Today’s is the last episode of the semester. I have sought to clear the underbrush and cobwebs from our collective conception of Columbia, and in the last column I proposed new guiding principles for the institution. I have gone to such lengths of cobweb-cleaning and underbrush-clearing because it is a necessary and salutary process for a place seeking to put itself aright. Some might say that this work is of little practical importance, but in response, I cite a well-known quote from John Maynard Keynes: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” One might change “economist” to “philosopher” with equal merit. Isolated actions with no guiding principles to inform them are wont to be incoherent and, for this, futile.

At this point, however, we have formulated some preliminary guiding principles. With them in mind, today’s episode is intended to make a beginning sketch of how we might put these principles into practice.

I originally had intended this column to be a list of specific reforms that, if implemented, would benefit students at Columbia. Before I could write it, however, I was preempted by the announcement that Lerner 6 will be used to host a consolidated student advising center. This is precisely the sort of reform I have had in mind, for several reasons. First, it utilizes a space that has gone unused or underutilized for at least eight years, according to the Spectator’s staff editorial from September of last year, in a city and at a university where space is immensely valuable. Second, it consolidates student advising into one center, an act which promises to streamline the advising experience and cut down on red tape. The move promises to eliminate waste and headaches, pure and simple.

It is precisely the sort of move that will hopefully enable effective advising that fulfills the mandates given in the first six columns of this series. What do I mean by “effective”? Merely this: advising where relationships, rather than regulations and class prerequisites, take preeminence. This is what I meant by “human connection” last time. Such things in principle are not hard to achieve—they involve the establishment of a particular culture that supplants another. (This is where you come in, PrezBo and Quigley. See column 3 of this series.) Of course, it does grow complicated in practice.

I do have one large reform to suggest, however, one aimed at solving multiple problems simultaneously. We need some sort of mechanism for improving campus community and student life, not for individual groups of students, but on the macro scale. One might argue that the undergraduate population is simply too large or dispersed to all be placed under one unifying, but still effective, umbrella. I’m going to suggest what multiple universities have already worked out as an effective mechanism for making this happen: the house system.

Based on conversations I’ve had with friends and fellow students, this idea strikes many as an anathema, both in principle and to the Columbia way—too insular and cliquey, seems to be the main complaint. However, let me propose an alternate formulation: a house system that builds community around city-going events and NYC-specific knowledge accumulation. At other schools, house systems more often than not are used to build community internally—hence, perhaps, the New Yorkers’ complaints about insularity. What about houses as a home base and support system for forays into the city as well as entrepreneurial activities here on campus?

In principle, at least, such a house system would solve many of the administrative woes we’ve examined in this column. If house overseers are given the authority to apportion funds, approve activities, and the like, the system would establish administration based on relationship and trust rather than on regulation that too often morphs into endless red tape. It solves the complaints many have had about how the process of student-group creation is too rigid, bureaucratic, and protracted. And finally, it builds community not in spite of, but as a direct result of, fostering those things that give Columbia University in the City of New York its unique character.

It’s a thought, anyway. Clear thought leads to effective action, or so has been our motivating principle all semester. The specifics of the proposals presented here aren’t as important as that the ideas be talked about, mashed, manipulated—and ultimately, of course, acted upon. It’s high time for some clear, principled, effective action. Let’s get going.

Mark Holden is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science and philosophy.If It Ain’t Broke... runs alternate Mondays.