After a close vote, the Student Governing Board agreed to recognize Jewish cultural group Chabad Student Center at a town hall on Monday night.
SGB recognition will provide Chabad with further funding and access to campus space.
The governing board, which oversees funding for religious, political, activist, ideological, and spiritual groups, also recognized four other new campus groups, but Chabad’s recognition was the most hotly contested.
Many audience members inquired about how Chabad would distinguish itself from the other 40-plus organizations that fall under Columbia/Barnard Hillel, the umbrella group encompassing most Jewish organizations on campus.
Chabad said its distinguishing quality was its Hasidic philosophy of Judaism. “Chabad and Hillel are different, the same way that the College Republicans and Democrats are … coexisting but different,” Rikki Feuerstein, CC ’13, said.
The group has been active on campus since 1997. “We haven’t been able to get the word out as much as we would have liked to,” Feuerstein said in explaining the group’s motivation for seeking recognition. She added that Chabad, formerly known as the Chai Society, used to be recognized by Hillel, but “that didn’t work out for a lot of reasons.”
The four other groups that gained SGB recognition—Students to End Modern Slavery (STEMS), religious publication Sanctum, Columbia University Sickle Cell Teens Raising Awareness (STRIVE), and Unite for Sight—were voted through more easily. A sixth group, community organizing club Campus Camp Wellstone, applied for recognition but withdrew its application before the meeting.
STRIVE will remain unfunded under SGB.
“We didn’t have all that many groups asking for recognition,” SGB representative Barry Weinberg, CC ’12, said. “You never know until you count the votes. ... It’s just the democratic process at work.”
The group that withdrew from the recognition application process, Campus Camp Wellstone, did not attend the meeting. Weinberg said that in the past, other groups that have previously applied and not been recognized by an SGB vote have opted to withdraw. Weber noted that the group might not have been a good fit for SGB.
“We promote their mission, but we feel like they might be better suited under the advising offices because they provide a resource for student leaders,” Weber said of the group.
The event was well attended, despite the trays of vegetarian pad Thai that remained long after the groups dispersed.
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