It was a sticky, hot August afternoon, and I sat on my hard plastic chair surrounded by hundreds of people both like and unlike me, all of us so unified in our excitement to start college that we eagerly clung to every word emanating from the speakers before us. Again and again, they said the same thing: You are accepted. You are wanted. You are like us.

And in my naïveté, I believed them.

There are many wonderful things about Columbia that make it a great school to attend, but the one thing that distinguishes it from other world-class universities is the existence of the School of General Studies. The school was first established in 1947 in response to the influx of World War II veterans whose schooling had been interrupted by their military service. Since then, its scope has broadened tremendously—accepting bright and motivated students from a range of unbelievably diverse backgrounds—making it a unique asset to Columbia.

During the General Studies New Student Orientation Program, I remember my fascination with the other people attending what were otherwise dull events. I met a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces and an Egyptian refugee and witnessed their delight in a new friendship that could have never existed in their previous lives. I learned intimate secrets about the Philippines’ ruling elite from a former luxury helicopter salesman turned CS major. I discussed the value of safe spaces with an ex-Marine with combat experience. All of these interactions, born simply from putting such a diverse group of people in the same space, gave me access to viewpoints, ideas, and friendships which simply would not have been possible at any other place.

That’s why it's such a shame that Columbia does so little to integrate General Studies with the rest of its student body. When I overhear my classmates in the other undergraduate schools having conversations about prep-school shenanigans and Model UN mishaps, I mourn the fact that they haven’t had the same chance to meet and engage with people in General Studies who weren’t part of the pipeline from SAT classes and extracurriculars to the Ivy League.

As part of the joint program between General Studies and the Jewish Theological Seminary, I personally have more in common with my classmates in the other undergraduate schools than my peers in General Studies, which has translated into a greater appreciation for the GS-ers I do meet. Yet, despite all four schools sharing the same campus, there appears to be an almost systematic separation between General Studies and the other schools.

This separation between the schools is palpable everywhere and is most obvious in the physical fact that General Studies students need to be signed in to enter both Barnard and Columbia dorms. The humiliation of exclusion stings every time my friends need to go down to their lobbies to sign me in when I visit them. I work just as hard and am a part of the very same organizations as my classmates, yet time and time again, I seem to be reminded that I am other. That I don’t belong.

Beyond the humiliation, this exclusion belies the advantage of having a school like GS in a university like Columbia. Many of the major core classes—the places in which students are essentially forced to engage in meaningful discourse with each other—are in effect segregated. General Studies students are restricted to taking school-specific sections of University Writing, and two of the other major seminar-style core classes—Contemporary Civilizations and Literature Humanities—are optional for, and therefore, rarely taken by GS-ers. This clear separation of General Studies from the other schools makes me question how Columbia claims to strive toward an intellectual environment with a rich and varied character when it keeps students within groups they are already familiar with. How can discourse exist when everyone allowed into a discussion holds similar opinions born of similar circumstances?

Our administration needs to urgently review its goals for this university. Abolishing General Studies-specific classes and changing NSOP programming so that more friendships can be formed between the schools from the start are all worthy, but not definitive, solutions to this problem. If they want to continue insisting that General Studies students are part of the same community as the rest of Columbia undergraduates, then it's time they take some measures—the specifics of which could be up for debate—to follow through on these promises.

As General Studies students, we were promised that we would be accepted, wanted, and treated like everyone else. It’s time Columbia followed through with its promises and expanded its students’ intellectual landscapes.

The author is a first-year in GS/JTS majoring in Computer Science and Jewish Literature.

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