Money Talks, and Money Walks

Last year as many of us recall, the student-run fAiR Coalition was formed to address undergraduate financial aid at Columbia University. Notice the terms being used - "undergraduate" financial aid. The Coalition received over 1100 signatures from students across the University requesting that the debt burden of students be relinquished for those whose families make less than $50,000 per year. A noble goal. So noble in fact, it is now a done deal at Columbia College and SEAS. Many of us in GS signed the petition; yet when we were organizing a greater GS presence within the Coalition, this is what one of the founders of fAiR wrote back to me saying via email ,

"when creating the platform we decided to limit our demands to CC/SEAS undergraduates, not because we don't want to work with you but because a-to be quite honest, i think GS sort of slipped our mind and b-because we evaluated what we deemed the University would find feasible"


WOW! Imagine the irony. Students from Columbia's other colleges fighting for the financial rights of underprivileged parents across America being able to afford to send their students to college. Yet, those very same parents and older Americans go to school on the very same campus.