Let's make a deal. I'm going to write to you about financial aid reform at Columbia as best as I can, and in return, you don't get bored reading about it. Deal? Great. There is going to be a really exciting editorial about financial aid appearing next Friday in Spectator that you should read. Likely it will be better than this one, but you should continue reading this one anyway because it has interactive Create Your Own Adventure features.

Chapter One. You care about financial aid reform, but you don't really know what it is. Why do you care? (You know why you care. Skip to Chapter Two.) Well, if you're not personally freaking out about having to pay back tens of thousands of dollars in debt after you graduate, and you are not bothered that some of your friends are upset about their tens of thousands of dollars in debt, then likely you care because you want to live in a society where getting into and affording Columbia is truly determined by your capabilities and not your family's ability to pay back a prohibitively high level of debt.

Chapter Two. You know that you care about financial aid reform, and you want to learn the buzz words of the financial aid reform movement at Columbia. (You know the lingo already. Skip to Chapter Three.) When people compare financial aid at Columbia to the new reforms enacted last year, they are referring to a specific type of reform that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania enacted. All the reforms aimed to encourage promising students from low- and middle-income families to apply to and attend their university by saying explicitly that students from certain income groups will be promised certain benefits. For example, Yale declared last year that students who come from families with an annual income of less than $45,000 aren't required to make a family contribution, while students from families with incomes between $45,000 and $60,000 will have their family contribution significantly reduced.

A group of students came together last year under the banner of the Financial Aid Reform Coalition in order to bring Columbia up to par with our peer institutions. Its creation was inspired by the success of a similar group at Yale that helped pressure their school's administration to reform financial aid policies. Students for Environmental and Economic Justice, Chicano Caucus, College Democrats, Black Students Organization, Club Zamana, Columbia College Student Council, other key groups, and a lot of students not involved in any of these groups formed the backbone of the group. The coalition put together a survey to see how students wanted financial aid to be reformed; its members collected over 1,000 signatures on their petition in a single week, calling upon the administration to reform financial aid in various ways; and then the coalition topped off the year by taking the petition three-dimensional with a huge speak-out on Low Plaza (over 200 students is pretty big according to most official "Demonstration Organizing at College" handbooks).

Chapter Three. You are determined to help reform financial aid and need direction. (You think "reform financial aid" is an empty catchphrase and become discouraged from working on the issue because Columbia students are generally apathetic about things like working to implement huge University policy changes. Go back to Chapter Two.) There are two different theoretical angles from which students can work on financial aid reform. (In fact, I am sure there are more angles, but if there's one thing I've learned as an econ major, it's that creating and working from simplified models of the world is totally legal.)

The first way to work on financial aid is to remind everyone in the Columbia administration and on the Columbia student councils that these are changes which must be made (i.e., make a lot of noise). We need the encouragement to keep us focused. The second way is more radical. It is based on the premise that donors are more likely to donate to help Columbia students when Columbia students are the ones asking for the help. So be ready to work with the administration in order to reach out to the potential donors/alumni who will be paying for the expansion of financial aid (i.e., make a lot of noise that convinces alumni to donate in order to improve their school).

But more practically, in order to approach either of these angles toward reforming financial aid, or to invent new ones, go to the Activities Fair today on Low Plaza between noon and 3 p.m. and talk to any of the FAiR representatives stationed at the tables run by their member groups. (Return to Chapter Two.) If you don't make it there in time, e-mail us at ccsc@columbia.edu to get involved on this and, of course, any other project you want to work on to improve Columbia.

The author is the president of CCSC and is a Columbia College senior majoring in economics.