Big seas energy

ESC master Finn Klauber covers the final meeting of the semester this week!

Professional Development and Hunger Awareness Week

ESC met for the final time this semester last night in their old haunt on Lerner 5. Once again ESC had a brief discussion on the Professional Development and Leadership programs, which aim to provide fun and education programs for students. Programs about interviews, project management, comedy and improve, as well as alcohol and networking will provide opportunities to learn useful skills which are not taught in the classroom.

ESC followed this with a presentation from the First-Generation and Low-Income Partnership (FLIP) Food Insecurity Committee Chair, Miguel. His presentation concerned food insecurity at Columbia, which has been a very prevalent topic in ESC and the administration for the past few years. FLIP is partnering with the Food Pantry to collaborate on a Campus Hunger Awareness Week taking place from February 4th to the 8th.

This will include film screenings, speaker panels, possible collaboration with Columbia Dining, as well as a meal packing workshop at Barnard. While Miguel was not formally requesting a cosponsorship from ESC, he wanted to put the event on ESC’s radar and open up a discussion on what a cosponsorship would look like. While Miguel did not know exactly how ESC could involve itself in the planning process, he did not deny ESC’s interest in helping out with the collaborative effort beyond simple financial contributions.

Updates:

• President Garg and another member of the executive board held a meeting with Joyce Jackson regarding housing—specifically tv preferences in dorms. The discussion considered whether the televisions should have cable, or whether they could use accounts for streamable content.
• Columbia is moving forward with implicit bias workshops, having partnered with a consulting company to develop Columbia-specific trainings for faculty, post docs, and TAs. The woman conducting this research, whom ESC referred to with the mononym “Priya,” will call specific members of the Columbia community for personal thoughts on implicit bias, as opposed to a less person mass survey.
• ESC is hoping to finally have their website back up in December, though it may actually take longer than that if the site has to be rebuilt.
• The revision process for faculty/undergraduate relationship policies is in progress in the University Senate. Not only does this policy involve a lot of entities within the university, but it might have to be voted upon if enough of the policy is changed. Furthermore, University Senate has to focus on the graduate student relationship policy, as, according to anecdote, such relationships are more common.
• More locations for the “wellness vending machines” are being considered. The initial criteria for placement was: 1) 24 hour open space, 2) physically accessible space, and 3) no swipe access is needed. Because of strong data, locations are being considered that don’t adhere to the third criterion, such as inside the EC lobby. As Senator Zoha Qamar described it, EC is “a desert for any resource” and a vending machine there would be impactful.
• There will be at least 1 more Lerner Pub occurring next semester in Ancel Plaza. Hopefully there will be more mugs, or a similarly appealing giveaway.