This comes down to the semantics of what is “on campus.” Most undergraduates live in Columbia owned-and-operated dorms, so since it is Columbia property I guess you could call that “on campus.” But the majority of those dorms are “off campus” but the lay person’s understanding of campus. They are outside of the gates intermingled with the city streets and non-Columbia housing, businesses, schools, shelters, etc. With a small number of exceptions only first years and some seniors live inside the gates of what most people think of as “campus.” 70% But this is nothing new. So both stats could be correct.
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Can we agree then that the lay person is wrong? The lay person couldn’t name Columbia’s cohorts in the Ivy League.
No Columbia student would consider East Campus housing as off-campus because it’s on the other side of Amsterdam and therefore outside the gates.
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I hope Columbia adcoms don’t convey that attitude.
Yup. Maybe worth noting that when NYU moved to meet needs for financial aid a couple of years ago, they dropped the size of the freshman class by about 10% to be able to meet those commitments. So increasing by 20% if those are not largely full pay … not sure how that helps finances.
And no New Yorker would consider ANY of the Columbia-owned or leased housing as “off campus” in the way that this term usually describes student housing. Walking a few blocks north or west does not get you “off campus”. That’s how cities work.
East Campus is “on campus” by any definition. It is within the gates. It directly connects to the secure part of the campus via the land bridge over Amsterdam and has gates of its own that are all part of the same secure area.
That’s not what we’re talking about when we say most undergraduate housing is perceived as “off campus.” East Campus housing was what I was referring to when I said “some seniors live inside the gates.” East Campus is the most coveted undergraduate housing at Columbia for undergrads which even many seniors aren’t able to get it and the only people below seniors getting it are part of high lottery groups that include seniors. Other than first years and this subset of seniors and a small number of exceptions (accommodations, part of high lottery groups, RAs, some people in Hartley Hall, etc.) the vast majority of sophomores, juniors and a decent amount of seniors live “outside the gates” of the core “Morningside Heights” campus, mostly in campus-owned properties within the city grid intermingled with non-campus properties. If you ask someone living in River Hall if they are “on campus” almost without exception they would tell you no. This is especially true of current students who have to get through security every time they transition from their dorms to the classes “on campus.”
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I think a lot has changed since the Gaza War protests. Can you be arrested for trespass? On campus. Can you be arrested by ICE? Off-campus.
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Ever since the murders at the Blackstone headquarters this past year, security has become very tight EVERYWHERE in NYC. Anywhere you can stick a checkpoint and/or a metal detector, you’ll find one. University campuses were not designed for the environment we are living in right now.
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As someone who has lived or worked in NY for decades, who has multiple family members currently living in the immediate proximity of Morningside Heights (including a student at Columbia) and who knows dozens of others who live in that area or the adjacent UWS, Manhattan Valley, Harlem, Manhattanville, Hamilton Heights and Washington Heights neighborhoods, I don’t agree.
If anything, the opposite. Many non-Columbia affiliates within the city don’t even realize many of the housing buildings not within the gated campus are part of Columbia. If you ask the average person walking on the west side of Broadway at 115th Street where the Columbia campus is, they would point across the street not say you’re already in the middle of it. Unlike NYU or GWU in DC or many other “urban” universities, Columbia has a distinct portion that is a self-contained Columbia’ “campus” that is a subset of all the buildings it owns in the neighborhood. There is “on campus” and “off campus” (a distinction that would be meaningless at NYU). When I went to UCLA no one would claim that if they lived in housing near Wilshire in Westwood was “on campus” even though UCLA owned dozens of buildings in the area. Everywhere understood where the real campus began.
This was always true at Columbia to an extent, but its particularly true since two years ago when they started requiring anyone getting “on campus” to pass security checkpoints (and locked most of the other gates) and show ID. The “campus” is mostly inaccessible to anyone not a current student, faculty or staff member or their guest. It is not simply part of the city grid.
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