General Studies Lounge

This morning I attended a breakfast held by Student Auxiliary & Business Services. The point of the breakfast was to hear feedback from the three undergraduate presidents and to celebrate some past successes and meet the new Executive VP leading the Division - Jeff Scott. The breakfast was interesting in that it was a very solid way to engage with both the leaders and the people in the trenches within the organization.

I met Scott Wright, the VP in charge of the division and his boss Jeff Scott. Both were eager to arrange one on one meetings with me. What struck me throughout the presentation and breakfast was that they were extremely tightly integrated into the interests of CC/SEAS. They knew those presidents on a more personal level, and their services were being more directly consumed by those constituencies. After considering the issue I realized that GS services appear to be spread among a larger number of divisions.

One of the jewels of achievement for the division this year was a so-called "one stop shopping" for all the service sign-ups the first year students needed this year. Such a concept would be amazing and unknown to GS students presently as we face an endless task of going from office to office to arrange financial aid, work study, housing, registration, advising, meals, transportation, errands and more. The major piece of the GS service need that is outside the purview of the division is housing.

My conclusion from the meeting was that the division is very eager to help us, but since they don't own our entire set of services, the energy I would expend working to earn improvements will only get us so far. The true change will be if all GS services is consolidated. To meet yet another set of folks for every balkanized GS service will kill any progress I could hope to make on those fronts. We need to centralize.

That is not to say that GS should become part of CC/SEAS. It is to say that the high-level management of our service requirements needs to be under one roof so that student feedback and student leadership is not fragmented as we seek improvements and ultimately a better life for GS students during their time at Columbia University.