Coping with Winter at Columbia

No problemo.* I commuted from home on Long Island while getting my masters at Columbia. Never outside for more than a minute - from house to car, from car to LIRR station - from...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1960

First Mother at the J-School

Can youthful dreams come true?

In my case, yes.

When I was a student at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, I heard of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and dreamed of going there....

Graduate School of Journalism 1960

Hartley Hall 1958

This is the beautiful room of Andy Kubishen and Frank Zmorzenski. It was only like this for the picture (to show our parents). We were roommates for sophomore and junior years. There were a few problems...

Columbia College 1960

History 10

Professor Bernhardt was teaching the second course in the basic American history course, which I loved with a passion. He assigned the students to write book reviews, and mine was James McGregor Burns’s (I hope I have...

School of General Studies 1960

How Columbia’s Training Helped Me to Change TWO Worlds

Three years after graduating from my astronomy program, I was hired to work on the Apollo Project with a group of over 40 people. The others were engineers, mathematicians, programmers,...

Columbia College 1960

My Heart Remembers with a Great Fondness

It was in the spring 1959 after the semester had ended and the summer school semester had yet to begin when I had a surge of affection for C.U. I walked on...

School of General Studies 1960

My Shoes Wore Thin!

In the Program in Occupational Therapy, we often traveled many miles per day: from 186th St. on the west side to TC campus on 116th St. and south to 23rd St. and First Ave., many...

Teachers College 1960

Question for the next century

Questions for the next century:

How can we bring government back under control after letting it oppress us more and more – pretty much continuously since World War I – in response to various...

Columbia College 1960

Something New for Astronomy Class

My defining moment at Columbia involves neither my arrival on campus nor meeting a Barnard co-ed. In fact, I was not even on campus when it started, but home eating dinner when a reporter...

Columbia College 1960

Strange Library

In 1958, I was taking American History with Prof. Henry Graff. He assigned a term paper, which I decided to do on one of my favorite characters, Tom Paine. I went to the library to read “Common...

Columbia College 1960

Surviving NY Winters

The hardest part of Columbia winters was rowing on the Harlem River.

Although the crew rowed in indoor tanks in the basement of Low Library during the coldest months, we would be back out on the...

Columbia College 1960

Where to Hang Out

I had three hangs-outs during my time at Columbia. My favorite was WKCR’s lounge, as my Barnard girlfriend did a classical music show there, and I could count on her showing up a lot of...

Columbia College 1960

Anybody Wanna Work in Europe?

I was sitting in the Daily Spectator office when a student I didn’t know stuck his head in and asked,”Anybody here wanna work in Europe next summer?” The idea hadn’t occurred to me –...

Columbia College 1961

Favorite Place to Study

My favorite place to study for second semester exams was in front of the library, on the grass. There was beautiful music always playing over a loud speaker. The weather was wonderful after the cold...

School of Dental and Oral Surgery 1961

Ivy and Sherlock

Arriving at Columbia from the south, I was curious about what “Ivy” might mean to me day-to-day. One thing I noticed quickly was that searches for referenced papers and books were essentially always successful.

I considered...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1961

Opera in Hartley Hall

My sophomore Arts Humanities professor described van Gogh as “passion nearly out of control.” I took that line to bed with me in my Hartley dorm and had the following dream:

I’m on the stage...

Columbia College 1961

Prominent Classmate from Israel

I got married during my Columbia experience and helped found the University rugby team, so there wasn’t a lot of time to be a part of the community.

However, there was one friend I was...

Graduate School of Business 1961

The Chopped Liver Malted

When WKCR was located in Hamilton Hall Annex in the 1950s, there was a coffee shop across Amsterdam Avenue called Columbia Chemists. Every afternoon, the WKCR regulars would repair there for a cup of coffee...

Columbia College 1959, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1961

Water in the Dorm

At the beginning of February 1958, the start of my second semester at Columbia, a bed became available in a 3-bed attic room on the 10th floor of Hartley and I bid adieu to my...

Columbia College 1961

Who Owns New York?

Every time the cadets scored they stood up across the field to taunt us, waving their clean and pressed white handkerchiefs. But at four in the afternoon we had the last wave.

I was a...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1961, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1952, Columbia College 1951

A Book by Lionel Trilling

I was an MA then – a PhD student in the 1950s. One book of special importance to me was The Liberal Imagination, as amplified in several of the courses Lionel Trilling taught during...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1962

Blasting Through the Core

When I began my jouney through the CC Core, I was a student raised amid urban gang warfare in East Harlem. I responded with enthusiasm to the journey I undertook in the Core and subsequent...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1962, Columbia College 1959

Never Mess with a Football Player

In my Sophomore year, I was assigned to Ferris Booth Hall. My next door neighbor was a member of the football team and quite large. Ferris Booth was still being renovated, and there...

Columbia College 1962

Playing Hooky Led to My Most Artsy Experience!

During my graduate student days in philosphy, I took a course taught by Professors Ernest Nagel and Thomas Merton on the Sociology of Science. There I met someone who was older...

Columbia College 1962

Southern Californian Not Ready for Real Cold

My reaction to the first cold days I experienced in Morningside Heights were a little like Dorothy’s initial response to being in Oz: “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

In fact,...

Columbia College 1962

Talking Back to the TV (and the Movies at the Nemo)

I lived on the ninth floor of Livingston Hall in my freshman year (1958-59) and on the second floor for a few months at the start of my...

Columbia College 1962

T.E.R. Singer’s Class

It was a very hot day in June, 1959. We all were seated in Butler Hall, on the top floor, waiting for the professor to arrive. There was no air conditioning, and no fan in the...

School of Library Service 1962

A Spiritual Tale from the Mansion

I started Columbia School of Social Work as a newly married, college graduate from Minnesota. The challenges of living in the city, starting graduate school, and married life were exciting and amazing. Learning...

School of Social Work 1963

James Farmer and the Cable Guy

In senior year I arranged for James Farmer, head of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), to speak at Columbia. I reserved a large corner room in Hamilton Hall, infomed “Spectator” and WKCR,...

Columbia College 1963

SDS

It was during the Vietnam War, and I had been to marches against the War, but nothing was said at school. Then, one day, there was a table in the quad. It was SDS (Students for a Democratic...

School of Library Service 1963

The Lesson of the Wrong Train

My first significant Columbia experience occurred a month or two before my freshman year began, during the summer of 1959. A family friend invited me to visit the campus and gave me directions:...

Columbia College 1963

Visiting Art Galleries as an Undergraduate

Columbia College in the City of New York was the way it was put to us. New York City is a great resource for Columbia students, and as a college student majoring in...

Columbia College 1963

“What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?”

Among the endless forms required of first-time registrants in 1959 was one asking “Religious Preference.” I don’t know if “none” was an option, but to leave no...

Columbia College 1963

Nu? Hall

In those glorious days of yesteryear when New Hall was unfinanced and therefore unnamed, women were prohibited from the dorm. Surprisingly, this even applied to Vassar women, as I discovered one rainy day when I smuggled such...

Columbia College 1964

Paul Tillich: The Ameba

While an undergraduate, I lived off campus with my parents, but I came to many of the Earl Hall events. I was very excited to attend an informal gathering with Dr. Tillich. I really don’t...

College of Physicians and Surgeons 1964, Columbia College 1959

Professor Gordon Shillinglaw

Can you imagine a required course in basic accounting…full of controversy and impassioned arguments among the students?

The words “accounting” and “exciting” are rarely found in the same sentence.

It was Professor Gordon Shillinglaw’s special talent...

Graduate School of Business 1964

Quantify it Joe!

My favorite person at Columbia was Professor Arthur Pollister, with whom I took Histology and Quantitative Cytology. I also worked for Dr. Pollister in my senior year as a lab preparator for Histology, and I took...

Columbia College 1964

West End Bar & Grill

There have been many memories in the New York Times this week [April 2006] about the West End Bar & Grill.

There was an annual rite that deserves note. At the end of each...

Columbia College 1960, Graduate School of Journalism 1964

Adversaries, Old and New

In 1964, I was a staff announcer at WKCR and was assigned to do the halftime newscast at the Columbia-Princeton basketball game. For some reason, I could not do the newscast from the WKCR studios...

Columbia College 1965

Financial Aid: Thanks, `55

Without substantial financial aid, I would not have been able to attend college. About a third of my education was underwritten by a most generous scholarship sponsored by the Class of 1955. Whenever I meet...

Columbia College 1965

Finding Furnald

During my first year at Columbia, my home was 929 Livingston, a double with a view across the John Jay airshaft. If you got really close to the window and moved over to one side, you could...

Columbia College 1965

Great Mind

In your My Columbia section, you asked what book, read while I was at Columbia, had the most influence on me. When I read Plato’s Republic (the dicourse on Justice), I realised I was in contact with...

School of General Studies 1965

Just the Facts

The class was evidence. The professor was Michael Sovern, later to become Dean of the Law School.

I sat in the second row, with my then and still best friend, Jeff Weisenfeld.

Mike (as we all...

School of Law 1965

Laetitia et Pulchritudo

In the fall semester of my sophomore year, I was quite adrift, with little or no sense of what I was doing at Columbia. I had done very poorly in my freshman year and was amazed...

Columbia College 1965

Roar Lion Roar

Beyond question, my favorite day/night at Columbia was Saturday January 18, 1964. I was a member of legendary coach Jack Rohan’s first recruiting class and after playing freshmen basketball I moved up to the varsity as...

Columbia College 1965

The Big Chill

Are you kidding? “Big Chill??” I came to the College from Minnesota, where men are men and only whooses put on parkas when the temp drops below zero (Fahrenheit). Winters in New York City were a...

Columbia College 1965

Artsy Experience

So, I was trudging through the MoMA looking for the assigned works of art for Art Humanities, preparing for the final. As best I remember, the only bench in the whole museum was in front of Guernica,...

Columbia College 1966

Compare and Contrast

I was a sophomore, taking the Art Humanities course, and had little prior exposure to great paintings. Halfway through the semester, we were assigned papers and given an instruction sheet. The sheet gave us some points...

Columbia College 1966

Dormitories then, apartments now

Furnald, in the early 1960’s, had the wood panelling, the fireplace, the overstuffed lounge chairs, and the red brick elegance of McKim, Mead, and White, along with a view of resident comfort which is absolutely...

Columbia College 1966

Government Defined

Professor Rothstein taught Government 101. His most brilliant lecture included a piercing analysis, the definition of government broken down to its lowest common denominator: “That group which has ‘legitimate’ access to violence.” The lecture occurred in 1963,...

Columbia College 1966

Graduation Memory

After my ceremony, we went somewhere to get the envelope with our diplomas. When I opened mine, there was no diploma, only a bill for a library fine. For a book I had returned and for which...

Columbia College 1966

Live Jazz Memories

Among the memorable jazz moments that still resonate are hearing John Coltrane from point blank range at Birdland, Randy Weston and Mose Allison at the Five Spot, Herbie Mann at the Village Gate, Ella Fitzgerald at...

Columbia College 1966

My Favorite Teacher

During my years at Columbia, I had many outstanding teachers in contemporary civilization, economics, and psychology, which was my undergrad co-major (with economics) and the concentration for my M.A. and Ph.D.

In psychology, Clarence Graham, Nat...

Columbia College 1961, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1966

The Big Hedge

In my freshman CC course, there was a classmate who was fond of giving lengthy answers that were somewhat amorphous and tended to cover all bets so that, in some way, his answer – or some...

Columbia College 1966

1968: Year of Decision

I am a Vietnam Veteran, a college graduate of the Vietnam Era, and a professional journalist. That should establish either some kind of credibility or culpability. The Vietnam War began when I was l7 years...

Columbia College 1967

“Don’t go there”

When I attended Columbia, my core Catholicism after 13 years of Catholic schooling was weakish, but still strong enough to send me into the arms of the Newman Club, and to keep me attending Mass on...

Columbia College 1967

Mr. Stade

The guy was tall, lean and looked a little seedy. His walk seemed a cocky amble. His face took on aspects of pain, fatalism and bemusement. His hair seemed more a perverse steel brush with long bristles...

Columbia College 1967

Staying Alive

In the spring of 1965, finding myself drifting within a sophomore slump, playing pool a tad more than reading utopian theory, visiting the West End Pub almost as often as visiting my class on the poetry of...

Columbia College 1967

Succeeding the Focused Way

When I was an undergraduate in occupational therapy, part of our classes were at the medical center and part at Teachers College. I lived on the main campus. I found that returning to college after...

Teachers College 1967

Taps

Columbia was probably more interesting than other university campuses musically not just because it was in the middle of a thriving musical marketplace but because musical things happened so serendipitously and had such unexpectedly pleasant consequences.

As a...

Columbia College 1967

The Everlasting Year

I arrived at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in Sept. of 1967 from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was a year of many firsts for me: my first time in New York, my first subway...

Graduate School of Journalism 1967

The Phone Call from Yogi

In April of 1964, I was a freshman baseball player at Columbia who, in February, had been named the receipient of the Yogi Berra scholarship. However, it took several phone calls from the New...

Columbia College 1967

A Peaceful Visit

I was a student in the Combined Degree Law School - Business School Program and went to Columbia Law and Graduate Business Schools year round for three years–from when I was discharged from the U.S. Army...

Graduate School of Business 1968, School of Law 1968

A Perfect Match Made in the Dormitory

Back in 1960, the Carman Hall dormitory had just opened and was still known as New Hall. The college and the dormitories were all male and the rules did not allow unchaperoned...

Columbia College 1964, College of Physicians and Surgeons 1968

Best Sporting Event at Columbia

Football–Cornell at Columbia–fall 1966. My roommate was dating a Barnard student whose younger sister was attending Cornell and came down to NYC for the game. I was fixed up with her younger sister, who...

School of Law 1968

Columbia 20, Princeton 18

It is Homecoming Day, 1988. Columbia’s valiant eleven haven’t been victorious over Princeton in years… twenty-five since I was a freshman. Somehow, the year 1945 rings a bell. The Lions have tried all afternoon on...

Columbia College 1968

Documents to the People

In April 1968, the turmoil on campus led the University to close Butler Library. The Library School was on the top floor of Butler. With the library closed, we were unable to attend classes.

A...

School of Library Service 1968

Engineering Detail for Every Shower

I took a controls systems course with Dr Guy Longobardo. He was a great lecturer who could make tough concepts intuitively easy to grasp. One day he was explaining the major parameters affecting controlling...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1968

How to Prepare for Winter at Columbia

My answer is short but true: spend four undergraduate years at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire – winter at Columbia, in balmy New York, seems almost tropic in comparison. Everything in...

Graduate School of Business 1968

Livingston Hall: All Three Varieties

As a NYC freshman in the (in)famous Dudley’s Follies class, my parents and I thought that living away from home made sense. Rather than live in the almost brand new NEW HALL (nu?), for...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1968, Columbia College 1964

Calling Cambridge

One day in the late 1960s the folks in Carman Hall, Suite 604–the suite right behind the open area in front of the elevators–got a private phone connected. Later that day someone came to use the campus...

Columbia College 1969

Columbia Graffiti, 1966

Graffiti found on Columbia study desks (circa 1966):

Liszt was a beast but Nietzsche was peachy.

Immanuel Kant but Genghis Khan.

Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana.

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1969

Elevator Games

I lived in Carman for three years, from 1965-68. I remember a favorite game was to tie a thread to the elevator stop switch, anchor the thread to something outside of the elevator, and then send the...

Columbia College 1969

Life in NYC

Sometime in the fall of 1969 during my graduate school attendance at GSAS, I came across graffiti scrawled in the men’s room of Butler Library pleading “Free the New York 8 million.” As a lifelong resident...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1969

Music I Listened To

At first, being a young 17-year-old, I listened to WABC, Cousin Brucie and Dan Ingram. Then, as I developed some taste, I went to WNEW-FM, the legendary station with Murray the K (most famous, not...

Columbia College 1969

My Roommate? What Roommate?

My first semster living in a Columbia dorm was also the first time I’d ever had to share a room (other than bunking with my older brother at home as a kid). Naturally, before arriving...

Columbia College 1969

Religion at Columbia

I was a graduate student in sociology in the 1960’s. My wife and I, both white, lived in Woodbridge Hall at 115th and Riverside. Before we met, she had joined Church of the Master, a largely...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1969