After Columbia’s decision to cancel this year’s commencement ceremony amid fears of disruption from protests, students have been vocal about their disappointment and frustration with university officials. 

Commencement activities, usually held in tandem with program-specific graduation ceremonies, would have been held this week. The abrupt decision to cancel followed weeks of battle between student protesters and the university over divestment from Israel. This year, the university had announced that it would instead focus on the main individual graduation ceremonies for each program and opt out of the annual commencement ceremony on the main lawn that usually accompanies them and features all of the graduating classes.

Students expressed frustration not only with the decision to cancel but with the fact that the school made no official communication directly to students when it was announced. 

The university announced the cancellation through a campus alert message on the school’s website; many students did not learn of the news until they were notified by email later that day, either from deans or student affairs for their programs, long after it had already been widely reported by international outlets, including the New York Times and CNN, and spread rapidly on social media.

Michelle Quarshie, 22, a graduating senior biology student at Columbia, said she was “shocked” when she heard the news, first seeing it posted on Instagram from the Columbia Spectator, the college newspaper.

She called the decision not to email students “cowardly.”

“I was like, ‘Wow, they couldn’t even have the guts to say it to our face,’” Quarshie said. “They had to go to shady means to make sure the student body would spread the rumor that commencement was canceled.”

For weeks, Columbia students were receiving regular updates about matters such as the protests and the level of access for the campus. 

The last few weeks have been difficult for Quarshie in terms of being able to focus on school work and enjoying her last days as a student. She said everything that has happened has been a distraction from finishing some of her work.

“It’s definitely hard to focus on academics when my mind is on my friends who are in the encampment or my friends who were in Hamilton Hall that night,” Quarshie said.

With limited access to the campus in recent weeks, Quarshie said it has been a “bittersweet” end for her time as a student. She remembered how cheerful the campus felt during graduation season last year.

“It was a very happy time. You can tell there was joy on the campus, but that has been entirely erased,” Quarshie said. “I want to get out of here because of what’s going on, but it’s the end of my undergraduate experience. I’m not feeling the sweet feelings and nostalgia right now.”

Graduations are happening throughout the week at Columbia, including for students in the School of Journalism School scheduled for May 15. Some were particularly frustrated with the fact that they had not been notified directly by the school and had to find out from professional news outlets. 

“It’s almost like the university just forgot to email us about canceling commencement—‘I’m sure they’ll hear it on the news’ kinda attitude,” Meghnad Bose, a master’s student, wrote in a group chat. 

Julia Coccaro, a master’s student in the journalism school, said that while she supports the student protesters, she believed canceling the ceremony is “necessary.”

“There would have been some disruption in some form. It wouldn’t have gone smoothly and it wouldn’t have been able to play out in full, no matter what,” Coccaro said.

Coccaro said she would have felt differently if the actual class graduations were halted instead of the larger ceremony. From having experienced a previous commencement at Columbia, “it’s pretty much just a bunch of speeches. Given that it is mostly just ceremonial, I don’t think it is all that big of a deal,” Coccaro said.

Columbia is not alone in its decision to suspend or alter commencement activities this year. Other schools have followed suit in canceling large ceremonies in response to potential protests and disruption, including the University of Southern California, while Emory University in Atlanta moved its commencement activities off campus.

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After more than 70 years in the East Village, Veselka is bringing its soul-warming Ukrainian cooking to Williamsburg this June with a 5,000-square-foot new outpost at 646 Lorimer Street. And to celebrate its highly anticipated first foray into Brooklyn, the beloved diner is partnering with an equally iconic New York City institution for a new pierogi flavor: Katz’s Delicatessen. 

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The first-time partnership between the two time-honored Lower East Side restaurants is centered on the “Pastrogi,” a pierogi made with Katz’s legendary, hand-sliced pastrami as the filling of Veselka’s signature Ukrainian dumpling. “The flavorful fusion was developed after weeks of testing and trials by both storied restaurants,” per a press release. Limited daily quantities of the “Pastrogi” will be available for one month only at Veselka’s brand-new Brooklyn location, currently slated to open on June 5. A limited number will also be available on Veselka’s website for shipping nationwide.

The collab will also see a “New York Classics Package featuring Veselka“ ($160), which includes one dozen of Veselka’s classic potato pierogi along with Katz’s hand-carved pastrami and all the classic fixings. The pierogi-and-pastrami package will be available for the next three weeks via Katz’s nationwide shipping program and includes free shipping.

“We are thrilled to partner with Veselka to give the gift of NYC’s classic pastrami and pierogi to foodies nationwide,” said Jake Dell, owner of Katz’s Deli. “We love having the capability to ship these exclusive and iconic tastes across the country, making it possible for everyone to experience and provide a bit of nostalgia to those who may have moved away from the city.” The Veselka crew is equally excited, with owner Tom Birchard sharing: ”At Veselka, we’re always looking for innovative ways to showcase our Ukrainian heritage while celebrating the diverse culinary landscape of NYC. Partnering with Katz’s allows us to do just that, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to share it with both our customers and theirs.”

The partnership is a continuation of Katz’s New York Classics series, which launched with a collaboration package with Magnolia Bakery last year. Check out the pastrami-and-pierogi package from Katz’s and Veselka below:

* This article was originally published here

The Cuban poet Nancy Morejón has been visiting the United States for the last month and a half. During her trip she gave a reading at California’s San Francisco State University and conducted a literary workshop at the Instituto Cervantes in Chicago, Illinois. She also traveled to the University of Missouri to take part in the “2024 Symposium: Afro-Cuban Legacies” and read some of her poetry on a recent evening at Manhattan’s The People’s Forum. 

It’s been an exhausting trip, the famed writer confessed, but an interesting one.

“It’s nice. It’s a tight program, which I loved,” she said. “Let me tell you, it was very rich, very spontaneous, lots of people and many new readers. There were people that approached who knew my name, but not my poems. So, I started just to communicate with them.”

Morejón has been a world-renowned poet for decades now. She has won the international Struga Golden Wreath, was named Cuba’s National Poet in 2018, and has had her work translated into English, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, and Dutch. Morejón has also served as president of Cuba’s Writers’ Union; worked with and written a book about the famous Afro Cuban poet-journalist Nicolás Guillén; and served as a senior adviser for Casa de las Américas and the Teatro Nacional de Cuba.

Morejón’s accolades come because she has a way of sanctifying words. She says that her basic practice of reading and being informed is what pushes her to create, and she does not do any research or create long plot lines before writing her poetry. Her work is based on memory.   

“The very first thing is memory,” she said. “For instance, my very famous poem, ‘Mujer Negra / Black Woman,’ I did not make a research; it was just a dream I had. I wanted to tell the story of the Black woman I saw in my dream: to fix her memory and to fix the memory of the passage for those Black women everywhere.” 

In one section of “Mujer Negra” (as translated by Kathleen Weaver) Morejón writes:

I still smell the foam of the sea they made me cross.

The night, I cannot remember it.

The ocean itself could not remember that.

But I can’t forget the first gull I made out in the distance.

High, the clouds, like innocent eyewitnesses.

Perhaps I haven’t forgotten my lost coast,

nor my ancestral language.

They left me here and here I’ve lived.

And, because I worked like an animal,

here I came to be born.

How many Mandinga epics did I look to for strength.

Influential Black writers in Cuba

Morejón said that when she returns to Cuba from this trip, she’s getting back to work on writing her memoirs. “Yes, I will be writing my memories. All of these stories about how I fell in love with French and then I studied French, and my specialization in French.” She said her memoirs will also look at influential Black writers in Cuba like Guillén, the poets Gastón Baquero and Rafaela Chacón Nardi, and folklorist/researcher Rogelio Martínez Furé. 

Born in Havana in 1944 to Angélica Hernández Domínguez and Felipe Morejón Noyola, Morejón said her parents were labor activists who quickly realized that she was a precocious child. They believed she deserved to have the opportunity to live the life of an intellectual.

“I’m telling you; my father was––I have talked about this––my father was a poor man. He was a sailor, he used to work in the harbor. He had to carry heavy things from the ships to land. And he was so worried because I was a good pupil. They realized, my parents, that I was a little bit smart and intelligent. And he was very worried because he did not have the money to take me to the university. Because it was 100 pesos, my father did not have the 100 pesos.” 

After years of worrying about how he could pay to further his child’s education, Felipe Morejón got angry and started to complain. “But complaints didn’t allow me to get into the university,” Morejón said. “But [in] 1959, both of them, my parents, they were trade unionists. They had, in a way, a role: they participated. And finally, education became free, so I entered into the university [for] free. So, it may seem silly or whatever, I don’t care. That’s my story, my personal story. I wouldn’t have been a writer; I wouldn’t have been a professional of literature without that revolutionary process. Because for us, it was completely impossible. My father could not afford, my family could not afford the entrance to the university. So those anecdotes are very strong because they are my life.” 

Life for Afro Cubans is often difficult, but its joys also remain profound, Morejón said. And during this trip, she saw that the University of Missouri’s “2024 Symposium: Afro-Cuban Legacies” put some of those joys on display. Morejón was proud to point out that the symposium exhibited several works of art by Afro Cubans, and some of her favorite was the photography of Roberto Chile, a photographer who is known for coming into close contact with the faces of his Afro Cuban subjects and emphasizing the importance of their everyday actions. 

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* This article was originally published here