Gimme Shelter

In a late January memo to the University Senate, Housing Policy Committee co-chairs Paige Lampkin and Craig Schwalbe brought the issue of housing for students in the School of General Studies before the Senate with the support of University President Lee Bollinger. GS students suffer from a shortage of units and the burden of sharing a housing office with graduate students and off-campus residents. The University should heed the recent calls for change by working harder to help GS students find and finance housing of their own.

The Senate’s attention and Bollinger’s support are admirable, for the problem deserves administrative redress. Being waitlisted or denied University housing can have serious consequences for GS students, who are less likely than other undergraduates to receive parental assistance to alleviate the financial burden. Due to Manhattan’s exorbitant rents and arcane rental policies, students compelled to locate off-campus housing often find themselves far from Morningside Heights and less connected to social and academic goings-on on campus. Long round-trip commutes from Brooklyn, Queens, or other areas where housing is more affordable discourage some students from engaging in extracurricular activities or otherwise contributing to campus life. Other students have fewer feasible options when the University denies them housing and resort to illegal and dangerous housing arrangements, such as living in Butler Library or packing three or four students into a dorm room intended for one.

Columbia should provide more housing for older full-time students by earmarking space in the planned Manhattanville campus for a GS-only dorm or by arranging a system with Columbia-owned apartment buildings. A GS-only dorm would equip GS students to build a greater sense of community, something that has heretofore proved difficult. Failing this, Columbia should at least work out a deal with a private company to allow GS students to live off campus for reduced move-in fees or rent. Brokers’ fees can run into the thousands, and a full-time student usually needs a co-signer to meet the income restrictions or pass a credit check. Such onerous requirements make it unduly difficult for students to find long-term stable housing outside of the University system.

Additionally, while older GS students are sensibly prohibited from living in Columbia College and School of Engineering and Applied Science dormitories, the 190 GS students under the age of 24 are little older than their peers in CC and SEAS. With appropriate safeguards, full-time GS students who fall within a specified age range should be allowed to live in CC/SEAS housing. First-year residences should remain the exclusive preserve of CC and SEAS students. Suites, too, should generally remain off-limits, except when suite residents invite their GS friends to join them as suitemates. Provided these conditions are met, younger GS students should have access to undergraduate housing, though, given space constraints, CC and SEAS students should retain priority in room selection and transfers.

These are long-term solutions. In the meantime, the University should fill rooms as soon they become vacant, rather than only at the beginning of each semester, and better respond to student housing issues. Doing so, in conjunction with more permanent fixes, would also lessen the need to share graduate housing units with GS.

Many GS students pay more tuition than their CC and SEAS counterparts, and about 60 percent attend full-time. Nonetheless, their housing options remain subpar. Every effort should be made to provide safe, close, and affordable options for GS students who want University housing. While in many ways GS is a separate program with its own particular issues, adequate shelter is not a luxury—it is a basic need for all.