Room for Improvement

Several weeks ago, Dhruv Vasishtha, vice president of the Columbia University Parliamentary Debate team, outlined many of the core problems associated with Columbia’s space crunch in a letter to the editor. As president of the Columbia International Relations Council and Association (CIRCA), I have encountered many of these problems with increasing frequency over the past several years. As one of the largest undergraduate clubs on campus, CIRCA is constantly booking rooms for speaking events, meetings, and social gatherings. While this requires long-term planning and a willingness to shift dates and times at the last minute, for our organization, it is a secondary concern. I will briefly touch on CIRCA’s main concerns before suggesting short-term solutions that would be valuable for every club on campus.

CIRCA hosts two annual Model United Nations conferences, a 200-person conference for college students and a 500-person conference for high school students. As Dhruv expressed, our basic space needs are rarely met, and with increasing facilities charges, we are forced to cover exorbitant and often unanticipated costs. Because the number of student events requiring security has outpaced expansion of the security fund, groups organizing larger events are left to cover an increasing percentage of these costs.

If demand remains constant, in the next few years, Columbia’s space crunch will likely worsen as more space is converted to e-classrooms, which have tighter regulations. Anticipating this, Student Development and Activities (SDA) staff members suggest thst we either look into booking off-campus venues or decrease the scale of our conferences. In our eyes, neither is a viable solution. Columbia’s facilities charges may add up, but they are at least feasible compared to the cost of New York City venues. With regard to the latter, our conferences provide a unique forum for discourse on international politics and incorporate a combined staff of over a hundred Columbia students—a figure larger than the membership of most undergraduate clubs. Our high school conference exposes 500 wide-eyed potential applicants from around the world to our campus and our students. Given Columbia’s desire to be a “global university,” it is clear that decreasing conference attendance would have negative implications for students and administration alike.

Perhaps most importantly, CIRCA relies on these conferences to generate revenue, which in turn subsidizes our allocation from the Activities Board at Columbia (ABC). These additional funds enable us to bring prominent speakers to campus and to send delegations to Model United Nations conferences in far-off destinations like Montreal and Cairo, where we proudly represent Alma Mater as one of the most competitive teams on the college circuit. Without this revenue, joining our traveling team would be difficult for those with greater financial needs, and our organization would be unable to maintain its diverse programming.

Taking these factors into consideration, there is certainly room for improvement. While space is tight and demand is high, in most cases, University administrators want to accommodate student needs and are indeed willing to work with clubs.

While there is demand for long-term solutions on the administrative level, improving communication among student groups will open up a substantial amount of space. Too often, groups reserve rooms and then for whatever reason fail to use them. While the cancelation process must be simplified by including a cancellation link in all reservation e-mails, it is the responsibility of these groups to ensure that reserved space does not go unused. Since this adversely affects all students, at the end of each semester, some consequences should be imposed for repeat offenders. In the past, when unable to find space, CIRCA has reached out to other campus groups, often with positive results. If adopted more universally, this sort of communication can alleviate immediate needs.

Beyond the fifth floor board rooms and the SDA office, Lerner should be used more explicitly for events. To achieve this, student groups should be encouraged to hold regular meetings in Hamilton Hall and alternative campus venues. As it stands, finding available space outside Lerner can be a bureaucratic nightmare. Hence, there should be a central Web site with detailed specifications for all available rooms. This site should include directions for students to the respective offices and administrators in charge of particular venues on campus, including those spaces outside the purview of University Event Management (UEM).

Since recognized groups are largely funded by student activities fees, when UEM charges exorbitant fees for the use of e-classrooms it is essentially double-charging the student body to use its own academic resources and constraining the programming potential of student groups with limited funding. Since more and more classrooms are becoming e-classrooms it is imperative that these spaces be made available to students without a $400 charge. If Columbia University Information Technology (CUIT) trains students to manage these classrooms and requires deposits on the rooms, the fees could be substantially lowered. This would open up space in Hamilton and other academic buildings that are regularly unoccupied on the weekends and evenings.

With the Nexus and Faculty House under construction and Manhattanville lingering in the future, it will be important for the undergraduate councils to secure clear and generous terms of use for these new venues. Columbia must also develop long-term strategies. By effectively renovating vacant floor lounges in buildings like East Campus and centralizing resources in an easily accessible format, the administration can ensure that in the future student groups have the tools to better coordinate and collaborate on events. To that end, I encourage campus organizations and individual students to be proactive in voicing their personal experiences and ideas. Through continued collaboration and dialogue, the student body as a whole can formulate feasible solutions to an issue that affects everyone.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in political science and anthropology. He is the president of Columbia International Relations Council and Association and a senior class representative of Columbia College Student Council.