As Barnard approaches its 125th birthday next year, President Debora Spar told Barnard’s Student Government Association on Monday to get ready for the money to start rolling in, for the party hats to come out, and... for a few more budget cuts. Emma Goss reports on the fun and the finances discussed at last night’s SGA meeting:
- Pooling resources, and resourcing the pool: Spar acknowledged that students are upset over the impending closure of Barnard’s pool, but she said that using the pool space for faculty offices during major campus renovations is better than the alternative—planting a large tent on the lawn. She also said she is working to find another facility that can offer Barnard students women-only swim hours:
“We’re looking at every option in the city that will do women-only swimming. We are going to reach out to the students who are involved in worrying about the pool. It’s very important that there are women-only hours somewhere. We really want to get student input. We already have a little money set aside to cover the cost of that."
- Apology for the housing crunch: Spar expressed sympathy for everyone affected by this summer's housing shortage:
“This was a really unfortunate series of bad events, and like many things it creates a teaching moment. My biggest concern is figuring out what went wrong. A lot of people just got caught by it, and it’s terrible. It’s horrible to find out in August that you don’t have a bed, or you have a roommate you didn’t think you were having. It made a lot of people’s lives miserable. Moving ahead, how do we build these early warning systems in, how do we get the information early enough to give people enough time to make decisions? It did not fall hardest on us. It fell hardest on the students who did not get the housing situation they were hoping for.”
