Open Letter to the Barnard Administration: Living in CG

When it officially opened in the fall of 2006, Cathedral Gardens was the pride and joy of Barnard’s Office of Residential Life and Housing. While some students stayed away because they were concerned about its distance from campus, many flocked to the amenities advertised on the Barnard ResLife Web site. Among them were “lovely views of Morningside Park, a social lounge, roof terrace, and a 24-hour security desk.” New hardwood floors and large windows to facilitate “vanity lighting” added to the joys and conveniences of an enormous common area, a new dishwasher, and bathrooms with two showers and his-and-hers sinks. Opening onto “the larger world of New York City’s Upper West Side,” the residence boasted proximity to “diverse shops, markets, Central Park and varying ethnic and cultural restaurants, while just a block from your favorite campus hang-outs.” While still “highly accessible by the M4 bus, the Morningside Heights shuttle bus, and a variety of nearby trains,” Cathedral Gardens seemed the perfect place for Barnard juniors and seniors to make a mid-college getaway, striking out on their own while still enjoying the pleasures of living in a college-run building.
“Come discover how Cathedral Gardens is the ideal way to expand your Barnard and New York City experience!”

Let me begin by assuring you that I am not a complainer. I am not an “oh-my-God-why-can’t-you-fix-all-of-the-things-that-are-wrong-with-my-life-now” kind of person. As a rule, I’m a suck-it-up-and-deal-with-it-or-DO-something-about-it kind of gal. When I picked into a six-single Cathedral Gardens suite in the spring of 2007 with three of my best friends after regrouping with two strangers to form a group of six—all the suites composed of all single occupancy rooms having already been chosen—we faced our fate with grim determination. After signing our housing contracts, my three friends and I trekked down to Cathedral Gardens to examine our digs. Slightly out of breath after our 20-minute hike, we began knocking on doors. After some careful snooping, we walked away feeling reassured. The apartment was beautiful, the common area was as expansive as promised, and the bathtub looked clean enough to actually bathe in! We left for the summer feeling confident that we had made a good choice under the circumstances. However, after five months of living in Cathedral Gardens, I’ve changed my tune. Sadly, there are some key elements of the CG experience that the Barnard ResLife Web site conveniently neglects to mention.

Cathedral Gardens may look great on the inside, but sadly, Barnard has forsaken all accepted college security protocols for the area around the building, protocols it implements in all other Barnard housing. To wit: CG residents get no blue light call boxes, no guard posted outside during night-time hours, and really no guard of any type posted near the dorm. The contracted “security” union, which is different from the one through which the rest of Barnard Security is contracted, commits to watching security monitors, but it can do nothing but call Barnard security when a problem arises. Sadly, every security expert knows that “monitor watching” is the least effective of all security measures, since no one can do it for very long. The net result is a lack of safety for which Barnard would likely be held liable should anything happen to a CG resident that would not have happened to a student in a Barnard residence taking proper security measures. The dorm is just too far away for an officer coming all the way from campus to make a difference in the case of an assault, rape, or robbery—you pick it.

CG has other problems not noted in the glossy write-up. We have no printers—the closest is in Butler. With online network access from Time Warner—not the University AcIS network—CG residents lack a lot of the online resources all other University residents enjoy, quota printing being one of them. The excuse: the dorm is too far from campus to be connected to the AcIS network or for a printer to be maintained. Barnard ResLife also neglects to help CG residents with campus accessibility by refusing to provide even bike storage or a discounted unlimited MetroCard for a dorm which is three avenue blocks and between seven and 10 street blocks away from campus. The one accessibility perk: 1020 is only two blocks away.

For the services we get, CG might as well be somewhere in New Jersey. Yes, the floors are hardwood and the common area spacious, but that’s little consolation if you’re late to class because all the printers in Butler are jammed, or if you get mugged on the way home from campus.

Barnard should act immediately to beef up security in the area, either through frequent security patrols on foot, or through a guard staffed outside the dorm from sunset to sunrise, as Barnard has for all its other satellite dorms. Barnard should make it a priority to get CG on the same online network as the rest of the campus, or at least to install a printer in the building immediately. It should provide frequent and reliable transportation to and from campus, offer students secure bike storage space, or subsidize the unlimited MetroCards required to live at CG. In the absence of any of these changes, living in CG should be cheaper than other dorms, given the lack of services other Barnard students enjoy. Barnard purports to hold the safety, security, and happiness of its students in the highest regard. Dean Denburg and President Shapiro, I think we can do better.

The author is a Barnard College senior majoring in political science.