This summer, President Bollinger announced that students who were enrolled in the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters would be able to take courses over the Summer 2021 semester, tuition free, adding up to a total of 40 credits for the entire academic year. While we applaud the university for offering students this amazing financial benefit, this generous offering is currently limited to students enrolled in Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. General Studies students, who make up over a third of the undergraduate population, will be required to pay the full $1,896 per credit for courses taken over the Summer 2021 term. We are simply asking that GS students be given the same financial benefits as the other undergraduate students. 

From veterans to actors, parents to working professionals, the School of General Studies is one of the most diverse student bodies in the Ivy League. Columbia University prides itself on its ability to recruit these talented nontraditional students and to offer them a chance at a traditional education. To exclude a third of the student body from receiving these benefits is nothing short of a failure to serve the very people this university takes so much pride in. We applied to this school under the assumption that we would be treated the same as any other undergraduate student in the university, and we are asking for the University to deliver on that promise.
We encourage President Bollinger and the Dean of General Studies, Lisa Rosen-Metsch, to revisit this decision and include the students of General Studies— who enrolled through the entirety of the 2020-2021 academic year—in the tuition free summer courses.