From a Gated Campus in Washington D.C. to a Gated Campus in Morningside Heights: What Are We Losing?

By Alexia Massoud

I visited Columbia University with my mom several times between 2021 and 2022. I walked in and out of the Morningside Heights campus as if it were my own: we had no scheduled tours, no appointments, no QR codes, no identification.

We were just two wanderers — one looking into her past, and one looking into what she hoped to be her future, trying to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

I went to high school in Rockland County, New York, less than an hour-long drive from the Columbia University campus. My mom attended Columbia in the late 1990s for her graduate studies, so when I was of age to start looking for colleges, the obvious move was to take a little trip over the George Washington Bridge.

Five years later, the campus is my own. Like my mom, I am a graduate student at Columbia. But it’s not the same as it was when I visited it with her. It’s fortified. Tall black gates surround the entire campus. Every entrance is narrow and monitored by at least two security officers. I have to tap my Columbia ID twice (for some unknown reason) before stepping onto university grounds.

I have to wait in line most times to perform the tapping ritual.

On its website, Columbia says that it “recognizes the importance of its location in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis.”

But with the campus closed, how can that creed stay the same?

Ironically, I came from an undergraduate campus that underwent a similar transformation. I watched as George Washington University became less and less welcoming, when the thing that made me fall in love with it in the first place — its openness to Washington, DC — was lost.

The State Department was two blocks away from my sophomore dorm. The White House was part of my walk to my favorite gelato place. Our track and field practices were often held at the National Mall. 

But after the spring of 2024, one of our only green spaces on campus had large —and quite ugly— gates surrounding it. I thought they’d be temporary, but two years later, they are still there, appearing permanent. 

Columbia is now in its third year of having a closed Morningside Heights campus. I’m beyond fortunate to have been, and still be, a student at institutions like these. Columbia is absolutely beautiful, and people deserve to see it. 

I made memories with my mom walking around for hours, full of glimmer in my eyes, as she showed me the buildings she took classes in and where her favorite kebab trucks were. But these are moments that someone else won’t be able to experience for as long as these gates remain closed. 

I owe those memories to the open gates of Columbia University in the City of New York.

Read More:

• Morningside Heights Community Members Protest the Ongoing Closure of Columbia University’s Gates

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