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Sunday night’s CCSC meeting got off to a discombobulating start. Where, oh where, was George Krebs? Robyn Burgess (VP for Campus Life) who sat in that spot that Krebs usually sits in and ran the meeting, announced that both Krebs and Adil Ahmed were not in town. Uh-oh.
Leader-less CCSC-ers immediately got testy when a long-awaited presentation on meal plans began. The Student Services Representatives admitted that much of their initiative was a reaction to the high number of complaints filed by nervous parents about their kids “actually eating and having meals.” Ideas to increase swipe options per day for first-years and improve the salad bar at John Jay passed without criticism, but once the reps suggested an uperclassman meal plan, shit kind of hit the fan.
The rationale for requiring upperclassmen to purchase a (“very lax”) meal plan is that it would increase revenue for “struggling” Dining Services. The idea of transforming Ferris into an unlimited swipe-access second dining hall on campus was also thrown around. Both ideas were shot down immediately. Even though the upperclassmen meal plan would require a minimum of one meal per week, council members protested: “I don’t believe Dining Services”, “a mandatory meal plan would be wildly unpopular”, “Ferris food will get shitty” and so on. Then everyone started shouting about shrimp in Ferris salads, overpriced Ferris cupcakes, and how much worse John Jay food was back when they were freshmen.
The council finally simmered down a bit and discussed a possible update to the smoking policy. While there seemed to be a consensus that no one should have to walk into a “cloud of smoke” when they enter their dorms, Burgess’ idea of banning smoking on certain parts of Low Steps (“but not hookah”) and the larger idea for a smoke-free space between 120th and 114th from Broadway to Amsterdam was immediately dismissed as impractical. Burgess then gave the CCSC-ers before her a talk about not showing up to campus events, during which many eyes were averted to the ground: “your faces aren’t known and you don’t come to events”. The council then sauntered out into the surprisingly warm evening, most likely pleased that to be done with that particularly trying episode of CCSC politics in the Satow Room.
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@Anonymous Smokers are discriminated against enough…the only harm caused by smoking outside is to the lungs of those who are actually doing the smoking. This isn’t the same as banning smoking in restaurants or clubs or other enclosed spaces: if you’re worried about breathing in toxins from the air, why not ban cars or factories…You complain about a couple of smokers outside Butler and the toxins they expel into the air when we live in New York City. This is not the place to live if you’re worried about polluting your lungs.
And besides, New York comes with smokers, its just the way it is.
Columbia is supposed to be a “diverse” university, so leave the little smoker minority alone.
And I’m not even a smoker!
@oh ignorance how ignorant could you people be? i am tired of hearing people say they are going to die sooner just because they inhale a puff of smoke every day. in reality, it has no effect on your health – you need constant if not excessive exposure to smoke to be affected even slightly. if the puff of smoke really was that harmful, then all heavy smokers would die before the age of 22, when in reality they suffer the consequences late in life. and whoever mentioned the new york air is absolutely right! you are breathing a hell of a lot more crap just by living in new york than you are by bypassing smokers a few times a day. move! or better yet, try banning driving in new york, that way your lungs will remain perfect
for the person who said you pay to go to this school, so do smokers. unless you think they dont – in which case im taking up smoking right now to kill my 200k debt.
this reminds me of the ROTC ban – just because some flamboyant gays didn’t want to be ‘discriminated’ against despite never even considering joining the army, they stopped all the other gay people who would rather stay in the closet and get 200k for school than be eternally indebted, from joining the army
@seriously? we’re all going to get cancer. deal with it.
@But... Barnard is a smoke-free campus, why can’t Columbia be too?
@butt deny grad students the pleasure of cigarettes? can you imagine the uprising?
@New Convert I’m going to pick up smoking just to bother all of these self righteous, health conscious arses. Maybe I’ll smoke outside of John Jay so that while they’re on their way to JJ’s place to pick up some healthy fried food, I can damage their lungs.
@PLEASE ban smoking on this campus, including hookah — which is a lot more harmful than cigarette smoke. just keep your toxic disgusting crap off our beautiful campus. thanks.
@OR... you could stop being a self-serving dick. Plenty of people DON’T die and DON’T get cancer from living in a world with smokers. Accept it as a part of life.
@Dining services should go fuck themselves. They charge high prices (eg: $1 for a banana) so that they can pay their employees above standard wage (confirmed in an email query to them). They should fire those surly tools or pay them less, and/or make good food, and they will achieve fiscal stability. It is completely unethical, fucked up, and self-serving to screw students, their clients, for their own self-interest. They are supposed to be working in our interest, and it is not in our interest to have a mandatory upper-class meal plan. While we’re on the subject, upper-class meal plans are stupid and poorly thought out, charging you more per meal to be on the meal plan if you use your meals primarily for breakfasts, than if you pay by cash.
If dining closes down because they can’t pay up, then close down. We don’t need their shit and they’re scaling way down anyway. Work with vendors like Strokos etc. and have them accept DD (ie, outsource dining).
@ridiculous wait, really? dining services should “fire those surly tools” and outsource dining options to folks who pay minimum wage or below? minimum wage isn’t a living wage, which is probably part of why staff are paid the way they are.
“It is completely unethical, fucked up, and self-serving to screw students, their clients, for their own self-interest. They are supposed to be working in our interest.” I’d say it’s pretty unethical, fucked up, and self-serving to say that those in dining services should be paid less. what classist bullshit.
@smoking sucks seriously, something needs to be done about this. i’m sick (literally) of the smokers in front of River
@2150 yeah, i often feel like i’m not getting enough full meals even though i have lots of dining dollars. thanks for looking into the problem, ccsc!
@okay, dude i have been bugged by this for weeks. what the fuck does your 2150 name mean? I always think it’s a year and you are speaking to me from the future. Cut that out.
@oh, robyn when will you learn?
@seriously she needs to CHILL
@umm smelling puke in the elevator doesn’t affect my health in any long-term way. Butler smokecloud does.
@really if you can’t hold your breath for the 5 seconds required to get from the inside of butler past the front entrance of butler, you might have more crucial imminent respiratory issues. Speaking of more imminent respiratory issues, once you get past the “cloud of smoke” you still have a problem – post 9/11 manhattan air. Also, how do you know that puke in the elevator, all over toilet seats and bathroom floors, and obnoxiously drunk girls don’t piss me off so much it could actually be troublesome for my longterm well-being? *smugly lights a cigarette inside dormroom*
@why should I have to hold my breath for you? You didn’t show me the same consideration, polluting my air, making me smell your exhaled toxins, and harming my lungs.
And I don’t care if I should have to get used to it now because people will do it in the future. I pay to be here and just because the rest of the country is (more) racist doesn’t mean we start being more racist on campus to acclimatize.
@... oh puhleeaze.
yeah, if you grew up in a household where your weird live-in auntie smoked a pack a day in the livingroom, it might have just done you some harm.
if you worked in a bowling alley in the 1980s, you might be facing a higher risk for lung cancer.
if you walk past some smokers outside on a daily basis, it’s just about as carcinogenic as spending most of your time indoors, where nasties from dirty air handling equipment, cleaning chemicals, disintegrating paint, lacquer and other pleasantries permeate the air.
in other words, if you’re uptight enough that you think walking past a smoker outdoors is going to do you harm, then what the hell are you doing in a dirty, chemical laden, artificial environment like new york city?
if we were, say, in the mountains at 9000ft surrounded by trees and wilderness, then maybe, just maybe, you’d have a point…
@FYI http://www.lungusa.org/site/c.dvLUK9O0E/b.35422/k.7D0B/Secondhand_Smoke_Fact_Sheet.htm
smokers are pretty much helping everyone die sooner. yikes.
@whatever oh suck it up everywhere you will ever go in life, there will be smokers, so you might as well deal with it now – since maybe even one day your boss will be a smoker and he won’t give a fuck whether or not you mind him blowing smoke rings in your face. its a free country and the smokers can do whatever they want. it bothers and disgusts the hell out of me every time i have to walk through puke in front of the dorms or even in the elevators, and even more every time i have to hear a girl who thinks she is ‘so cute’ for being drunk off her ass but that doesn’t stop you from getting shitfaced every weekend now does it. stop being hypocrites and accept smoking as a personal choice. when you make the personal choice of not drinking and killing my mood with your stupidity and half-digested dinner, then you can go and tell a smoker not to smoke cuz it bothers you
@what The purpose of these sessions is not to observe how everything we do is useless. We have these student councils so that there can be change, based on popular opinions and plausibility. Sure, we may not be able to control whether our future boss blows smoke rings in our face, but we sure as hell can set some regulations on smoking in front of our dorms (and butler). And we should.
@did you read the update, no smoking in front of dorms is the only thing that might actually be moved on.
@anti-smoker you shouldn’t be allowed to smoke in front of dorms either, it is disgusting to have to walk through 6 people smoking every time i enter and leave the dorms
@when I die of cancer, I will curse the area in front of Butler’s entrance