USenate to Address GS Housing Controversy

The University Senate will hear about the housing concerns of School of General Studies students and graduate students at a hearing on Friday.

The hearing, held by the Senate Housing Committee, is intended to address the quality and allocation of housing for GS and graduate students. It follows the distribution of a related memo at a Senate plenary meeting on Feb. 1.

The memo outlined specific problems that the housing committee hopes to address. These include filling the housing units that go unused throughout the year for a variety of reasons, students’ inability to procure housing, under-representation of GS students’ true housing needs, and conflicting timing of the University admission and housing application processes.

Several GS students have admitted to living in Butler Library for short periods of time while unable to find other accommodations, and many feel they are denied services to which other undergraduates are entitled.

“The issue is not even about the lack of units themselves, but about the lack of services they [students] receive,” said Paige Lampkin, GS ’08 and University Senate Housing Committee co-chair.

Panelists at the hearing will include the co-chairs of the Senate Housing Committee and Student Affairs Committee, the chair of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Associate Vice President of Finance and Administration David Greenberg, and Associate Dean of General Studies Dominic Stellini.

Lampkin said the hearing is not meant to be accusatory in nature, but rather “a good faith fact-finding mission in response to the groundswell of concerns raised by GS and grad students with relation to their housing experiences.”

“The point is not to aggravate people, but to highlight that there is an issue and to figure out how we can address it,” Lampkin added.

The hearing will be held on Friday at 11 a.m. in 107 Jerome Greene Hall.

shane.ferro@columbiaspectator.com