Alma Mater, the massive, laurel wreath-sporting statue-woman who sits at the heart of the Columbia campus in Morningside Heights, strikes an ambiguous pose: her forearms raised, her palms open to the sky, her face blank. This gesture can be interpreted in all kinds of ways, but, on days like Tuesday, it was a shrug. Many students I talked to shrugged and expressed only a vague comprehension of the transit strike. "We don't know anything about the world," said a grad student. Shrugging, a senior faculty member said, "I don't need public transportation to get here from my apartment yet, but give it a few years."

Not everyone who works or studies at Columbia lives close by, but the reaction of the administration has also mimicked Alma Mater's stone-faced shruggery. In a series of e-mail messages, the administration made clear that end-of-semester finals will go on and staff, faculty and students should make it to campus as usual. Morning exams could start an hour late, but none would be rescheduled. Absent staff members would have their absence counted against their vacation days.

In order to facilitate this we-will-not-be-affected approach, Columbia set up a system of shuttle vans to and from various locations. How all this is going, however, has been swallowed up by rumor and confusion. Reports are spreading of Columbians, nervous about failed exams and lost vacation days, shivering on the streets for hours, waiting for vans languishing elsewhere in traffic. Yet legends of perseverance are spreading as well. I heard tell of a staff member in computer support who biked all the way from Park Slope - "but he forgot his long johns" and suffered frostbite in the process.»