“Space” is kind of a strange concept on the Internet, but I still can’t believe I’m wasting it in reference to the rather pathetic saga that wrapped up a few minutes ago. Unless you’re of a moralizing bent (or a novelizing bent, since the anti-heroic Spitzer seems like he’d be better suited to Philip Roth or Dostoevsky than to real life), there really ain’t that much to say here. Now I’m not of a moralizing bent. And needless to say, the man was felled from one of the highest offices in the country by moral failings so flabbergastingly familiar–and yes, so flabbergasting–that only the most sanctimonious of critics would dare take pot-shots at him. So I’ll wrap up my own comments on this by adding that he’d be a fantastic subject for a David Mamet play.

A quick whirl around the Internet, sans opinionating from yours truly:

Philip Weiss: Have mercy on him.

Tom Robbins: Don’t. (The Village Voice’s website isn’t working on my computer. What the fuck?)

National Review, Weekly Standard: Nothing so far. Make of that what you will.

TNR: He actually is a Philip Roth character!

The Nation: But he’s old news. (Might wanna actually read this one, as it’s an interesting look at Columbia alum and soon-to-be New York governor David Paterson’s progressive politics)

Charles Gasparino: Prostitutes were the least of his problems. Enjoy your spot in Hell, Elliot.

And that’s the end of that chapter as Homer Simpson would say. On to something a little more local.

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Perhaps it’s a little early to start gauging reaction to today’s big, non-Eliot Spitzer-related announcement (and speaking of Spitzer, this headline should like, win someone a Nobel or something), especially since we haven’t heard from Andrew Delbanco yet. But this is Columbia, and since we’re one of the world capitals of civic-minded self-importance (oxymoron alert!) we might as well start taking stock of this stuff now, before we get swamped with redundant, near-meaningless statements from groups like the Columbia Progressive Alliance of Jewish Engineers for Sustainable Development–an organization which might actually exist, for all I know.

GS Dean Peter Awn is busy spinning the extra million dollars allocated to GS financial aid, and his GS-wide email this morning closed by lauding the “ongoing generosity of alumni and friends of the School of General Studies through The Columbia Campaign for Undergraduate Education.”

Someone’s eventually going to have to say the obvious and point out what a huge disappointment this announcement must have been for GS brass. The 17% raise in aid is comparable to increases in past years. And as much as the announcement marks a potential turning point in the school’s policy towards affordability, GS has been disturbingly excluded from it. Simply put, there are no major changes here. The school still has to depend on whatever table scraps it gets from the general fundraising coffers. And it’s still incapable of rescuing its students from the terrifying GS debt trap.

I trust GSSC won’t take this lying down. I solicited a list of questions and concerns from a student council member–thankfully GSSC is as skeptical as I am, and a hell of a lot more skeptical than Dean Awn. Some of their as-yet unofficial concerns, in the early going:

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Is it just me, or does this sound awfully similar to Yale’s financial aid plan? And is it just me, or does this seem to have more to do with keeping up with the rest of the Ivy League than making Fair Alma a utopia of affordability and economic justice? Find out tomorrow, when these and other sundry topics will be treated in full analysis/breakdown form.

Meanwhile, not much love for one Columbia alum at the must-read National Journal. 

General Studies student council president Niko Cunningham sent the following missive to his constituents a few days ago:

Dear GS,

This is the most important email you will ever receive from me as your Student Body President. On April 1, new students admitted to Columbia College and SEAS will receive acceptance packets delivered to their homes throughout America.  Why should you care?

Columbia is engaged in a financial aid arms race with other Ivy heavyweights such as Brown, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, and Dartmouth.  Over the past few months, one by one, each of those Universities have made bold and paradigm-shifting financial aid overtures to students those Schools compete for.

It is expected that in a matter of days, Columbia University will announce an extraordinary financial aid plan for undergraduates.  The University does not want to lose its brightest incoming students to other institutions, and now it is forced to offer extraordinary aid to those same students to compete. But, will GS be included, or even mentioned?

I’m not sure what makes Cunningham think that “an extraordinary financial aid plan” is about to be announced, but assuming this is true (a huge assumption, as such an announcement would be uncharacteristically abrupt by Fair Alma’s standards. Affordability typically hasn’t been one of PrezBo’s talking points either, especially with the university throwing money at a new institute whose pointlesness is barely outstripped by its self-importance. The religion major is basically a program in religion, society and public life anyway–this is a classic example of scholars goading the university into a pointless bureucractic reshuffling that has nothing whatsoever to do with academics), I’m not sure he completely understands how financial aid works.

Columbia College’s admissions are need-blind. General Studies’ are not. This means that Columbia is obligated to make all College students’ educations affordable–if they weren’t, you’d see Princeton and Cornell swamped with applications from qualified middle and lower-income students. But its also a symptom of the Colleges’ near-limitless reservoirs of cash. GSers are so saddled with debt that donating to the school’s financial aid coffers is the last thing they have in mind. The College has John Kluge.

This is hardly an equitable situation, and GS’s financial aid stash is barely enough to cover some cosmetic “merit-based” aid. But if GS were to be integrated into any major expansion of CC and SEAS financial aid, it would mean that the school would have to reach into money specifically set aside for the other undergraduate schools. This would come at a cost–for one thing, it could presage the end of GS’s existence as a financially and administratively separate institution. The last thing GS should want is to have to leech off of the other undergraduate schools, especially since its in the unfavorable position of having to constantly justify its existence.

GS should be included in any long-term financial aid plan. But Cunningham–and whichever administrators are hypothetically planning this surprise financial aid expansion of his–must include it in a way that doesn’t threaten GS’s long-term existence. GS should be willing to give up the possibility of need-based aid in order to ensure its survival as an undergraduate school that caters specifically to nontraditional students.  I’m sure Cunningham agrees with me. And I’m sure there’s a way to give financial aid to long-suffering GS students without allowing the school to get bought out.

Actually there is a way: get rid of ridiculous academic boondoggles. Switch GS student loans over to aid, as has already been done at the other undergraduate schools. Get a rich CC alum to underwrite a good chunk of GS’s existing financial aid requirements. There. Problem solved, right?

Like these guys. The SIPA blog’s running a little thin at the moment, but it looks like it’s got potential. Once Jagdish Bhagwadi wins his Nobel, it’ll be the only Oslo-approved outlet in the entire Columbia blogosphere. He’s a huge talent, Morningside Post-ers. Don’t waste him.

Looks like those GSers are smarter than you all give them credit for. For the past three weeks our campus has looked more like Columbia, Missouri than Columbia University–and the recent lull in activity offers the perfect opportunity to thrust pet issues upon a rapt and controversy-starved student public. And that’s what the GSSC will hopefully do at tonight’s town hall meeting on finance.

The GSers’ gripes about financial aid are both long-standing and legitimate. Contrary to popular belief, GS is not a continuing education or professional school–GSers are studying for undergraduate degrees that require the same number of credits as the ones awarded to CC students, and the differences between the GS and CC academic programs aren’t as meaningful as snobbish CCers make them out to be.

GS financial aid has always been a thorny issue, as it carries huge implications for GS’s survival as a distinct undergraduate school. Without a huge, rich alumni base (remember that most GSers graduate well into adulthood) there’s very little money laying around for scholarships; meanwhile the school’s unique application process all but disallows the awarding of need-based financial aid. One solution is instituting need-based aid and slashing the number of available application slots; another is to merge CC and GS so that they each draw from the same financial aid pool.

The better solution is for the Columbia administration to set aside more money for “merit-based” GS aid–to make GS giving a line item in the Columbia Campaign, and to solicit donations from CC alumni who understand the benefits of preserving GS as a unique and distinct undergraduate school.

Could GS financial aid turn into a big campus cause? Probably not. But hopefully tonight’s meeting and Chima’s article will get people talking.

ZEN: And now the Larry Johnson rant on the Khalidi-Obama connection is on the Huffington Post, Technorati authority: 2019832109832. Great. Juuuuust great.

For two reasons: firstly, it’s only a matter of time before the rising waters claim our dear College Walk. I’d say enjoy the place while you still can, but I fear our beloved lagoon might be beyond saving at this point. Basically, just stay inside. Or better still, run for your lives. Or better still, curse the fact that the University paid for an alleged summer-long College Walk renovation project that did nothing about the thoroughfare’s well-known drainage problems.

Second reason: Roger Clemens is testifying on Capitol Hill right now. This marks the climax of one of the strangest sports fueds in history–just the idea of Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee being in the same room–with Arlen Spector, no less!–makes me want to put this blogging shit on hold and head for The Heights. But onward:

Everything that’s wrong with Columbia. In a sentence, in a nutshell, in sum: “CUIT’s current approach to expanding wireless access is noncommittal: Its Web site states that those who need wireless access in a part of campus that is currently uncovered must e-mail CUIT to submit a request.”

Hmmm…I wonder how a typical email exchange goes. Student: “I need wireless access _____.” CUIT (paraphrase): “In your fucking dreams.” Special thanks to the Spectator editorial board for exposing our school’s deep, bureaucratic woes, and for making my monsoon-drenched Wednesday just that much more depressing.

Careful what we wish for. Ignoring the basic thrust of Michelle Diamond’s pretty unremarkable article about financial aid: what ever happened to the Congressional proposal that would have forced universities to spend 5% of their endowment every year? Any progressive-minded fan of educational equity should love this idea (least of all for the big-name Republicans who backed it at some point or another)–because more spending from the endowment doesn’t just mean more money for things like financial aid and capital improvements (hey, like wifi!). It also means less money in the endowment, which means less of a return on investment, which means less money sitting around collecting interest/institutional prestige.

Endowments seem even less necessary in light of Columbia’s relatively successful capital campaign–sure an endowment partially covers the school’s operating costs, but at a school like Harvard those costs sure aren’t in the $26 billion range. These schools have piles of money that goes totally untouched, but more to the point–Harvard and Yale are two of the only schools that can afford to throw money at upper middle-class students, largely becausethey maintain such huge endowments in the first place. I’m not sure this is an example that Columbia should be emulating, and I’m not sure Diamond realized that Delbanco was arguing against us following Harvard and Yale’s “lead” on financial aid.

Chris shrugs. But wow, that is an impressive (or horrifying) list of conservative thinkers who went to Columbia at some point or another. The neocons (and crypto-neocons, like Chambers) alone form a veritable American Enterprise Institute-style talking head fantasy team. And for the record, Kulawik is slightly off when he says Kahlilzad is the highest-ranking Muslim in the Bush administration–he is actually the highest-ranking Muslim in any American administration, ever.

ZEN: Looks like the Women’s basketball team is getting a McDonald’s all-American (holy fuck, the womens’ basketball team is getting a McDonald’s all-American!). Just don’t tell her she can’t actually get an undergraduate journalism degree…

Saturday’s Times featured an article about the enormous endowments of some private secondary schools, focusing on my twin brother’s alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy. Exeter now has an endowment of $1 billion, amounting to $1 million for each of the school’s 1000 students. The high school from which I graduated, Phillips Academy Andover has a similarly large endowment, following closely behind Exeter with $800 million. Like Columbia, both schools raise funds fiercely from alumni and parents. While some of it goes towards construction and renovation of facilities, both schools have been focusing efforts on increasing financial aid and making the elite schools–once the haven of the rich and well-connected–accessible to anyone, regardless of income. Both schools have recently become need-blind, with Exeter instituting a policy wherein students whose families make less than $75,000 will be granted a full scholarship. Read the rest of this entry »