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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Let’s talk about GS housing. It’s an open secret that the administration treats GSers like crap. Speaking as a GSer myself (albeit a super non-traditional one–I’m a sophomore in the General Studies/Jewish Theological Seminar joint program, although if someone asks me my school I usually just tell them List College), I can understand why Columbia’s other, oft-maligned undergraduate school gets the proverbial shaft. Most GSers live off-campus, many of them study here part-time, few are visible campus personalities and few make major contributions to the so-called Columbia “community.” Of course, unlike most undergrads, GSers have lives in which Columbia is but a small part: they have jobs, families, and, because of GS’s arcane admissions and financial aid scheme, piles of terrifying student debt. And if you think they got into Fair Alma through the back door, try dropping out of school and working for five years.

With that in mind, the University’s mildly recalcitrant attitude toward GS brings to mind a particularly damning drawback to the command economy. From the article:

“The issue is not even about the lack of units themselves, but about the lack of services they [students] receive,” said Paige Lampkin, GS ’08 and University Senate Housing Committee co-chair.

So Columbia has enough units to house everyone–perhaps even enough units to exile Ph.D. students to apartments in the 110s and allow transfers and GSers to get pooled into Wallach or East Campus. But Columbia is creating an artificial supply shock for… what reason exactly? The expectation that they can unload these units elsewhere? Sheer bureaucratic complacency?

Whatever the motivation, the Spec has officially granted the GS housing episode “controversy” status. This either speaks to the lack of real controversy on campus, or to the fact that Columbia needs to treat GS with a little more respect. This begins with not threatening to get rid of it altogether, but caving to some very basic demands on housing also wouldn’t be a bad start.

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.