The perfect vortex to drop your Ferris pasta into

Joe Milholland back on a Monday morning to tell you the always juicy details of a Sunday night spent at a CCSC meeting. 

Rules of Conduct Committee and Town Hall: On Sunday night’s Columbia College Student Council general body meeting, several of the council members emphasized the significance of the changes to the University Rules of Conduct. University Senator Jared Odessky, who called the changes the “most important structural change” he’s seen in his four years at Columbia, talked about the critical portions of the rules that could change. Because of lack of trust in the university after the ’68 protests, Columbia developed an external, independent hearing process for rules violations judged by someone with no formal connection to the university. This process, according to VP of Policy Sejal Singh, gives students many rights, as opposed to an internal process through dean’s discipline, which allows no witnesses, is not public, and has no accountability.

For simple violations of the rules, students have to go through the dean’s discipline. For serious violations, they can either choose to go through dean’s discipline or the external process. However, in the external process, students can only be found not guilty or be suspended/expelled, which goes on their record. In dean’s discipline, they can could also get a warning or censure, which do not go permanently on students’ records and does not force students to be absent from the university for any time. According to Oddessky, Vice Provost for Academic Administration Stephen Rittenberg, who is the current Rules Administrator, has advised against keeping the external process because of its high cost.

Singh also noted the broadness of the rules. In 1992, students blocked only one of the doors to Hamilton and were prosecuted. The judge in the case gave them a one year suspension. In the judge’s opinion, the judge noted that, while he found the rule unfair, he had to punish the students. Rittenberg, however, has been generous to students on rules violation; he receives complaints about every 2-3 weeks but does not choose to prosecute many cases.

Attendance at the Friday town hall (4-6pm in Havemeyer 309) is required for CCSC members.

Dining with Admins: On Wednesday, CCSC will have dinner (Dino BBQ!) with almost every administrator they regularly interact with (except Deantini). At the meeting, the council members made a list of subjects they want to address at the dinner.

1. Giving unused meal swipes to low-income students in cases where those students do not have access to food.
2. Swipe-access for off-campus students.
3. RAs & CAVA, and the consequences that lie therein.
4. College Days
5. Lowering the bureaucracy required for new vendors to get onto the vendor list, a list of “preferred” vendors for Columbia.
6. Encouraging administrators to meet with students who are not on CCSC.
7. Student relaxation space not for meetings or studying.

Budget Surplus: VP of Finance Michael Li announced at the meeting that CCSC’s surplus is “higher than expected” by about $45,000 due to higher enrollment, the cancellation of Fall Bacchanal, and cuts to class council funding. The council debated what to do with the surplus and eventually came to the conclusion that the money should be given to student groups. Giving extra money to student groups this year could either result in an allocation process, which could be timely, or allocating it through an external fund, which could cause the money to just sit in the fund without being given to groups.

Updates:

• Basketball Mania will have a Space Jam theme this year. Because of copyright restrictions with the movie, the event will officially be called “Slam Jam,” but the aesthetics will be inspired by the movie.
• Academic Affairs Representative Grayson Warrick is working on open course evaluations and class registration. For open course evaluations, he wants to ensure the questions that students/faculty want are on the course evaluations.For registration, Warrick wants to understand “quantifiably” how many language-classes and major requirements are needed.
• Class of 2017 president Sean Ryan is meeting with deans from the Office of Judicial Affairs to address his concerns with the how non-sexual assault rules violations are dealt with. Students are only allowed to give a statement, no evidence can be given from students, and advisers can be in the room but are not allowed to speak. Deans are currently both prosecuting and judging students.
• A new staircase in Ferris is definitely happening over either the Winter or Summer break. It will not be a spiral staircase.
• The administration will likely get rid of the wavy green couches in the piano lounge of Ferris Lerner.

Ferris’ notorious safety hazard via Shutterstock