Readers,

It’s fall, and we’ve settled in. We have so many weekly CourseWorks posts or problem sets to do. We spend too many of our Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights out (or too few). We get worked up about minor campus scandals and Columbia sporting events (if we care about those sorts of things).

Since it is November, we’ve put up new names on our masthead and taken down the old ones. (Soon I’ll be off it.) But every college group turns over quickly. It is probably pretty trite to think that as a senior, but it is still a revelation to me. (It hit me when in a recent email a Bwog alum addressed me as “Young Conor,” a nickname I haven’t been called since freshman year.)

When e-boards and rosters turn over so quickly, groups rise and fall precipitously. The one-time student council representative who pressured administrators to change a college-wide policy is replaced by a résumé-stuffing bootlicker. (One undergraduate administrator confides that she doesn’t take even those serious students too seriously, since they’ll soon graduate.) So the geography of campus never settles. The must-read publication is this or that (or the other). The ’Stend becomes Havana Central at the West End. Even the century-old buildings’ names are changed when a new donor or poorly-followed donation agreement presents itself.

Nevertheless, this magazine believes that an essentially Columbian spirit survives this turnover. The Blue and White exists to promulgate (and thereby propagate) that.

— Conor Skelding