Small wave of double legacies hits Columbia College

Cynthia Campo had notes for Lit Hum before most of her peers had even heard of Columbia. Campo, CC ’15, is one of the first Lions reared by parents who are both graduates of Columbia College.

The Columbia College class of 1987 was the first to have a fully coed class. This year, the 25th anniversary of that graduating class, three college first-years were admitted to the class of 2015 as double legacies.

“It’s weird thinking of my mom being in the same position as me,” Campo said, explaining that she currently lives in her mother’s first-year dorm, Carman. Growing up Campo said she heard a lot about the Core Curriculum, the campus, and the culinary wonders of John Jay.

“My dad used to say that John Jay had so much selection,” Campo said.

But while the food has changed, Campo’s father, Richard, said the Core Curriculum has not. In Literature Humanities class, Campo reads through the notes her mother, Diane Hilal-Campo, CC ’87, left in the margins of her books over twenty years ago.

“I went to my basement to get the Lit Hum books and read through her notes,” Campo said.

Richard Campo, CC ’84 said that when he started at Columbia the school was still all-male and that there were only 700 students per graduating class.

“Columbia went coed, my junior year, 1983. The campus looks very much the same as it did, except for all the new science buildings in the northern part of campus,” he wrote via email. “Columbia does a great job in maintaining the campus and constantly renovating.”

Although the anniversary of the college’s gender integration saw the admission of three double legacies, Veronica Montalvo, CC ’09, was the first Columbia College student to attend as a double legacy. Nevertheless, as more children of Columbia’s early coed classes hit 18, the college is bound to see more double legacies.

Despite a number of changes over time, Campo said she believes that the social and the academic experience will be similar to that of her parents. Columbia University is somewhere that Campo said she can feel at home, as it’s where both of her parents spent their college years.

“I think her mother and I really enjoyed our time there,” Richard Campo said, a sentiment his daughter echoed.

“It’s even better than I expected,” Campo said.

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