For a second-semester senior like me, déjà vu is not so much a momentary occurrence as it is a state of mind. Stress about housing, dissatisfaction with CCE in the face of internship and job pressures, the arbitrariness of academic deadlines: all of these important issues have plagued Columbia and Barnard students for years. New scandals pop up from time to time, but they tend to fall back on tired tropes (if you don’t know what I’m talking about here, you might be living under a rock, or perhaps Harmony.)
The duration and persistence of a problem, of course, is not a reason to ignore it, especially if it continues to shape our experiences as students. We should push our administration to reform the aspects of our school that fail to live up to our expectations. We should criticize the parts of our education that we find marginalizing or meaningless. But to move beyond criticism alone, we need to change our approach.
