United We Stand

The complex relationships among the University’s four undergraduate schools have long been a source of both benefits and misunderstandings. Barnard’s Student Government Association has taken the lead in developing informational materials to educate incoming students about the nature of these relationships, but its counterparts have dragged their heels. Columbia’s other three undergraduate student councils should work with SGA to distribute the pamphlets already made and to create a new document that encompasses all four undergraduate schools.

A yearlong effort by SGA to clarify Barnard’s status as an “independent affiliate” of the University has culminated in a detailed pamphlet that explains Columbia-Barnard ties and answers common questions. An early draft of the pamphlet discussed each of the undergraduate schools separately, but that draft was met with opposition from the Columbia College Student Council and the Engineering Student Council due to fears that it would foster division among admitted students. SGA then changed tack, working closely with Barnard’s Office of Communications and Office of Admissions offices to create a professional finished product that will be mailed to all incoming Barnard students, beginning with the class of 2012. SGA hoped that Columbia’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions would send the pamphlet to its own incoming students, but the office indicated that any request would have to come from Columbia’s student councils. Such a request has not been forthcoming.

SGA is right to push for informational materials about institutional ties among the University’s schools. Those ties are elaborate, ranging from cross-registration to facilities usage and rounded out with side payments to make accounts balance. Without clear explanations of how each school benefits from its affiliation with the others, students are left to rely on tired stereotypes about their peers. It is lamentable that the pamphlet SGA originally drafted aroused CCSC and ESC concerns that it would foster division among admitted students. Educating first-years about the particularities of CC, SEAS, the School of General Studies, and Barnard can only combat mutual antipathies. Members of the CC and SEAS student councils suggest that the executive boards of all four undergraduate councils meet to discuss the issue, and they say they are open to distributing a pamphlet similar to SGA’s at the New Student Orientation Program. But although Columbia’s councils voice support for improving interschool relations, only Barnard’s has taken concrete action. And although SGA has solicited input from the other councils for months, its good-faith inquiries have gone unanswered. Now is the time for the other councils to work with SGA so that this pamphlet—in addition to one that includes an explanation of the relationship among all four schools—can be distributed to new students come August.

The councils now face the question of what should be done with the pamphlets already printed at SGA’s expense. The 3,000 remaining copies are Columbia’s for the taking if the four executive boards can work out a compromise. While it is now too late for incoming Columbia students to receive them in their admissions packets, the pamphlets could be distributed at NSOP. Even if SGA’s pamphlets are ultimately discarded, however, the councils should not lose momentum on a worthy project. The current student leadership should leave as its legacy a more positive social environment for the classes to come.