I started writing this blog as a way to get out of the day-to-day. My relationship—personal and professional—with the Columbia Association and its people is complicated, especially now. In the last couple years, it has become increasingly contentious.
Conflict changes your perspective—it demands a narrower focus and leaves lots of space for emotions (which can be good and bad).
So this blog is meant to be a place where I leave the conflicts of daily life behind and broaden my focus—to write considered, thoughtful and analytical pieces about something—the Columbia Association—that I am passionate about. I believe as strongly as ever in the purpose and the potential of CA, and I believe that its current predicament is a critical crossroads that demands our attention and energy.
CA is Columbia’s most important civic institution, and the decisions its leaders make over the next year or two will have profound and lasting impacts on CA and Columbia for many years to come.
The Symphony of Lights op-ed is, contra this blog’s purpose, about the day-to-day (year-to-year?) conflict, a portion of it anyway. I have mixed feelings about calling CA the Grinch, but I have no such hesitation about the need to tell this story in this way.
Because it is part of the larger story about CA, where it stands in these extraordinary times, and how it plots a course for its future. To be blunt: I think the Columbia Association has lost its way.
I want only the best for Columbia and the Columbia Association. Sometimes that means writing lengthy pieces about committee structures (stay tuned!) and sometimes that means embracing the starkness of the conflict.
Symphony of Lights will turn on or it won’t. For these lights, there is no dimmer, nothing between on and off.
