City Students Spend a Day Afloat

The day started with a huge rainstorm, but the sky had cleared by the time we launched our kayaks in the shadow of Crow’s Nest Mountain.

Most of the students paired up in tandem kayaks, but Dmytro Kolokolnikov and Nina Litvinova, a married couple, chose singles. Otherwise, “she would do all the work,” Kolokolnikov said.

We were instructed not to paddle out past the end of a long pier, to avoid encounters with passing motorboats, but there was still plenty of river to explore.

Halfway through the outing, the kayakers pulled up on a nearby beach. Some walked on the rocks; others had a swim or posed for photos.

The club was born after 25 students responded to an email from Doug Israel, the college’s director of government and community relations. Only two had kayaked before.

Students practiced in the B.M.C.C. pool with instructors from the Downtown Boathouse, a nonprofit that offers free kayaking in New York Harbor. Their first outing was in May at Pier 26, near the college’s Tribeca campus.

The club is like “a United Nations,” Israel said, with members hailing from South Korea, Mongolia, Colombia, Myanmar, Iran, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, India, Ecuador and Trinidad.

B.M.C.C. as a whole is very diverse, with 99 countries represented, according to its fall 2022 enrollment data. Fifty-eight percent of students are the first in their families to attend college.

“Joining clubs is the best way to meet different people,” said Diana Mendez, an accounting major from Colombia and the club’s treasurer.

Yaming Tsai, a finance student from Taiwan, had another reason for participating. “I wanted to paddle!” he said.

Foreign-born students at the college, Israel said, tend to be highly involved in clubs and student government.

After two hours, the kayakers paddled back to shore. “That was a cool outing, no?” Israel asked. “Yes!” the students shouted.

Hawa Sibblies, a business administration major, was pleased with the day outside the city. “I knew an interesting hobby was definitely going to happen in college,” she said.