DormStories Viggo Blomquist and Aunoy Poddar

DormStories speaks with Naomi Hollard, the leader of Sunrise Columbia. Sunrise is a climate change activist movement. They have an upcoming town hall this Saturday on the Green New Deal. We talk about the creation of Sunrise Columbia, Hollard's path into activism, and the fact everyone has something to lose from climate change.

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Episode 4: Education in Prisons and Columbia’s Center for Justice. DormStories speaks with Professor Geraldine Downey and Jarrell Daniels from Columbia’s Center for Justice. The Center is dedicated to combating mass incarceration through education and advocacy. One of its initiatives, Justice-In-Education, organizes opportunities for Columbia professors to teach classes in local prisons. Professor Downey is the director of the Center and a member of Columbia’s Department of Psychology. 24-year-old Jarrell Daniels met Downey in one of her classes through the Justice-In-Education initiative. Since his release, he has worked as a research assistant at the Center, and has contributed to important justice-oriented projects. We speak about the power of education, the importance of prison reform, and Downey’s and Daniels’ personal reasons for being involved in this work. Make sure to check out the Center’s annual “Beyond the Bars” conference in early March! More information can be found on their website.

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Episode 3: Columbia University and the Community of West Harlem. For this discussion, we sit down with Trisha Mukherjee, author of the Spectator Eye feature article "A Columbia initiative has placed hundreds in University jobs. But many local residents have never heard of it." We discuss the university's expansion into Harlem and their competence in upholding their side of the community agreement to help residents adjust. We also feature music from the talented Mamadou Yattassaye (minute 14:43), a member of the band Soul For Youth and a resident of West Harlem. You can check out their song Tell Me Lies along with more of their work on Soundcloud.

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Episode 2: Making Mental Health Events Effective. For our second episode, we get a chance to sit down with Angel Njoku and Prem Thakker to discuss their thoughts on the state of mental health at Columbia. Angel is a first year in SEAS who was willing to open up about her experience here at Columbia. Prem is the sophomore class president of CCSC and a member of the Mental Health Task Force. We asked him for his thoughts on the Mental Health Task Force and its approach to improving mental health on campus.
We also have an appearance by Patches, a band started by Aunoy’s roommate Austin Horn and his friend Andrew Sobleson. Please check them out, they’re a fantastic band and their first album will be on spotify soon!!!! (Their music comes on at 22:10).

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Episode 1: Why are we still segregated? DormStories is our project to help bring important conversations out of the dorm room and onto campus. For our first episode, we interview the author of the op-ed titled “Does Columbia have a self-segregation problem?”

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