• The Problem: Columbia should take care of all its students
  Students need help during this pandemic, and our school has failed to provide for our basic needs. Columbia’s financial aid and pell-eligible students count on housing and food for the semester from the university, families who were not prepared or financially able to fit that into their budget. Students counted on the University to treat them as students whose lives for four years were oriented to pay for tuition only, rather than being in a position to pay for everything else if they are suddenly no longer residential students. As difficult as adjusting to life in a pandemic has been for everyone, the sudden changes to university life are devastating for students whose families are financially precarious. It is unacceptable to expect students to pay for housing, food, safety, and technological resources when they have insecurities outside of school. The decision to close the University has also disproportionately affected students who may not have the same access to the same educational resources in their home states or countries. Every humanities department at Columbia makes it clear that resources are not equally distributed in the world. Clearly, being low income creates large disparities that need to be accounted for. Further, simply being a university student puts students in a precarious position if they/their family aren’t already financially secure because we have temporarily reoriented our life. For example, most students probably don’t have a full time job. The university aspires to be a place accessible to talented students, even if they are poor, marginalized, etc. and if it wants to be that then it has to take care of all of its students when there are huge disasters/disruptions.
• What do we want the university to do?      
   For financial aid students, receiving funding from Columbia under the CARES act via small grants would go a long way to alleviating the financial burden on its neediest students. Columbia University needs to notify students about their receipt of the CARES Act grant and release a statement about the allocation of the funds, because the funds are supposed to be for emergency grants that students may need now. We are looking for transparency. The funding was distributed to universities in late April, with Columbia receiving $12.8 million, yet we are now almost two months later with no notification regarding this grant or simple updates from Columbia on what is happening. For families who struggle to budget week-to-week, waiting for months is a significant burden.

1. Columbia University needs to keep us informed as they reach a decision on what they plan to do with the CARES Act money, whether it be accepting it and opening an application for students to apply for aid, or rejecting it. That information should also include a specific timeline for their deliberation and potential distribution of the funds. Other schools (e.g. UChicago, Boston University) have received and recently distributed CARES Act funding from the government to their students in need, mostly students who qualify for aid such as the Pell Grant from their FAFSA. 

2. Columbia University’s Teacher’s College website states that they, specifically, have an application that opened June 5th for people to apply to receive funding. If Columbia’s other schools accept the money, the applications for the grant need to be opened expeditiously. 

3. The CARES Act grants should prioritize those who receive financial aid AND are Pell-eligible (i.e. Pell Grant recipients)

• The details of what has happened up to this point
  The only financial support Columbia students have received during this COVID-19 pandemic has been a maximum $500 grant for emergency move-out (March), and a refund for our housing and dining plan (late April). Our housing and dining refunds were reduced by the percent of financial aid we receive from the University, with the minimum refund set at $1200. As a result, the students who needed the most financial support from the institution, and are thus granted a large portion of financial aid, got the smallest refunds. Furthermore, those refunds were not processed until late-April, the same time Columbia was offered the CARES act grant. According to the Columbia Spectator, “16 percent of undergraduate students in Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are Pell Grant recipients The number nears 40 percent of students for the School of General Studies—around 70 percent of whom are enrolled, full-time students.” Students, especially those heavily reliant on university support and further disenfranchised during the pandemic, should not be left in the dark about funding that could help them at a time when the support is most crucial.
  Columbia received $12.8 million from the U.S. government and is “reviewing regulations before making a decision to receive the aid” according to an article written by the Columbia Spectator, one of the school’s newspapers. There is no other information available on how Columbia has handled the federal grant or whether they would accept it to financially support their students in these difficult times. Financial aid officers and administrators have not given any answers. 
  The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act, is a law intended to address the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The Secretary of Education clarified that “the only statutory requirement is that the funds be used to cover expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus (including eligible expenses under a student’s cost of attendance, such as food, housing, course materials, technology, health care, and child care)”