Demands: Administrative Reform

Columbia University has failed to demonstrate its commitment to providing safe spaces for all members of our campus community. The administration has yet to fulfill its avowed goals of making the long-term, institutional changes necessary in stemming the rising tide of hate incidents aimed at students of color, students of faith, LGBTQ students, and other oppressed groups. We demand that the following changes be enacted so that students may hold the University accountable to its purported anti-discriminatory values.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs is an integral part of our community. From student group advising to programming, to building a support network for individual students, the OMA's range of operation requires more resources than that which is granted by this school. The OMA is grossly understaffed and housed in a space that is simply inadequate considering the scope of its responsibilities. Furthermore, the OMA has only a limited purview in working with Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The OMA must have administrative support and a means of inter-school collaboration in order to address issues of diversity on a campus-wide level.

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1. We demand more advisors and counselors for cultural groups, students of color, the LGBTQ community and communities of faith, with student involvement in the hiring process of said personnel. We ask that that the Office of Multicultural Affairs be expanded physically and responsibly, and that more support for collaboration between the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Columbia and the Multicultural Affairs Office at Barnard be given by the University administration.

The University administration has failed to facilitate inter-school communication between faculty, administrators, staff, and students alike, resulting in inconsistent responses to bias incidents and hate crimes. The introduction of a Vice Provost for Multicultural Affairs would greatly improve channels of communication between schools and the campus community on issues of diversity. This Vice Provost would be able to facilitate the connections between various schools and implement campus-wide initiatives.

The creation of this position would ensure a level of consistency and accountability in the way that the administration addresses bias incidents and hate crimes as well as other student concerns, and would encourage the university to be proactive in addressing issues of campus climate. Columbia would be able to respond to such issues preemptively, rather than reacting to incendiary incidents that reflect badly on our school as a whole. The Vice Provost should be responsible for providing incentives for certain policy changes that will encourage greater communication and interaction between faculty and students, communication and initiatives across schools, and lend continued support for anti-oppression training for incoming students, as well as for incoming faculty and public safety.

2. We demand a Vice Provost for Multicultural Affairs to administer and direct the University's policies affecting students within all the schools of the University.

3. We demand institutionalized, mandatory, full day workshops on issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, power and privilege for all incoming faculty, and public safety; and that the training focus on anti-oppression, rather than sensitivity and diversity.

4. We demand that Columbia's Public Safety announce instances of hate crimes when they are reported and issue an annual report of reported bias incidents and hate crimes and how they have been addressed.