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Moral of this article: check all cabinets for hidden alcohol.
This is why you shouldn’t poke people in real life.
Betcha didn’t know The Blue and White was broke!
Mom! The kids in my Lit Hum class are pretentious ass-holes!
God these first-years are whiny.
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9 Comments
@gawd that girl has alot to learn: pompous but intelligent beats pompous but idiot. the sane columbia intellectual? do you mean you? HA. your fellow “colleagues” must LOVE you.
@Jaded “But the whole spending money on apple arrangements thing gave me a more bitter outlook than usual.”
They’re learning so quickly! Now if only this Hamilton Party had been a University wide public extravaganza, and the apple arrangement been a cake in the shape of Low Library…
Also re: Club funding- One more reason why I hate the bureaucracy which somehow “can’t change.” The really fucking idiotic part? So many schools, including our “peers” don’t require you to jump through hoops of fire to operate as a student group. The result is far more efficient student fundraising and management. Oh well.
Just remember: http://wikicu.com/images/6/6d/FedColumbiaCartoon.jpg
@ehh I hate the bureaucracy too, but I don’t know of any other school that allows students the degree of autonomy to allocate and spend money in such quantity and with such comparatively little oversight as Columbia. Sure, there are hoops, and they’re idiotic and annoying, but as bureaucracies go, Columbia’s is a hell of a lot better than, say, the federal government.
@moreover What in particular would you change? Can you give an example from somewhere else (one of those “peers”) that you think should be incorporated here?
@business It’s far more efficient to actually have student groups in control of their own bank accounts rather then forcing them to 1) request money from ABC with detailed explanations of what you plan to do next year in the spring 2) request to use that same money again, resubmitting much of the same data you submitted in the spring again each time you want to spend more than 20 dollars 3) submit all the necessary paperwork to SDA and collect their signatures so Columbia’s collective ass is covered from the tax man.
Instead, let the student groups have their own bank accounts they they have complete control over. force them to keep their own records and subject them to occasional auditing.
http://www.college.harvard.edu/student/handbook.html
A grad student friend of mine complained that Columbia’s student group funding bureaucracy was worse that at his college, a mega state school. Go figure.
@Yikes The Harvard system scares me. I just read through the PDF at the link you provided, and basically Harvard just cuts their student groups loose. They are essentially only tangentially affiliated with the university – in contracts and banking the groups are technically not affiliated with the university and they are strictly prohibit from using Harvard’s tax information.
While this may be great for efficient management, it’s not something that’s great for students with no financial management experience. Columbia may screw students who have financial management experience, but at Harvard, student organizations carry the legal liability shouldered by the bureaucracy at Columbia.
Given the sort of mistakes that student groups make in managing their funds, even under current restraints, I don’t think it’s even patronizing to suggest that the Harvard system is fucking insane. To give that kind of financial independence to student groups is more efficient, but I wouldn’t prefer it.
@well As a two time treasurer, I disagree.
“it’s not something that’s great for students with no financial management experience”
I think that’s the point. Financial management is an important skill, and managing a student group is a great place to learn it.
“Given the sort of mistakes that student groups make in managing their funds”
Maybe organizations would put more emphasis on electing someone with skill to the position then. Maybe they’d take more care of the money since it isn’t “free” and since they have significantly more agency over it.
Looking thorugh the PDF, it isn’t a perfect. But I think giving student groups a level of independence is both good for efficiency, and really good for making student groups more adept.
The point is that other systems do exist, and they probably operate successfully.
@Hm... You know what’s a bad idea? Writing a column in the Spec about how everyone in your Lit Hum class is a douche and then attaching your name to it. Good luck in class next week, Vesal!
@h8er that lit hum one makes me want to smoke crack. i like that their description of the “normal, sane Columbia intellectual” is actually the annoying kid who says, “got it on” and tries to make ancient texts soooo nonchalant. oy oy oy.