After the election, I’ve noticed that people take more time to look one another in the eye. Perhaps in beholding one another, we look to come together based on the values we share, given all the divisions that the election results have revealed. After it became clear that Donald Trump would win the electoral vote on election night, Columbia students flocked to the Sundial in droves.

When something transient becomes routine, repeating day after day, how do we savor it?

Eliana Pipes, a sophomore at Columbia College, secures a camera onto a tripod. Twisting the wiry necks of a floor lamp, she smiles as a soft glow illuminates her face. She settles into a swivel chair and stares straight into the lens. Pipes plays Dia, a fictional YouTube blogger in Meet Me @ The Clinic, an eight-episode web series that Pipes wrote and co-directed about two girls volunteering at a clinic similar to Planned Parenthood.

At the weekly Saturday night meeting of the Columbia Super Smash Bros. Club, 569 Lerner Hall reverberates with the clicking and clacking of controllers and the low bass of the occasional groan, as club President and Columbia College junior Zane Bhansali explains to me the meaning of a “salty” state of mind.

I was the cinematographer for this piece. I filmed and edited the Juilliard sequence at the opening and the interview segment that starts at 6:38.

For the past 18 years, Columbia Underground Listing of Professor Ability has served as a database of anonymous student reviews of thousands of professors at Columbia, but the organization’s inner workings have successfully remained secret. I almost expected the CULPA team to be a large corps of masked vigilantes, armed with hacking skills and anonymity to expose the truth about Columbia’s quality of education.

Both at Columbia and back home in China, Youzhihang Deng, a Columbia College sophomore, is often asked questions about his queer identity and his relationship with his boyfriend. Whenever someone inquires whether he plays the dominant or submissive role in a relationship, Deng has a response prepared.

Life is uncertain within the Ivy gates of Columbia University. Behind the pristine façade of undergraduate dorms, walls peel, water pipes corrode, and sewage fumes fill the room. For Xin “Coco” Weng, a Columbia College sophomore, her ceiling threatened to collapse over her head. “Everything is falling apart,” she says.

Before Columbia College senior James Lin proposed to his girlfriend and fellow senior Tatianna “Tanni” Kufferath on Oct. 5, 2014, he sent her a text message. “There’s a place in Riverside Park at 88th Street where the path curves, and when you come around the curve, you’ll find me waiting.”. Tanni immediately recognized the reference to her favorite film, You’ve Got Mail. Tanni immediately recognized the reference to her favorite film, You’ve Got Mail. When she arrived at Riverside Park, James emerged from the curve of the path with flowers. After reading a poem he had written, he bent down on one knee. Tanni and James met when they were first-years working to co-found a Christian fellowship that would become Columbia Faith and Action. They both considered their Christian faith as a cornerstone of their values. “Our faith is a foundation as to ... how we should live and interact with other people,” Tanni says. “Having those shared values brought us a lot closer.” The connection between the two is palpable. As he speaks about their shared life philosophy, Tanni touches the crook of James’s elbow, and they stare at each other with raised eyebrows before breaking into laughter.

In her first acting role in the United States, Lexi Wang, a Columbia College first-year, was a blue M&M. Alongside a red M&M and a cotton candy ball, she played the chorus of Eurydice at the Northfield Mount Hermon School. “I was wearing the M&M costume, standing on stage for two hours,” she says with a laugh.

I was one of the camerapersons and editors in this music video.