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CCSC was not quite as eager to participate as these little tykes
CCSC met for the second time of the year. Sarah Ngu and Maren Killackey break down all the action.
Big Hits
- If sometime in recent weeks you were frantically emailing your professor for the required readings because they weren’t on Courseworks, you shouldn’t have needed to (you spammer, you!). In 2009, the University Senate passed a resolution requiring the “schools request that professors post course descriptions and information about textbooks and other required readings in appropriate online sites at least two weeks before classes begin.” Needless to say, Columbia is a decentralized place, and enforcement of this resolution has been… lacking. Bruno Mendes, CC’14, academic affairs rep, is trying to hold the University to its very own standards about textbooks and submitting final grades before the deadline this year. Email him at brm2126@columbia.edu if you have complaints.
- True to their campaign promises, this year’s Exec Board is trying to cut down on Council expenses to leave more money for clubs. But it’s caused a bit of tension within the class councils, because their method of doing so requires what some see as an additional layer of micro-managing-bureaucracy: traditionally, before class council representatives can make a purchase, they, like every student organization, must get an e-form signed by their advisor. Now, reps must also obtain the consent from VP—Funding, Kevin Zhai. Zhai emphasized that he will likely approve all expenses and is just here to ensure that councils aren’t doing unnecessarily expensive things (like ordering expedited shipping on t-shirts because they forgot to place the order on time).
Littler Bits
- CCSC has a schnazzy website designed by Wilfred Chan: www.yourccsc.com. It’s a big improvement from their old one, and worth checking out, if only for the awkward camera angles in their introductory videos.
- During the policy meeting, Ryan Cho, VP—Policy, asked for volunteers to take on the swipe-access issue, but no one responded. It was awkward.
- When Cho polled the committee for any new initiatives to take on for the year, the only idea brought up was more laundry machines in McBain. Apparently everything else at Columbia is great all the time always.
On the Horizon
- According to the Barry Weinberg, head of SGB, Dean Valentini promises that students will be represented on the Education Planning and Policy Committee (it does important things like oversee changes to curriculum and tenure). Hold him to that at tonight’s town hall in 309 Havemeyer at 8pm!
- Karishma Habbu, CC’13, is on a one-woman mission to improve Financial Aid and Columbia Psychological Services. You go girl! If you have any complaints or information that would help her, email kah2167@columbia.edu
Youthful vigor via Wikimedia Commons
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@Where you there? Ryan listed out a whole bunch of CCSC inititatives and several people suggested others. You should make sure you have the minutes sent to you in case you miss something BC we were in that room for almost an hour and we were definitely talking about more than laundry machines
@Sarah From what I recall, there were no brand new ideas, other than the ones that Ryan proposed, except for the bit about laundry machines. There were some comments tagged to Ryan’s proposals about final grade/textbook deadlines. The exceptions are the reps: Mendes did bring up something involving U. Writing that he was looking to pursue and Habbu talked about CPS/Fin Aid. Most of the discussion was about issues that Ryan/e-board came up with.
@Anonymous That was because the first meeting focused on new issues we’d like to tackle this year. The meeting from this past Sunday (and obviously the only meeting you care to mention) had a schedule of what to talk about and those were a combination of continuing policies and new policy ideas we had discussed. If you’re going to attempt to be a journalist, at least provide an accurate view as opposed to some view you hope will garner you some journalistic credibility at this school.
@sarah Fair enough. Two Sundays ago, someone did bring up investigating the junior regroup process since he went through it and didn’t fare well. That idea was duly noted here: http://bwog.com/2011/09/14/what-to-expect-from-ccsc/
The bigger point is that most of the issues that the committee, with the exception of a few, is pursuing have been proposed by the VP of Policy. People, aside from Habbu, are not climbing over each other to propose their latest ideas to stimulate change at Columbia — yet. But there is more of the year to come.
Oh, and we should meet in person. I’ll see you at the next meeting, if you care to introduce yourself.
@sarah Actually, it was Ryan who brought up the junior regroup process — other people chimed in to add onto it. Name a new issue that was brought up (aside from Habbu’s and Mendes’) by someone in the committee other than Cho.
@Anonymous Go Karishma!
@if they want to cut down on expenses how about they hold their retreat in SGO rather than some remote lodge that they (we) have to pay for (in addition to transportation, food, etc)?