Columbia has long strained itself to support our increasingly large student body. Upon walking into John Jay at 7PM, it is not rare to see students stacked upon each other’s laps due to a lack of seating, and at Dodge Fitness Center, you’ll see students benching one another in lieu of extremely in-demand weights. Despite this, earlier this year, President Shipman announced that Columbia would be admitting about 20% more students than previous years for the class of 2029, spawning one central question above all- where would they live? While Columbia continued its tradition of displacing people from their homes by kicking some residents out of Wien to place the freshmen there, this still left about 100 freshmen with nowhere to live.
This morning, Shipman announced that she would be housing these students in tents on Butler lawns. They will be charged 50% more for their housing, due to the “operations cost” of pitching the tents. Additionally, the tents will be exclusively doubles; granting each student a companion to provide warmth through the imminent winter term. While many have raised concerns over temperature and weather, Shipman assured them that the collective students’ body heat would keep them alive, and that the tents add a warm, lively atmosphere to campus, as she has consistently and always believed.
