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In the past year, we have already nurtured coalitions with student groups. We have worked with the Eco-Reps and Students for Economic & Environmental Justice to raise awareness about energy consumption, with the College Democrats to bring affordable birth control to this university, and with Columbia Students for Animal Protection to create a pilot program for more humane food.
We have found that these grassroots initiatives are often the most powerful. We plan to continue such programs on a larger scale next year as the foundation of our agenda. Connecting your ideas with our resources makes for an unstoppable combination.
Expand & Promote the RecycleBank Program
This year, Housing & Dining has worked to create the RecycleBank program on Columbia's campus. This program allows students to receive rewards, such as dining dollars or even gift certificates to local stores, for recycling. This provides an amazing benefit to students while also helping our environment.
Currently, the program is on a trial-run in first-year dormitories. Cliff has met with administrators from Housing & Dining to see about the possibility of expanding the program to upper-class dormitories, as well. This way, the program can benefit all Columbians, in addition to providing a great benefit to the environment. We will work closely to form a coalition with environmental interest groups such as the Eco-Reps and others to raise awareness about this program once it goes campus wide.
Affordable Birth Control Initiative
Due to legislative oversight, the federal government has eliminated its subsidies for birth control at college campuses. In response to this, many of our peer institutions such as Barnard and Dartmouth have made strides toward making birth control affordable for their students. Columbia has yet to act.
This semester, Alidad has worked to make CCSC an active member of a coalition comprised of groups including the College Democrats, Students for Choice, ACLU, Take Back the Night, and others. This coalition is working to lobby administrators to alleviate the financial burden imposed by the federal government's oversight. Hopefully the coalition will achieve its goals as soon as possible. However, we plan to continue these efforts as long as necessary.
Alumni Donations for Student Groups
Currently, alumni are only permitted to make their donations to the College as a whole. While we recognize that this prevents certain aspects of Columbia with fewer alumni from going under-funded, we believe that allowing the opportunity for alumni to donate to the specific group of which they were once part would greatly increase alumni contributions to the university. This will result in closer contact and cooperation between the alumni and students. It will additionally provide financial support to cash-strapped student groups. We will work with student groups to lobby for this change to donation policy.
Funding for Humanitarian Groups
This year, SGB took the courageous step of recognizing humanitarian groups who have operated on this campus for years but were previously unrecognized by the governing boards. Such groups include the Double Discovery Center, Peer Health Exchange, Rotaract and others. Due to their status as unrecognized groups they were not eligible for funding.
We will commit to supporting SGB in its decision to recognize these groups and we will allocate the necessary funds for these groups to operate. The work of such groups cannot be ignored simply because the classification of "humanitarian" group does not fit under the umbrella of any of the governing boards.
Greek Night
We appreciate the importance of the Greek community in Columbia. Alidad is a brother of Beta Theta Pi and Donna is a sister of Delta Sigma Theta and the President of the Multicultural Greek Council. The promotion of Greek life will be an important part of our campus life priorities.
In recent weeks, student leaders from various fraternities and sororities have discussed the creation of a Greek Night event during the New Student Orientation Program. We would like to create a coalition and use the capabilities of CCSC to ensure the success of this idea. The Greek Night concept is quite simple yet brilliant. During one night of orientation, all Greek houses will be given the opportunity to host a non-alcoholic party aimed at recruiting and informing students about the opportunities available for Greek life at Columbia. Such an event benefits everyone. Greeks benefit since fraternity life is put front and center for one night for the first-year students and this provides a great recruiting opportunity.
Space is extremely limited at Columbia. Whether you're trying to study during midterms, or you need to book a space for that amazing free food event that you're planning for your student group, space is extremely difficult to find. This year, more than ever, we have recognized that space is becoming increasingly scarce. This is in some ways a natural consequence of living in New York but there are ways to alleviate this problem. With the momentum we've built on tackling space issues this semester, we will make it our highest priority to make the best use of space on campus.
Lerner 6
As it stands, the sixth floor of Lerner Hall is empty. It is literally a room without any lights, floor, or ceiling. This is a tremendous waste of resources for a university which is as tight on space as Columbia. It makes no sense to leave this room empty as student groups cancel and postpone events due to a lack of space.
One of the top priorities of the current CCSC executive-board has been Lerner 6. We will continue these efforts and ensure that this initiative reaches a successful conclusion. This past year, CCSC reformed advising to centralize academic advising. As it stands, the offices of different advisors are spread across residence halls and the fourth floor of Lerner. We believe that the sixth floor should be used as a "one-stop-shop" for student advising. Not only will this be an effective use of that space, but the old space used by advising can be transformed into space for student groups.
Lerner 6 has been a major issue for nearly a decade but we plan on using the momentum of our work this year to accomplish this goal.
Making Lerner a Space for Students
We want to make that funny-looking building on campus to truly serve it's purpose- be the center for student life! We believe that Lerner should be a place where students can study, meet with friends, and host student events. We will advocate for undergraduate student use of Lerner, so that undergraduate student groups are highly prioritized when it comes to booking space. We will also push for longer student group-use hours of Lerner. Currently, student groups are only able to book space in Lerner for free from 5 pm onwards on weekdays. We will also make Lerner serve the most student groups in the most efficient way possible. We propose revising the pre-calendaring process to ensure that all student groups are able to access space in a fair and efficient manner.
Navigating the Bureacracy
For those of you who have ever tried to use the Columbia Event Management System (EMS), or had to stand for an hour in the seventh floor of Lerner trying to book space- we feel for you. This semester we have been building the momentum to create a more streamlined website that will make the process of booking space much easier and much more user-friendly. We currently sit on the UEM (University Events Management) focus group that develops solutions to make UEM protocol more fair and accessible to students. We will work to:
publish UEM guidelines and protocol
make the confirmation process more timely and accurate
provide a list of all available rooms
create "office hours," where students can voice complaints about space or UEM
Waivers for E-Classrooms
As of now, only half of the classrooms in Hamilton are open to students. The other half, known as e-classrooms, are closed off to students because of the tech equipment in those rooms. In order to open up more space, we are proposing the idea of providing waivers to student groups who want to use these e-classrooms.
Columbia College Expansion
As the university has unveiled plans to create a new Manhattanville campus, we will work to ensure that Columbia College gets as much new space as possible. As graduate programs such as the Business School move out of the Morningside Campus and relocate to Manhattanville, there will be new space that was previously unavailable to undergraduates. We will fight to ensure that the undergraduate community receives a fair share of this space.
Serving your Pocketbook
The college lifestyle can be quite Spartan. With the expenses of tuition, room, food, books, and New York City, it can be tough to make ends meet without going heavily into debt. We have already worked hard on this issue. Alidad and Jenn worked as members of the current executive board to push for financial aid reforms which have helped many students from working and middle class families. Donna has pushed to get Flex off campus at Labyrinth Bookstore to help those with financial aid grants to get these books.
This year, Alidad and Donna have begun working with Sue Yang and other members of the Class Councils of 2010 and 2011 on a report to evaluate study abroad. As it stands, you must pay Columbia tuition regardless of how much tuition at the school costs. Many international universities charge much less and this is unfair to you. We will work to make the finances more equitable to encourage you to get some international exposure.
Let's face it books aren't cheap. We will work with the Columbia University bookstore to make books cheaper. By extending the book buy back program, we will be able to buy more used books from students, and be able to sell the same editions at cheaper costs. That's puts more money in your pocket when you sell it, and when you buy it.
CCSC will set up a fund that will be solely dedicated to providing a 7% discount on packaged Lit Hum and CC book sets from the bookstore every fall semester. We think that students could use the extra cash to buy... more books.
Credit/Debit Card Readers in Ferris and Care 212. CCSC will help pay for it.
Graduate School
Graduate school admissions are becoming more and more competitive. We want to give you that extra edge you need to get into Law School or Business School. Donna has already been working this year to expand the number of courses that students can take at the Business School. Next year we will work to increase the number of graduate school classes you can take, including the law school!
Dean's Discipline Reform
Each year, dozens of students go through Dean's Discipline. Throughout the year, we have been approached by numerous students who faced difficulties with the way the system works. Alidad has begun working on an evaluative committee to review the Dean's Discipline process to provide recommendations to the administrations on how to improve the system. We believe that the system can be improved through greater transparency. As such, we intend to work to shed light on the process by:
Provide suspected students with peer mentors who can advise them on their case.
Making sure students are well-aware of their rights before the Dean's Discipline process begins.
Create more clear guidelines about the possible punishments that could be received for specific infractions.
Urban CC
We live in one the best cities in the world, and as students, we often find ourselves being unable to enjoy all the amazing things it has to offer. Urban CC is a great excuse to get out there and enjoy New York. Urban CC, modeled after Urban New York, will give students the opportunity to go to Broadway musicals, sports games, and take great tours, all on a student's budget, and just for CC students!
Satellite Gyms
It is hard enough to find time to work out but the hike to Dodge can be even more daunting. We will work with the Housing office to create more satellite gyms in the residence halls. After researching viable locations, we will propose the creation of satellite gyms in Broadway and Schapiro.
Free Tickets to Events on Campus
We also realize that there are some amazing events right here on campus! Whether it's a student directed and written play, or a poetry slam, we will provide students with the extra incentive to get out of their dorm rooms by providing some free tickets to events that CCSC co-sponsors. We will distribute these free tickets every week through a random lottery that you can sign up for. Student groups win by having you attend and you win by getting something for free!
Art Hum Abroad
Although 20% of students at Columbia College study abroad, there are a significant number of students who are not able to. We believe international exposure is important and as such we intend to create an Art Humanities Spring Break program. This would be a quick and easy way to get some international exposure through the Core Curriculum. This optional program would provide students with the opportunity to travel to a city such as Rome with a member of the Art Hum faculty. During the day, the faculty member could provide students tours and teach them about the art on-site.
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