Staff Writer Gina Brown, a non-math major, attended the first meeting of the Columbia Undergraduate Math Society (CUMS) on Wednesday!

Columbia Undergraduate Math Society meets every Wednesday in the Cantor Lounge in the Mathematics building from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. The meetings are usually broken into two parts: a catered dinner and a talk. “Talk” refers to a math talk, which certainly intimidated me as an environmental science and biology major. I’ve only ever made it past Calc 2! And that was back in high school!

However, I soon realized that this particular meeting wasn’t slated to have a math talk during the second half. Instead, one of the club organizers Lisa Faulkner (BC ’26) had planned a bingo game, but it wasn’t just any bingo game! I’ll get to that later.

When I walked in, four massive trays of steaming Thai Market were waiting for consumption. And let me tell you I was ravenous! I had just come off of four academic classes and one dance class, and it was hard to hold back from stuffing my face. Soon enough, Lisa and Zachary Linh (CC ’25) gave us the OK to dig in. A side note about CUMS dinners: although the food is technically free, it does come with the expectation that club participants are math majors or at least are very passionate about math. So it wouldn’t be very cool of non-affiliated folks to barge into these meetings, eat a bunch of food, then leave before the actual math talk. 

I began to mingle about the room—turns out I knew more people there than I thought! One fellow Bwogger, Kate Mekechuck (BC ’25), even made an appearance! The food was delicious, the sodas refreshing, and the bingo… well… it was quite interesting. 

Like I said above, it wasn’t traditional bingo. It was “UMS Bingo,” featuring squares like “owns Hagoromo chalk,” or “writes notes in Latex,” or “does ballroom dancing,” except that last one was almost certainly targeted… not saying towards whom! The objective was to go around the room introducing yourself to others in order to fill in squares on the board.

I made so many new friends that night! I recognized one girl from a class that I TA, I saw my friend J from a literary journal I write for, and so much more. Many people were interested in so much more than math: there were lots of rock climbers, English double majors, dancers, etc. Despite how much I was milling about the room, filling out squares, a group of first-years beat me to bingo. There was a three-way tie for the winners: Elizabeth, Joseph, and Felix. Another one, Carmen, got every square!

The math society was such a welcoming community of people, and even though I was an imposter in their space, I loved learning about everyone’s unique passions. So if you’re at all interested in math, dear reader, I urge you to attend a meeting or two, and see for yourself how fun math can be!

All photos via Author