Can’t spell success with out (a)ccess!

Joe Milholland makes the latest on CCSC accessible to you! 

On Sunday night, three students with disabilities visited the council to discuss problems with accessibility on campus. Their problems:

• A lack of accessibility information in CCSC emails about events. One student pointed to the direction for the Columbia University Powwow as an example of good accessibility info.
• At events, when there is a line of people, those running the event often do not make the line accessible.
• Events on campus, like the President of Afghanistan’s recent talk, can limit accessibility excessively.
• Some student groups that need to meet in accessible places can’t.
• Weather conditions have closed off Butler ramps a lot.
• NSOP lacks disability access or information, a difficulty especially hard for new students.
• Commencement and its set-up limit accessibility on campus.
• A major problem are the elevators that take students from the lower to higher parts of campus and which are often off limits. The Office of Disability Services, or any other part of Columbia’s administration, do not notify students about changes to accessibility on-campus; instead, students have to notify the office themselves.
• All three of the students said they had either skipped classes or put themselves at risk to get to classes.

Several council members at the meeting said they were interested in joining a task force about accessibility on campus.

The other big issue before the council that night was Bacchanal. “It seemed like there were fewer incidents than in past years,” said CCSC President Peter Bailinson about Bacchanal this year. His question before people in the Satow Room that night was what Bacchanal, currently an ABC group, should look like in years to come.

Student Services Rep Chris Godshall noted that it is “ridiculous” that Bacchanal is treated like any other group, pointing out that this year was not the first time an outside force had to step in leading up to Bacchanal. USenator Ramis Wadood said that while Bacchanal should be its own community, it needs more oversight.

Bacchanal Co-President Benjamin Kornick relayed a bunch of information about Bacchanal’s process to the council. Firstly, several of the costs (like for the lawns, which were expected to be destroyed) will be lower than budgeted. Second, the committee books artists at variable times each year (most universities have a set date for booking an artist), and the central committee, composed of students who “eat, sleep, and breathe music” according to Kornick, looks at around 100-150 artists. Bands cost about three to four times more than rappers or Djs. Fall Bacchanal would have had several artists with smaller reputations rather than a very well-known headliner.

Kornick said that the primary oversight this year was from the administration. The committee had so many new things to deal with that the decision to sell tickets went through the Student Engagement Office. According to Kornick, the Bacchanal Committee was shocked that the tickets sold out so quickly.

VP of Campus Life Andrew Ren said that Bacchanal needed to improve its communications with students and suggested that the committee appoint a liaison. However, VP of Finance Michael Li pointed out that past liaisons haven’t worked.

In a straw poll vote at the end of the meeting, 4 supported Bacchanal adopting Glass House Rock’s model, 15 supported a liaison to Bacchanal, 21 supported a system whereby funding decisions made through the council but the structure of the committee is otherwise unchanged, and 1 supported no change to the Bacchanal committee (some council members voted more than once).

Updates:

• The council looked at a draft of a food insecurity proposal. The proposal was for a two-year program that would collect data. The program would at first give students free meal swipes donated by other students, then move to an institutionalized system for providing free meal swipes to low-income students. Those who need meal swipes would have to see a financial aid administrator to assess their situation. The proposal had not opposition among the council in a straw poll.
• Proposed revisions for the University Rules of Conduct will likely come out tomorrow night, according to Usenator Marc Heinrich. Heinrich said two areas of concern about the rules were media figures being charged in protests and student representation on an internal panel.
• Bailinson, VP of Communications Abby Porter, and Class of 2017 President Sean Ryan are trying to get JJ’s hours extended to 1am on weekends.
• According to Wadood, the Commission on Diversity is reaching out to student groups for representation on the commission.
• The swipe access proposal is moving along, but admins don’t want to allow swipe access over winter break to commuter students, and they want applications in order to reject commuter students who have disrespected housing in the past.
• Porter is still working on the senior survey. She noted that any data collected by the survey would have to be “super-statistically significant” if it was to drive policy decisions.

Key to success via Shutterstock