Remember our College Walk archetypes? This time, Bwog tackles East Campus—a dream within a nightmare within a dream, the buildings that dominate your daytime musings and inform your party-seeking behavior/senior entitlement complex. In this edition, an unrepentant Sarah Dahl delves into the mind of the imminently mockable EC smoker. 

There’s no better place to light up a cig than on the sky bridge arching across Amsterdam—that marvel of modern architecture which connects “Low Beach” and other lesser areas of campus with the pure simplicity, clean lines, and lawfulness of EC. The East Campus smoker knows this best.

After hand-rolling a cigarette (less expensive than store-bought, and producing a finer taste), the EC smoker pulls out their vintage refillable lighter, and blazes.

Smoking is cool. Cigarettes are elegant.

The EC smoker runs a hand through their hair, takes some puffs, and contemplates the view.

I am standing between one world and another, the EC smoker decides. I don’t belong in either—I represent a conundrum.

The EC smoker pulls out a small pocket Moleskine to jot down this line for their poetry workshop this week.

(Which world is which? Main campus vs. EC? Morningside Heights vs. Harlem? Uptown vs. downtown? Physical vs. imagined? Only the EC smoker knows, and they aren’t willing to share, unless you’d like to read their poetry.)

You smell the EC smoker before you spot them. You watch from afar, and as you draw closer, you roll your eyes. How many hipsters are there on this campus? The EC smoker gives you a look of cool superiority. You return the stare. You know underneath the turtle-necked façade, whatever they are really thinking is empty bullshit.

The EC smoker continues to glare icily. Americans, they think. They don’t understand. (No matter that EC smoker grew up in Florida). Writing has reminded the EC smoker that they were headed to the Law Library, to get some work done.

Mission remembered, the EC smoker enjoys some last drags as they take a step forward, and begin walking across the sky bridge. Towards EC. At last.

No longer stuck in space-time, the EC smoker has a purpose. The haze curling away from their lips tint their vision grey, but doesn’t cloud the EC smoker’s goal.

I have arrived, the EC smoker mentally announces to their newly stimulated-relaxed neurons.

They laisse-tomber the cigarette—that hand-rolled work of art—crush it lightly with a Chelsea-booted foot, and walk into the library.

Illustration by Phoebe Newton