FROM THE EDITOR
OWNING COLUMBIA

In the fall of 2003, I entered the gates flush with desire for the “Columbia experience,” but found myself disappointed and disconnected. College, the great American conceit, was failing me, and its Ivy veneer was marred by an implicit realization that Columbia was not quite what the pictures made it out to be. The infamous cake celebrating Columbia's 250th birthday — a hulking concoction of plywood and nails — represented this paradox in all its inedible glory. Over time I realized that this feeling of separateness was not anomalous, but perhaps even representative of first-year experiences.

Columbia does not have school spirit. It lacks a larger sense of community, making it easy to attend the school and only engage in a fraction of what it offers. Over three years, I have witnessed how this fragmented feeling prevents students from understanding each other. These feelings of separateness have manifested themselves in political demonstrations on Low Plaza, impassioned speeches and protests in Lerner, and on the pages of campus publications.

These four years are not “just” college, and we are not “just” students. There is a mentality that college is merely a stepping-stone to good jobs or prestigious graduate schools; that it is neither the time nor the place for engagement and critique. But a brief history of Columbia demonstrates how students have changed the institution. National and international debates — representation of minorities, hate crimes, gentrification, the role of the military, unionization, divestment, and a host of others — have all been brought to the fore by Columbia students.

There is something greater at stake here than a diploma. Questioning inequality and institutional structures should not be confined to the classroom, but injected into the larger conversation. AdHoc is an attempt to provide a forum for this broader discourse. My hope is that AdHoc and this “Issue Orientation” offers an introduction to issues that directly impact our lives and those around us. It is vital to engage with these issues. Four years is too long to learn only from books.

E. Alex Jung,
Editor