First impressions from Columbia University

Columbia University flagship building and former library

It was high time for me to publish my first post on this blog - and finally here it is. While Basilio has been multitasking efficiently - working in fields so different as technical development for Pomelo, managing students remotely, photography and blog posting - I have taken my time to settle in smoothly at Columbia and (not unimportantly) to start seriously the business of writing my thesis. 

'Columbia' has long been for me one of these awe-inspiring names of an all too admired and (because of its elitism and exclusiveness) slightly despised foreign academic institution that seemed somewhat out of range. Now that I belong (temporarily) to its community, I have sufficient time and opportunity to scrutinise and double-check my theory loaded view on this institution. As this post is going to be overtly subjective, I shall start with some statistics and facts. 

Initially founded in 1754 as King's College, Columbia got its current name in 1896. It is a private Ivy League University accepting as little as 7% of all applicants to its Colleges which currently host approximately 30000 students (graduate students included). Tuition fees vary but average around 50000 US$ a year. Columbia University is the second most important land holder in the city of New York (just after the catholic church), with most of its possessions being located at the northern end of the Upper West Side. From our apartment at West 78th street, subway train number 1 takes me in 10 minutes to the University where I meet my professor to discuss my thesis, attend two interesting classes, frequent various libraries to do my writing and exploit the university's sports and cultural facilities. 

From a more subjective point of view, Columbia has so far revealed itself to be an interesting and complex phenomenon. First and foremost, Columbia is sustained by an intense and highly successful branding machinery. Columbia's trade mark (a white crown on a blue flag) emerges at every possible and impossible spot of the campus: The undergraduate students' t-shirts, the soap dispenser, the concrete wall in the shower cublicle at the sport's center, and so on. The community spirit (which also builds on exclusiveness) is further strengthened by access control to most buildings - only Columbia card holders can get in. (In contrast to my unofficial stay at Columbia in January 2012 when I was only eligible for a library card, my current status as a visiting scholar provides me with full access rights and I therefore not have to wait for the opening of the library at 9am to be allowed to enter the main building any longer.) Columbia has its own sport teams that regularly compete with those of the other Ivy leage Universities (whose flags all hang in Columbia's basketball hall). 

Does exclusivity entail quality? This is of course an interesting question and in some sense it must certainly be answered in a positive way. Columbia students work hard (libraries are crowded already at the semester's beginning) and their school performance must have been very good. Nonetheless, students at Columbia are not exceedingly surprising. Some of them are, of course, but others aren't. They ask more questions than students in Switzerland, but more than few questions seem to be asked for the sake of asking a question: finding some remote connection between the class's material and some loosely related topic and exploiting it for a question is not too difficult a task. Admission to Columbia seems to foster self-esteem in many positive, but also some negative ways.

Columbia is furthermore an interesting arena for various ethnic minorities. Compared to their share in the citywide population, Asian-Americans seem to be overrepresented by far, while there are only few black students. Jewish students constitue another important group at Columbia. On the occasion of the recently celebrated Jewish New Year (rosh hashanah), some Jewish students have installed a stand in the midst of the campus where they advertise free birthright travels to Israel (i.e., a travel to Isreal open to all Jewish human beings living outside of Israel before the age of ~25).  I am struck by this public display of a right which is completely based on ethnicity (or religion), although I must admit that I have not tried so far to enter into a dialogue with the people at the stand. (And of course I must remind myself of all the less visible privileges we have as we belong to a specific ethnicity, nation, group, etc.) For the sake of completeness, I also need to add that when the different Columbia associations could promote themselves on Campus at some day last week, I discovered (to my surprise) a small association of students fighting for free Palestine. 

So far, Columbia has shown itself to be many things. It certainly is as exclusive as its reputation implies, but surprises me on many other aspects. Most importantly of course I appreciate Columbia as an excellent research institution. Choosing classes out of the curricula of my favourite departments (economics, maths, philosophy, and so on) proves to be very difficult because of an excessive supply of interesting courses. And listening to those classes that I have finally chosen is nothing but a pleasure. If only there wasn't my thesis to write, I could easily spend the term as an academic tourist rushing from one interesting class to another.

And of course it is but a question of time until I get my own Columbia sportswear.

Butler library seen from Alma Mater