This first article from the Columbia Spectator this week is about how a group on campus gains funding in order to throw a spring concert every year. This year, the group proposed that the concert be held at an off-campus venue in order to cut skyrocketing security costs. They felt like this would be a good idea because then they would have a larger budget for the artist and thus could be more selective with that. I was a little confused reading this article because what specifically Bacchanal was. I thought it was the group that specifically funds the spring concert, but I was still a little unsure of what this group’s purpose actually was. Either way, this article does a good job of laying out where the money comes from even though the committee itself didn’t reveal any precise cost information. They looked at percentages and used charts to put everything into perspective. I think the aim of this article was to prove why the group is choosing to move off-campus, but I wasn’t sure why they felt the need to show that students were for the idea, but still weren’t allowed to vote on it.
Next, I stumbled upon an article that speaks about a partnership with libraries at Columbia in order to help students combat the high costs of the required textbooks they need for class. Despite the school’s reputation for meeting students where they are despite their socioeconomic background, the required textbook costs for their students still remain overwhelming. In order to combat that stress, Butler Library at Columbia created a circulation of textbooks for low-income first-generation students specifically to help. A student organization known as FLIP started the collection in 2014 with student donations and has continued to grow since then. This article also goes in to talk about how financial aid packages have tried to compensate for this cost, but there is still often a large gap of unbilled expenses that aren’t accounted for that students have to pay out of pocket. I also liked the part about how they have generally focused around general education as well as science, technology, engineering, and math textbooks. However, they are working towards accommodating the humanities since those classes often come with a more niche collection of required texts that can change often. That hit home for me because I usually don’t have a lot of textbooks that are over $100 apiece, but I still have to often find books that aren’t as widespread and accessible. So, this article could have a larger audience of students that span outside of Columbia.
