Steven Castellano

Steven doing work late at night with friends

Steven Castellano CC '13 is from Middletown, New Jersey and majored in Biophysics. He was one of the head coordinators for CUE, the CCSC Academic Affairs Representative, a leading member of the Student Wellness Project, a TA for Biology, a researcher who engineered cells in Fairchild and is pretty much the most helpful and caring person you'll ever meet on this earth. A good way to sum up his dedication to others is to either imagine him as the person who will A) Drop everything he is doing when you need him there for you even if he is in the middle of a paper and you call at 4am or B) be that person on the team who gives everyone direction and inspiration, but when they aren't able to pull their weight, he goes ahead and picks up their slack without ever complaining.

Student Council

During Steven's first year at Columbia, he joined CCSC's Student Life committee, naively believing that throwing better parties would improve community at Columbia. Afterwards, he joined the policy committee, and hoped to use this experience to win a seat in the University senate during his race in his sophomore year. He came in dead last. He upped his efforts in his junior year, and newly armed with social media he came out on top to win the Academic Affairs Representative position. Steve and other members of CCSC were surprised as the discussion had been publicly documented since November, the administrators who would implement the program were informed, the organizations are call student councils for a reason, and ESC did not bring up any of their concerns when they initially rubber stamped passed the resolution.

One of Steven's first successes was to work with the registrar to make the schedules of finals available earlier. He then worked with the Academic Integrity Task Force to come up with the idea of an honor code, presenting it in November of 2012. Despite being initially passed by all the student councils in April of 2013, ESC decided to rescind their vote on the grounds that such an effort needed to be discussed more with the students, and that the council members were not aware of how well the administration was informed of the plan when they initially passed it..

This relationship with the registrar's Barry Kane proved useful for his waitlist initiative. 

Pass/D/Fail Proposal

Steven undermining ESC's legitimacy like a bau5

Student Wellness

Steven's 60 page wellness report

Which has over FIFTY THOUSAND VIEWS on a renren.com.

Awards

Steven was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He was a recipient of the King's Crown Leadership Award for Ethics & Morality. and he won the Alumni Association Achievement Award, which has a description so badass and fitting for Steve that I have to include it right here. "A trophy, in the form of a Columbia lion, awarded annually to the member of the senior class who is judged to be most outstanding for qualities of mind, character, and service to the College."

Despite all of Steven's awards and stellar grades, he shared a bit too much with Mortimer Adler. Steven's concert at the end of his senior wisdom came true, and he failed to graduate because he neglected his swim test!!!!