A coalition of campus groups has crafted a resolution urging Columbia to alleviate the cost of birth control for students after a federal law took away subsidies last year.
The resolution, which was crafted by a coalition formed by the activist leg of the Columbia University College Democrats, is a response to the US Congress Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, part of which cut funding to university health clinics that was used to offset the cost of birth control.
The resolution maintains that in reaction to these cuts Columbia should assume the added costs, which have raised the price of birth control from $10 a month to $60 a month.
The coalition of groups that created the resolution, which includes Students for Choice, Take Back the Night, the American Civil Liberties Union at Columbia, and the four undergraduate student councils, outlined four separate strategies that the University could implement to benefit students: subsidizing birth control costs, creating a dispensary, linking with Barnard’s dispensary, and inviting Planned Parenthood to campus.
“We wanted to give the University options, not force it,” Alidad Damooei, Columbia College Student Council vice president for policy and CC ’09, said at the CCSC meeting on Sunday.
College Democrats media director, Jonathan Backer, CC ’10, called the growing support for the resolution a “widening of the web,” adding that he hopes student groups will spread the word to other groups to develop a “broad base of support.”
Members of the coalition will have two meetings with Health Services this week to pursue a reasonable cost resolution, though College Democrats lead activist Mara Richard, CC ’09, said that she expects the issue to continue moving up the bureaucratic ladder from there.
“If Health Services doesn’t seem to have a resolution, we’ll look into ways we can put activist pressure on the administration,” Backer said. “We’re operating under the assumption that it will take a degree of activism.”
The resolution cites actions taken by peer institutions, including Dartmouth, Princeton, and Barnard, as reason for Columbia to update its birth control policy. Columbia’s sister college uses a dispensary to purchase birth control in bulk and provide it to students at a discounted price.
“At a university with these types of resources ... I’m confident that there is a solution,” Backer said. He estimated that Columbia should come up with an answer by the end of the semester but conceded that “it’s really up to the University.”
Chris Daniels, CC ’09 and vice president of the College Democrats, said that the problem of expensive birth control “will not last forever. Hopefully next time Congress won’t have this typo.” The College Democrats originally targeted Congress in their campaign for affordable birth control, but redirected their attention to Columbia after receiving slow responses at the federal level.
The coalition has already held two events to raise awareness of the cause: one in November, at which they enlisted students to call Congress members to fix the flawed legislation, and one at Glass House Rocks on Feb. 7, when they held a mock baby shower for “Alma Mater.”
At a recent CCSC meeting, CCSC president Michelle Diamond joked that, “We don’t want our ladies walking around with babies.” But Richard later added that the problem goes beyond contraception, as some doctors prescribe birth control to combat hormonal imbalances. “This is more of a medical necessity than anything else,” Richard said.