physical interactions, such as in the parking lot of a local coffee house or after school in my favorite classroom.

Are you a Columbia student seeking off-campus housing for any part of the upcoming 2020-21 school year? Are you planning on living at home for part of or all of the school year?

For Columbia’s student theater groups, the spring semester is when creative teams, actors, and designers produce a crowded roster of musicals and plays. Beginning in January, creative teams begin planning, casting, and constructing their upcoming productions. Amid the COVID-19 crisis and cancellation of on-campus activities, however, all student-led theater groups have been forced to cancel or postpone their shows until the fall semester.

If you’re an admitted student, you’ve probably heard Columbia College Dean James Valentini’s catchphrase that Columbia is the “greatest university in the greatest city in the world.” From internships to museums to all types of shows and entertainment, the opportunities and lifestyle that New York offers are a defining feature of the Columbia education. What you might not know much about, however, is Morningside Heights, the neighborhood where Columbia is located.

In my house, there used to be buckets of Lego pieces—a tumultuous medley of bricks collected from multiple sets over the years. While my brother would build countless little cars and trucks and planes with random pieces, I would build a house. It was always the same: one bedroom, a kitchen, a big ol’ living room, and four little Lego block characters—a mom, a dad, a daughter who was always the eldest, and a son who was always the youngest. Just like my own family, just like my own house.

This semester, there have been three reports of swastikas being painted on the 16th floor of East Campus. This is the same floor on which Chinese students’ name tags were burned in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Over the past few weeks, the bustling vibrancy of Morningside Heights has paled as thousands of Columbia undergraduates have departed campus for the remainder of the semester and other residents are staying indoors during the coronavirus outbreak.

Before my first class at 10:10, campus was empty.