We need some community ’round here, I reckon. The undergraduate population at Columbia doesn’t have as rich an on-campus life as students at some other schools do—and this is lamentable. Some impute this truth to our location in New York, which they say sucks away students on the weekends. Some blame it on the bureaucracy, of which we have quite a lot—the argument being that all the red tape makes it hard for students and student groups to hold events and have a real impact on campus life. Less frequently, it’s blamed on our lack of space. As a good friend of mine says, what would really help Columbia’s sense of community would be “more places with tables, chairs, and coffee shops,” not more shiny glass buildings.
New York is an asset to Columbia as well as a curse, and Columbia knows this. It markets itself on the basis of its location in Manhattan. What it hasn’t figured out how to do effectively is utilize the city to the benefit of its students once they are here. Some efforts are made, it is true. For example, the Urban New York program gives chooses students by lottery for free access to concerts, plays, and restaurants around the city. While it’s surely a fun time for students selected to participate, the program perfectly exemplifies the problems we’re talking about here—those in charge don’t couch the program in terms of Columbia and school spirit. Rather, it’s promoted as “free stuff!”
Columbia’s attempts at undergraduate community-building during orientation are a little better-motivated in this regard—the freshman dance party (for my class it was held on the USS Intrepid) is a good example of what I mean. But here the other major flaw with the administration’s attempts at community-building arises: its over-bureaucratization of student life. Sometimes you hear the claim that the real role of the administration and its initiatives—the RA system being a common example—is lawsuit prevention and damage mitigation, not character-building. And from the perspective of a student attempting to navigate its iron maze, this often seems pretty close to the truth. Perhaps this is so, or perhaps the problem is merely that the administration functions as a collection of overlapping and uncoordinated fiefs that do not cooperate to streamline the institution’s functioning. Either way, the same result arises: student disenfranchisement, disenchantment, and disillusionment with the alma mater they ought to love. (This is the real source of the hunger strikers’ woes.)
And of course, we are short on space around here—part of it, again, has to do with New York. But Lerner Hall is a tremendous waste of space, a building designed with an eye to the trendy and elitist rather than the human and livable (more on this topic at a later date). Meanwhile, dorm lounge spaces tend to be either dimly lit, garishly lit, poorly appointed, or ill-located. A centralized, streamlined overhaul of lounge spaces and an effective system of inducements to utilize them—just as an example of a project the administration might implement—would go a long way toward making them livable and lived-in. In isolated pockets, the administration is capable of such initiatives, with last semester’s overhaul of the CUID system as a prime example. But where such projects have happened, they have tended to be the result of one key person’s initiative and ownership of the project and pushing it through in spite of bureaucratic resistance.
But the truth is that while all of the above reasons are proximate causes of the malaise, none of them are at the root of it. The final cause is a prevailing indifference (though there are signs this attitude may be changing somewhat of late) to student concerns. This indifference targets all students here equally, and while it doesn’t usually hamper the strong-willed, it doesn’t help the weary and the wary who could use the support of their school.
The lack of undergraduate focus on campus is lamentable and not just for purposes of building student happiness. Happy undergraduates go on to be happy alums, and happy alums donate to and speak proudly of their alma mater. Unhappy, disenfranchised undergraduates go on to bad-mouth, or at least to seldom mention, the school at which they received their first higher education, and they seldom donate in large quantities. Nicholas Murray Butler, one of Columbia’s most noted former presidents, admitted as much—but then in the next breath went on to say that to him, the undergraduates were of no importance.
It bears repeating. Happy, cared-for undergraduates a great educational institution make. And while we’re on the topic of greatness, while the lack of undergraduate focus allows the excellent who matriculate to stay such, it fails to grow great spirits into who they ought to be. Great alums reflect well on the institutions that produced them. But we can’t be made happy simply by being ordered to “be happy!” A new emphasis must be placed on students—not just as potential donors, but as human beings who want to obtain fulfillment while they’re here. We’re still feeling the effects of Butler’s attitude today. The administration can help its students find fulfillment, but only if it changes its treatment of them. When it does, we’ll have a new Columbia, one many—past, present, and future—will be excited to be a part of.
More thoughts on who, what, when, where, why, and how coming next time.
Mark Holden is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science and philosophy. If It Ain’t Broke... runs alternate Mondays. Specopinion@columbia.edu