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: take the express to 96th Street, change for the local, and get out at 116th. When the local arrived at 96th the only people I saw getting on it were wearing CCNY jackets. I assumed this was not my train and took the next one. When I got out at 116th I realized my mistake. The only thing that looked like a campus was a cluster of trees in the far distance (which turned out to be Morningside Park). I headed for them and soon realized that I was in Harlem. I also noticed that people were looking at me with curiosity, almost hostility: what are you doing here? I did not feel threatened but I did feel uncomfortable. Then I recognized the look: it was the way white people look at African Americans when they walk in white neighborhoods! And, for the first time, I understood racism viscerally, not just intellectually. What must it be like to live in a society that looks at you that way? And while I have to endure it only when I get on the wrong train, the people around me have no escape from it. It was a profound lesson, more lasting than most I learned in class.