A package about packages

During the Fall, the Lerner Package center, which IKON Document Management operates under a contract with Columbia Mail Services, reduced its operating hours and canceled Saturday deliveries. Now that the Spring semester has begun, those changes are being felt by patrons facing long lines and delayed deliveries.

"I'm on my way to pick up a package that was a next day package that was really urgent that I needed to have by Friday and FedEx tracked it and it said it got here at 4 on Friday and I didn't get a notification until [the following Tuesday]," explained one undergraduate.

His friend shared a similar experience: "My stepmom sent me a care package during finals week with food and snack and she didn't tell me about it. It was supposed to get it right before finals started and I got it the day of my last final, the day before I was supposed to go back home."

One student who was unable to speak on camera said, she received important medical documents which were sent to her overnight four days after their confirmed delivery to the Mail room.

"When you order [packages]," expressed a freshmen who had just received a delayed package. "You get a number so you can track it and it'll say that it's been delivered days ago but you still won't get an email from the package center."

While students find the long waits frustrating, they don't blame mail room staff.

"I don't know if that's actually a fault with the package center and how long it takes to distribute it from when they get to the actual mailbox and when they send out the email."

"It would have been great to get that thing here on time but they probably got 400 things at that one time. I don't know. I don't really blame them."

Although many students still rely on the package room, some students are taking steps to ensure that their school supplies and other necessities are available when they need them.

"If I need a book early in the semester, I will usually just buy it from the bookstore because I know that it's probably not going to get here in time."

Although the wait for packages has been long, Package Center officials say that they currently have no intention of extending hours or hiring more staff.

CUArts budget slashed

The Columbia University Arts Initiative is struggling to make ends meet after its budget was slashed by 30%. CUArts was founded in 2004 and aims to expand student and alumni access to the arts. The Ticket Information Center or TIC, as it is commonly known, provides low-cost tickets to performances around the city. CUArts events and outreach coordinator, Chad Miller, told attendees at an ESC meeting that although the TIC will be affected by the budget cut, he does not expect the price of tickets to rise.

CUArts is in talks with the School of the Arts and the Office of the President to discuss how the cuts will be implemented.

Oscar nods for Columbians

The 2010 Academy Award nominations were announced this week, and some Columbians are hoping to take home Oscars in March.

Three films with Columbia ties were nominated for best picture. These include A Serious Man, The Hurt Locker, and Precious.

School of the Arts professor Kathryn Bigelow, a 1981 graduate from the School of the Arts, was nominated as best director for The Hurt Locker; the film was also nominated for best picture. It follows a United States Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team deployed in Iraq. The Directors Guild of America recently awarded the "Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film" award to Bigelow; she is the first woman to receive the prize.

Two other films with Columbia ties were also nominated for best picture.

Precious, based on the Novel Push by author Sapphire, depicts the life of an illiterate, obese young woman who is offered an opportunity to attend an alternative high school after becoming pregnant with her second child.

Finally, A Serious Man was nominated in the best picture category. The film was produced by Focus Features, which is led by School of the Arts professor James Schamus.

Glass House Rocks and Rolls

Coyotes roam Lewisohn lawn

In an email to students, Columbia Public Safety reported the presence of coyotes on the Morningside Campus. Three animals identified as coyotes were observed in front of Lewisohn Hall Sunday morning according to Columbia Public Safety. The NYPD responded to a 911 call concerning the animals and confirmed the sightings. One other unconfirmed sighting was reported. All members of the community are advised not to approach coyotes as these animals could be dangerous.

Barnard welcomes the Diana

The Diana Center, named after Barnard's alumn, Diana Vagelos, has been open to student access since the beginning of the semester. However, this Wednesday the new student center was finally inaugurated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony where several notable people, including the Barnard College president Debora Spar and Diana Vagelos herself, delivered a few enthusiastic words about the new building.

"We could not be happier than we are today to open this building, to welcome you here, and to launch the start of the Diana Era here at Barnard College," the Barnard President said to welcome the crowd.

Although students have already been taking advantage of the Diana's facilities, the ceremony gave the administration an opportunity to express the hopes it has for the function of the building in the community.

Spar continued, "This building was designed and intended very much to be a nexus. To be a meeting point between the Barnard College community and the Columbia University community, it was designed to be a nexus between our college and the broader community and neighborhood of which we are a part, and it was designed perhaps most critically to be a nexus between student activities and the faculty and intellectual life of the college."

"It's as though the Diana takes bits and pieces of our campus, from the dining halls, to the classrooms, to the faculty offices, and puts them all in one place that is inevitably going to become the crossroads of the Barnard College campus in the years to come."

After the ceremony, the audience was invited to the theater on the bottom floor of the Diana for entertainment, raffles, hors d'oeuvres and hot cider. And even though the festivities for fro this week have concluded. The administration still has many other plans to celebrate the presence of the Diana on it's campus.

"We think the Diana Center personifies the forward-looking, cultural and global outlook of Barnard College. "

"The Diana Center is truly, as Deborah said, Barnard's nexus, where social, academic, cultural and community life will thrive and be strengthened. It is a building that one of our guests last night at a small dinner said, is worthy of our students."

Man dies in elevator shaft

WPIX reports that a man died after falling 40 feet down an elevator shaft on Friday afternoon. The accident reportedly took place in a Columbia-owned building undergoing construction on 129th St. According to ABC, the victim was treated at the scene before being rushed to St. Luke's. Sources told WPIX that the man was declared dead on arrival.

We will bring you more information, as it becomes available.

CCSC, ESC propose new academic calendar

If the student councils have their way, students may leave earlier for winter break. The CCSC and ESC unanimously passed a proposal to change the academic calendar. Under the proposal, the fall semester would begin on the first week of September, rather than after Labor Day.

Changes to the academic calendar must be proposed by the University Senate's Education Committee and passed by the full senate. The calendar is currently undergoing review by the committee, a process which takes place every ten years.

Sports Roundup

Now to our weekly sports roundup:

The wrestling team opened its Ivy League competition on Saturday at Cornell. The Big Red defeated Columbia 37-3, with Matt Dunn picking up the Lions' only win at 157 pounds. In their second match of the day, Binghamton defeated the Lions 30-14.

The men's basketball team won their second straight game in a comeback against Brown. After trailing by nine points at halftime, Columbia outscored Brown 38-18 in the second half to win the game 65-54. The women's basketball team also defeated Brown 65-60, winning its second consecutive Ivy League road contest on Friday evening.

The Columbia women’s tennis team earned its first win of the 2010 season, defeating Stony Brook 5-2, the team winning all of its doubles matches. With this success, the Lions now stand at 1-1 on the season.

The Columbia women’s swimming & diving team fell to an undefeated Princeton squad 141-91, in a meet that saw several season and lifetime best swims from the Lions. The 400 individual medley was one of the strongest events for Columbia on the night, as all four Lion swimmers had season-best times. Columbia's top finisher, first-year Katie Meili came in second with a time of 4:30.80, besting her personal record by seven seconds. Further, with a loss to the Naval Academy in Annapolis the men's swimming & diving team stand at 4-5 in dual meets this season.

Barnard fights the meal plan

Barnard's new meal plan is making some students feel sick. Dean Spar hosted a town-hall meeting in The Diana to discuss the plan, which will require all students to purchase meal points. Students have petitioned the administration and formed groups to oppose the policy. 644 students have joined the Facebook group “Protect Your Right to Be Off the Meal Plan”.

"We decided to get together and start a Facebook group, the title which is 'Protect Your Right to Be Off the Meal Plan' and we have about 650 members at this point, which is about 1/3 of the Barnard classes will be affected by it next year. Because there are a lot of, believe or not, seniors in the group as well. I’m a senior, so this doesn’t even affect me but there are a lot of seniors in the group, and I feel so passionately about it because we feel that the way the administration has treated the students has been very negative and we feel that they have reached out for student input."

Ironically, the debate has created community at Barnard as students have gathered together to oppose the new policy.

"I was actually telling a friend the story of how Ashley and I met. It was last year when be both lived in the Quad at Barnard and we were both forced to be on the unlimited meal plan but unfortunately because of our severe food restrictions, there was nothing we could eat in the dining hall. So we were forced to pay thousands of dollars in order to eat food that we couldn’t eat or make us sick. So, Ashley and I met in the Quad kitchen one day when we were trying to make lunch for ourselves because we couldn’t eat anything in the dining hall."

Commuting students will also be forced to pay for a meal plan they may not use.

"Other students have raised a very legitimate concern that they live in Cathedral Gardens, very far away; they live on 110th, very far away and they are going to have to walk to campus, all the time to get food. You know it’s not, again it’s not conducive to their lifestyle. And the administration, throughout the forum, President Spar speaking quite vocally about her worries that students wouldn’t use the Diana, the new student center. And that was one of the reasons why she wanted to institute this new meal plan so that students would be kind of forced to come into the Diana to eat. But that was very off putting, I think, for most people in the crowd because to us, it’s like, this is a fantastic new building on our campus. Why would we not use it? I haven’t had a student center since freshman year, so I mean, I am thrilled and of course there is going to be flow traffic in the Diana. It didn’t make sense to us. It seems to me that there; I don’t feel like they really understand students on this issue."

While administrators promote the meal plan as a community building initiative, the lack of options and resources has students feeling isolated from the rest of the Barnard community.

"If I could just make it so that no other Barnard girl has to go through what I went through; I will be so happy. Because again, this doesn’t affect me, I just can’t stand the thought of another girl with my food allergy being forced to eat the food that I had to eat. So, and I’m hoping that, you know, as our society’s ideas about food evolve; we can have just more awareness."

Some students worry about the impact the meal plan will have on their financial aid packages.

CTV was not permitted to film the town hall meeting and our request for comment from the administration went unanswered.