Memories tagged “Activism”

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 old...

Columbia College 1967

A Kid from the Bronx–Part 1 I arrived at the College in September 1952. At that time, a large percentage of Columbia “Men” (remember those dark days before women were admitted?) lived at home in the city or nearby suburbs...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1982, Columbia College 1956, School of General Studies 1976

A Mole My favorite teacher at the GSAPP was Richard Plunz, whose role at the time was akin to that of a mole. He dug deep into architectural history and politics at a time when it was much more fashionable...

Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 1986

A Texan’s First Winter at Columbia My first winter at Columbia was a big shock to my system. I was a Freshman all the way from Texas, and had absolutely no idea what I was in for. I was a...

Columbia College 2004

A Wonderful and Baffling Mix As one of seven kids in a Philadelphia working-class home, I never expected college, but a National Merit Scholarship made it feasible. My Princeton visit convinced me I’d be a misfit there (tall blonde guys...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1971, Columbia College 1969

Already a Quarter of a Century? There are so many people who pass through our lives, like breezes on their way to the sea - they might jostle us, or soothe or please us before they disappear, or they may...

School of Social Work 1980

AN ORIGINAL SAM Some of you will remember Sam. When I arrived at Columbia after the spring 1970 riots, he was sitting on Low Library steps or at the Broadway Gate selling his color abstracts. They were always of fanciful...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1972

Ani DiFranco, Neil Young A high school buddy came from out of town for a few days and saw posters on campus for an Ani DiFranco concert in Wollman Auditorium (may it rest in asbestos-abated peace). Needless to say, having...

Columbia College 1994

Armageddon In early September, 1952, I arrived on campus as a sophomore, a transfer from the University of Oklahoma. It was my first visit to New York. It was the Saturday before the Monday that Orientation of New Students would...

Columbia College 1955

Arts While at Columbia A long time ago, the physical therapy degree program was all-consuming, with classes at 168th Street and internships all over NYC, but I found a few hours, once in a while, to enjoy the arts in...

Program in Physical Therapy 1958

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 classes,...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1962, Columbia College 1959

Bomb Squad In the 1960s I worked in the Special Collections section of Butler Library while going to school at Columbia. We received a gift of many films reels from the estate of Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, etc.)....

School of Library Service 1970, School of General Studies 1968

Breaking the Tension in Low It was during the days of the Ethnic Studies protests in April 1996. Students had entered Low Library to lend support to negotiators meeting with administrators–but President Rupp took umbrage, and would not meet until...

Columbia College 1996

Change the World, Bit by Bit, Byte by Byte Two aspects of my Columbia experience turned out to be the opposite of what I had expected. And two other aspects of Columbia changed me – or didn’t! After graduation, I...

Graduate School of Journalism 1990, Graduate School of Business 1990

Civil War Draft Riots - Prof. Shenton Professor James Shenton’s lecture on the Civil War draft riots that took place in New York City in 1863 was an exceptional experience for the several generations of Columbia students who heard it...

Columbia College 1982

Columbia Universtiy and Orhan Pamuk Columbia University and Orhan Pamuk October 24, 2006 Columbia Universtiy in New York City became home to two new Nobel Laureates early in October this year when Prof. Edmund Phelps won the prize in economic...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1964, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation 1970

Combat Veterans I entered Columbia College in 1946 along with many combat veterans of World War II. I was 22 years old and one of the youngest veterans in my class. I had flown missions over Germany in B-17’s with...

College of Physicians and Surgeons 1953, Columbia College 1949

Convolution I was introduced to the mathematical operation of “convolution” as an aspiring EE (Electrical Engineering) student in an Electromagenetics course taught by a professor already named in these archives by someone else. Now, I wanted to be a “practicing/practical”...

School of General Studies 1990

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 subway...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1960

“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 Sundays...

Columbia College 1967

Dorm Life It was a warm, beautiful, late-spring day, and we were studying for finals. As I looked out of my Livingston Hall 2nd floor window, a pretty co-ed walking by caught my eye. I yelled a hello to her....

Columbia College 1958

Downtime at Gold Rail Much of my downtime was spent at the Gold Rail bar on the east side of Broadway at about 112th St. They were famous for inexpensive (much less than the more famous West End on the...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1970

Encountering Lionel Trilling When I entered the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, then known as the Faculty of Philosophy, I registered in Lionel Trilling’s course in American Literature. And I came to read The Liberal Imagination, which was published...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1951

Entering College I was a graduate of Lafayette H. S. in Brooklyn, N. Y. in 1942. World War ll had started, and I enlisted in the Army Air Corps as an Aviation Cadet. After flying as a Bombardier with the...

Columbia College 1949, College of Physicians and Surgeons 1953

Faith in studying I identify as Protestant and was very happy to find an event entitled GradPraise during my first week at Columbia. GradPraise turned out to be a meeting that occurred each semester and involved students from all of...

School of Social Work 2002

Frank: Learning to Love “Frank” was the grumpiest old man I’d ever met. He was a pillar of the church at Broadway Presbyterian down on 114th St, and his face often reflected it: a perpetual frown carved in stone. He...

College of Physicians and Surgeons 1974

Freshman Orientation Most members of the college class of ‘52 will remember our first introduction to the then newly appointed president of Columbia University, Dwight Eisenhower. He gave us some quite unexpected advice at our freshman orientation, telling us to...

Graduate School of Business 1953, Columbia College 1952

full circle on a warm, sunny day, classes over, would sit on the sun dial and wait. and friends would walk by and sit and accumulate. and in the pre-cell phone/answering machine days, it was the best way to line...

Columbia College 1976

Furnald Snowball Fight - 8th takes on 7th If I’m not mistaken, it was one of the President’s holidays in February of my senior year. I was the 8th floor residence counselor with a room right across from the TV...

Columbia College 1978

Ghana Be Good During my junior year (Spring 2003), I left for what would eventually become a life changing experience. I had originally been scheduled to study in South Africa, but at the suggestion of a couple of friends, I...

Columbia College 2004

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, draftsmen,...

Columbia College 1960

How I Kept Warm at Columbia: Revised As I put myself through Columbia via loans, work, and other forms of “creative financing,”* I had relatively limited resources with which to keep myself warm during the long, cold, and dark winter...

School of General Studies 2003

How I Kept Warm (or Not) Coming from mild, wet Portland, Oregon to the College in 1969, I was totally unprepared for an East Coast winter. My typical clothing consisted of cotton socks, blue jeans, flannel shirt, an Army surplus...

Columbia College 1973

How I Kept Warm During my first year at Columbia I lived in Ruggles Hall. The main steam pipe went right through my room. It was so warm that I had to keep the window cracked open all winter long....

School of Law 1983

Howl Contest Entry Do you remember River Rat? Dancing in the dregs, Do you recall Phi Epsilon? Do you remember kegs? In Manhattan, at Columbia, there was a microcosm of America, And the word up there was the word everywhere:...

Columbia College 1991, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1998

Junior Year Abroad in Rome “What are you going to DO with it?” is a question all Latin majors hear a hundred times. All I can reply is, at age 56, I’m gainfully employed and have never missed a meal....

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1971, Columbia College 1970

Keeping Warm in NYC Winters can get pretty cold in New York, with the wind whistling down the canyons of the streets and avenues. With Columbia’s proximity to the Hudson River, an added chill off the water adds to the...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1976

Krum Elbow The part of the Columbia campus that I most enjoy remembering was the Columbia boathouse at Krum Elbow. It was, it seems, inaccessible by land, sited in an isolated rural area across the Hudson river from Poughkeepsie. The...

Columbia College 1950

Love Letters The best teacher I had at Columbia was Professor Gilbert Highet from whom I took Humanities in the fall of 1947. He had just returned to Columbia after having served in British Intelligence during World War II. Professor...

School of Law 1954, Columbia College 1951

Meaning of Commencement Before Columbia, graduation ceremonies were meaningless exercises. In elementary and high schools, everyone who kept their warm bodies in their seats for the required time was guaranteed a spot at the commencement party. So I questioned the...

Columbia College 1979

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 than...

Columbia College 1967

My Favorite Campus My favorite times to hang out on the Columbia campus were in the summers. From the times when the South Field was slippery with the dew of the humid mornings to the times when the night sky...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1978

My Thesis or My Life During graduate school, I lived on the 29th floor of Haven Tower 2 at the Health Sciences campus. One winter morning, around 4am, one of my three apartment-mates burst into my bedroom and told me...

School of Public Health 1997

Oddly Collegial In the fall of 1986 I somewhat reluctantly entered the School of Library Service. In the five years since graduating college, I had considered law, theater, journalism, wildlife ecology and clown school. I’d worked in libraries through college...

School of Library Service 1987

Oh, Do I Remember! In 1968, Bernard W. Nussbaum - my distinguished classmate and dedicated donor to the Columbia College Fund - decided to run for political office. So, he mustered the shock troops, Ernie Brod and this correspondent to...

Columbia College 1958, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1976

Old Hells I Have Known (“I’m with you in Rockland”) down Baltimore Avenue, West Philadelphia grey winter twilight stone obelisk in the graveyard shrieks catches my eye and jerks it jerks my eye to the cemetery ominous stone finger brooding...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1980

Onondaga in June June of 1988 saw the Freshman Heavyweight Crew wrap up an extremely long season that included fall racing in Boston and New York, January work in Tampa Bay, Spring Break in New York City, and daily practices...

Columbia College 1988

Owl Hunting I have the fondest memory of orientation week, thanks to the Columbia Spectator. Some of my new friends (who after a week of pre-orientation in the Catskill Mountains felt like old friends) were enjoying a warm early autumn...

Columbia College 1999

Perfect Columbia Day Submitted by Rod Allee, GSAS ‘97, American Studies A gorgeous early summer day in 1992. There was a breeze, slow and thorough, that afternoon. The brown haze had been blown clean beyond memory, leaving a shocking azure,...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1997

Perseverence The teachers at CBS - and especially those from professional practice - had such a profound realistic idealism. They encouraged us to dream, but encouraged us to perform our due diligence as well. These professors taught us the importance...

Graduate School of Business 2003

Post World War ll Years Dear Editor, I entered Columbia College in February 1946 as one of many World War ll combat veterans. The G. I. Bill of Rights paid for most of my tuition, thank goodness. I also earned...

Columbia College 1949, College of Physicians and Surgeons 1953

Proust on the Lawn One of my favorite recollections from my freshman year is going out onto the (great) lawn in front of Furnald Hall in late spring (finally warm weather!) with my copy of Proust’s “A la Recherche du...

Columbia College 1971

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 perceived...

Columbia College 1960

Relaxing on Sunday Mornings My favorite place to relax at Columbia was on Low steps. My wife (she is now anyway), Rebecca (‘93) and I would go to Columbia Bagels on Sunday mornings and ask “What’s hot?” The employees would...

Columbia College 1993

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 African-American...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1969

Running for Warmth Coming to Columbia from Cleveland in 1984, I was pleasantly surprised to find the temperature relatively balmy in New York, with the buildings trapping heat and generally knocking down the wind. So after growing up on the...

Columbia College 1988

Scowl (A Lament, with Apologies to Allen Ginsberg) Scowl (A Lament, with Apologies to Allen Ginsberg) I. I’ve seen the best minds of my generation silenced by manufactured fear, Banalized by materialist want, marginalized by a creeping sense of anomie,...

Columbia College 1975, School of International and Public Affairs 1991

Scowl New York at its meanest - circa 1986 Infested with Goetzes, panhandlers and pricks “God Save the Winos” said the man with the stick And what did we do, journo-stars of tomorrow? Grew stubbly chins a la “Miami Vice”...

Graduate School of Journalism 1987

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 Society)...

School of Library Service 1963

Shenton’s Army Coming into Columbia as an apparent economics major, and pretty much taking all core classes my freshman year, I decided to try a history class my sophomore year. Entitled “The Radical Tradition in America,” and taught by Eric...

Columbia College 1988

Shivering at Columbia Arriving at JFK in January of my first year at Columbia, just back from the winter holidays, the flight attendant announced that it was -35 degrees with the wind chill in New York. At first, I hoped...

Columbia College 2003

Ski Jump on Low Steps After a once-in-a-decade snowstorm in the heart of New York, my teammates and I decided (brilliantly, I might add) to venture with our ski gear out to the Low library steps. After all, we weren’t...

Columbia College 2003

Sledding on the Lowe Steps How we kept warm in the winter: we would borrow lunch trays from the cafetorium when we got a good snow, and sled down the Steps. It was fun, and challenging. Those trays don’t offer...

Columbia College 1998

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, I...

Columbia College 1962

Stakes Is High to the Red Headed Stranger The first thing I heard when I stepped into my suite at Carman Hall was the album Stakes Is High by De La Soul. The last thing I heard at Columbia, leaving...

Columbia College 2001

Statistics…Whaaa? It had been 11 years since I graduated from college with my bachelor of science in nursing, and I was very anxious about going back to school - papers, exams, etc., not to mention the fact that I worked...

School of Public Health 1997

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 Stevens...

Columbia College 1967

Staying Warm A daily endeavor in the New York winters. Layering…that was the key. Hopefully, the snow was new or maybe if I was lucky there would be no snow at all. Because if it was one of those days...

School of Dental and Oral Surgery 2004

Studying Spirituality I took a course at Barnard in 1983 called “Religious Ritual”–because I was personally interested in the subject and because I had heard of Elaine Pagels, who normally taught it. Unfortunately, she left Columbia just before the course...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1989, School of General Studies 1984

Summer in the City The celebration of graduation by law students is always just a little muted. In the back of your mind is always the dreaded bar exam. Columbia provided a fine legal education. I learned to “think like...

Graduate School of Journalism 1972, School of Law 1976

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 river...

Columbia College 1960

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 freshman,...

Columbia College 1967

Thank You Ford Hall I was ecstatic when I was accepted into the Fall 1985 class of Arts Administration students studying for MFA degrees in the School of the Arts. The only problem–no on campus housing available for students who...

School of the Arts 1988

The Anabaptist Vision One of the more momentous, though still little-known, lectures ever given at Columbia was delivered by Harold S. Bender on December 28, 1943, in the Men’s Faculty Club. The occasion was the annual meeting of the American...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1980

The Big Chill - Surviving Winter I wrap a headband around my ears and put a hat on, along with gloves and a scarf and a really warm and waterproof coat. Then hit the streets, slopes, or whatever!!

Columbia College 1996

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 tropical...

Columbia College 1965

The Closing of the Ring Although I am now a New Yorker again, I have lived and worked on six of the seven continents. I was a commuter, a subway student, for the first three years of my Columbia experience...

Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science 1950

The Columbia Riots of 1968 In the fall of 1967 I entered the School of General Studies, following a three-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia. I won’t say that the spring of 1968 was my happiest time...

School of General Studies 1974, School of Library Service 1976

The Day Ball Points Got a Chilly Reception No, not now. Not here. Not in the middle of the street in the middle of the winter that had set a then-record in New York City for most snowfall. As a...

Graduate School of Journalism 1996

The Lows and Highs of Campus Beauty An urban university campus is not the first place in the world that comes to mind when I think of locations that have the capability to move the soul, but Columbia has these...

Columbia College 1990

The Thrill (and Agony) of Winter at Columbia As a member of the Women’s Swim Team at Columbia from 1983-1987, I vividly recall both the thrill and agony of the arrival of wind, snow and ice on the CU campus....

Columbia College 1987

Trying to Study When I was an undergrad, a lot of my mental energy, maybe too much of it, was expended in search of the perfect place to study. As an easily distracted student, I was always looking for a...

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 2001, Columbia College 1998

Warm Weather in Manhattan In Canada, where I’m from, September marks the end of summer, with days getting shorter and temperatures dropping. In November, snow starts, and it gets really dark outside. Then, in December, it gets very cold, and...

Graduate School of Business 1981

What New York Had That Warmed Me Most I live in Ohio’s snowbelt, now. In my memory, New York, with streets on which the snow seemed to melt like magic, was warmth itself. All fall, I loved taking the bus,...

School of General Studies 2002

Wien Hall, Tacos, and a Toilet: One Year in the 11th-floor Janitor’s Closet 86 square feet. There is really no way to understand the true meaning of the size without spending a year in my sophmore-year dorm room. During the...

Columbia College 2002