“Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.” - Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium

Many of us at Columbia have read those exact words in our first semester Literature Humanities classes. Though Aristophanes’ portrayal of love—reuniting two halves to create a body with four arms, four legs, and one head with two faces—envisions a dubious image of humankind, it is nevertheless true that, for many college students, finding our partners in life remains an unstated priority. If the prevalence of dating apps and hook-up culture at Columbia are a signal of anything, it is that we are no stranger to the universal “wound of human nature,” even if we chase fleeting—and at times ineffective—methods of healing it.

Recently, however, a new strain of dating services targeting college students have popped up at universities across the United States. Each purports to match students based on their answers to a series of questions, using some hidden algorithm to compress compatibility into a percentage. Where are these coming from, and why? Should we trust these shady platforms with our data? And—more fundamentally—should we offload the very human journey of finding love to a very inhuman shortcut?

Date Drop, Marriage Pact, Yak Match

When I first came into Columbia, I was eager to find someone after 18 years of singlehood. I frequented Amity and 1020, joined a myriad of clubs, attended mixers and socials, and followed the oft-repeated advice to “put yourself out there.” While I ended up with plenty of friends, little came by way of love.

With encouragement from my newfound companions, I signed up for these novel matchmaking algorithms, going through the gamut of Marriage Pact, Yak Match, and Date Drop.

However, from the start, this matchmaking model of romance struck me as particularly strange, even as I readily created a digital profile of myself. Unlike modern matchmaking services, which boast high rates of success—and still require highly-experienced humans to vet potential matches and the personal commitment that goes along with financial investment—these platforms consistently marketed themselves as something frictionless and free.

For example, Marriage Pact’s website claims that finding love can be “easy”: “Answer our questionnaire, backed by the latest research on romantic compatibility. We’ll feed your likes, loves, and pickiest non-negotiables to our matching algorithm.” They also feed off of the disillusionment some people feel when it comes to other dating apps, such as Tinder or Hinge, where the pursuit of love can feel more commercialized, emotionally exhausting, and fraught with rejection. Date Drop’s website claims that “We swipe through more faces in an hour than our ancestors met in a lifetime, and somehow we’re lonelier than ever. It’s no wonder we’re all exhausted.” Truth be told, they’re not wrong—dating apps often do create a sense of dejection when it seems like all the swiping leads to nowhere. But are these new impersonal algorithms really the solution they market themselves to be?

When compared to the swipe-based logic of apps like Tinder or Hinge, or the slow burn of meeting people through online communities built around shared interests, this model delegates all romantic effort to a third party. Instead of being forced to navigate the ambiguity of attraction and social context, participants are offered a controlled experiment with a guaranteed match. In a campus environment where time feels scarce and social circles can feel closed off, that promise can seem attractive, and is, perhaps, why these algorithms are so popular.

Ava Blum BC ‘27, who co-organized the original Columbia launch of Marriage Pact, put it plainly: “I find there are very strong pockets of community on this campus, but as a campus culture collectively, it feels like we are isolated.” (Blum is also an illustrator for Sundial.) For Blum, that isolation is precisely what Marriage Pact was designed to address—not by replacing organic connection, but by giving students the excuse to pursue it. She told me that, “If you’re scared to talk to someone, you can just blame Marriage Pact,” as a neutral and convenient reason to start a conversation. “We both know why we’re here, and now we have something else to facilitate the initiative we take to reach out to each other.”

These campus matchmaking platforms all follow a similar model. After filling out a survey, often framed as a mix of personality questions, value assessments, and lifestyle preferences, your answers are then processed through an algorithm that claims to identify compatibility by pairing individuals whose answers maximize some measure of alignment. The platform later spits out a match, accompanied by an algorithmically-determined compatibility percentage or a mention of a shared interest. After that, you are given their contact information to reach out to, or placed into a group chat to communicate.

A BandAid over the Wound

My own matches were, on paper, perfectly reasonable. Similar interests, overlapping values—nothing obviously incompatible. But that was precisely the problem: There was no tension, no frission—nothing to react to. These shared qualities were so generic and shallow as to be meaningless. There was no story behind a meet-cute or a slow buildup of romantic tension over a semester’s worth of classes together; as a consequence of the sterile inception of the meeting, the pairing felt arbitrary and meaningless. The algorithm just provides a name, a profile, and the vague obligation to reach out. Without the organic buildup that usually precedes attraction, the effort to contact another person felt strangely hollow.

In my case, the conversation never really started. I never talked to my Marriage Pact match, partly due to my busy schedule, and partly because my match percentage was pretty abysmal (43.06% compatibility) and I felt there was no point in meeting someone I wasn’t “compatible” with. Similarly, Yak Match never resulted in a message because the anonymity of the platform removed any sense of personal investment. Even my first Date Drop match died quickly despite the far better 96% compatibility score: Though some games of Word Hunt were exchanged, they quickly tapered off. The second round of Date Drop fared no better. It became clear that neither of us felt particularly invested. There was no reason to be: We had not chosen each other out of our own will.

That is not to say that these algorithms never result in successful matches. Blum herself knows of couples who found something real through Marriage Pact and describes her own experience—though it did not progress beyond one date—as genuinely positive. Her match, knowing she was an actress, opened with a Shakespearean email: “so silly and dorky and fun,” she told me. She credits her experience less to the algorithm than to a mutual willingness to engage sincerely. A few friends, more the exception than the norm, have shared similarly positive outcomes. However, for the vast majority of my friends, I’ve seen a pattern of sparse contact or none at all between them and their pairings.

From my experiences with these platforms, I have found that, when a connection is handed to you fully formed, it removes the very process that gives it meaning. The awkward introductions, the gradual discovery of shared interests, even the uncertainty of whether the other person feels the same way—these are not obstacles to connection. They are the substance of it. The algorithm may be the impetus, but it does not supply the willingness to actually show up.

More broadly, I attribute a kind of passivity to these platforms. If the algorithm is responsible for finding your most compatible partner, then your role becomes evaluation rather than pursuit. You no longer actively engage with the social world around you but instead wait for it to deliver someone to you. And, without that commitment to the search, you lose any attachment to the results. Blum senses this too, lamenting that many students fill out the questionnaire for “shits and giggles” and that those who sign up while already in relationships quietly deflate the whole enterprise for everyone else.

Towards a Truer Romance

So then what actually works? What is the balm for our wound?

In my view, the answer is simple and perhaps boring: time, proximity, and repeated interaction. Compared to Tinder and Hinge’s endless swiping or Marriage Pact and Date Drop’s vacuous matches, these precursors to connection come best from daily interaction.

Real relationships tend to emerge from environments where people see each other consistently and without pressure. Classrooms, clubs, shared spaces—even casual routines like studying in the same library or attending the same events. These contexts allow for something that no algorithm can replicate, which is the gradual accumulation of familiarity.

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Familiarity matters because it lowers the stakes. You are not meeting someone with the explicit goal of dating them, nor with your so-called “compatibility score” looming in the background. You are simply existing in the same space, over and over again, until conversation becomes natural. Attraction, if it develops, does so as a byproduct rather than an end goal.

This perspective also requires an uncomfortable but necessary component: becoming comfortable with being alone. The urgency to find someone often leads people to grasp at the most efficient available option, even if it is unsatisfying. But treating relationships as something that must be solved quickly can distort how we approach them in the first place. Being alone, in this sense, is what allows interactions to remain genuine rather than instrumental.

None of this is to say that matchmaking algorithms are inherently malignant. They reflect a real desire to break through the toxic campus culture that rejects romantic initiative and, for some, may even work—but they misunderstand the nature of what they are trying to produce. True compatibility expresses itself in a way that cannot be captured by a mere percentage. It emerges from the small moments, from the inside jokes developed over time, and the gradual baring of one’s soul to another.

Likewise, the wound of human nature is not something that can be healed by machine learning or mathematical assumptions. It requires something slower, less certain, and ultimately more human.

Mr. Chang is a freshman at Columbia College studying political science and computer science. He is a staff editor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

A recent hot-button issue in the world of higher education reporting is, as a December 2025 Atlantic article by Rose Horowitch put it, the “Accommodation Nation.” Horowitch argues that able-bodied students—particularly from elite universities—are unethically gaming the system by registering for disability accommodations. The narrative is simple: students who don’t need accommodations are “faking” conditions to get a competitive edge in the classroom. Other publications have followed suit, releasing articles pushing identical theses to Horowitch, such as the New York Times, New York Post, Fox News, Forbes, and The Times, to name a few.

I am appalled by the implications of these articles. At Columbia, our problem is categorically the opposite of what these pieces allege: despite the growing number of students registering for accommodations, Disability Services at Columbia remains structurally underfunded, procedurally opaque, and at times adversarial. This is not a personal grievance. It is a critique of a system that treats accessibility as the management of ill-intentioned students rather than an exercise in upholding institutional responsibility. Perhaps there exists a minority of students who exploit the system for personal gain. But the vast majority of accommodation-seeking students are being exploited by Disability Services, an office meant to support them. Giving disproportionate attention to inevitable bad actors obfuscates the urgent need for institutional reform regarding Disability Services.

When a student finds themselves experiencing symptoms of what society deems as “less than able,” they rely on Disability Services not merely for paperwork, but for protection from punitive attendance policies, unsafe testing conditions, and bureaucratic delays that can derail an education overnight.

Students need third-party advocates to ensure professors do not retain unilateral power to deny flexibility, to penalize absences, or to fail a student whose only infraction was being human. Speaking from personal experience, I have needed a third-party advocate for classes where professors have said racist and sexist slurs. I doubt that they would handle my disability any more diplomatically.

No accommodation system is perfect, but imperfection is not an excuse for negligence. My first in-person interaction with Disability Services was framed as an ‘orientation,’ fitting for the September air. In practice, it was disorienting and dangerous.

I was initially assigned to take exams in a group testing environment, despite documentation clearly stating that I have stress-induced seizures. A group setting is unsafe because a tonic-clonic seizure in a crowded room risks injury to others, severe distress to students already managing their own disabilities, and medical emergencies that could have been prevented with basic foresight. The last thing a disabled overachiever and a depreciating Ivy League institution needs is headlines of a Class D Felony in the classroom. I will, unfortunately, be unable to request legal representation from the оffice for mens rea after accidentally assaulting my classmate while seizing.

When I raised these concerns at my ‘orientation,’ the advisor admitted to me that they could not name a single type of seizure, jumping up in shock when I told them there are multiple types. How could my advisor offer support without foundational knowledge of a symptom of over 20% of intellectual disabilities?

This was nothing compared to the time I ran into the Wein Hall Disability Services office with an aura begging the front desk, “Is there somewhere I can lie? I am having a seizure!” and he looked me straight in my panicked eyes and said, “That is none of my business.”

Changing unsafe accommodations required repeated follow-ups, delayed responses, and the tacit implication that I was being unreasonable about my own medical needs. At no point was it made clear who actually determines accommodations or how students can appeal decisions without retaliation or delay, even after I asked multiple times. It is hilarious to me how an office meant to serve disabled students seemingly makes them feel subordinate, as if we do not already feel so everywhere else.

One of my accommodations is deceptively simple: a reserved seat. This is a medically necessary condition to ensure that I can safely participate in class without triggering episodes or navigating unnecessary physical and psychological stress.

And yet, even this accommodation required negotiation. I was initially told that, while I could have a “designated” seat, it would be my responsibility to ask someone to move if they were sitting in it. In other words, the accommodation existed on paper, but its enforcement was outsourced to me.

This is what Columbia calls “self-advocacy.” In practice, it means asking a room full of strangers to vacate a seat, disclosing personal medical needs in a public setting, and risking confrontation, dismissal, or embarrassment over something that has already been formally approved. Self-advocacy, as it is currently implemented, is not empowerment. It is an abdication of the institution’s responsibility to safeguard the well-being of its vulnerable students. After repeated pushback, I was eventually granted a fixed, consistently reserved seat—one that did not require me to justify my presence every time I walked into the room.

My experience with Disability Services here at Columbia leads me to ask: Why did the University not enforce the accommodations it had granted itself to begin with? Columbia’s approach reflects a deeper institutional logic—one that treats accessibility as contingent on a student’s willingness to push back. But disabled students should not have to persistently plead for an accommodation to receive protection. The burden of implementation should not fall on the person the policy is meant to protect.

The failures extend beyond paperwork. In comparison to other institutions, Columbia is undoubtedly falling short. Outside of a mere two-hour window, Disability Services does not offer drop-in hours, despite the fact that disability—especially episodic disability—is inherently unpredictable. Students are often notified of exam locations and times with minimal notice. Changes to course registration times appear without warning. In my experience, appointments—by phone and in person—are consistently missed without explanation by the staff being paid to manage this work.

Most concerningly, the Disability Services office is architecturally ableist. Wein Hall lacks a quiet and accessible recovery space for students experiencing medical episodes. There is no protocol for pre-episode care, during-episode support, or post-episode recovery for any of the hundreds of disabilities they recognize. When I sought a place to safely recover after a seizure on campus (one of the many seizures I have experienced in just one semester), the front desk employee at Disability Services said, “That is not my job.”

This absence of care not only affects students with epilepsy. It affects students with panic disorders, OCD, migraines, PTSD, and other conditions that require altered stimulation and adaptive support.

I have had seizures on campus and gone to class immediately afterward—not because it was safe for me or anyone in the classroom, but because attendance policies made absence punitive. I have sought help across Wellness Coaching, Medical Services, Counseling and Psychological Services, and Sexual Violence Response, only to be redirected repeatedly with no clear ownership of responsibility.

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The problem with reforming Disability Services is that solutions only come about after harm occurs. Students are told to file grievances through generalized channels that handle everything from parking complaints to co-worker disputes. Disability-related rights, however, are time-sensitive and medically consequential. They require specialized oversight, not bureaucratic diffusion.

If Columbia is serious about equity, Disability Services must be restructured with the same rigor applied to academic integrity or Title IX compliance. At a minimum, the University must complete these seven basic tasks:

First, establish a student ad hoc group to rewrite clear, transparent accommodation decision-making and appeal processes, including timelines and independent review. Hire more advisors (especially if Disability Services continues to use the decentralized model for graduate schools) so that a single staff member at each graduate school is not responsible for thousands of students. Second, require specific medical and disability competency training for all Disability Services staff. Third, create an accessible, fragrance-free recovery space for students experiencing medical or psychological episodes. Taking after peer institutions, the University should implement widely available drop-in hours and emergency protocols for episodic disabilities. Guarantee advance notice for exam logistics and registration changes instead of having students find out the time and location of their exams the night before. Audit Disability Services annually, with findings made public and student feedback meaningfully incorporated. And finally, shift the burden of proof off disabled students and onto the institution to justify restrictions or denials.

Columbia can continue treating these Columbians as an inconvenience that they need to quietly mitigate, or it can accept responsibility. Unlike the narratives pushed in the major publications as of late, the harm of systematic negligence is not a minor inconvenience for privileged and able-bodied students. It is about respecting and uplifting the safety and dignity of disabled students as they attend classes and learn like any other student.

Giselle Sami Dalili is a Master of International Affairs candidate at the School of International and Public Affairs, concentrating in development and governance. They are a staff writer for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

Walk into any Pupin basement classroom on a Friday afternoon, and you will witness a peculiar ritual. A TA stands behind a computer, reading through slides that regurgitate a lecture the room has already heard 24 hours prior. After 20 minutes, the TA asks, “Are there any questions?” and is met with deafening silence. The TA eventually relents, the clock hits the hour, and students file out with the nagging dread of having to do it all over again next week.

According to the International Student Guide to Columbia’s School of General Studies, discussion sections are an “intimate setting” to “build connections.” The University’s Center for Teaching and Learning claims they turn students into “co-constructors of their learning” by ensuring “they actively participate in their learning, rather than passively listen.” But based on that, the idea of imposing mandatory discussion sections, regardless of the course’s specific demands, feels less like a strong pedagogical philosophy and more like a performative attempt to maintain the optics of a liberal arts education.

The root of this failure is the University’s inability to properly distinguish between discussions intended for quantitative review, versus those aimed to genuinely foster dialogue. There is a sharp divide between subjective courses, where student-to-student discussion is the point of the class, and memorization-intensive ones, where the goal is to master a set of facts.

The irony of the University’s commitment to “intimacy” through discussions is most visible in the Department of Political Science. The Introduction to Comparative Politics class has around 120 students and includes a mandated weekly discussion section. Yet, move up to an advanced 3000-level comparative politics course with no prerequisites and 60 students, and the discussion section vanishes.

Disha Ghatak, a 2nd-year Political Science PhD student, TA’d for Intro to Comparative Politics last semester, and is currently a TA for a 3000-level Comparative Ethnic Politics class. “With 60 students, you know everyone’s not getting the material in the same way in class, but it’s harder to give individualized instruction [without sections],” she tells Sundial.

Ghatak adds, “I have a strong preference for sections being there because you get to monitor progress.”

The Political Science Department’s logic here is rooted in branding rather than needs. A 120-person lecture without a discussion section looks like a state school megaclass, while a 60-person lecture without a discussion section feels numerically palatable on a brochure, even if it is functionally just as impersonal. In reality, Columbia is using discussion sections to optimize for the appearance of a liberal arts college while ignoring the actual classroom experience.

However, simply adding discussion sections to every lecture course does not fix the underlying problem: often, the sections themselves are intellectual filler.

Michael Lee, a 3rd-year Economics PhD student and current Head TA for Intermediate Macroeconomics, argues for a flexible model: “I’m generally a fan of letting people decide what to do with their time and make their own judgment calls about where they are in the class.” For Intermediate Macroeconomics, recitations are optional. “I think if you understand what’s going on, then having to go to the recitations is a waste of time,” Lee says.

The abundance of other supplemental help options further complicates the purpose of discussion sections. First, all TAs are required to host office hours, which are dedicated spaces for students to ask specific questions and get targeted feedback. Lee’s Intermediate Macroeconomics class also has Ed Discussion, an online platform where students can ask questions to TAs anonymously. Beyond TAs, AI can also provide comprehensive answers instantly and at any time. Professor Martín Uribe, who teaches Lee’s Intermediate Macroeconomics class, has openly encouraged the use of AI to help students better understand the material. These other support channels eliminate the need for mandatory discussion sections in these fact-based classes, as students can get their questions answered through other means.

In Lee’s economic world of objective models and historical data, the value of the section is purely functional. He sees it as a space for “emphasis and re-emphasis” for lecture material. When the section is optional, the students who attend are engaged, as they are actively seeking extra review and practice. Yet, in introductory political science courses—which are also largely fact-intensive and review-based—the department uses mandatory discussions to fill rooms.

Although Ghatak prefers mandatory sections, she notes that “You can’t force people to engage, but you can force people to show up.” What is the value of a body in a seat? The active participation that discussion sections are meant to foster becomes an impossible dream when disengaged students are forced to attend for their grades, not their passion. Additionally, these students are not going to be motivated to engage with review material that they presumably already understood from the lecture.

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The mandatory discussion section’s role should be relegated to courses where the material is more subjective and interpretable. As Lee points out, “For humanities classes or classes where there is more room for interpretation and levels of subjectivity, discussion is actually really important because part of the class is hearing the subjective… [and] being exposed to subjective analysis or the opinions of the reading that other people have. There’s not just one answer for the TA to give.”

In this type of course, the mandatory discussion creates a valuable environment with everyone bringing different perspectives to the table. But this same level of interaction is not the goal of courses with more fact-intensive material, such as lecture-style political science and economics classes.

Moreover, the optional discussions allow students to choose the TAs who put in the most effort for their classes. Most Columbia PhD departments require students to be a TA for two semesters (or alternatively be appointed as a teaching fellow). However, Lee noted that “The value and effort that TAs put in is not required. I’m going to get my stipend even if I get horrible reviews. I’m also not going to get fired as a TA, especially not midway through a semester.”

When a discussion section is mandatory, the students are at the mercy of the effort (or lack thereof) the TA is willing to put into the course. This is not too problematic for humanities-styled sections because the importance of the section rests much more in student-to-student interactions; however, for review-based discussion sections, this can trap a student with a poor TA for the entire semester, effectively wasting their time. Unlike with professors, ratings for TAs are not as readily available. This leaves students guessing which mandatory section to enroll in, and they can easily get stuck with subpar teaching for an entire semester as a result. However, when discussions are optional, students can attend different sections and choose the TA that best fits their learning needs.

The fear that optional sections will lead to empty rooms is overblown. Students will show up for difficult material and/or high-quality instruction. In his experience, Lee says, “it is not common” for his discussions to have few students. This also incentivizes TAs to put in good effort into their sections if they want students to show up. As a student in Lee’s class, I personally always attend his discussion session even when I understand the lecture, because he structures the review so efficiently that I always leave feeling even more confident about the material.

If Columbia expects its discussion sections to serve as “intimate” intellectual spaces, it needs to stop using them as an optical checkmark for creating small class sizes. Nowhere is this disconnect more apparent than in the Political Science Department. Rather than forcing attendance in fact-intensive, review-based courses, the department could reserve mandatory discussions for more humanities-style courses that greatly benefit from student-to-student interaction. Until then, we’ll continue to file into Pupin, silently staring at our TAs, and wait for the clock to hit the hour.

Ms. Rajan is a sophomore at Columbia College majoring in Economics and Political Science. She is a senior editor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

Union Theological Seminary (UTS), on 120 St and Broadway, is a bit of a strange palimpsest. As you enter the door, you are welcomed by their motto, a play on Christ’s Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the activists.” In case any Columbia students were uncertain–Jesus did not say this. You may see advertisements for an “interreligious seder” with Cornel West, a UTS faculty member, as a special guest. You may even recall their recent mention of an “Iftar dinner & galvanizing talk” with 2024 Visiting Professor Mohammad Abdou, sponsored by the “Queer Muslims of NYC.” The conversation was titled “Death to the Akademy: How To Be a Thorn in Their Throat Amidst Snakes in the Grass.”

And then you look up at 120 St., alternatively named after Reinhold Niebuhr, an influential twentieth-century theologian and professor at UTS, or you walk into Burke Library—which I had the opportunity to visit this semester for a couple of term papers—and are greeted, as you enter the elevator, by an absolutely stunning stained glass artwork of St. Francis.

I could continue listing examples of the beautiful history of UTS written over by vulgar activism. The point is that the mission of Union Theological Seminary—in part, perhaps, because the Seminary has been a forward thinker in progressive theology—has descended into amorphous “spiritual” language. It’s rather clear that “the god” that the Seminary worships is social justice. The Seminary even admits this on its website, where they claim that their mission “lives out this formative call to service by training people of all faiths and none who are called to the work of social justice in the world.”

I find the Seminary to be a living embodiment of the problem with social activism at Columbia, while also having a kernel of the solution: The people, though they don’t realize it, yearn for conservatism—and by conservatism I mean God.

Columbia students subscribe to nearly every other ideology but social conservatism. The onus for this unfortunate trend lies with how conservatives articulate themselves. In the popular sphere, they are a harrowing mirror image of the problems of liberalism because both are a type of modern morality. Classical liberalism, as we may define it, is borne of the French Revolution, and Burkean conservatism right after.

G. K. Chesterton described this new morality in his 1905 Heretics, in the chapter “On the Negative Spirit.” Chesterton articulates here what might be called a “Second Fall.” As the biblical narrative goes, when humanity first fell, it gained knowledge of Good and Evil. But now, under our “modern morality,” all we have left is “the problem of a human consciousness filled with very definite images of Evil, and with no definite image of good.” The effect of this is the new golden rule, which is, “that there is no golden rule.”

I interpret Chesterton in the modern day as elucidating just how negative conservatives are—both as a set of viewpoints which attracts some of the most bitter people and as a disposition which is solely about negating the efforts of their liberal counterparts. This is unfortunate, as I believe that an optimistic vision of conservatism is what will make Columbia students happy—in the classical, eudaimonic sense of the word. I know it made me so, and I thank Columbia for turning me into such a conservative—though I doubt that was the institution’s intention.

Conservatism, however, can function as a form of progressivism when it becomes a weak antiquarianism. This is when the conservative is merely a reactionary to any new ideas, and believes that he must advocate for the ideas of yesterday. It is often quipped that a conservative is just a liberal from 20 years ago. At times, I do not disagree. This is what happens when you have a constantly changing goalpost; it gives the sense that the liberal is the true civilizational standard, and it is the conservative who is making unnecessary noise with his finger wagging for the sake of being disruptive.

I see this attitude most vividly in the style of the most commonly-employed conservative commentary. Many right-leaning publications’ depth of editorial commentary makes them into dumpsters merely for the opportunity to criticize. I like to think that I, and a heterodox publication like Sundial—to continue the Edenic metaphor—avoid the low-hanging fruit of higher education commentary as opposed to the typical, sensational right-wing populist publications like the Daily Caller and New York Post.

Admittedly, I have been tempted to succumb to pathetic right-wing culture war-ism. I did very seriously contemplate writing about the Columbia Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity’s drag show, but that would have required attending. On a liberal campus, the stories are all too easy, and the critique is right there. Like any tried and true conservative, I’ve had my fun critiquing activism and DEI, and have advocated for patriotism. I do not regret these ideologically charged pieces and stand by them—someone had to write them at Columbia.

But, to be honest, they do not have a lasting impact. I know that these articles may have caught the eye of a leftist, hopefully from a pique of intellectual curiosity. They may engage with the arguments presented, and may even enjoy hearing the opposing viewpoint, but the standard conservative takes we are more or less used to lack destination, leaving the liberal reader very close to where they began: Suspect of any view which dissents from their dogma either way. I may have made some good points, but so what? One could chalk up any persuasive elements in my more polemical writings to the kind of rhetorical flattery Socrates condemns in his dialogue with Gorgias.

Ultimately, these arguments, however persuasive or however much rhetorical flourishing I or any other Sundial writer may have included, do not really get to the heart of the problem. The progressive student is generally attracted to their viewpoints because, at the most basic level, they are drawn to hope and optimism. Leftist activism is the cheapest form of this: The promise of a glorious tomorrow invigorates students with the belief that, though there may be Evil, it will be extinguished.

However, progressive thinking is not protected from the modern golden rule. This form of optimism, because it is detached from a narrow vision of perfection, turns into a vague aimlessness. We have witnessed this with the decline of UTS, which started out with its mission to educate Presbyterian ministers, its involvement in the protests of 1968, participation in the cultural revolutions of the 80s and 90s, and is now down right sacrilegious with no sign of slowing down.

Just from my four short years at Columbia, I have witnessed the same student body pivot from pro-abortion advocacy, to Israel’s initial military response to Hamas’ terror attack, to the university’s response to the student’s response, to the NYPD’s response, and then to the Trump administration’s response, then back again to Israel (but this time their unjust violence in Gaza), and then to climate change, and then climate change and Israel, and then back again to the University.

I would describe the activists—whether they clothe themselves in theological or spiritual language or not—as pantheists. They are worshipping the effort of social justice in every pursuit they take on, utilizing totalizing language as if that is the ultimate cause. But as we know, the City of God will never be fully actualized: Even when, the City of God, for the activist, a communist utopia. But to glorify whatever cause one takes up as the effort which will bring one closer entails a complete rejection of transcendence. The effect of this is it gives well meaning students a perverse kind of optimism: flourishing amid permanent dissatisfaction.

Though I often utilize the liberal counterpart for my point, modern conservatives are not much better at this, which makes the vision of conservatism even worse than liberalism, because at least the latter can articulate some sort of faux positivity.

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Conservatism as I understand it, should be a recognition that spiritual and eternal matters are of primacy rather than the passing fads of temporal issues. This can manifest in different ways in the policies we associate with right-wing movements, but for the Columbia student, it can offer the most positive, most hopeful image: That there is more to life—so much more—than centering oneself on the latest political drama, social concern, or even political feud.

It may manifest in certain enduring principles, such as concern for the nuclear family, certain economic liberties, abortion, and so forth. But one can, in theory, advocate for all of these while still embracing a modern morality of pessimism, one invested in changing fads. That is not all conservatism amounts to. It is above all a recognition not only that tradition is a good thing, but that there are enduring values and a recognition that we are made for a kind of perfection that transcends any merely physical form.

When I use the word “conservatism,” I really mean the vision of “tradition” as articulated by Josef Pieper. For him, tradition is not beholden to any specific form. He explicitly rejects the antiquarianism of those who cling to external forms while ignoring the core idea. That core is the recognition that “the world proceeds from the ungrudging goodness of God; that God holds in his hands the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things.” Tradition for Pieper ultimately comes down to a single principle: That there is one tradition with a determinate content, reducible to the recognition of absolute Goodness as the origin and end of all things.

The consequences of students rooting themselves in this tradition are profound. External forms—institutions, initiatives, policies—may come and go. But once we acknowledge the inherent goodness of our initiatives, of our fellow neighbors, and of our existence itself, it gives a deeper meaning to all of our diverse passions and interests—even activism. What might seem corny becomes, in fact, sanctified through this more fundamental vision. I call this conservatism because it is, at its core, a commitment to that one enduring principle that was revealed to us.

In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson wrote the following retrospective of 60s activism:

“I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Today, at Columbia, we find ourselves in a similar place. As the tide rolls back, the activists ought to take their momentum and redirect it towards higher pursuits that can last longer than four years.

Ms. Chaudhry recently graduated from Columbia College with a degree in history. She was an editor-at-large for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

I recall when my friends in General Studies were evicted from their Nussbaum dorms to make room for the largest ever incoming freshman class. At least one friendship was strained by the ensuing housing struggle, fretting over living prospects and frantically scouring the depths of StreetEasy for new shelter. From the sheer volume of complaining, you would assume they were doomed to end up on the moon, or worse, in the Bronx.

And so Columbia’s 132nd Varsity Show, titled Once on a Blue Moon, envisions an unusual solution to this year’s overcrowding issue: the establishment of a second, moon-based campus. Staged at Lerner’s Roone Arledge Theater from May 1 to 3, your favorite Sundial correspondent saw its final performance on Sunday evening. The musical makes for an enjoyable experience, compensating for a somewhat underbaked plot with wit, verve, and musical virtuosity that manages to elevate bureaucratic disputes to the level of theatrical art.

The lunar plan emerges from a spontaneously derived, lunatic solution from Acting President Claire Shipman (Ana Huesa CC ‘26). When questioned on her plans to resolve campus overcrowding, she announces that the moon is the answer, in the cartoonish manner of a Twitch streamer, blowing her eyes wide, a metaphorical lightbulb sprouting from her skull. The main body of the musical’s action—and all the heart—is to be found in the students that question and carry out this dubious action plan on Shipman’s behalf. Connie (Ariana Neal CC ‘26)—short for Concrete—and Socks (Luca Tuana i Guitart CC ‘27)—short for Socrates, naturally—are best friends and Columbia seniors who find themselves with opposing takes on the proposal that students blast off.

Socks, who has found himself disillusioned with the tedium and inertia of campus life, cannot wait for a semester abroad on the moon—a relatable, if otherworldly, take on seniors who can’t wait to depart for the real world. Connie, while initially full of enthusiasm as she volunteers to recruit students for the moon landing, comes to recant her initial support as she realizes—to her horror—that the plan is a ploy for Shipman to rid campus of “undesirable students”: misfits who won’t be missed by the greater student populace.

Further mayhem ensues after students are shipped away, attempting to form a community on the moon while their earthbound counterparts wrangle with a separate dilemma. It turns out that while liftoff goes smoothly, Shipman neglects to provide an engine other than the fans from John Jay dining hall. Thus, students and Professor Hart (Kai Joseph CC’26) are left to devise a solution to bring their friends home. Meanwhile, the students on the moon are faced with the question of whether returning to earth is worthwhile, given administrative faults that don’t exist in their newfound campus commune.

I found Socks’ words from the moon campus particularly resonant. He articulates his desire to escape or transfer to “NYU, Fordham, Pace… or anywhere that doesn’t feel like a competitive pressure cooker full of miserable overachievers and administrators who couldn’t care less if you were drowning.” In the catchy ballad “Moon Over Manhattan,” he belts his grandiose desire for community that he finds lacking in Morningside Heights.

Personally, as someone who has found herself frustrated with the state of Columbia and has spread the rumor that I was transferring to NYU solely to see my friends’ comically horrified expressions, I found the musical a dramatic profession of discontent that often turns ironic. Though people might not like it here, the idea of leaving is still anathema.

The musical features several catchy numbers, lampooning issues at Columbia with an eye for detail that reflects the affection that persists alongside exasperation. “Oh, the Humanities!” parodied the Core, detailing its conflation into one class called “Humhum” due to overcrowding. As Professor Hart proclaims in a song, “Mozart may seem very far from Marx / But put the two together: there are sparks!” The wit shines through with this number, addressing the irony in how the humanities are compressed to a generalizable object of scorn, compared to STEM fields and the pseudo-intellectualism characteristic of the Core of putting unrelated subjects “in conversation” with one another. In the Humhum class where Connie and Socks meet their classmates, various characters’ dilemmas—from a hapless freshman’s overdependence on AI (Josh Chang CC’29) to a Barnard student responsible for the Fakemink Bacchanal debacle (Gaia Di Mitri CC ‘27) to the chronicles of an arrogant finance-bound rower (Anoushka Sharma BC ‘27)—are tackled.

The musical strikes home the hardest at times like this—when specific details testify to the goofy, unique nature of Columbia: from the usage of fans from John Jay to launch the rocket to the uncommon friendships that emerge from Core classes. The show reflects both the desire for an idealized version of community as well as the genuine connections built on campus every day. The set design (Matthias Pridgeon CC ‘29) was also exemplary, seamlessly transitioning from campus building and dorm interiors to the moon and back.

Unfortunately, once half of the students arrive at the moon campus, the play’s vision becomes muddled. Save for the sky’s coloration, the moon location is essentially identical to the original earth campus—and while the point remains that students on the moon feel liberated by the lack of administrative oversight, the vision for how students actually develop solidarity doesn’t feel terribly fleshed out. The message of togetherness that unifies students on both campuses felt rather inauthentic and rushed.

Following the staging of the musical, one of the lead writers, HeeJee Yoon (CC ‘27), agreed to an exclusive interview with Sundial.

When asked about how the writers landed on the idea of relocating students to the moon, Yoon reflected that characters’ varying views of the moon mirrored its transitioning phases. The moon is first Socks’s transfer fantasy—a place he will finally belong, ripe for romanticization—and then a wonderful place for the students to study abroad in a place untouched by campus fatigue. “I really put myself in the shoes of the space students. If I found this wonderful, perfect version of Columbia, would I really want to leave? And I really liked the characters’ decision [to return to earth]. What is the point of utopia if not to share it with reality?”

She continued, “I feel like that touches on some of our beliefs in the Core Curriculum, too. Why do we learn such wonderful abstract values? Why do we take CC? Why do we take LitHum?” The core classes enable students to apply “the epitome of beauty… to the people around us.” Thus to Yoon, “the moon represents a lot of different things,” all managing to encapsulate “what an education at Columbia is to experience.”

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Several facets of the show enabled Yoon and her fellow writers to examine elements of Columbia in closer detail. The decision to make Connie a University senator came from the writers’ desire to highlight an aspect of student government that many don’t know about, and the focus on Core classes came from Yoon’s apparent love for it, a passion which took me by surprise. “As a Core lover, I just feel like the Core Curriculum has opened me up to so many different possibilities, so many different understandings of the world,” she said. “I learned so that I can apply [what I’ve learned] to the world,” she said. This proclamation brought the phrase “you do you” to mind, as not every student would be so inclined to grant rave reviews to the Core.

The depiction of Columbia’s administration also came from real-life observations. Yoon found video communications from Shipman “very professional and scripted” rather than authentic and honest. She once attended a Senate Plenary meeting discussing a new policy that would require faculty to get approval “to put something on their door… Things could get taken down and a senator had raised this [concern] and Claire was just kind of like, ‘I didn’t know this was happening,’” Yoon reflected. “That level of incompetence and irresponsibility is dangerous and has genuinely harmed students’ lives.” Thereby, the choice to depict the acting president as a Twitch streamer “would kind of meld all these traits” she’d observed of Columbia’s outgoing president (interim president?).

Speaking on the unification of students at the end, she expressed that the ending was not intended to feel unrealistically hopeful but to profess a more grounded sense of optimism, one that “really has to come from the students and not from up there, I believe. And it’s also not naive hope that the student government can fix everything alone.” She said she wanted viewers to walk away with hope, as difficult as it is to come by these days.

According to Yoon, the Varsity Show is “saying that the only alternative to institutional loneliness is mutual investment. Characters like Connie should not just have to martyr themselves and characters like Socks should not have to disappear to feel seen,” she told me. “Students shouldn’t have to wait until, I don’t know, a spaceship has launched, to realize that they matter to each other.”

How political should the Varsity Show be, and how is one to balance addressing serious subjects that have emerged this year with the levity of a satirical musical tradition? Yoon said this was something that the writers wrangled with throughout the process, deciding to veer away from addressing the tricky subject of ICE detainments while not steering clear of difficult truths. “The show is a lot about collective responsibility, and that doesn’t mean everybody suddenly becomes the senator or reads every governance document. It really means refusing to let people do the work of care isolated.” She added, it was about “understanding that community isn’t just school spirit, it’s a really intentional practice of attention.”

Institutional fatalism is indeed endemic to Columbia. The concept, as defined by the feminist scholar Sara Ahmed, refers to the desire of institutions to quash rebellion by making confrontation seem pointless, deterring students from lodging complaints. The truth is that, even if complaints and objections to campus policies are disregarded by the administration, their mere existences will build on each other. Collectives are ultimately the solution to dismantling institutional fatigue and exhaustion.

Although the show’s signaling became muddled at times, I thought the message reflected an admirable attitude of care for our school. The solution espoused by the Varsity Show is not only to point fingers at the tiresome administration, but to link arms. Yoon recalled starting a tradition of dressing up for Halloween in an inflatable dinosaur costume and handing out chocolate kisses in Butler; I can think of several notable moments of my own. Complain we shall, yet we won’t transfer to Brown or Hogwarts or any other fictional institution, as Connie lambasts our ostensible rivals in the show.

Those of us who aren’t graduating will fly home for summer break, but we’ll be back to play among the stars. Just you wait.

Ms. Rohslau is a senior in the dual BA program with Trinity College Dublin and the School of General Studies. She is a staff writer for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

Columbia University owns approximately 300 buildings—housing thousands of residents—across Morningside Heights, making it the largest private property owner in New York City. While talking to many residents across the Columbia community, it became apparent that the University’s role as a landlord has been somewhat subpar. While the university is bound by New York City law to fix problems like water leaks and mold within 30 days, and problems with hot water and heating within 24 hours, many student tenants living in housing owned by Columbia have experiences that show Columbia falling far short of these legal obligations.

Beyond what Columbia is bound to do by law, though, lies the moral responsibility our school has to the thousands of students from around the world that were promised an excellent college experience. By far the most visible mark of how Columbia pays attention to students is the living conditions that they come home to every day.

One persistent issue is heating. New York law requires landlords to maintain temperatures of at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit inside if outside temperatures fall below 55 degrees Fahrenheit during the day; at night, the temperature must be at least 62 degrees inside regardless of the outside temperature. If there is a problem with the heating, landlords must fix it within 24 hours. Although none of the individuals I talked to had measured the exact temperature of their dorms, many described situations that were “too cold” for far longer than the lawful 24-hour limit.

Erica, CC ‘26—who spoke to me under a pseudonym—observed, “It always gets cold before they turn on the heat…the end result is that there’s always two to three weeks every semester when it’s too cold.” She uses a space heater, which she described as “the best 25 dollars I ever spent,” even though it is a banned item. She expressed exasperation at the idea that Columbia regularly fails to get temperatures up in wintertime, but also bans the only item that can provide relief.

Over at Barnard, Lydia, BC ‘27—also speaking under a pseudonym—described the temperatures this past semester as “freezing.” When she first reported the issue, she was told to keep the windows in her room closed, which she was already doing. After her second report, she was told that the person responsible for turning the heat on at night “forgot to turn it on.” Even afterward though, she said her heater “wasn’t doing much.”

Beyond basic heating issues, Erica also described a situation in one of her previous dorms where the girls’ bathroom was perpetually flooded, causing the shower curtain to repeatedly develop mold. Columbia Housing dutifully changed the shower curtain whenever it became moldy, but never fixed the flooding problem that was causing the mold.

Lydia even described a recurring mold infestation that forced one of her suitemates to switch out. “As far as I could tell,” she wrote, “they just painted over the mold.” She also described mold issues under the AC unit and in the bathroom. Mold issues, she said, are very common across Barnard, and many of her friends have had similar problems. Now, she just tries to ignore the mold.

Certainly there are times when Columbia does its job. Nik Cook, CC ‘25, wrote that Columbia Housing was “pretty good,” recalling that when he had mice and roaches in his suite his sophomore year, they quickly set up traps. When faced with a moldy shower curtain, they replaced it “probably the next day.”

Some students have sought to take matters into their own hands, not by dabbling in forbidden equipment, but by organizing. Michael Gross, a law school student, founded the Columbia University Tenants’ Union to help those who are struggling under Columbia’s ownership, including those living in undergraduate and graduate housing, as well as non-affiliates who rent Columbia-owned properties. “We have this form that folks can fill out with any specific complaints,” he explained, listing some of the problems that had been brought to the Union’s attention: a rat infestation, broken elevators, heating issues, and poorly-functioning laundry systems. In the past, the union even had an asbestos complaint.

The most urgent and ongoing issue, Michael shared, was a problem with the cooking gas at 620 West 116th St., a Barnard building that promises “a kitchen with a sink, gas stove, refrigerator, and cabinet space” in every suite. However, the students living there have been without working stoves for the past seven months, according to a December 2 email from the Tenants’ Union to the Columbia administration. The email notes the financial strain that the lack of working stoves places on students who planned on being able to cook in their dorms.

According to Michael, the University still has not offered any meal plan dispensations or reimbursement for affected tenants. When the letter was sent to both Columbia and Barnard Housing, Columbia Housing emailed back and told the Tenants’ Union to email Barnard Housing (which was already a recipient of the original email).

While Columbia’s forgetful administration may take little notice of student comfort or organizing, they might do well to take notice of the legal ramifications of their actions.

Lydia’s mold problem, for instance, is classified as a “Class C: Immediately Hazardous” violation according to New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), requiring attention within 21 days if the problem was ever reported in court. With a repeated failure to fix the problem, the University could be fined $150 to $1,200 per day for as long as it persists. For a six-month mold infestation, the fees might total up to $216,000.

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For the widespread heating issues that so many of us face, the legal system would give Columbia no time to fix it—fines could start racking up immediately. Given that it persists across multiple buildings, the University might be looking at a full $1,500 every day while the problem persisted. With over 30 undergraduate dorms, assuming 15 dorms every year experienced lack of heat for a week, Columbia might be facing a fine of $157,500 every year.

And yet, even with all of these issues, the Columbia administration might not care. A full student’s tuition, after all, is around $90,000 per year—more than enough to cover for a few chilly dorms, mold infestations, and broken promises.

Every week, when I look at university emails promoting dozens of speaker events, well-being workshops, and administration-organized social activities, I wonder if even a little of the effort and funding that go into these events could be spent making sure that Columbia students go home to a comfortable living space every day. Administrators who spend their days thinking of new and exciting ways to engage students in structured social time would be better served making sure that every student can shower and sleep in dorms with comfortable facilities.

Ms. Weinfeld is a junior at Columbia College studying political science and creative writing. She is a staff editor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

Editor’s Note:

On April 15, 2026, The Columbia Daily Spectator broke the news that Barnard was not renewing its contract with Professor John Wright, the only professor in its Slavic Studies department. This effectively put the Slavic Studies program at Barnard on pause, as a spokesperson for Barnard did not announce plans to hire new faculty in the department for the 2026-2027 school year, according to Spectator.

Subsequently, a petition was started to “Keep Slavic Studies and John Wright,” garnering over one thousand signatures as of the time of this article’s publication. Our Editor Emeritus and former student of Professor Wright, Alex, spoke with him on May 4, the last day of classes, about his time at Columbia and Barnard, his thoughts on the outpouring of public support for him, and finding peace in uncertain plans for the future—for him and new graduates alike.

— Xinyan Chen, Deputy Editor

Alex Nagin (AN): How are you feeling right now, in this moment?

John Wright (JW): Well, right now has been good. I’m glad to be talking to you, and it’s nice to see you.

Otherwise, I’ll just be honest with you—my last chance to be honest as a professor. It’s been extremely bizarre. Nobody wants to lose their job, but I think most people, over an entire life, never get this unexpected public outpouring—the kind of response that it seems like most people would not fake. Like, “Oh, I’ll write this nice thing about him or the courses.” I would never have even imagined anything like that. Never would have fantasized about it.

So there’s that, and at the same time—as you said—I’m thinking, how many more trips do I take to haul this stuff out, take my books home? And then what am I supposed to do with myself? So it’s been a very weird mix, with a lot of mood swings, I would say.

It’s been very unpleasant. I mean, enrollments have been way up. A big increase from my first year to my second year, and another sizable increase after that. And you hear a lot of positive things, which is great. Like, somebody took your class and liked it and told their friend—that’s really gratifying. Anybody would like that.

And at the same time, that doesn’t matter at all, apparently. The entire position is teaching. There’s no research component; I’m not supposed to publish to make money. The whole job is teaching. And it seems like I’ve been doing that. All these students are making a lot of noise—what does that say? And then the response from the institution doesn’t engage at all with what the students have been saying. So it’s just kind of disorienting.

AN: Did they give you any signs or warning that you were going to be laid off?

JW: Well, in the sense that, when you’re on a renewable one-year contract, you know that until somebody tells you “how about next year,” you’re automatically out—in the absence of action, you don’t have this job anymore. So I already knew that.

There were some unpleasant conversations about uncertainty in the fall, and then the date for any certainty kept getting pushed back. It was like: October, then November, then December, then January… okay, I’ll just keep going. And then it didn’t go well.

But there was no element of evaluation—as far as I know—of what I was actually doing. Negative or positive, nothing. I’ve never heard any evaluation except, a year ago, someone mentioned that my enrollments were good. Some awareness of that, but otherwise nothing.

So there’s no opportunity to feel like, “I think I’m considered to be doing an acceptable job,” or “I feel like I’m falling short.” It’s just not legible. In what terms will this position be evaluated as tolerable or cuttable? It’s not even vague—it’s blank. It’s like knowing there’s a piece of paper on which your fate is written, but it’s written in a different language and in invisible ink. The information technically exists: If you could heat it over a candle and find someone who could read it, you’d know what it said. But you can’t do either of those things.

And it’s weird, because the classes are so consuming. It takes a lot to get the materials together and do everything—which is fine, it’s the job—but you can’t really think too much about the fact that you may be fired at any moment, or you can’t work at all. So you just kind of do the thing, and then sometimes remember: Oh, right, I wonder what I’ll be doing next year. Maybe I’ll be teaching the same course. I don’t know.

AN: I want to step back from the situation and just ask about you as a person. How did you get started at Barnard? How did you land here, and under what circumstances?

JW: I was a graduate student at Columbia, a long time ago. So I was aware of Barnard—I had a couple of classes over here with a professor who was a Barnard fan. She passed away in 2015.

Then I was back in New York, and I had been adjuncting in linguistics at Columbia since 2018. In 2022, somehow Columbia Slavic asked if I’d do the senior seminar for Barnard. I said okay, and did it in the fall of 2022. Then Columbia also needed a course to be covered that coming spring. And at that time, Barnard was looking for someone to fill this position again—it had been filled by a series of contract people, and the last one had left. I applied and was asked to do it. So I’ve been here three years full-time.

AN: What is your favorite part about teaching? Why did you choose this profession?

JW: What’s my favorite part? It’s preparing the work for class and interacting with students about them. The stuff that happens in class, that’s the best. That’s definitely the best, 100 percent.

As for how I got started, I kind of didn’t know that would be the best. I didn’t really set out to do this exactly. I went to grad school in Russian literature for a reason a lot of people go—I didn’t know what to do. I had a job as a paralegal, which was fine, but it wasn’t really legible to me. I’d been going to school from kindergarten through college and I understood that. And then I didn’t understand what life was supposed to be after that.

So I applied, got waitlisted, then got accepted, and did it. And after doing it for a while, I thought, I’ll apply for jobs doing this. I originally thought of myself as a language person—Russian as a foreign language. And only along the way did that turn into, or get augmented by, an interest in Russian literature, and then ultimately teaching it.

AN: Do you feel like you’re having trouble making sense of this transformation—out of this profession, suddenly and out of nowhere, your job ceasing to exist, and the department along with it?

JW: Strictly speaking, they haven’t said the department doesn’t exist. It’s either on pause or on hiatus. More recently I’ve heard it’s not even on pause, and that they’ll offer a couple of adjunct courses next year—but not in the fall.

Today was the last day of teaching. I couldn’t really deal with any of this until I was done teaching, and I still have reading and responding to do. So it will really start to set in soon.

It seems to me that I was really transformed—in a totally positive way, I don’t know if one can say that—by doing this specific job. Working with these students over the past three or four years, if we count part-time. I was just really feeling like: Okay, it’s really working, I’m getting these courses to work, enrollments are going well, I’ve kind of sculpted myself to fit into this. And now I have to do something else, and there’s nothing else that is quite like this. So yes, I expect it to be an extremely weird transition.

AN: For everyone who cares about you and will miss your presence here: What’s next? Are you staying in New York?

JW: I’m staying in New York. I have no plans to leave. I don’t know what’s next in terms of income stream—I really just don’t know.

This email address will probably die. I don’t know what will happen to the Columbia one either. So I’ll send everyone from the last couple of years an external address, in case they need letters or want to get in touch. If anyone wants to be in touch with me, they should be able to find me.

But there’s no next thing I’ve gotten together. I haven’t arranged it so that I can say, “Well, I’m just going back to being a practicing physician” or whatever. There’s nothing like that. The short answer is: I don’t know.

I’m not freaking out. I see students graduating—people graduating last year—and I don’t know, mostly I’ve been blinding myself to what’s going on with me by thinking about them. Like, that’s cool: Students are going to go on and do things because there’s a set of things they choose from or invent for themselves. And maybe that sounds enviable—there’s a next thing after college. You get a job, you join the Peace Corps, whatever the thing is.

And I’m sure not every student feels that way. Like, “Oh, I’ll just do the next thing.” Maybe some people also feel lost. Maybe some people are in both positions at once—I know what I’m doing, and I want to do it, and I’m still uncertain. So I feel you, if you’re a senior graduating. I also don’t know. I was in that position when I finished college, too. These things come around again. The bumps are never over. Your life could be upended in your 60s or 70s or 80s, and you have to find a new way of life.

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AN: It seems like you were maybe a bit taken aback by the reaction—all the students coming forward. Why are you so surprised?

JW: I wouldn’t say taken aback—that sounds negative. But I am surprised. I thought I would write to everybody at the end of the semester, say I won’t be here, here’s an external email, get in touch if you need anything. And I thought maybe someone would say, “Oh, that’s too bad,” or express some displeasure. But I didn’t expect a petition, a follow-up article, different pieces, all this stuff. It’s been a lot.

I just don’t really have much ability to form an image of myself as other people might see me. I try to do the job, but you can’t see from the outside unless someone tells you: this was really valuable, this had a lasting effect, I’m still thinking about it two years later. There’s no way to detect that as the instructor. You submit final assignments, send grades, and you don’t get to see what somebody is thinking or feeling or what they learned or what they feel was really worthwhile. That’s not obvious.

So in general, I would say: If you have an instructor who means something to you, tell that person. Because they probably don’t hear it enough.

And that’s part of what’s been so head-spinningly disorienting about this—you’re fired, and that’s what alerts you to the fact that a bunch of people really liked having you there, and can give reasons—not just “I liked the class,” but with real specificity. I never expected it.

You don’t feel like a pop star. People come in, they sit in the room, it’s wonderful to interact with them, but you don’t feel like some kind of memorable star. It’s just: Did I do my job today? Did I have something prepared for class? Check. Get ready for the next one. You don’t see any of it.

It’s like there’s this other secret life I’ve been actively participating in, but I didn’t know anybody noticed it. All the prep—okay, Anna Karenina, “The Dream,” make sure I have everything together, get the student work sorted—you just keep doing it without thinking about what it means to someone else. Just keep going.

AN: I think to help you make sense of it—when people are in the flow of classes, there’s not really a moment that feels right to say, “John, you are such an amazing professor.” But this unexpected event has almost given people permission to speak. Now that he’s leaving, he has to know what he did for me, how he made me feel, what I learned. That’s what’s happening.

Because behind closed doors, when you weren’t in the room—when I talked about being in your class with Rose or Cassidy or Ava or any of my classmates—it wasn’t that different from what people are saying publicly now. It’s just public. You’re so kind, so easygoing, so understanding, with so many good things to say about our texts. The readings are interesting, and the class is rigorous but not stressful. All these things existed whether you were conscious of them or not. And now that Barnard made this decision that everybody is upset about, everyone thought: We have to let him know, we have to make this petition.

JW: These things are largely new to me. I’ve heard positive things and I’m very grateful—of course I pay attention, I read emails, I appreciate it. Usually it’s a couple of things at the end of a semester, if that, and they’re very positive. I read them with great interest.

And I’m not suggesting everyone should be fawning over every professor. I just mean: Someone two years ago—that person probably doesn’t know that you still remember that course. If you wanted to tell them, they probably wouldn’t object to receiving a positive email.

But what you’re saying is that to you, as a student, it’s not new at all. You’ve already put this into words privately. As a student, you’d have been more shocked if this reaction didn’t happen?

AN: Right. When Rose sent me the petition, I thought: of course. I was almost surprised they didn’t start it sooner. That’s the student perspective. And I hope it allows you to exit this institution, this chapter, with a sense of peace.

JW: Someone I know said—early on in this whole response—that it was like I had died and gotten to be present at my own memorial, hearing all the nice things people said about me. And it does feel something like that.

I know that in teaching and other professions, people sometimes get something like this at some point. But I think a lot of people never get to hear all the good things that people say about them behind their back, suddenly presented all at once. And presented almost as medicine—like, we’re trying to fix this by saying what we need.

I mostly don’t get to know students very well—you read their work, you hear what they say in class, that’s it for most people. But when you have a very positive feeling about a lot of people, and then you see that they’re willing to put in time and effort and verbal ability for something where they get no compensation—they’re not getting credit, they’re not getting anything, there’s no possible reason to do it except that they want to say something—it’s kind of boggling.

You realize: oh, there’s a whole person there. And what I did mattered to that person outside of class. It wasn’t just a tolerable class. It meant something. That’s completely shocking.

I’m sure I’ll be processing this for the rest of my life, whatever kind of jobs and stuff I do. In six months, or ten years, or forty years—that was a watershed moment when I learned that I exist to other people and they don’t object. I don’t mean anything negative by the “before”—I just mean: this shocking revelation. You made an impression on a bunch of people, some of whom you never even spoke to. Not everybody talks in class, not everybody sends an email. Some of those people are out there, and you were in their lives and they never said anything—which is fine. But then there was this whole other set of things they had to say. It’s beyond belief.

Nobody wants to lose their job. And I think anybody would want this. A friend of mine—I won’t give his name—when I showed him the petition a few weeks ago, he said: “I think this is a fantasy that everybody has—that if they were wronged, people would stand up for them and say, ‘No, that’s not right.’ And you’re actually getting to experience that. It’s literally happening.” And I think that’s right.

I couldn’t have even thought of such a thing. Everybody lives in fantasy a lot of the time, countless things that never happen that you think about. But this is more than fantasy. I’m sure I never fantasized about anything like this. How could you even think of such a thing?

And people are putting their name on it—signing their name to the notion that this person did a uniquely good job, something unusually useful or worthwhile. It’s just beyond belief.

More people probably get fired at some point in their life than get something like this. So in a way, the firing is kind of ordinary, and I’m getting this gigantic bonus alongside it. Not unique, but unusual. And just this very personal stuff from people I think highly of, people I remember well—and you’re surprised to see that you actually meant something to them personally, even though it was supposed to be just this contained, professional interaction.

AN: Was my interview too intense, or were you okay?

JW: Just be yourself. That’s exactly what I wanted.

AN: Thank you, professor.

Update: On May 20, after the initial publication of this article, Sundial learned that Columbia has hired Professor Wright to teach its Literature Humanities course. The new contract is expected to last three years, as opposed to his one-year renewable contract at Barnard.

Mr. Nagin is an alum of the Dual BA program with Trinity College Dublin. He is the editor emeritus of Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

What if I’m wrong?

I’ve been asking myself this question a lot recently. My time at Columbia has led me to challenge one of my strongest-held beliefs: the indubitable importance of higher education.

My argument is not that college is useless; it’s a time of significant growth in which young adults learn how to be independent and begin to envision the life they want to live. I am also fully aware that the value of college is often realized outside of the four years we spend on campus, in the form of a rich alumni network and name-brand recognition. However, while a college education has been a requisite for a “successful” life over the past decades, I do not believe this is true anymore. Learning more information via the university system does not seem conducive to preparing students for our world today, where virtually all information is available on the internet.

This wasn’t a conclusion I reached overnight. I, too, was once an eager student, anticipating with great excitement the things I would learn within the ivory towers of academia. However, much to my chagrin, these idealistic images faded rather quickly as I progressed further into my college career.

My skepticism began with the challenges I faced in college golf. I was taught the McCord-O’Grady Research and Development (MORAD) system from the age of 12, a method of swinging the club developed by former PGA Tour player Mac O’Grady that addresses the perceived shortcomings of Homer Kelly’s The Golfing Machine, a highly technical, physics-based analysis of the golf swing that emphasizes the geometry and alignment of movement patterns. There is not much on the internet—nor in mainstream golf instruction—known about the MORAD project, and for good reason: Students of the MORAD school of golf are said to have the best-looking and most biomechanically efficient swings, so those in possession of this proprietary knowledge are highly protective of it. Unless one has the good fortune to receive instruction from O’Grady or someone who studied under him directly, as I did, there is no way to learn the MORAD swing in its entirety.

Throughout my junior golf days, I worked tirelessly to perfect my swing alignments, spending hours on the range meticulously following the drills my coach prescribed. However, as every economics major knows, few things escape the effects of diminishing marginal utility; by the end of high school, the 100th minor change that brought me even closer to the MORAD ideal did not improve my ball striking or score by much, if at all.

Thus, when my coach insisted that I “correct” part of my swing—despite the fact that I was striping the ball—I asked him, “Why am I making changes if I am hitting and playing well?”

His response was jarring: “We need to get the look of your swing right before you can learn how to score.”

I was confused. Yes, the MORAD system seems to produce a distinctive look among its adherents (see O’Grady himself, Robert Rock, and Grant Waite as examples). However, I didn’t realize there was an exact formula to shooting lower scores; if that were true, how did players notorious for their unorthodox swings like Scottie Scheffler, Matthew Wolff, and Jim Furyk succeed?

Despite these nagging doubts, I decided to trust my coach. After all, he was the expert, the authority figure, and knew what was best. If he believed that having a flat left wrist at P4 (the top of the swing) or maintaining a 6° head tilt at setup was the key to shooting lower scores because it achieved the “proper look,” then I would as well.

This mindset would prove to be disastrous. By the time I entered college, I had ingrained the habit of solving problems in my game by doing what had worked in the past or by relying on my coach’s instructions because he was the “expert.”

I continued to prioritize improving my swing alignments because I believed that was the way to get better; I read Columbia Business School professor Mark Broadie’s book Every Shot Counts—which revolutionized the way golf statistics are calculated—and, through my own research and efforts, gained 10-15 yards on all my clubs during the winter of my freshman year. In every sense, I was doing what was “right”: I followed instructions, made decisions based on well-researched data, and worked to achieve a certain goal.

However, the results suggested otherwise: seven out of my eleven rounds in my freshman spring season were in the 80’s, marking the worst stretch of golf I had ever played in my entire career. I felt an incredible amount of bitterness and resentment over these results, but, as is the nature of golf, I had no one to blame but myself. What went wrong? Not only did I do as I was told, but I also went above and beyond to improve my game. Was it wrong to expect progress from such efforts?

Up until that point, I had believed that hard work would always pay off. When that fundamental paradigm was disrupted, it caused me to question everything I had ever been taught.

This experience was my introduction to first principles thinking.

First principles thinking is a reasoning method that involves breaking down complex ideas, problems, or processes into their most basic, fundamental truths (their “first principles”) and then building solutions from the ground up. Instead of approaching a problem through reasoning by analogy—which relies on assumptions, traditions, best practices, or comparisons to what already exists—you start with what you know to be undeniably true and reason up from there.

Using this approach, I began with the most basic question: What is golf?

Golf is a game in which you try to hit a little white ball into the hole in as few strokes as possible. There. In one question, I had completely undermined the way I had been taught the game. Nowhere is the goal of attaining the “best” or “prettiest” swing a requirement to shoot low scores: It is simply a means to an end, which may or may not work for different players. Similarly, when it came to gaining distance, I had overlooked the most basic building block of research: the data. Simply put, the majority of the data used in Every Shot Counts is based on men’s golf, not women’s golf. Because of the vast differences between how men’s and women’s golf is set up, the insights in the book may not be directly applicable to the women’s game.

The realization that my approach to golf was fundamentally flawed—after years of practicing a certain way—was terribly unsettling. How could I have let myself spend so much time chasing things that were irrelevant to the actual goal? Naturally, I began to wonder how many other assumptions I held were categorically misguided.

My musings led me back to education.

The nature of school is such that we are taught what is known and what has worked in the past. We are rewarded for being “right,” as defined by our textbooks, curricula, and teachers. But who is to say they know definitively what “right” is? Our tests require us to know the way things are, but little opportunity is granted to us to consider why they are. It is implied that the material we’re being taught is the best and most complete idea in each respective field—but what if it isn’t? Through all this, we are constantly conditioned to think in terms of analogies, to trust what has worked in the past, rather than starting from the most basic principles of a problem and reasoning up from there.

The problem is not an indictment of elementary, middle, or high school. We are incentivized to follow instructions and do as we’re told from a very young age because there needs to be some structure in place for kids to learn how to read and do basic arithmetic. However, this system fosters a tendency toward blind trust, a trait that manifests itself most clearly at the university level in the form of our faith in the institution to provide us with something of value.

As I was relieving myself from the chains of total adherence to authority and reasoning by analogy in my golf game, I realized the same must be done for my education.

In Principles of Economics, we learn that the Federal Reserve controls inflation by changing interest rates—but were we ever taught why the Federal Reserve exists in the first place?

In Intermediate Macroeconomics, we learn about the Solow-Swan model to explain long-run macroeconomic growth, and in Intermediate Microeconomics, we learn the foundational utility maximization problem. Putting aside the many assumptions made in these models, my question is this: Is math truly the appropriate language to express the study of economics? I cannot be alone in thinking that much is omitted when we try to apply an objective medium like math to an extremely complex social science like economics.

In Frontiers of Science, we learn the scientific method—hypothesis, experiment, and falsification—and treat it as “the path” to advancement; it is a stable, objective procedure that rises above cultural bias and personal opinion. But consider Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he argues that science does not progress linearly. Instead, it periodically undergoes sudden, disruptive shifts in which entire frameworks for understanding the world are discarded and replaced. If the most consequential moments in scientific history were not the product of careful hypothesis-testing but of entire paradigm shifts, what exactly are we being trained to do when we learn the scientific method?

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By no means am I an expert in any of these fields; however, I don’t think that expertise should bar anyone from challenging widely-held ideas. My issue, then, with the “education” we are receiving is not that there is an active agenda to stifle questions, but rather that there is no incentive or desire to ask them. Education, by definition, is “the knowledge and development resulting from the process of learning or being taught.” But is the acquisition of knowledge a productive activity when computers already house more knowledge than any human being could retain? It may have been in the past, but continuing to emphasize education is a mistake when the differentiating factor it provides is no longer abundantly clear. A more worthwhile pursuit would be to acquire the ability to reason through the practice of asking questions—that way, with information readily available at our fingertips, we are equipped to tackle even the most uncertain situations.

It might seem bold to critique findings that transformed the entire golf industry or question the foundations upon which an entire discipline is built. However, when you play a sport like golf, where you lose and fail constantly—even Tiger Woods has lost more times than he has won—it teaches you to leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of improvement.

Regardless of ideological affiliations, it is essential to maintain a constant, healthy skepticism, not only of the world around us, but of ourselves. Institutions remain stagnant amidst a world that changes a lot faster than we realize. To think that adding an AI minor will genuinely prepare students for a society where improvements in AI occur at blinding speeds shows that Columbia is still trying to apply slow, rigid systems to new, increasingly complex problems. Why wait for the University to teach us when we have the ability to learn anything right at our fingertips?

Ultimately, the value of our education comes down to whether we choose to ask questions and get to the truth of a matter, regardless of who and what we are questioning. Sundial has allowed me to put this into practice over the last two and a half years, shaping me into the person I am today. For that, I am grateful.

Ms. Shen is a senior at Columbia College studying financial economics and computer science. She is an editor-at-large for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

For freshmen first arriving at Columbia, an infinite number of opportunities for academic excellence, professional exploration, and a vibrant social life seem available. Yet, that shiny optimism is quickly overshadowed by a cumbersome club application process eerily reminiscent of the dreaded college application season students naively believed they had left behind.

Coffee chats, group interviews, mixers, resumes, technical questions, and essay responses are common barriers to entry before one can enter the golden social circle of a club managed by other students. For some student organizations, this exclusivity is perfunctory: pre-professional organizations often require knowledge and commitment filters, while competition-based groups favor members with prior experience or demonstrated talent. That logic, however, becomes less straightforward when such structures appear in cultural clubs that are centered around identity and belonging rather than performance. For clubs that market themselves as sites of community, what is the point of exclusivity?

Behind The Scenes

While not every cultural organization on campus is exclusive, groups that serve well-represented ethnic populations at Columbia often are. Notoriously competitive cultural clubs include Columbia’s Chinese Students Club (CSC), Korean Student Association (KSA), and Club Zamana. While each hosts large-scale cultural showcases, community programming, and outreach initiatives open to everyone, they also operate under hierarchical, multi-tiered membership systems that, either intentionally or unintentionally, determine the level of social engagement one receives from joining the club. These tiers consist of the General Body membership (G-Body), Board, and Executive Board (E-Board).

To access structured bonding activities, restaurant outings, and even weekly meetings, applicants have to join the Board as an Organizational Committee Member (OCM) or as a “Freshman/Transfer Representative.” Other examples of Board-exclusive features I learned about through conversations with club leaders include Club Zamana’s mandated chai chats with the E-Board, CSC’s big-little program, KSA’s private spring retreat, and the general pregames or afterparties that surround larger events.

If you are otherwise part of the G-Body, you receive little opportunity to engage with cultural or social activities outside of the club’s main events and smaller, often less well-organized activities. This results in the troubling sentiment that those who are not part of the Board are not true members of the club. To be in the G-Body is essentially a nominal title applied to anyone who shows up to the club’s public events; in other words, being part of the G-Body means you gain nothing more from the club than the average Columbia student.

However, entering the Board requires applicants to go through a lengthy process. Ostensibly, the first step is the written application, consisting of standard questions about cultural identity, motivation, and availability. For example, KSA’s application inquires about “an aspect of Korea that most interests you,” while CSC’s simply asks “Why do you want to join CSC?” The next step is a required 10-20 minute interview to further gauge applicants’ interest and expected contributions. These are normal questions to ask, but behind the scenes, an opaque decision-making process determines who advances to the next stage of the process: a second, more in-depth round of interviews. Based on my own experience applying to CSC, this round often involves case studies of how one reacts in certain situations, proposals for events, and more personality-based questions. In the end, only a select few are accepted for the Board. At CSC, for example, only 14 of the roughly 100 applicants were eventually accepted, according to club president Amy Lu CC ‘27.

Why is the application process to join a social or cultural club so protracted? It seems ironic that a place meant for people to find their community at college is simultaneously exclusionary.

Though I have gone through the recruitment process and am currently serving as a committee member for CSC, I often ask myself why our club even needs this filtering mechanism. While my time at CSC has been fantastic—expanding my social circle, introducing me to many new experiences, and helping ease the transition into college life—I fail to understand why more people cannot also reap the same benefits from the club. Greater inclusion would not only allow us to muster more support for our events, but it would also cultivate a more vibrant and diverse social community.

Essential or Elitist?

Three themes emerged consistently across interviews with members of CSC, KSA, and Club Zamana in defense of their selective application processes: commitment, community, and a seemingly mutual sense of resignation to the way their club currently operates. The application process, they argued, is meant to identify students who are genuinely interested in contributing to the club’s mission rather than simply adding another line to their resume.

I, however, fail to see how this approach properly screens for anything. Among the throngs of eager applicants, how many can explicitly voice anything novel enough to differentiate their application from the rest? How many possible answers to “Why do you want to join CSC?” can there be? How many unique event ideas can one propose for a cultural club?

Moreover, it seems dubious to claim that one can ascertain another’s year-long commitment to a club from a series of one-off answers that, quite honestly, can be constructed in a few minutes with little effort. Though I agree that it can be easy to identify some applicants’ shallow careerist motives, I doubt that a process that turns away most interested students can realistically attribute that reason for most of its rejections.

Even amongst those who view the process as a commitment filter, there is recognition that it is imperfect. Karthik Mahakala CC ‘29, a spring organizational committee member within Club Zamana, highlighted that the interview is “just a 15-minute time slot. How can they truly get to know you as a person?”

I inquired of Irene Seuk CC ‘28, a programming officer for KSA, for her honest opinion. “How do you discern whether someone deserves to be on the board of a cultural club?” she asked. “It’s clearly not about how Korean you are because technically we are all Korean…if you show interest in joining the club, that, in itself, is you showing your commitment to being a member of the club.”

Despite these acknowledgements, there has been little change to address the accessibility issue within these clubs. While CSC President Lu and Executive Committee Member (ECM) Jerry Zheng SEAS ‘28 mentioned a desire to host more G-Body events, revive a social connection program (“Connect Pods”), and select for students who are not already in a cultural community on campus, there was no mention of removing the barrier that necessitates all these proposed solutions.

When asked what changes they would make to the current process, nobody suggested anything that would fundamentally change the exclusive nature of the clubs. Some voiced a sense of helplessness, stating that they couldn’t “think of a better system,” while others simply accepted it as a relic of the past long before their time.

To me, this is depressing: We are students at one of the best universities in the world, and yet, we cannot figure out a better way to make our cultural communities more accessible to students who are merely looking to belong. Why is that?

A Symptom of Columbia’s Culture?

Columbia’s broader campus culture increasingly normalizes competition as a marker of legitimacy. Finance clubs, student publications, and even volunteer organizations rely on multi-stage recruitment processes that mirror professional hiring.

Within this environment, it appears as if cultural spaces have adopted the same logic. Prestige culture has seeped into areas that should be defined by openness, limiting the benefits of a community to a small group of people who can successfully jump through the hoops assigned to them. Purposefully or not, these identity-based clubs have become both participants and perpetrators of a different type of culture on campus than originally intended.

If the goal is to truly foster community rather than exclusivity, then the organizational model itself deserves reconsideration.

One possibility would be a more clearly defined general body structure. Instead of filtering students into the board through interviews, membership could remain broadly open while leadership positions remain selective. Students who attend a minimum number of events could gain voting rights within the club, allowing them to participate in electing leadership or approving major programming initiatives. In practice, this would resemble the way many traditional student governments or large campus organizations operate: broad participation at the base level, with elected leadership responsible for coordination and logistics.

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Another possibility involves rethinking internal community building. Many current bonding initiatives exist primarily within the board and the executive board. The big-little system, mandated chai/coffee chats, and internal mixers with the leadership of other clubs create tight-knit networks that are largely inaccessible to the general body. Expanding versions of these programs to include interested general body members could significantly narrow the divide between the experiences of those on Board and those in the G-Body.

Of course, practical constraints complicate these proposals. These organizations operate with limited funding and face difficulties in managing the scale of their existing events. Expanding programming or opening participation more broadly would require additional logistical coordination and financial resources.

Yet, workarounds are possible. Smaller, lower-cost gatherings such as discussion nights, cultural workshops, or rotating host dinners could distribute responsibility among volunteers rather than concentrating it entirely within a small leadership team. Even informal mentorship structures between board members and general attendees could help recreate the same sense of connection that currently only exists within internal committees.

None of these alternatives is a perfect solution, but they point to a broader principle: If cultural organizations exist to build community, then access to that community cannot remain tightly controlled by processes designed to select a small internal leadership circle. Hierarchy may be important for an organization, but it does not necessitate a restrictive barrier to entry that turns away most interested people from experiencing a cultural community. If anything, these clubs should be a sanctuary from the pervasive prestige culture that haunts Columbia’s other clubs.

Mr. Chang is a freshman at Columbia College studying political science and computer science. He is a staff editor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

At the end of her classes, Tatiana Aleekseevna Mikhailova, Lecturer in Russian at Columbia University, requires her students to spiritedly recite the following in unison po russki: “Svoboda, ravenstvo, sestrinstvo, bratsvo!” (“Freedom, equality, sisterhood, brotherhood!”)—freedom because it can only be achieved through equality, sisterhood because it cannot exist without brotherhood.

It’s difficult to understand how Tatiana’s spirit fits into just five feet and one inch. During lessons with her students, she is a force to behold. Indeed, class typically begins with a motivating and upbeat launch off: “There’s little time. We have a big program today!” If students stroll in without a certain pep in their steps, she’ll cut to the chase: “Fast, fast, we’re running, we’re running!”

Tatiana frequently reminds latecomers in Russian: “Don’t be late! We are one body. Without a limb, we suffer.” It’s the sort of unconventional affection one must accept unreservedly if they are to excel in her class.

Tatiana’s classes are a deeply rewarding, challenging, and borderline cathartic experience that require you to surrender your ego, forget your accomplishments, and be willing—enthusiastic, even—to be wrong.

Tatiana’s smile, glowing against her usual all-black outfits, is disarming. When she does smile, you know she means it. As the Russian idiom I often joke about with her goes: “Smekh bez prichini, priznak durachini.” (“Laughter without reason is a sign of stupidity.”)

Raised in Soviet Sverdlovsk—which became Yekaterinburg after 1991—Tatiana constantly had books and papers lying around due to her “many projects” in her corner of the room she shared with her sister, Nadya. Since her youth, she had been fascinated by literature and chemistry. The idea that one substance could transmute into another, with some elements remaining from its prior makeup, is emblematic of the sort of resourcefulness Tatiana inherited from her family.

For the Mikhailovas, restaurants of any kind were “out of reach.” They mostly ate fish and cabbage pies, potatoes, and vegetables. Red meat was too expensive (and unavailable) to have on a consistent basis. It didn’t matter much, however, because Tatiana’s mother, Valentina, was an outstanding cook. While the Mikhailovas were not wealthy by any measure, a certain brand of no-nonsense Soviet resourcefulness bred fulfillment in their home: “You could make 40 dishes out of potato, if you are inventive enough,” she told me.

This sort of “anything is possible” mentality defines much of Tatiana’s approach to life. If the conditions are right, hydrogen and oxygen can become water, and the humble potato can transform into kartofel’niki or vareniki.

Tatiana had many best friends growing up, yet they parted ways once the late teenage years rolled around. She preferred to read and ponder, while her former circles grew more interested in vodka and the vibrant Soviet discotheques that illuminated dark weekend nights in Sverdlovsk. She doesn’t regret the social sacrifices that resulted from her pursuit of intellectual development: “It’s not very productive if you are spending your life on something like that,” as opposed to focusing on higher, academic pursuits.

As a young woman, Tatiana always wanted to play piano, though she could never afford it. The piano was expensive. The domra, on the other hand—a circular Russian string instrument akin to the American banjo—was cheap. And so, the domra it was. On top of regular school, she played the domra in a Russian folk orchestra at the music school she attended.

Tatiana, in wise fashion, seldom ruminates over the unideal, inconvenient, or unfortunate. These inevitabilities are simply worthless to spend any amount of energy on.

The circumstances of Tatiana’s Soviet childhood, whether positive or negative, were defined by a productive and judicious system of thought: acknowledge, accept, continue.

Once Tatiana enrolled at Ural State University in 1981, she entered a new milieu that didn’t attract her childhood friends. Soon enough, she met the man she would spend the rest of her life—and eventually land at Columbia—with. On the first day of her history of Russian literature class, Tatiana saw a handsome classmate, Mark Lipovetsky, now Chair of the Columbia Department of Slavic Languages, across the room. She was immediately captivated by him: “He caught my attention because he was really smart, and he outperformed everyone. He was a good writer back then, and he’s a good writer still.” Understanding her worth and intellect, Tatiana knew she would never settle for a man who wasn’t the top dog. Lipovetsky, too, meant business—he asked Tatiana to marry him when they were just 20.

Tatiana likes being married to another academic. “It’s perfect, actually,” she told me. “You can gossip, laugh, ridicule, question, analyze, and dissect everything.” Tatiana loves Mark the most for how he sees the world and how his intellect guides his values and principles. In an unspoken way, Tatiana’s students know this.

Last spring, Tatiana and Mark hosted an end-of-semester dinner party in their apartment for Russian language students. Against the backdrop of a colorful Russian feast and bookshelves galore in their snug and folksy Upper West Side apartment, we played charades. When I opened up my slip of paper to see which character I had to act out, I instantly chuckled: “Mark Lipovetsky.” Immediately, I walked over to Tatiana, wrapped my hand around her shoulder, and began pretending to have an intellectual discussion with her without actually saying any words. Everyone laughed, and within the blink of an eye, my peers blurted out the answer they didn’t need to think about for more than a second: “Ты - Марк! Марк Липоветский!”—“You’re Mark! Mark Lipovetsky!”

Once the answer was revealed, Tatiana let out her typical, succinct, Soviet chuckle. Imagine saying the cha in challah very loudly and in one concise burst: “Hah!”

The refrigerator of the Mikhailova-Lipovetsky residence is littered with magnets of all varieties, some in Russian, some in English: “Parmesan was here,” “Everything I enjoy is illegal, immoral, or fattening,” and “Like work like salary!”

Poetry and idioms are essential in Tatiana’s classes. Lessons in her Russian modules often begin with recitations. For weeks on end in both Fourth-Year Russian I and Russian Through Theater, we repeated Daniil Kharms’ 1931 poem, “A person is made of three parts…” in unison:

Man is made of three parts,
Of three parts,
Of three parts,
Hey la la
Drum drum tu tu
Man is made of three parts.

Beard and an eye and fifteen hands,
And fifteen hands,
And fifteen hands,
Hey la la
Drum drum tu tu
Fifteen hands and a rib

But actually, there are not fifteen hands,
fifteen hands,
fifteen hands,
Hey la la
Drum drum tu tu

Fifteen hands, but not hands.

In essentially every session where we recited this poem, Tatiana would first critique our readings, then guide us through extended philosophical discussions that began with students feeling lost. Tatiana also often asked us to recite the poem individually. My recurring critique from her was only two words: “Need drama!”

She frequently would begin our discussions about this poem with simple questions, referring to me in my Russian diminutive, such as: “Sasha, how many parts is a person made up of?” Panicking and referring instantly back to the poem, I answered in Russian: “Three.” Within less than a second, Tatiana served me a volley back: “Which three?” My answer wasn’t good enough. Almost telepathically, I could hear her voice coaching me: No sloppy answers. Actually think about it. Do not be lazy.

I improvised: “Soul, spirit, and mind,” I said. Tatiana critiqued my separation of “soul” and “spirit,” which, in Russian, have very similar meanings. However, she made it clear I was moving our conversation in the right direction. After finishing her remark about my answer, she moved on to my classmate at lightning speed: “And you? How many parts does a person have to them?”

Tatiana’s students understand well that validation must only ever come in small doses. To be drunk on your own intelligence or success is to disrespect yourself as a lifelong learner.

Tatiana’s favorite idiom, after decades of intellectual exploration in Russian art and literature, is not Russian. To my surprise, it is one popularized by Hillary Clinton: “Bloom where you’re planted.” Tatiana feels this reflects her “main position” in life: “If we are trying our best, that’s much more productive than just sitting and whining that we are not getting what we deserve.”

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Tatiana’s remarkable character results from the confluence of her erudite spirit, hunger for excellence, and truly loving soul. Whenever I look at her—whether it be in class, office hours, or in the hallways of Hamilton—I can see she has a certain glow in her eyes for me and all of her beloved students. To be respected by someone I admire so deeply is one of the experiences I walk away from Columbia with most proudly.

After my grandmother died of ovarian cancer in March, it was impossible to focus. I spent breaks in between classes crying, and typing a sentence felt like lifting a 100-pound weight. The Wednesday after my grandmother passed, I had several memorized lines of our class play, Roachzilla (Tarakanishche), due. I informed Tatiana before the class that I would be unprepared. When it came time to recite the lines by heart with our partners, she pulled me aside: “Sasha will work with me.”

In a soft, warming voice—and with intense eye contact—she slowly asked me: “Sash, how are you?” It felt like she spent time on every letter in that little four-word sentence.

Removing one letter, that quiet little “a” at the end of my Russian name, Sasha, meant more to me than she could have ever known. Tatiana knew she was checking in on a version of me that felt incomplete, lost, and devastated. I wasn’t my fullest self at that moment; I wasn’t Sasha. And it told me everything about our student-teacher relationship that she knew she was talking to Sash without me having to tell her.

Tatiana is one of the few people I’ve met in my life who is truly difficult to explain. She is someone whom the most brilliant poet or storyteller could not do justice to. To understand the nooks and crannies of her teaching philosophy, worldview, and love for life and her people, you just have to meet her.

I used to believe that, despite attending Columbia, I would never be ”good enough.” That, no matter where I went in life, there would always be someone to outshine me, or insurmountable barriers to finding success and happiness. As I prepare to graduate from Columbia, I have abandoned these fears proudly, in no small part due to Tatiana’s mentorship and belief in my potential.

Learning Russian at Columbia with Tatiana has forced me to reevaluate my life and perception of myself completely. In order to bloom, I needed someone to “plant” me: to invest in my success without coddling me, to push me where I fell short, and, ultimately, to normalize struggle and perseverance as fundamental ingredients of a life defined by freedom, equality, sisterhood, and brotherhood.

Mr. Nagin is a senior in the Dual BA program with Trinity College Dublin, majoring in political science. He is the editor emeritus of Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

“The day he left me was the day that he died, and then he was reborn as a whale.” This line, appropriated from TikTok, isn’t that far from describing The Whale—a play mired in surrealist literature, religious iconography, and dance.

Written and directed by Yusuf Luqman GS ‘26, the play, first staged and reviewed by Sundial at the Riverside Theater on March 28 and restaged at the Lerner Black Box on April 14 and 15, takes audience members into the trenches of tortured passion.

Considering the premise of the play—“the whale”—I was initially a bit disappointed by the lack of direct whale-on-stage action. Although the titular whale is central to the plot, it is largely perceived by the audience through dialogue. Having said this, the human plot was intriguing in its own right, concerning a grieving widow, Aila (Violeta Reyes CC ‘28), who believes her dead trucker husband (Calidore Robinson CC ‘26) has returned to her in the guise of an oceanic mammal—as one does. This is explained in a flashback in which said husband playfully remarks that, should he pass, he will return as “a nice, thick, and horny, chunky whale.” Some like it hot—others prefer cold, wet whales, apparently.

As Aila comes to believe his jest, the play calls our initial perceptions into doubt. Is Aila truly delusional, as the hot priest, Father Walter (Rayan Ali CC ‘27), would insinuate? Is she merely a fantastical storyteller, as the town inn-keeper and writer Aisha (Kmar El-Matri GS ‘27) believes? So many questions, but The Whale is a play in which answers are hardly the point. One is instead struck into hazy admiration of the performance itself.

It opens with a shriek, a ghost, and a flashback; the action is relentless from there, as actors probe philosophical questions with an intensity fueled by the evocative script. The play is reference-dense with nods to Shakespeare as well as to the writer, politician and founder of the négritude movement Aimé Césaire in its opening—“And that great black hole where a moon ago I / wanted to drown / It is there I will now fish.” The speed and unique visuals quicken the delivery and the pace, collapsing the barriers between literature and reality’s understated tragedies.

Standout performances come from Aila and Father Walter as each wrangles with their respective faith and tortured desires. The choreography (Luke Garbacz, CC ‘27) is remarkable, heightening the dramatic tension between our woman Aila, the whale, and Aisha as she whirls around, arm-in-arm with the dancers whilst she proclaims her desire for revenge, life, and godly status as a storyteller. The minimalistic, starkly lit set curated by (Zoë Holmes CC ‘28) feels like an appropriate representation of a declining town in early 1970s America, prior to the 1971 commercial whaling ban. The town’s hottest location is an isolated dock ideal for soulfully gazing off into the distance whilst contemplating unrequited passion. One might imagine dangling one‘s feet from here, pondering whether or not to pull a feat straight out of Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water and get one’s feet wet, so to speak.

In the show’s finest moments, any unclear plotlines are overshadowed by the grandeur of the premise itself—a creative, internal reality that supersedes the external world’s constraints. As when wallowing in the everlasting pervasiveness of lost love or the taste of a really great cheeseburger, time’s passage and the facts of the play cease to matter: They are insignificant compared to the gravity of the story’s emotional truth. There’s no denying that the headiness of the material exceeds the modest aspirations one might typically associate with a student production.

The Whale was literally borne from the dreams of the director, who was kind enough to agree to an exclusive interview with Sundial following the show’s first run. I met Yusuf at the Pulitzer Joe’s Coffee, and, after the obligatory exchange of weather-related grievances, I asked him about the source of The Whale’s premise. He told me that it came to him in a dream he had of a woman and a joke two years ago that entailed the words “whale song.” After frantically scribbling the beginning and ending in his Notes app, he reworked the premise and planned to stage it during his last semester at Columbia. Yusuf described his creation as “a modern-day prophecy.”

Dreams fascinated Yusuf by virtue of their duality: at once having a lineage of “being treated very seriously from a theological standpoint” while at the same time encapsulating the highly nonsensical, easy-to-dismiss human subconscious.

“I think the audience gets to decide as to how much of it is true and how much isn’t,” he said, referring to the play’s ambiguous, dream-like plot. Drawing on layered literary and personal experiences proved fruitful. He referenced T.S. Eliot’s essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent. Eliot “makes this point that it’s quite important to at once be like you’re subservient to a tradition that comes before you. And in one sense, you’re positioning yourself within the tradition,” he explained, “but, at the same time, you have to also be able to stand at a remove from it.” He said that there were “certain elements” he’d drawn from “growing up and [his] background,” mixed with “elements of complete fiction.” Though the historical references to the last whaling company and the collapse of the industry were factual, Yusuf emphasized his desire to make a story that would resonate beyond its immediate concerns.

He said that, often, prospective audience members assumed The Whale “would just be about a woman and whale.” He added, “It’s really not about that at all... you have people who are really dislocated in terms of culture, in terms of society and who are trying to make their own sense of identity.” He told me that the play could be encapsulated in three words: “belief, death, desire.”

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Admittedly, I didn’t comprehend all the nuances of the plot, or catch all the words in the cascading, oblique exchange about Aila’s son, but the play proved a welcome reprieve from a world full of facts certain to depress. Sometimes you want to lose yourself in a derangement of the senses so profound you forget all the doubts—to indulge in the play within the lifeless, connivingly stilted play called “real life.” The Whale provides just such a reprieve.

I would summarize The Whale as Fleabag meets The Shape of Water. Aila concludes the production by quoting from the Quran: “And call not those who are slain in the way of God “dead.” Nay, they are living, only ye perceive it not.” Leaving Riverside Theater, I felt that. I was a bit lost and dazed, but in the sense of feeling inspired rather than confused, like an erstwhile widow who has triumphed in her return to self. I certainly felt the rough, sea-salty skin of The Whale accompanying me home.

The charm ofthe play lies in how it undermines the expectations of the dominant culture that we are in a default race against time to prove ourselves successful or worthy. What is time against the nebulous nature of grief? In a time when stale campus discourse can feel impossible to challenge, it is riveting to witness Aila’s defiance in the face of social norms, veering from the surface and into the surreal. It is disturbing and gorgeous to hear her reminiscing and diving into the rapture of recalling her dead husband: “Yes, I live and remember. Down at the beaches, we—dewy-eyed—held hands and skipped, and there was nowhere else we could go.” Words to harpoon the cold hearts of any Columbia student exhausted from the constant demands society places on us, revelling in the memory of happier days.

Ms. Rohslau is a senior in the dual BA program with Trinity College Dublin and the School of General Studies. She is a guest contributor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

Editors’ note (April 30):

This article has been updated to reflect the privacy concerns of the petitioners.

Earlier this week, a group of graduating seniors at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) circulated a petition asking the institution to rescind its commencement invitation to Israeli President Isaac Herzog. The letter contends that Herzog is too “divisive” a speaker for the occasion, and that he stands to undermine the day’s spirit of “unity and joy.” The link to the petition as of April 29 has become inactive, however Sundial was able to obtain a PDF of the document that can be found here.

What makes the petition especially difficult to take seriously is how sharply it departs from the actual experience of a JTS education. In my own time at List, JTS’s undergraduate college, disagreement amongst peers has been a core element in the classroom.

In Talmud courses—which are required for all List College students—we learn just how central thoughtful disagreement is to the Jewish tradition. A page of the Talmud itself models a culture of argument: Competing interpretations are presented side by side, minority opinions given serious consideration even when ultimately not accepted, and there is no expectation that a clear consensus will emerge at the end of the discussion.

That same ethos—to list another example—is carried into our history and nationalism courses, where the focus is not on advancing a single vision of Zionism but on confronting the deep and often irreconcilable disagreements within it. We read competing Zionist thinkers — Ahad Ha’am alongside Theodor Herzl; A. D. Gordon alongside Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Each author offers fundamentally different answers to what a Jewish state should be and what it should prioritize. These are not minor disagreements but foundational ones: cultural versus political Zionism, labor versus revisionism, spiritual renewal versus state power.

Discussions are often tense and frustrating, but always substantive. Students frequently articulate differing views from each other and their professors. Those disagreements are not treated as threats to the learning environment; they serve as its very foundation. To ask, after four years of that kind of training, to be shielded from hearing a speaker one disagrees with suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of what that education was for.

What should be clear, then, especially at a place like JTS, is that sitting in an audience and being addressed by a speaker does not entail an institutional endorsement of said speaker. To pretend it does is anathema to the very tradition that informs the JTS experience.

Nonetheless, the authors argue that inviting a speaker “with whom many students… vehemently disagree” undermines the mission of the ceremony, but institutions of higher learning, including List College, are not designed to shield students from discomfort, but to prepare them to engage with it.​ What is more, it is understandable that a Jewish institution like JTS specifically would engage with an important figure in Jewish life like Herzog, politics be as they may.

Clearly, my peers do not agree with this fundamental truth. The letter worries that JTS’ invitation reveals the Seminary to be “only for Jewish students who align with a specific political viewpoint.” The authors frame this as a complaint about the narrow bounds of acceptable Jewish discourse, but their complaint, in effect, inscribes narrower ones.

To say that the president of Israel cannot address the graduating class of America’s only pluralistic Jewish undergraduate institution is to define the “diverse Jewish community” so as to exclude the political center of gravity of world Jewry. Of the world’s roughly 16 million Jews, a plurality live in Israel, the Jewish homeland; Another large share, in the American mainstream, hold positions considerably closer to Herzog’s than to the signatories of the letter.

The group of seniors also reduces Herzog to little more than a moral caricature, alleging that he “condones the suffering of others” and incites “violence against an entire nation.” Instead of engaging in productive dialogue with JTS administrators, the letter diminishes complex political realities to a series of buzzwords in a blatantly transparent attempt to vilify their own institution.

A recent piece in Jewish Currents notes the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory’s suggestion that statements made by Herzog could be interpreted as incitement for genocide, citing remarks made in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre. Yet, even within that reporting, the conclusion is comparatively ambiguous to that of my peers, as it acknowledges that Herzog “did not expressly call” for genocide, while noting the importance that his words be read in context. Turning a contested, conditional finding into a moral indictment, as the petition’s writers do, is rather reductive.

The truth is, Israeli presidents do not direct the cabinet, command the IDF, or oversee humanitarian policy. Israel’s chief executive is the prime minister; the country’s wartime decisions run through its Security Cabinet and General Staff. The presidency is largely ceremonial, modeled on the constitutional monarchies of Western Europe. In short, the signatories’ portrayal of Isaac Herzog as a decisive political actor is a grand exaggeration of his authority.

Still, the letter’s most bizarrely ambitious appeal might be one invoking Abraham Joshua Heschel, who taught at JTS for nearly three decades and stands among the Seminary’s most consequential twentieth-century theologians. It quotes his plaintive Vietnam-era question, “Where is God present now?” The authors transcribe a brief, conventionally anti-war excerpt but stop short of acknowledging what might dismantle their case against the Israeli head of state altogether: that Heschel was an ardent Zionist whose 1969 treatise Israel: An Echo of Eternity serves as a theological defense of the Jewish state. It argues that Israel’s existence and security are both a religious imperative and a contemporary manifestation of the divine-human covenant.

To cite him while engaging in performative activism—alluding to a past conflict with which there are few parallels to the contemporary Israeli situation—is not homage; it is, simply put, disrespect. Heschel’s moral urgency was rooted in a lived commitment to the Jewish people and their future, which included a serious engagement with (and support of) the State of Israel. Invoking his name in this context is to misrepresent what he actually stood for and use his legacy in a way that ignores his real commitments.

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One can oppose war in principle while still recognizing the necessity of self-defense. Communist Vietnam is not generally thought of as having posed an existential threat to the United States. In contrast, Hamas presents a direct ongoing existential threat to the State of Israel. Heschel’s opposition to the Vietnam War does not necessarily imply a blanket opposition to all forms of military action, and especially not those taken in defense against groups like Hamas and for the sake of preserving the Jewish homeland.

In any case, JTS is not even doing anything remotely unusual here. Places of higher learning—including JTS itself—have long hosted speakers whose views are controversial, polarizing, and, to some, deeply objectionable. Student groups on campus routinely invite activists, scholars, and public figures who take hardline positions on Israel and Palestine—figures many students view as morally indefensible or even offensive. Those invitations are almost always defended—rightly—under the principles of open discourse and academic freedom. That standard cannot suddenly be abandoned when the speaker is Isaac Herzog. If it is acceptable to host voices that sharply criticize Israel, even in ways many find extreme, it must also be acceptable to host Israel’s president. To argue otherwise is not a defense of pluralism but instead an attempt to impose a one-sided boundary on acceptable speech.

While it is true that commencement is, in some sense, a public expression of an institution’s values—different, one might argue, from a University club inviting a controversial speaker—for JTS, those values clearly include engagement with Israel in all its complexity. Inviting Israel’s president to speak is not a betrayal of that mission: It is an affirmation of it. If anything, it precisely reflects the intellectual rigor and pluralistic tapestry of a JTS education, which aims to teach both tolerance for dissent and the capacity to listen and critically engage with arguments one may oppose—bounds Herzog comfortably falls within.

To complete a degree at JTS and then ask to be shielded from a speech is an ironic rejection of this ethos. It is my modest hope that my peers can come to realize this basic point—or else they may find themselves in a dogmatism all too common in Columbia’s broader campus community, contra the complex, the beautiful, and the true.

Mr. Lederman is a junior in the joint degree program between the Jewish Theological Seminary and the School of General Studies. He is a guest contributor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

On the evening of April 15, in a packed Pupin lecture hall, Columbia’s Democratic and Republican student groups faced off in a debate hosted by BridgeColumbia, spanning issues such as healthcare, foreign policy, immigration, and government bureaucracy.

At an Ivy League university like Columbia, one might expect a debate akin to Oxford’s debate societies, where extensive preparation and oratory polish are put on display. On Wednesday, however, no such debate ensued. The event felt akin to a brash Piers Morgan segment. That said, it was deeply entertaining.

The event began with introductions from each group’s leaders. First to speak was CU Democrats’ President Praharsha Gurram CC ‘27. He wore a relaxed blue button-down and emitted a focused, prepared, anticipatory energy.

Afterwards, CU College Republicans Co-President Jessica Weinfeld CC ‘27 introduced her club as an ideologically diverse group of right-leaning students on campus. Weinfeld, also a staff editor for Sundial, was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.

Before beginning the discussion, the BridgeColumbia moderators—Ryan Crawford CC ‘27 and Gia Mercer CC ‘29—introduced the “norms of discussion” for the debate, a sort of friendly warning for the participants, which included: “Listen to listen, not to respond,” “address the statement, not the person,” “avoid interruptions and side conversations,” and “individual representation.” Individual representation refers to the idea that no statement made by any debater is representative of any identity or social groups they belong to. For each topic discussed during the debate, both sides had two minutes for opening statements, followed by a five-minute open discussion exchange.

As we in the audience came to learn quickly, the open discussion portions of the debates felt more like a contentious corner of the Thanksgiving table rather than a serious intellectual exchange.

Immigration

The first issue debated was immigration. The Democrats opened, critiquing ICE officers’ alleged lack of training, the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and overreach into other areas of society, such as airports, where the Democrats contended that agents are unneeded. They also argued that, even if one takes ICE’s stated goals at good-faith value, the agency is not doing a good job of “removing undocumented people” and that the agency should be abolished entirely.

The Democrats appeared prepared for the debate, with extensive printed and computer notes. They were observably eager to argue their points in front of the crowd. The Republicans, on the other hand, spoke largely off the cuff and emitted a more relaxed, though at times unprepared and deer-in-headlights demeanor when faced with common arguments against the Trump administration. The Republicans were on defense from the get-go, struggling to respond to the depth and sheer quantity of the Democrats’ contentions.

In his response to the Democrats’ opening statement, Columbia Republicans Treasurer Salvatore Manella CC ‘26—who joked about his name’s likeness to salmonella bacteria—asserted that “every tragedy is deserving of justice,” referring to the Democrats’ contentions about ICE’s murders of civilians. Manella posited that, despite these tragedies, escalations against law enforcement officers have been increasing for decades and that these events are simply a continuation of this trend. His argument boiled down to the idea that this is just what happens, and that officers’ expectations of violence led them to react more aggressively. This response represents a more general weakness with the Republicans’ contentions throughout the night: They continually relied on Fox News-esque boilerplate arguments instead of engaging with the Democrats’ arguments at face value, using haphazard statistics and flummoxing anecdotes.

While more interesting discourse could have occurred with better preparation, the Republicans’ stated positions on immigration were underbaked at best. Their most convincing argument was that, as students at an elite Ivy League university, we are insulated and don’t fully understand the effects of mass immigration to the U.S. The crowd didn’t seem impressed or open to that point.

Healthcare

The Republicans spoke first in this round. Weinfeld began her speech by defending the American healthcare system compared to those of other countries, citing statistics that wait times in hospitals and for critical medical procedures are comparatively lower in the U.S. About 30 seconds into her statement, Weinfeld began to attack the mainstream progressive idea of single-payer universal healthcare, warning that the U.S. will suffer if it gives up on “free market incentives” that drive medical innovation. She offered less of a Republican vision for American healthcare and more of an immediate attack on progressive healthcare policy proposals.

Weinfeld also pointed out that she had undergone a heart operation in the U.S. that was only possible because of free-market innovation that produced the technology and techniques needed for her procedure.

The Democrats pushed back against this perspective by invoking the greed of American healthcare companies. They passionately expressed to the audience that Americans pay some of the highest costs for healthcare in the world, and that insurance companies rip off Americans for medical essentials such as insulin, which could be mass-produced for less than two dollars per dose.

At one point, CU Democrats Treasurer Adler Rice CC ‘28 dramatically invoked a statistic about how one in three Americans forgoes essential medical care because of high costs: “Look to the right, look to the left. Statistically, one of you had to skip a visit to the hospital because of medical costs,” he said. This was a moment of melodramatic theatrics that made the event feel even more unserious than it already did.

They also pointed out President Trump’s inaction on healthcare policy, reminding the audience of his statement during a 2024 debate with former Vice President Kamala Harris that he had “concepts of a plan” for how to improve American healthcare.

At this point, expressive sighs and eye rolls were traded between the debaters as more partisan or controversial points were made. Because of this, the debate began to feel unproductive, bordering on histrionic.

Foreign Policy

The Democrats began this part of the debate with a simple assertion: The U.S. is more involved in foreign conflicts than “ever” before, most principally Iran and Venezuela. They devotedly posited that Trump’s interventions in these countries are ineffective and unnecessary.

The Democrats also suggested that the billions of dollars being spent on the war in Iran should be spent on healthcare domestically. They also touched on rising gas prices and the deaths of innocent civilians in Iran.

Weinfeld offered a bold rebuttal, claiming that Trump was obliged to go to war with Iran because of the “general shield” they were building up. Then, at approximately 8:49 p.m., an audience member seated in the back of the auditorium began to yell at Weinfeld after she commented that she would rather have oil be more expensive to prevent a “terrorist state” from possessing nuclear weapons. The moderators swiftly hushed the heckler.

Weinfeld also touched on the Democrats’ condemnation of Trump’s Venezuela policy, calling Nicolas Maduro’s abduction and arrest a “perfect operation.” At this point in the debate, it became clear that Weinfeld was the leading voice for the Columbia Republicans. She was speaking and defending her group’s positions the vast majority of the time, with her fellow Republican debaters only chiming in every now and then. The Democrats, on the other hand, had a more even distribution of speaking time across their various team members.

Midway through the cross-exchange portion of this round, BridgeColumbia President Harvey Pennington GS JTS ‘27 interrupted and reminded debaters to make sure they were listening to one another. Towards the middle and into the end of the debate, the members of each team developed a habit of scoffing at the other side’s arguments. Though understandable, this clarified that there was not an active effort being made to respect the norms of discussion established by Crawford and Mercer at the beginning of the event.

The Economy

The Columbia Republicans called the One Big Beautiful Bill “awesome.” Weinfeld highlighted the bill’s inclusion of Trump’s no tax on tips policy and the extension of the Child Tax Credit.

In response, the Democrats went heavy on criticizing Trump’s tariffs. They, with a sense of moral urgency in their tone, detailed the economic costs of global trade wars and farmers who have struggled as a result of tariff policies. As a rebuttal, Weinfeld contended that the U.S. needs to “grow itself out of debt.”

The Democrats claimed that Trump had failed to deliver on the campaign promises that carried him to victory in 2024, citing that inflation is now the highest it’s been since 2022. This was the most mundane portion of the debate, though some interesting arguments were made by both sides.

Federal Bureaucracy

This was the last topic debated. The Democrats pointed out what they perceive to be the hypocrisy of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), asserting that Trump has spent billions on foreign wars. The Democrats also personally attributed the deaths of thousands of Africans to Trump and former advisor Elon Musk for shutting down USAID.

The Republicans, in expected fashion, mainly contended that DOGE has saved the U.S. millions of dollars on alleged ridiculous, extraneous government-funded projects such as “injecting baby beagles with cocaine” and “lizards on treadmills.”

In the final open-exchange portion of the evening, Eira Prakash BC ‘28, Organizing Director of the Columbia Democrats, simply asked how many felony convictions Trump has. When the Republicans answered a separate question asked previously, Prakash asked how many convictions Trump had once again. At this point, Crawford interrupted and reminded her of the norms of discussion.

Participant Perspectives

Weinfeld told Sundial the event “went great,” was “a productive conversation,” and that she “really appreciated being able to give the Republicans’ perspective to a lot of people who probably haven’t heard it before.”

Despite my observations, Crawford believed the debate was productive: “I think this went very well. It went a lot better than what I previously thought. I think we were able to bridge the divide, at least somewhat. I’m happy we were able to bring both sides together.” When asked if there were any areas where he believed the debate fell short, Crawford said: “I think there were moments where people were listening to respond instead of listening to listen.” Here, Crawford is correct. This was a common theme throughout the event that dictated the direction of the conversation on essentially every issue—in other words, resentment took the front seat over respectful argumentation. This was especially true of the Democrats—they came prepared with notes, but generally lacked a civil compass. Between the eye rolls, finger pointing, and scoffing, I didn’t feel terribly proud to be a Democrat that night.

The Columbia Democrats did not respond to Sundial’s multiple requests for comment.

What Was Accomplished

It’s unclear. In all fairness, this was a debate. The event was not branded as a common ground or dialogue event. While the event was not advertised in such a way, it was good entertainment at best. Throughout the night, there were better arguments the Republicans could have made against the Democrats’ positions. In large part, however, the Republicans failed to make compelling rebuttals. This was disappointing, not because I personally sided with the Republicans or hoped that they’d win, but because Columbia is still a hotbed of political tension in desperate need of widespread respect for viewpoint diversity.

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Well-intentioned initiatives at Columbia, such as the Listening Tables, tend to draw the most open-minded, curious, and dialogue-craving. This debate served as evidence that Columbia’s main political organizations do not seem genuinely interested, not even in dialogue, but in doing the work to have a genuinely respectful exchange. Columbia, as editor-at-large Imaan Chaudhry has written about in these pages, has enough dialogue. That said, this debate cemented my belief that civility in political discourse is scarce within Columbia’s gates.

For some of the debate, both sides spoke to each other civilly. However, especially on the Democrats’ side, moments of respect felt deeply performative. When they followed up on one of the Republicans’ answers in a civil manner, it felt like they were waiting impatiently to ask their next “gotcha” question as opposed to actually listening to their opponents. And as the debate progressed, they held back less and less—they pointed fingers (literally) at the Republicans, leveled ad hominem attacks, and seemed to blame them directly for America’s ills.

Middle ground was not achieved; neither side did a great job of actually listening to one another. Even though the Democrats clearly won the debate, the evening felt more like an opportunity for them to blow off some steam at their political adversaries on a campus where liberals and conservatives rarely come face to face.

Mr. Nagin is a senior in the Dual BA program with Trinity College Dublin, majoring in political science. He is the editor emeritus of Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

Editor’s note:

In accordance with Sundial’s byline policy, anonymity is granted only in exceptional cases in which the writer could be seriously harmed by attaching their name to a piece. As such, the writer of this article has met this criterion and has been granted permission to publish under a pseudonym, Colloquious.

— Alex Nagin, Editor Emeritus

Earlier today, The Columbia Daily Spectator reported on a student who Columbia threatened with discipline for passing out flyers critical of the trustees at a University Senate forum. I am that student.

My case proves that Columbia’s promises to protect free expression mean very little when criticism touches the powerful. I distributed a flyer with publicly available information about the people who govern Columbia and participated in the Senate Forum without causing disruption. My criticism of our leaders was entirely factual, without any contested rhetoric. For that, the University publicly smeared my exercise of free speech as harassment and threatened me with disciplinary proceedings.

I am not the first to experience this repression. Since Israel’s genocide in Gaza has intensified, the Columbia Board of Trustees has worked with administrators to arrest, suspend, and expel students for protesting in support of Palestinian liberation and against genocide. The University locked the gates to the Harlem community and collaborated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil. Furthermore, by signing the capitulation deal (negotiated by Columbia professor Jay Lefkowitz, who also negotiated Epstein’s 2008 sweetheart deal), Columbia made any criticism of Israel’s racist and colonial project disciplinable.

It was with this context that I arrived at a University Senate town hall on shared governance on March 26. During the Q&A portion, I raised my hand to ask why the Senate had not yet taken a vote of no confidence in the Board. I further noted that last semester my friend had received a disciplinary warning for putting up a flyer with the words “The Trustees crushed freedom of speech” and stated that I brought a flyer to pass out containing details about Columbia’s leadership. Days later, I received a notice from the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) stating that I was being summoned to a mandatory hearing about a report filed about me, but was left completely in the dark as to why.

On April 8, the University released a public statement condemning the incident, alleging that I was harassing and doxxing the trustees. I found the University’s weaponization of their anti-doxxing policy against free expression laughable: It is absurd for this powerful institution to claim that handing out flyers with easily searchable information constitutes targeting and harassment.

At an April 10 Senate Plenary on Zoom, President Shipman all but admitted the contradiction at the heart of Columbia’s response to my flyers. She conceded that the flyer “may well be free speech” and suggested that criticism of leadership may be “legitimate.” However, instead of defending that right, Shipman pivoted to saying she would prefer “other avenues” and more “constructive discussion,” because the flyer “felt targeted.”

This logic is absurd. Senior leadership at Columbia is notoriously elusive despite their unilateral power over discipline and University governance, and students are now being told that even though criticism is protected speech, they should not express themselves too directly, too publicly, or too forcefully. In other words: yes, you may have the right to criticize the trustees—but if that criticism makes them even mildly uncomfortable, no matter the veracity of the facts or your supposed freedom of expression, Columbia may still drag you through a fraught disciplinary process. No wonder Columbia is nationally recognized as one of the worst college free speech environments.

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Ultimately, after mounting public pressure, my case was dropped. But this is beside the point. If a student handing out a flyer (the most basic case of free speech) is harassment, then is there any acceptable way to criticize our leadership?

My experience also shows the arbitrary nature of the University’s disciplinary process. Even though Columbia’s Rules of Conduct (§440) affirm students’ right to free speech, the Board of Trustees can enforce or remove sanctions on a whim. This is not surprising—David Greenwald is known to personally review student disciplinary records—but it means that the idea of equity and inclusivity has been weaponized and co-opted to silence activists.

Let me be clear—our leadership is corrupt and rotten to the core. Shoshana Shendelman lied to the FDA about her pediatric drug; Jonathan Lavine, a vulture capitalist who ran Bain Capital, described protesters as supporting “rape and terrorism”; Jeh Johnson was architect of the US drone strike policy that killed hundreds of civilians, was on the board of Lockheed Martin, and claimed during his tenure as DHS head that it would be necessary to “send a message” by locking up mothers and children fleeing violence; Abigail Elbaum—a nepo baby and the Milstein Family’s current representative on the Board—was sued for refusing to refund tenants after Superstorm Sandy; Victor Mendelson is CEO of the war profiteer HEICO Corporation.

After all the Board’s actions over the past two years, nobody has faced meaningful accountability. Our rotating cast of Presidents are mere figureheads—the same Board has run our school with impunity at the behest of Stephen Miller, and influential Zionist donors. The University has consistently privileged pro-Israel perspectives and affiliates over everyone else.

The trustees capitulated to Donald Trump’s authoritarian federal government. Now, they are uncomfortable when students criticize them. It’s high time for the trustees to realize that actions have consequences.

I have a message for David Greenwald, Claire Shipman, the “ghost trustees” like Jonathan Lavine and Lisa Carnoy, and the rest of the Board: You will not get away with using Columbia to protect sex criminals, to gentrify Harlem, and to manufacture consent for genocide.

You tried to silence me, but I will not be silenced. The student movement will not be silenced. We will keep fighting until there is real accountability.

— Colloquious

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

Disclaimer: This piece does not represent Platypus in any way—neither the Columbia chapter, nor the organization altogether. It is written in a purely personal capacity.

As vice president of Columbia’s Platypus Affiliated Society—a Marxist reading group—I co-organized a March 26 panel discussion examining imperialism, with a specific focus on Iran.

The panel featured speakers from vastly different corners of the left: Arash Azizi, an Iranian writer, academic, and contributor to The Atlantic; Layla Saliba, a pro-Palestinian activist and social worker; Jon Brooks, a representative of the Spartacist League, a Trotskyist group; and Spiros Tsonos, New York chapter executive for the American Communist Party (ACP). It went a full three hours and drew dozens of people from both within, and outside, our University gates.

I opened X on the morning of Monday, March 30 and saw a post about our event from Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia University (DJH), an account with 20,900 followers. It was odd reading this post from an account devoted to exposing antisemitism when, as far as I recall, at no point did anyone speak of Judaism, nor was Israel a primary topic of conversation.

The account baselessly claimed that Platypus’ use of a photo of the 1979 Iranian Revolution in the event promotion evidenced support for the Ayatollah. The post goes on to question, rather suggestively, whether Platypus is “linked to the Iranian regime.”

If DJH had done some quick research—as simple as visiting Platypus’ website—they’d see that the organization is far from supportive of the regime. For what it’s worth, the very day of the panel, Platypus reprinted a letter from the Anarchist Front of Iran and Afghanistan that was highly critical of the Islamic Republic. It ended with the anti-regime slogan, “Women, life, freedom.”

Platypus, however, isn’t about taking sides on geopolitical issues. Erin Hagood, GSAS ‘30, and the president of the entire Platypus organization beyond Columbia, told Sundial that Platypus “doesn’t think anything in a sense. We’re not trying to take positions, we’re trying to reopen questions.”

To the assertion that Platypus might be “linked to the Iranian regime,” Hagood replied in a chuckle: “We only get funding from schools, and then we have $10 a month dues, and it costs $0.00 to get four people in a room and have a conversation. So just in case people wonder where our money comes from, we don’t have any.”

She continued, “If you read the panel description, we ask, ‘Why did some of the left support the Islamic Revolution?’ We ask if it was a ‘mistake’ for the left to do so.” Far from seeking the mindless anti-imperialism all too common amongst, say, the Democratic Socialists of America types, Hagood maintains, “We’re actually trying to get people to justify their anti-imperialism.”

Nonetheless, DJH fired an uncompromising tirade at us: “Columbia Platypus should be shut down immediately. This group’s goal is to encourage extremism and promote violence on campus by sharing radical anti-American ideology.” Promote violence? Shut down immediately? You can imagine our confusion as Platypus’ members messaged back and forth in our WhatsApp group chat. Lamentably, as I’d seen similar rhetoric on this account and those like it before—Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students, Canary Mission, Stop Antisemitism, to name a few—I couldn’t say I was totally shocked.

DJH’s stated goal is to “Put pressure on academic institutions to oppose Jew-hatred by exposing toxic anti-Israel climate on their campuses.” The first part, opposing Jew hatred, is something I’d hope we can all get behind. Columbia has witnessed several deeply disruptive incidents, alienating to many Jewish students—regardless of one’s individual conception of antisemitism—which include the occupation of Hamilton Hall and Butler Library, the distribution of pamphlets straight out of the Hamas Media Office, the drawing of Swastikas, assaults, Khymani James’ notorious “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists” provocation, and countless other policy violations.

The trouble is that “anti-Israel” can mean a lot of things. It can entail opposing AIPAC and U.S. foreign aid for Israel, decrying the barbarism Israel unleashed upon Gaza, or simply disliking Benjamin Netanyahu. But in the case of DJH, any association with the left—even on issues unrelated to Israel, and certainly unrelated to “the Jews”—is seen as an expression of antisemitism.

When I reached out to DJH via Instagram, they claimed on April 7 that they chose to disparage Platypus on the simple basis that, “In the experience of our group members, Marxist groups on campus are antizionist and often promote intimidation of Israeli and Jewish students.” That line of reasoning is incredibly faulty. Just because some self-identified Marxists, socialists, or leftists have engaged in antisemitism, however defined, does not mean all actually do. Now, while I’m intellectually informed by Marxism, I’m no partisan eagerly awaiting the revolution; and coincidentally, another influence I have—nationalism (especially through the New Right)—could be accused of the same thing: there are some antisemitic nationalists, therefore all nationalists are antisemites. You could do that, in fact, for any ideological canon, for any party, for any group of people.

The account offered to remove the post if Platypus would confirm that it is “not a supporter of the current Iranian regime and/or terrorism,” which I agreed to in my capacity as chapter vice president. But the next morning, they demanded to see “a post that clarifies publicly that this is the position of the whole group,” as if it were Platypus’ burden to publish that for DJH to correct the record. Platypus would not be publishing any post like that, I told the account.

Ultimately, on the afternoon of April 8, DJH quote-tweeted their original post, stating in a manner equal parts comical and pretentious (spelling mistakes are theirs, not Sundial’s): “Although Platypus’s collaborators and speakers are questionable at best, we were happy to learn that Platypus does not in fact supports [sic] the IRG. Thank you, Platypus for cleaning this up for us, and we recommend that in the future you select your speakers and collaborators more carefully.”

I believe that DJH’s rationale went something like this: the pro-Palestinian protests were dominated by self-proclaimed leftists and left-leaning rhetoric, the pro-Palestinian protests were antisemitic, and so all those on the left must be antisemitic too. Such a train of thought allows for no nuance. It’s the enemy of rationality, universalism, and any remote sense of truth.

It should also be noted that part of the reason DJH chose to attack Platypus—maybe even the sole real reason—appears to be that we invited activist Layla Saliba.

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Saliba is one of our campus’ loudest pro-Palestinian voices, who graduated from Columbia last year. Inviting her does not mean we condone or condemn her, or that we’re involved in our capacity as a University club in pro-Palestinian activism on campus—and certainly not in Jew hatred. Platypus invited Saliba on the pretext of “basic liberalism,” in Hagood’s words. To act as though she should be made anathema, as DJH suggests, is in direct violation of Platypus’ values.

The issue with all of this is that DJH isn’t just another X account—they are one of the most politically influential accounts in the Columbia sphere, and powerful people could read their one-sided exaggerations and baseless smearing campaigns as evidence of something real. Their followers include Harmeet Dhillon, associate attorney general for civil rights and a key figure in the Trump administration’s crusade against Columbia; Jonathan Harounoff, Israel’s spokesperson to the U.N.; and Canary Mission, the aforementioned group, which aggregates profiles on “antisemitic” college students and others, often conflating relatively mild and non-bigoted critiques of Israel with antisemitism. Court records show the Trump administration used Canary Mission to target activists for deportation.

In an appearance on Scott Atlas’ show last December, Dhillon said, “For every institution [disguising DEI offices to hide from government scrutiny], we have whistleblowers on campus. We have a great new cadre of creative independent journalists telling us online that this is happening. I read on @X every day what’s going on.” Clearly, Dhillon—the person in charge of civil rights at the Department of Justice—is likely taking cues from X accounts like DJH on who to target.

The day before Mahmoud Khalil was detained by ICE, DJH called Khalil a “foreign student who is one of the leading agitators on campus,” tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and ended the tweet with, “#DeportMahmoudKhalil.”

If anything, my latest interaction with Documenting Jew Hatred further proves that we live in an endless cycle of the worst, most hysterical, and anti-intellectual type of activism, and that at some point, it just has to end. Otherwise, we will continue in the pedestrian misery that has engulfed Morningside Heights as Columbians become increasingly perturbed by the uncompromising antics of both sides.

Mr. Mohammadi is a sophomore at Columbia College majoring in American studies. He is a senior editor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

Princeton announced in October that standardized testing will be required again beginning in 2027, leaving Columbia as the last Ivy League school with an indefinite test-optional policy.

Initially, it seemed as though test-optional policies could become a permanent switch in the college landscape. Critics of standardized testing argue it favors more affluent students, which perpetuates inequality and limits diversity. According to them, instead of placing so much focus on standardized testing, universities should assess a student’s GPA as a better measure of overall academic success.

However, multiple studies conducted on highly selective private colleges (the Ivies, Duke, MIT, Stanford, and UChicago) show that there is little correlation between an individual’s high school GPA and college GPA or with their financial success following matriculation. Crucially, these studies show that standardized test scores are the strongest predictor of both a student’s college GPA and advancement beyond college.

While eliminating the standardized testing requirement was supposed to promote racial and economic diversity, shortly after going test-optional, most Ivies reversed course and argued that mandatory standardized testing actually benefits marginalized groups. Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, and Cornell all stated that test scores allow socioeconomically disadvantaged students to demonstrate their academic capabilities. Thus, requiring test scores would reduce inequities and improve the diversity of admitted applicants.

Despite all of this evidence and the new policies at all the other Ivies, Columbia remains test-optional. But why?

For one, Columbia’s decision to remain test-optional might signal that the school favors intellectual profile and curricular fit over raw academic scores. Columbia’s key feature, which distinguishes it from the other Ivies and highly selective private institutions, is, of course, the Core Curriculum. The Core ensures that each student completes a traditional liberal arts education upon graduation. The spirit of the Core is rooted in humanities skills such as close reading, analytical thinking, constructive discussion, and argumentative writing—none of which standardized testing does a particularly good job of measuring.

The demands of the Core means Columbia seeks a different type of student than other highly selective institutions. Because it is mandatory, admissions decisions carry a higher curricular risk than peer institutions with more flexible distribution requirements. A student wholly uninterested in the humanities cannot simply avoid these courses. In this sense, Columbia admissions must predict not just academic success, but sustained intellectual interest and participation in the Core.

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In my two years on campus, I have noticed that even students pursuing STEM majors have a baseline level of interest in the humanities. The nature of the Core discourages students who utterly abhor the humanities while favoring those interested in a full liberal arts education, regardless of their intended major.

Remaining test-optional, then, potentially allows Columbia to admit students who better align with the philosophy of the Core. A student who excels in a specific humanities area may not produce a top-notch 1500+ SAT score, but would be well-positioned to thrive in Columbia’s discussion and literature-based Core courses. Columbia already gauges an applicant’s aptitude for the Core through their short essay questions: Keeping a test-optional policy enables admissions officers to admit these high-achieving humanities students who demonstrate readiness for the Core by evaluating their overall ‘fit’ for Columbia, rather than their competency as measured by a single test score.

There are tradeoffs to this approach. Again, the research cited by the other Ivy League schools indicates that mandatory testing can benefit socioeconomically disadvantaged students and may better predict academic and career outcomes. However, this is a tradeoff Columbia should be willing to make. The Core is not designed to merely certify academic ability or maximize post-graduate earnings; it is meant to cultivate students as thinkers and communicators through sustained engagement with the humanities.

That mission does not align with every intellectually capable student. By remaining test-optional, Columbia prioritizes admitting students who will fully participate in and benefit from the Core, even if doing so sacrifices some desirable statistical metrics. In an era of STEM dominating higher education, preserving Columbia’s unique intellectual identity is worth the institutional tradeoff.

Ms. Rajan is a sophomore at Columbia College majoring in political science and economics. She is a senior editor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

New York. The financial capital of the world, filled with incredible culture, towering architecture, and a lot of gay bars. Each neighborhood radiates personality, from the vibrant nightlife of Bushwick and Flatbush in Brooklyn to the art hub of the South Bronx and everything in between. Then we have Morningside Heights. While not as glamorous as the rest of the city, it is our home for at least four years. It would be a shame not to familiarize ourselves with our own neighborhood and its surrounding areas.

This is where I come in: I am your tour guide for the neighborhood we call home, exploring niche, refreshing, or just plain fun spots no more than six stops from the 116th subway station. You’ll learn about some new places today. Hopefully, once you’re done procrastinating on that dreaded assignment—or, even better, keep procrastinating on it—you’ll go check these locales out. Let’s kick things off with an underrated gem not many people know about. The Hungarian Pastry Shop is located at—just kidding.

What better way to start our day than with coffee and breakfast? Omonia Cafe, located at 2801 Broadway, is a cute coffee/pastry shop. The place has a cozy, welcoming vibe, with Victorian-style patterned plates dotting the ceiling. As someone who is an expert in mochas and has ordered them at every cafe in the neighborhood, Omonia comes out on top. Who would have thought that a place that bakes a large variety of chocolate treats would know how to make an almost perfect mocha? In any case, they also offer a variety of bagels, but for today, I went with their ham and cheese croissant and spinach pie. The croissant was buttery and flaky, the sweetness balancing the savory ham, which was accompanied by a sharp, in-your-face cheddar. The briny spinach filling harmonized beautifully with the pastry’s sweetness. All in all, a warm, nostalgic breakfast.

Feeling bad for having an actual nutritious breakfast instead of coffee with cigarettes, it’s time to burn off those tasty calories. Good thing we have PingPod at 243 W. 99th St. At its surface, it’s a place where you can rent a private ping pong table, but if you look deeper, it’s much more than that. Next to every table, there is a television and a camera that records each one of your epic fails and clips them, a reminder that we all have to lock in. The place has a futuristic aesthetic and is a perfect afternoon hangout spot for you and your friends. The most fun part: converted badminton rackets that are used to pick up the ping pong balls from the ground. Trust me, smashing a racket on the ground to collect the missed balls that made you lose the game is much more fun than it seems.

A little while after my Olympic gold medal performance, I needed to replenish my hunger. Curry King is a hole-in-the-wall place with the best Pakistani food in Morningside Heights. It’s located at 942 Columbus Ave., and it’s one of the many gems people overlook. A tiny, intimate location with an open kitchen, their food options have something for everybody, from cheap and delicious meal menus to spicy, mild, or vegetarian options. I went there during iftar, and I cannot describe the place any better than comforting and familiar. It’s truly a full sensory experience, being hit with the warm smell of curry, the rhythmic music of the region, and the many people breaking their fast during Ramadan. I ordered butter chicken, beef curry with basmati rice, and a side of garlic naan. As for their mission to “make every meal unforgettable,” I can definitely say they have succeeded: buttery, smooth, warm, flavorful, tender, fall-off-the-bone meat that’s perfectly complemented by a mango lassi. The tireless cooks and elderly immigrant ladies who took my order and served me with such kindness and hospitality reminded me that the world isn’t as cold as it sometimes feels. Be nice to your neighbors. Share a meal with them. Put politics aside and recognize the shared humanity we all have. This is what true human connection feels like.

To finish off the day, let’s take a tour to 1264 Amsterdam Ave.: Sipsteria. When I lived in Fairholm last summer, this place was a daily visit for me. With cozy and welcoming decor, they offer a variety of incredible coffees, breakfast pastries, and traditional Georgian cuisine. They also usually offer free treats at the register, which are delicious and always appreciated. It’s a great place to hang out with your friends, do some work, or just look at yourself in their big, rustic wooden mirrors. We’re not here for that, though, because after 6 p.m. the place turns into an intimate wine bar, with warm lighting perfectly complementing the wooden interior. Their small but carefully curated wine selection adds incredible depth to the atmosphere. The selection of European and American wine seems to only highlight the traditional Georgian wine they serve, which all fits together into a comfy aesthetic. Add their weekly jazz nights into the mix—featuring local talent from Morningside and Harlem—and you have yourself the perfect date spot in the neighborhood.

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My experience at Sipsteria motivated me to write this series; coming here every day during the summer and getting to know the wonderful employees keeping the place running made me feel like I was truly part of a community. I want you to feel the same way during your time at Columbia. I know it’s easy to feel negative about the current state of the university, of the U.S., and of the world. It sucks, I’ll be the first one to admit that. But let’s focus on the positive sides of our home and community and be happy about our privilege and the little things in life: our friends, family, random hangouts and side quests, and our procrastination. I hope you check out all the places I’ve mentioned above—they deserve your time. Stay warm, enjoy life, eat good food, and I’ll see you next issue.

Mr. Galbenus is a sophomore at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science studying mechanical engineering. He is a staff writer and photographer for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

When you talk to conservative women at Columbia, they’re usually not your stereotypical “trad” woman. They aren’t performing the traditional script of normative femininity, faith, and nationalism.

Some of these right-wing girls may be religious, and some may openly identify as conservative. But they appear on the surface to be just like any other Columbian: attending an elite university and—contrary to the trad gospel—nearly all intend to obtain careers post-graduation. Past and current members of conservative clubs at Columbia have gone on to work in finance, law, and medicine—high-paying, ambitious, culturally feminist paths. Many are deeply embedded in the social life of college and the big city: frat parties, sorority events, nightclubs, networking, flirting, tight dresses, exposed collarbones, even the occasional strategic cleavage. Perfectly ordinary behavior for young women in the city—though likely enough to send a Christian conservative grandmother into a tiffy.

So, what actually separates a conservative woman on campus from a liberal feminist?

At Columbia, conservatism clearly isn’t about wearing long skirts, cross necklaces, or domesticity. It shows up in women who are ambitious, socially active, and modern, yet who are increasingly skeptical of progressive gender politics and institutional moral policing.

On campus, many of the most outspoken conservatives are women. The co-presidents of the College Republicans are women, and as vice president myself, I am acutely aware of the irony in my general defense of traditional norms. Conservative women are supposed to be something specific: soft, maternal, private. Instead, at Columbia, they are public, ambitious, and competitive.

The same contradiction appears nationally. Prominent GOP women are constantly criticized, often by their own side, for failing to live up to the ideal they are presumed to represent. Erika Kirk has been attacked for stepping into the role of CEO at Turning Point USA after her husband’s assassination—why wasn’t she home with her children? The comment sections of Candace Owens’ videos scold her for being outspoken and ambitious, while she has often criticized feminism. Similarly, Karoline Leavitt’s combative style hardly matches the imagined soft-spoken conservative woman.

The backlash is revealing. Conservative grievances about these women are almost never about policy (with the notable exception of Owens), but about their violation of the bonne femme archetype.

What does it mean, then, to be a “conservative woman” in 2026? Has she become just another careerist disillusioned with the left but not actually living conservatively? Just another “MAGA babe”? Or a corporate girly who votes Republican but lives indistinguishably from her cosmopolitan liberal peers?

To begin to understand what conservatism truly even entails in Morningside Heights, I interviewed four self-proclaimed right-wing women.

Stephanie, BC ‘27

Stephanie, a junior double-majoring in economics and English at Barnard, described being conservative in pretty conventional terms, such as “leaning towards traditional values—marriage, family, etc. Economically, it means things like lower taxes, free markets.”

When asked to name her top issues, her answers clustered tightly around education, gender ideology, foreign policy, and the limits of progressive moral enforcement rather than bread-and-butter economic populism. She supports “freeing Iran from [the] regime, supporting Israel, lowering taxes, and making college campuses more open-minded to [a] conservative perspective.”

Stephanie further insisted: “I 100 percent consider myself a feminist, in the sense that women and men are equally capable.” She elaborated that “feminism is built on agency, and women should be empowered to follow whichever path they choose.”

Leah, BC ‘27

Leah, a Barnard junior studying computer science, described conservatism as ‘“more logical, more rational” than the more “emotion-based” left.

She also told me that her politics are policy-based rather than identity-based, pointing to transnational continuity rather than American culture war tribalism. Her views are influenced by her family overseas, whose political system is different from the one here.

“They just think [being conservative] is living on the farm with the chicken eggs and whatever and baking the whole day,” Leah reflected, profoundly aware of the way many perceive conservative women. “I want to work…in finance specifically, but I don’t see myself staying in that forever,” she added, “It can be very easy to get sucked into that…You’re 40 and you haven’t had kids yet or you haven’t been able to prioritize your relationships.”

Anna, BC ‘28

Anna, a Barnard sophomore studying economics, resisted being flattened into a partisan label: “I make a strong distinction between conservative, right-wing, and Republican.” For her, American conservatism is not aesthetic or lifestyle-based, but a constitutional commitment. She argued that “true American conservatism is the protection of Enlightenment ideals of natural rights and separation of powers, as dictated by the Constitution.” Continuing, she commented that “much of our national political conflict today is a result of the federal government becoming too powerful.”

She is also unapologetic about her career ambitions. “Having a fulfilling career is very important to me,” she said, but added that “I know my future family will undoubtedly be the most important aspect of my life.”

When asked what issue she feels strongly about, Anna talked about how the “‘intersectionality’ of the LGBTQ movement and feminism in third-wave feminism has eroded women’s rights. The reason why women deserve to have their natural rights protected isn’t because women are the same as men. [It’s] Biology 101.”

Anna, still, identifies as a traditional feminist. She insisted that “third-wave feminism has deviated greatly from ‘true feminism.’”

Jennifer, GSAS ‘26

Jennifer, a student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said that her “culture has helped shape [her] into someone that values pragmatic policies built on strong virtues.”

“I believe in equality between men and women,” she added. “I wouldn’t consider myself a modern feminist, because I think the movement has shifted from uplifting women to putting men down.”

These interviews point to something deeper than hypocrisy or confusion at the bottom of these women’s decisions to be conservative. They are not rejecting modern life, nor are they trying to fully reenact a pre-modern one. Instead, they are attempting to draw boundaries within modernity, accepting its freedoms while resisting its excesses. The question is not whether conservative women are hypocritical, but why this form of selective conservatism keeps appearing among elite women in particular.

What’s interesting here is that these women are not describing conservatism as a subculture or aesthetic, but as a way of reasoning about institutions, incentives, and limits—a framework often detached from American partisanship.

Stephanie’s primary political issues—“freeing Iran from [the] regime, supporting Israel, lowering taxes”—for example, highlight a broader problem in American politics: “conservative” has become a catch-all label for a cluster of contemporary right-wing positions that don’t necessarily stem from traditional social conservatism. Ask most self-identifying conservatives in 2026 what they care about, and you’ll hear a similar pairing of a geopolitical priority and an economic one. Support for certain foreign policy stances or tax cuts is now treated as inherently conservative, even when those positions reflect partisan alignment or strategic preference more than an inherited philosophy of traditionalism.

Indeed, one of the fundamental issues with American conservatism is that the big tent only coheres if political expedience outranks genuine value alignment. What does it actually mean for a socially liberal, fiscally conservative person to share a movement with a Christian socialist who is socially conservative and fiscally liberal? They might both be labeled “right-wing,” but they are not aligned except insofar as they need each other to win elections and don’t think President Trump is an existential threat to our country. Within that incoherent tent, the conservative woman becomes an especially unstable category.

There is also an implicit moral hierarchy embedded in contemporary conservative discourse: rural trad over suburban mom over urban conservative. Production-based femininity is often treated as more “moral” or “righteous” than domestic life alone or the life of a professional conservative woman. Yet reducing this hierarchy to the claim that “rural trad is superior” is too easy and avoids the deeper tensions at work.

Many women want the benefits of being modern and feminist—career, status mobility, sexual self-determination—while also possessing the political or psychological cachet of being “conservative.” Urban conservative women live lives materially indistinguishable from their liberal peers. They attend the same schools, pursue the same careers, delay family in the same ways, and navigate the same elite institutions. They structure their lives around ambition, education, and career. In other words, at an institution like Columbia, they ultimately succumb to the dogma of liberalism.

This produces an internal contradiction embedded in the phrase “conservative woman.” The image we have of a truly conservative woman would not be a politically adroit, world-beating girlboss. She would be a mother of four in a quiet farm town in the Midwest, embedded in her church. She would never be a public figure. She would not be at Columbia, running a political organization, debating Title IX policy, and networking in FiDi. And I would not be interviewing her.

But what these interviews reveal is that feminist conservatism is a structural contradiction, produced by historical changes that no individual woman can opt out of. The difficulty with modern “trad” or conservative women is rather Tocquevillian: Once subjects of a monarch become citizens of a republic, you cannot put the genie back in the bottle. You can almost never convince people to surrender power they have been given and have enjoyed wielding.

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We are experiencing a historical transformation—women have already experienced post-suffrage politics, post-sexual revolution norms, and post-educational equality. The modern conservative movement can gesture toward tradition, but cannot reconstruct the social conditions that once made tradition organic.

Nowhere is this transformation more visible than on abortion, arguably America’s most contentious issue. Stephanie said simply, “I lean more towards pro-choice.” Jennifer echoed this position while grounding it in social consequences: “I don’t think making people that do not want to be parents, parents, is good for the child’s upbringing or society overall.” Anna, meanwhile, reframed abortion not as a moral crusade but as a constitutional question: “Our bodies are our most sacred form of private property. I don’t think abortion should be a major political debate topic.”

Leah was the only pro-lifer among the women I spoke to, although even here the position is bounded rather than absolutist: abortion, she said, “should be avoided unless the mother’s life is at risk.”

While we may not expect self-identified conservatives to be pro-choice, these opinions are not incoherent with the “traditionally conservative” values we hold conservatives to. At places like Columbia, where progressive sentiment dominates, rejecting the reigning gender orthodoxy becomes a form of boundary-setting rather than a return to 1950.

In elite institutions where there is no church culture, no localized social pressure, conservatism operates as a voluntary alignment and strategic signal, not an inherited role or place-bound obligation. These conservative women simply aren’t church-going, sourdough-making tradwives from the South.

It’s much easier for us to conceive of Columbia’s conservative women as either a “trad” woman or a secret feminist traitor. She is a third type—someone who values elite autonomy while enforcing conservative boundaries. What she ultimately reveals is that conservatism in elite America today has become less a way of life than a strategy for navigating modernity.

Ms. Ma is a sophomore at Barnard College studying English and Philosophy. She is a staff writer for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

A short walk down to 108th St. and Broadway reveals the economic forces quietly shaping—and threatening—Columbia’s backyard. In February 2019, a local diner on one of the corners closed and was converted into a Dunkin’. On the opposite corner, a local taqueria would close a year later and be replaced by Luckin Coffee, the Chinese coffee giant with over 24,000 locations. Meanwhile, on another corner, a small hot pot restaurant was recently traded in for another Chinese fast-food restaurant with plans to franchise.

I’m talking, of course, about the arrival of large chains and big brand names to Morningside Heights, often at the expense of small, local businesses. 108th St. is far from the only casualty: Mel’s Burger Bar, a beloved Columbia nightlife spot, was replaced by a Raising Cane’s; Shakespeare & Co, a popular bookstore on 105th St., suddenly closed last year; and, across the street, Silver Moon Bakery forcibly relocated after disputes with its landlord over rent.

These are just the examples current Columbia students have witnessed. From Pret A Manger and Shake Shack to Hashi Market and Dos Toros, chances are your favorite chain store stands where a beloved local establishment once stood less than ten years ago.

This process of commercial gentrification, however, goes back much further in time. To understand the forces behind it, and how locals and students alike can address the problem, I spoke with Morningside Heights Community Coalition (MHCC) Program Director Dan McSweeney.

“I think the gentrification became very noticeable in the 1990s, not just for our neighborhood, but most or all of New York,” McSweeney explained. “I’ve known the neighborhood for about 55 years. As a kid, the vast majority of businesses were mom and pop shops, shoe repairs, diners… Now, Broadway is starting to resemble more of a mall or an airport food court. It’s not what we want in a New York neighborhood.”

Beyond the loss of local identity and an authentic array of options, replacing small businesses also comes with its economic costs: On Amsterdam Ave. and 108th St., Dan Cohen owns and operates Super Nice, a small bakery and restaurant. He explained that, as a local establishment, Super Nice “employs people who live locally, who spend locally, which promotes other small businesses and keeps money within the community.”

Economists refer to this idea as the local multiplier effect, in which locally owned businesses are more likely to re-circulate money within their neighborhood than national chains. Studies find that every $100 spent at a national retailer yields a $15 return for the local economy, while every $100 spent at a local business yields a $45 return.

New Yorkers likely understood this lesson at one point; during the 1970s and 1980s, the city was rather hostile to big, national brands such as fast-food chains. In 1974, Upper East Side residents collected more than 15,000 signatures to prevent a McDonald’s from opening in the neighborhood, and besides the local opposition, the city’s ongoing economic and crime issues turned off prospective chains. “Back then, all your local establishments were likely owned by your neighbors,” McSweeney told me. “You didn’t have to work for a large corporation to live in Morningside Heights.”

With declining crime rates and a resurging city economy over the 1990s into the 2000s, New York’s growing population, tourism, and foot traffic attracted a variety of chains. In many cases, chains’ greater access to investor money, marketing materials, and brand-name recognition jeopardized their small business competitors. The number of chain retailers and restaurants in the city has rocketed from about 5,400 in 2008 to over 8,000 in 2024—an almost 50 percent increase.

Beyond this citywide trend, several factors may be making it harder to do business in Morningside Heights specifically. Consider Columbia’s growing international student population: “As the University becomes more international, the commercial presence also becomes more international, it doesn’t reflect local ownership,” McSweeney argues. “For example, we’ve seen a lot of Asian-themed restaurants and shops open up, which is great, but I think many of them are not owned by local residents rather than multinational corporations.”

Then, there’s Columbia itself. The University holds a near-monopoly over its surroundings, owning two-thirds of Morningside Heights, yet neighboring businesses have struggled to effectively communicate their needs to the administration. “This new president has an opportunity to improve the tone. The most important thing to do is end the campus closure. It really hurts small businesses, annexing a large portion of the neighborhood and preventing passersby from going from one side to the other.”

Businesses that have voiced such complaints include Book Culture and Morton Williams, both of which are across the street from campus. McSweeney shared that Morton Williams even hired a lobbyist to take on the issue, while many other businesses have refrained from publicly dissenting out of fear of backlash or hostility from the Columbia administration.

That being said, Columbia’s relationship with its neighbors hasn’t been entirely negative. In fact, local businesses in the area have had “positive things to say about” the University as a landlord, citing its openness to businesses’ different operational decisions and how understanding it was with rent payments during COVID. “I believe Columbia wants to support local businesses, but does that mean they have the right to curate the commercial presence in the neighborhood? I don’t know.”

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As the largest private landowner in New York City, much has been said about Columbia’s real estate conquest of Upper Manhattan. If the University really does value, as it claims, “its local community, its new friends and neighbors” and “the possibility for shared growth,” then at the very least, it should lease its growing portfolio of storefronts back into the community’s hands. In the past few years, however, it’s rewarded competitive retail space to Dos Toros and international chains Blue Bottle and Miznon.

Furthermore, the University can help work with the MHCC. McSweeney mentioned initiatives such as increased support for the employee ownership transition of local shops and restaurants, as well as the creation of a workforce development program for local residents.

Finally, New York City’s Department of Small Business Services has the power to designate areas as “Business Improvement Districts,” where money goes to maintaining public spaces while promoting local businesses. Alternatively, business associations are voluntary coalitions of primarily small businesses, used to pool together resources and lobbying power. While the Upper West Side has two Business Improvement Districts, and Harlem has a business association, Morningside Heights has neither.

For all of its real estate, wealth, and political power, the University can and should do much more to protect the local establishments that distinguish the neighborhood. In the face of rising rents, corporatizing tastes, and dissolving neighborhood identities, Columbia has the opportunity—and obligation—to be the patron of Morningside Heights’ unique character and small business scene.

Mr. Baum is a junior in the joint degree program between the Jewish Theological Seminary and the School of General Studies. He is a managing editor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.

I changed as a person because Columbia mandates exposure to some of the greatest Christian works. When I encountered St. Augustine in Literature Humanities, I was struck by his total reliance on God—“our hearts are restless until they rest in you [God].”

It has been written that St. Thomas Aquinas, a successor of Augustine, “baptised Aristotle.” This is how I feel about Augustine. He redefined for me the conventional understanding of “humanism” within the liberal arts. He changed how I read the Greeks and everything that has come since then—it all leads to understanding ourselves in relation to God.

What draws me to Augustine is his union of faith and reason. His example raises a broader question for Columbia students: how should the pursuit of knowledge be reconciled with the Christian inheritance embedded in texts like Genesis, the Gospels, and Augustine’s Confessions?

Columbia’s pedagogical decision is exceedingly rare in higher education. Even when such texts are included on a syllabus, there is no guarantee they will be taught faithfully. Other sections taught students to dissect these works through modern ideologies or to intentionally undermine writers by aggressively reading “against the grain.” I was privileged to be in a section where we took the ideas and claims as serious and worthy of learning from as the author intended.

There is no one more primed to tackle the relationship between faith and reason in the Core than Columbia’s Catholic chaplain since summer 2025: the Rev. Father John Wilson. I sat down with him at the Thomas Merton Institute, named for the Columbia alum-turned-Trappist-Monk and the 20th-century’s ‘Augustine’ for his Seven Storey Mountain. We talked about his intellectual journey to the priesthood, the influence of faith and reason in the Thomistic tradition, and how he reads Scripture.

Early Intellectual Formation

Wilson grew up in a devout Catholic family in Eastern Connecticut and went to Claremont McKenna College, a small liberal arts school located in Los Angeles, graduating in 2007 with a degree in political science.

He began to think about the priesthood in college. Through the model of “some very holy priests,” including Pope John Paul II, Wilson recounts a “desire growing in my heart for that kind of service.”

He also credits the influence of the strong Catholic community on campus. There, he learned to “be” more Catholic—beginning to pray the rosary and returning to confession, a Catholic sacrament. After college, Wilson moved to New York to work as a journalist. But after working as one for three years, he felt that the calling to become a priest had not left him. So he responded in 2010, going through six years of training, and being ordained in 2016. Now, along with being the Columbia chaplain and parochial vicar at Corpus Christi-Notre Dame, he is a candidate for a Doctorate of Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

Along the way, he also credits intellectual influences, including Augustine.

Wilson encountered Confessions in a required freshman year class during his time at Claremont McKenna.

Wilson read Confessions when he was just starting to deepen his faith, so he found that “he knew St. Augustine” since the Saint’s story “echoed” his own in many ways.

“I was very struck by the way his conscience started to develop, even in the midst of a lot of sins and a lot of mistakes. He was very thoughtful about noticing those inner movements—those pangs of conscience, those moments of regret—which he began to see as the voice of God in his soul. And certainly his moment of conversion was very striking for me to read, because I had been there. I knew what it was like to be reaching out for God but not knowing how to get there, and then to realize all of a sudden, I can’t get there, but God can come meet me.”

Wilson credits Confessions for curing him of some of his “lazy assumptions about human progress.”

“All of a sudden, I was noticing a communion across the centuries—my life is no better than his in all of the fundamental ways. That to me was an experience of the ‘communion of the saints,’ which is a Catholic term that talks about the way that all believers are united in the body of Christ, even across cultures, across generations. And it also taught me what it was like to actually inherit a tradition that was a living thing.”

Throughout his time in college, Wilson looked to both explicitly Christian and non-Christian works as “real conversation partners” with whom he could wrestle over the human condition. In particular, he loves Shakespearean plays. As a political science major, he recalls an appreciation for Henry V. But for Columbia students, he especially recommends Hamlet and King Lear. He sees these two plays, in particular, as “beautiful meditations on what human beings are like and the ways that our sins get the better of us.” In that sense, he added, Shakespeare himself was in many ways a deeply Christian thinker: “I see in them [Shakespeare’s plays] all kinds of reasons why I need a savior.”

When I asked Wilson if he could add a required text to the Columbia Core that he believes all students should be exposed to—besides the Bible, Augustine, and Dante—he mentioned The Rule of Saint Benedict, written by the father of Western monasticism, Saint Benedict around 530.

Wilson made this choice because Benedict “purifies a lot of what is best about the classical Roman tradition.” In particular, he points to the Rule’s emphasis on producing order and regularity in life—not for personal gain or glory, but “to direct the soul to God.” Wilson finds that Benedict’s rule, with its emphasis on “building solid roads through your life on which the soul can more easily attain communion with God,” functioned as “the fundamental text for the rebuilding of civilization through the Dark Ages.”

A more recent thinker who impacted Wilson was Pope Benedict XVI. He learned from him that faith and reason “are both aspects of the search for truth, and that being a man of faith doesn’t mean setting your reason aside, and thinking deeply is not an offense against faith.”

Faith and Reason

Though Aquinas was less influential for Wilson at first, he has since become a central figure in his intellectual journey.

He thinks a good place to start is the outline of the philosopher’s magnum opus, Summa Theologica. Judging the order of its contents, one notices how the Summa “talk[s] about how all truth proceeds from God.”

The people in the High Middle Ages were not so different from us, in that many rejected the complementary nature of faith and reason. Wilson explained that a common belief of the time was that there were truths of faith and truths of reason, with no real connection to one another—as if one could live two different lives governed by two different intellectual principles.

Aquinas rejected this completely: “If we believe that truth is truth, then truth is one,” Wilson said. Expanding on this, he paraphrased Aquinas’s “beautiful definition of truth” as “the correspondence of the intellect to reality.

“I can actually make a judgment that corresponds to things as they are outside of my mind. To know the truth is actually a beautiful way of being in communion with reality. To know the truth is just to be who we are as human beings and to be, in a sense, at one with what’s around us.”

Thus, “both by faith and by reason, everything that exists comes from God.” This means that God willed the existence of things outside of Himself. When we study those things—when we study nature through scientific means—we are studying something that ultimately comes from God, since no truth can exist outside of Him. As Wilson put it, this is how “God teaches us truth, by giving things natures that we can discover.”

An important caveat is needed. Though reason is important, it is not sufficient for either Wilson or Aquinas. God gives us the laws of nature to discover through reason, but He has also revealed Himself to us. A core Christian claim is that God is personal and desires a relationship with His creation to the point where “He had to come chase us down.”

Through revelation, God speaks to humanity about who He is and how we are meant to live. This, according to Wilson’s understanding of Aquinas, is the essence of faith: to “believe God when He talks to us.”

The Columbia Core

These moments of revelation occur “in a series of beautiful stages over the course of human history. These stages are narrated in the Hebrew Bible, starting from the book of Genesis” and then culminating “in the ultimate self-revelation.” Genesis and the Gospels, two quintessential works from Literature Humanities, led me to ask Wilson how he understands the reading of sacred texts in a classroom setting.

Though Wilson candidly admits that “I want non-Christians to read them because I want them to encounter Jesus,” he pushes back on the idea of there being a religious versus secular way of reading any text.

The liberal arts education trains students “to have a conversation with the author” and “with someone who disagrees with you.” Regardless of the text’s content, you need to converse with the text so that you may take “the text as it presents itself.” This includes asking: “What is the author trying to do? What is the author trying to say?” And once you do, you can ask, “Does this conform to my experience?”

In that sense, Wilson believes that though one does not need to share Augustine’s faith, an intellectually honest reader cannot do a purely secular reading of the Confessions, since, first and foremost, Augustine is writing about his relationship with God. To ignore that he is “writing as a deeply convicted Christian thinker” would be, to Wilson, to “do violence to the text.”

Similarly, if he were to read the Quran, Wilson explained, he would need “to take very seriously the idea that this text is presented to be the revelation of God to Muhammad.” Otherwise, it would be pointless to read without accepting the goal of the author.

Students are often taught to think of Scripture as “good literature.” Wilson doesn’t disagree. He said Genesis, for example, is “deeply gripping,” something he hopes students recognize “even when it’s mysterious.

“But it would be a mistake to reduce it to its literary form if what it’s actually intending to do is communicate fundamental truths from God about who human beings are and what our relationship with God is supposed to be. So you can look at the stories as stories, but you’re going to start going wrong if you try to yank them out of context and pretend that they’re nothing but stories.”

However, Wilson believes “it’s always a temptation to bring to any work of literature our own presuppositions.” As a fan of Jane Austen, he compared anachronistically reading Genesis to reading Pride and Prejudice as an economic text. Though there are certain insights to be gleaned from a careful socioeconomic analysis, Pride and Prejudice is a love story, and to do otherwise will bring to the text a slew of false assumptions.

This is similar to how Wilson feels about creation stories from other cultures. The Literature Humanities syllabus often includes other creation and flood narratives from ancient cultures, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Atra-Hasis Epic. Wilson finds biblical literary comparisons to these other cultures fruitful “as long as they’re kept in their proper place.”

Wilson explains that in these comparisons, one will “discover that Genesis is actually pretty unique. It’s saying something about God, perhaps even in conversation with those other creation stories, and saying something like, our God is not like what those other texts describe the deity, the creator, to be.”

However, upon hearing Wilson’s explanation, an obvious charge against the Christian interpretation of Genesis came to mind: why is it not also anachronistic to read Genesis through the lens of the Gospels?

Appreciating the challenge, Wilson put forth the Christian proposition. He does not “demand that those who aren’t Christians” accept this reading, but he finds it intellectually defensible if one returns to the first question that should be asked of a text: “What is the author trying to do? What is the author trying to say?”

For Wilson and for Christians, “all of the books of the Bible together are a united story, written by one divine author. It’s God’s story about himself and humanity.” Which means that “the best and deepest way to read the book of Genesis is as pointing forward to what happens in the Gospels,” since they form one narrative. For example, when one reads the first two chapters of Genesis as “pointing forward towards Jesus” other elements of the text begin to make sense. Wilson believes this is no coincidence but rather “stuff that’s actually in the text, because the author put it there.”

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When asked about the purpose of a liberal arts education, his answer, I would wager, was not unlike what we have heard from faculty and from our Canon. The purpose is to form “a mind that is trained to be alive to reality.” The mind is important, Wilson explained, because “more than anything else, [it is] the thing that makes us human. It’s the highest expression of our spiritual power as human beings. To have a mind that is awake to reality is about being a flourishing human being.”

Though one can flourish and live a good life without a Columbia or liberal education, Wilson still finds it a “beautiful privilege to be able to think together with the greatest thinkers who have come before.” He added, however, that this conversation must “be in the pursuit of truth—not just the pursuit of clever arguments that you can use to get a good job or impress your friends, but to grasp what is real and what is true, what is good, what is beautiful.”

Our Columbia education can give us many things, but it can—unbeknownst to us—place us on the journey toward faith. I do not expect everyone to take Father Wilson’s Christian propositions at face value. But I hope this conversation fills you with the desire, however nascent, to build a relationship with the greatest story in the history of mankind—with your mind and your heart.

Ms. Chaudhry is a senior at Columbia College studying history. She is a deputy editor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.