What Did Sundial Get Up to This Summer?
How a summer devoted to our writers’ reflections and curiosities reaffirms our mission
Dear Reader,
Here at Sundial, our writers took the summer to consider why student journalism, but more principally, Columbia, is important to them. Away from campus chaos—whether that be the latest protest, distressing email, or Trump policy announcement—students can more clearly think about what makes the Columbia experience valuable. We have found that it is not the chaos nor the headlines that define Columbia, but rather our love for this university and belief that its mission is worth fighting for.
This September edition, then, is the culmination of these reflections. At first glance, one might wonder how the lineup of articles in this issue relate to one another. Truth be told, they’re not supposed to. Each piece reflects each respective writer’s infatuations, including editor-in-chief Alex Nagin’s Soviet flavored summer in Kyrgyzstan, and senior editor Uma Rajan’s humorous account of how the class of 2028 spent their summers.
We’d also like to highlight this edition’s pieces concerning Columbia’s academic culture. Oren Hartstein and Imaan Chaudhry’s takes on politics in the classroom show a clear attentiveness to their arguments’ implications. They do not write to advance an agenda. Rather, their work makes clear that they sat with and mulled over their experiences in the classroom during the past academic year.
As a result, this edition is truly individualized to each writer while also being wholly representative of our mission at Sundial. This is exactly what we attempt to bring to the conversation: A team of student journalists who are not ideologically united, but who know that we succumb to intellectual mediocrity the moment we refuse to hear opinions that aren’t precisely our own.
We believe this mission is best represented by our publication culture. As a leadership team, we rarely, if ever, assign tips to writers. Nor do we mandate that certain news headlines be written and responded to. All pieces you read in this magazine, whether in this edition or ones in the past, are entirely pitched by our writers. The positive effects of this, we believe, are obvious. Our corpus is full of thought-provoking writing that is as well-reasoned as it is refreshing.
Sundial’s goal for our writers is simple: We train them to hear both sides, wrestle with the information at hand, and produce their own, truly individual viewpoint. In no other publication on campus is this process emphasized as much as at Sundial.
To any new freshman or underclassman who is reading this, Sundial is the place to be. It is where you can surround yourself with students who are eager to contribute to Columbia’s ongoing conversations, and to start their own. And most of all, it is where you will learn how to thoughtfully disagree while refining your own convictions.
Find us on a newsstand around campus, or connect with us here on our website sundial-cu.org. The application to join our staff is now open. We’re certain that this will be our best semester yet.
For the staff,
Alex Nagin, Editor-in-Chief
Imaan Chaudhry, Deputy Editor
Mr. Nagin is a senior in the Dual BA program with Trinity College Dublin majoring in political science. He is a 2025 U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholar and the editor-in-chief of Sundial.
Ms. Chaudhry is a senior at Columbia College studying history. She is a deputy editor for Sundial.