The following might score you serious indie points at a less quirked-up institution, but not here!

Being a member of the Barnumbia community can sometimes feel like a competition. The highly cutthroat nature of an Ivy League institution runs through all aspects of Columbia life, from scrambling to maintain precious decimals of your GPA, trying to one-up your (imaginary) academic rival who sits across from you in your Core discussion class, to fudging the details of your resume in order to secure a more prestigious internship than the person dating your crush. But there is another battlefield, one more brutal and unforgiving than any other—the aesthetic. It’s almost like keeping up with the Joneses, but rather than battling your suburban neighbor for the most tastelessly decorated McMansion, you’re fighting to be perceived as the resident on your floor who logs the most minutes-listened to Sufjan Stevens on their yearly Spotify Wrapped.

Everyone here is constantly competing to be cool, to be stylish, to be indie—an often used (but rarely defined) descriptor, a catch-all for anything a little quirky, a little goofy, a little not-like-other-girls. Indie is a fall-back, a trusty way to be perceived at this school as putting off “good vibes.” The problem is, being such a broad and ambiguous term, many things are mistaken for indie-isms that are purely normie core. Even more troubling is that, given Columbia’s large and effortlessly quirky undergraduate population, things that might earn you the heavily desired title of “Indie” anywhere else make you just another person here (what’s referred to as “Ivy League indie deflation”). There’s no reason to panic; the following list will help you navigate these turbulent seas, to know what is NOT INDIE. This is not to say that to be “not indie” is bad, or that the truly indie Barnumbians never engage in the following behaviors. Rather, let this be a guide to certain things that aren’t as quirked-up as you might think so you can pursue that which will truly win you the indie rat race.

1. $4.99 kombucha
2. Using a tote bag in place of a backpack (bonus not-indie points if it’s a New Yorker tote)
3. Having your phone set to your language-req language
4. “Accidentally” slipping into your language-req language
5. Dr. Martens 
6. “To the Lighthouse is the best book on the Lit Hum syllabus.”
7. Harry Styles
8. Clear glasses frames
9. Overenthusiastic A24 worship
10. Barnard chop
11. Attending the 100 Gecs concert at Terminal 5 in December
12. Curtain bangs (any gender)
13. Jane Austen
14. Frequenting Washington Square Park
15. “No, I actually thrifted this at L Train.”
16. Platform boots in lieu of a personality
17. The Strand
18. Having a Spec Podcast
19. “Formal on film!” Instagram photo dump
20. Being an obscure Columbia-centric meme page admin
21. Programming for the radio station (at 3 am no less)
22. Columbia Psychological Services
23. Taylor Swift Folklore cardigan
24. Loving Taylor Swift
25. Hating Taylor Swift
26. Being the child of a politician
27. Pretending that you’re not the child of a politician
28. Being the child of a robber baron
29. Being an industry plant
30. Having a twin who also goes to Columbia
31. “The gays love me!”
32. “Can we read on the Lawn?”
33. Science of Psych
34. The Social World
35. Performatively mourning SOPHIE (but not listening to her music)
36. Projecting onto Patroclus a little too hard during Lit Hum
37. Nose rings
38. Mom jeans
39. French and Francophone Studies
40. “I actually prefer the taste of diet soda.”
41. Gays (y2k)
42. Gays (tweed)
43. Steps culture
44. Pink Whitney
45. Fake designer
46. “Let’s study at Hungarian!”
47. Claw Clips
48. Gay man wears lesbian earrings
49. Dorm room stick-and-poke tattoos (if you know someone who does them let me know though)
50. Ordering pancakes from JJ’s
51. Ordering an egg white omelet from John Jay
52. Ferris Booth Commons
53. Sappho quote Instagram caption
54. Freshman Met-posting
55. Posting an RBG “In Memoriam” on Instagram
56. “Come check out my improv show this Friday!”
57. Pret coffee subscription
58. Performative smoking
59. Gay envy
60. Zines
61. Riot grrrl
62. Being a GS student
63. “My ex goes to Princeton.”
64. White boy does jazz (but in a “non-problematic,” “non-appropriative” way)
65. Champagne socialism
66. Hartley
67. Wallach
68. Philosophy major
69. “My Google internship is paying for my summer housing!”
70. Met internship
71. Handmade clothing
72. Weed
73. Marx-Engels Reader
74. LOVING LEAN
75. Borderline alcoholism
76. “My CC professor is so hot…”
77. Alison Bechdel worship
78. The Met Cloisters
79. Meeting Marianne Williamson
80. Dine with Deantini
81. Formals (generally)
82. ADP
83. Flexing your GU seminar that you don’t do the readings for
84. “I go to the College”
85. Woman in STEM
86. White girl does curly girl method
87. Being British
88. Being French
89. Lying about your hometown
90. Wolf cut
91. Being anxious about mask fishing
92. Reading tarot
93. Nihilism
94. Calling it Barnumbia
95. “No, my sleep schedule is SO fucked up!”
96. “I do ALL of the Core readings!”
97. “I do NONE of the Core readings!”
98. Senior Night
99. “I actually never downloaded TikTok.”
100. Using call instead of Duo push
101. Bwog

“Indie” Alma via Bwog Archives