Columbia-Barnard relationship

Introduction

Columbia University and Barnard College are two independent institutions with a long shared history and a close, somewhat unique, relationship that's a little complicated and often leads to misconceptions and endless spilling of ink. The relationship between the institutions has been governed since 1900 by intercorporate agreement that is periodically renegotiated or renewed. Columbia College began admitting female students in 1983, creating a potential redundancy between the schools. The agreement has been amended and renewed every certain number of years.

The Barnard relationship is somewhat paradoxic. On the one hand, Barnard students have the ability to register for almost any class at Columbia, and their degrees are conferred by Columbia University. However, because Columbia has no administrative relationship with those students, the University does not count them in any statistical calculation of enrollment, admission, or expenditure. All of these functions fall to Barnard College.

Simply put, Barnard is institutionally independent, while academically, and socially linked to Columbia. Institutionally, Barnard has it's own board of trustees (chaired by Anna Quindlen) which oversees the schools operation, it's own endowment, it's own faculty, it's own campus (Columbia does not own any of Barnard's campus buildings), and it's own administration. There are few freebies between the school- Barnard has to pay Columbia for access to utilities, the libraries, and other facilities. Columbia University does not handle admissions for Barnard, nor does it spend money on, or collect money from Barnard students, and the same goes for Barnard College and Columbia students. However, both student bodies typically benefit in some manner when either school spends money, as the schools tend to keep student programming open to all undergraduates, though this is not always the case.

That being said, both schools are academically linked by the intercorporate agreement which allows for nearly seamless open cross-registration between the schools. As part of the agreement to open cross-registration, Columbia took partial control of Barnard's tenuring process, which ultimately means that Columbia indirectly exercises some control over the Barnard faculty, in some ways making it an extension of Columbia's own faculty. Though there's politics between members of departments with counter-parts on either side of the street (such as History, or English), the schools generally hire faculty and develop departments with eye towards eliminating redundancies and maximizing the benefits from limited resources. However, in a nod to institutional separation, students answer to the department on their side of the street, even though they can usually register for classes on either side of the street.

Barnard is for all intents and purposes part of the same college life as the Columbia schools, despite not being under the Columbia yoke. Though there are practical consequences of Barnard's independent status, in day-to-day affairs the lines between the schools are in fact mostly non-existent. This is ultimately a very ambiguous relationship when attempting to determine who is and is not a "Columbia student." The situation has prompted endless rumination from all quarters, both informed and (more often than not) uninformed on the Columbia side, where students admitted to Columbia take issue with Barnard students referring to themselves as "Columbia students." The fact is that a definitive argument cannot be made either way, and that the situation is unlikely to change, no matter how unsatisfying that result may be for Columbia students.

The Agreement

There have been a number of Intercorporate agreements between Columbia and Barnard in their shared history. The last major negotiated agreement was in 1973 when Columbia was recovering from a financial free fall, with a major amendment in 1983- Barnard's forfeiture of the monopoly on women's undergraduate education.

The principal points of the current relationship are as follows:

Course Registration

Columbia and Barnard students are allowed extensive cross-registration, with the only exceptions applying to certain Core requirements at both schools. This was originally a Columbia proposal in 1973, when the cash-strapped University expected Barnard to pay a fee for the net imbalance of credit flow. Columbia expected more Barnard students to enroll on Columbia courses than vice versa, thus creating a new revenue stream. This was initially the case though in recent years the trend has been reversed, and Columbia has had to pay Barnard for the imbalance of Columbia students taking Barnard courses. This can be partially attributed to Barnard's deliberate decision to develop departments that have no counterpart across the street, such as Urban Studies, and the undergraduate Theater and Dance programs.

Libraries

Barnard does not have a major research library, though Barnard College Library serves as the school's collection. Instead, it's students and faculty have access to the world caliber research library resources of Columbia (and Columbians have access to Barnard's collections). Because Barnard had access to Columbia's library, it never had incentive to invest much in it's own. In 1973 Columbia demanded payment for that access, based on an estimate of what Barnard would have had to pay to maintain a library equal to that of one of its Seven Sisters peers. Barnard still pays a fee for that access.

Faculty Appointments

Though Barnard College has its own faculty, the tenuring process requires that Barnard faculty appointees be reviewed by an ad hoc committee consisting of equal numbers of Barnard faculty and Columbia faculty, with a fifth member from the outside. In 1973 Columbia demanded and received full control over tenure, with the president of Columbia making the final decision to hire. The incorporation of Barnard faculty into the tenuring process was negotiated into the agreement in 1983 as compensation for Columbia College going co-ed. In 1973, both schools also agreed to cooperate in order to avoid redundancies in appointments and programs. This went hand-in-hand with the greater cross-registration agreement.

Diplomas

One of the more contentious points of the agreement between the school, Barnard college degrees are officially granted by the Trustees of Columbia University, the same body that grants degrees to all Columbia students. This is despite Barnard's status as an affiliate as opposed to an undergraduate school of the university itself. This is often the thing used by Barnard students to justify sometimes claiming that they are "Columbia students", when it's just part of the agreement between the schools.

Utilities

Barnard pays Columbia for access to power and utilities and access to other facilities that it otherwise would have to provide for itself.

Practical Consequences

As mentioned before, in day-to-day life the lines between the schools are blurred to the point that it all appears like one big student body.

Registration

The schools have nearly complete cross-registration, Registration for Columbia students is almost seamless, with Barnard departments courses listed on the Columbia Course Directory, and registrable through the same process as Columbia courses on SSOL.

Housing

Barnard and Columbia College/SEAS undergrads have historically not had swipe access to each others residence halls. Students on both sides of the street have varying opinions on this policy. Some Barnard students believe they should have access to Columbia undergraduate dorms, but CC/SEAS undergraduates should not have access to the Barnard dorms because only girls (or mostly girls) live in these dorms and thus Barnard dorms have extra security risks. Other students from both CC/SEAS and Barnard believe that neither of the two undergraduate populations should have access to the other's dorms. The two student populations belong to separate schools, these students argue, and thus each should only have access to their own dorms and the resources therein. Finally there are students, both from Barnard and CC/SEAS, who believe that all the undergraduates within Columbia university should have access to each others dorms. Students of this view generally argue that the two student populations are not really separate and that it is inconvenient for both Barnard and CC/SEAS students to not be able to swipe into each others dorms.

The most recent attempt to enact swipe access between schools was scuttled by CCSC in 2001. Additionally, the excuse that Barnard and Columbia have separate security offices and separate swipe access systems, integrating would be too difficult and costly. Recently there was an SGA campaign for a compromised "Flash Access," in which Barnard/CC/SEAS undergraduates would be able to sign a special security contract and then would be able to themselves sign into the other schools dorm.

Students from each school have the option live in the others dorms (they get swipe access to that building). Columbia students can opt to live in Barnard housing (usually Plimpton), and some students opt to Summer Transfer into Plimpton to get out of a bad Columbia housing choices if they have a really bad lottery number. Similarly, Barnard students can live with their Columbia friends in group housing (they cannot register by themselves for the Columbia lottery, but must register as a group with Columbia students). However, the number of Barnard students allowed to live in Columbia housing is limited, and cannot exceed the number of Columbia students who opt to live in Barnard housing.

Other Aspects

Athletics

As part of an NCAA approved consortium, Barnard does not maintain an athletics program of its own, but instead women athletes from Barnard compete on University-wide (i.e. "Columbia") athletic teams. There are 3 such consortiums in the nation (such as the one between the 5 colleges of Claremont Mckenna), and Columbia-Barnard's is the only one in Division I. Barnard athletes figure prominently on a number of teams, including Archery.

Single-sex admissions

Barnard's single-sex admissions policy is an issue of some controversy on Columbia's campus. Some consider it to be outmoded and even sexist. The Barnard administration, as well as the Barnard student population, believe that its single-sex policy is necessary to the educational mission and general college environment. Generally they point to both the continual existence of sexism within society as well as data that suggests that at least some women work better and are more likely to succeed in general when they are educated at all female colleges. Barnard has a unique relationship with its parent Ivy compared to the other Seven Sisters colleges. For example, before Harvard went coed, Radcliffe College was a separate college affiliated with Harvard. Soon after Harvard began accepting women, Radcliffe was subsumed into Harvard College. Barnard has long been concerned about losing its individual identity as a college, as Radcliffe did, and as it most certainly would if it integrated with Columbia.

Petty Nitpicking

Some of the things people will endlessly argue over are as follows.

'Ivy League'

Whether or not Barnard is an 'Ivy League' school depends on the interpretation of the term. The Ivy League is an NCAA Division I athletics conference with 8 member schools. Though Barnard itself is not affiliated with the league, as per the consortium agreement, Barnard athletes play on Columbia teams. As such, Barnard is essentially a league member, though only through its connection to Columbia.

As an academic institution, the claim is more tenuous, especially since Barnard is traditionally held to be a member of the 'Seven Sisters' colleges, and is institutionally independent from the Ivy-affiliated University.

E-Mail Addresses

Barnard students are given email address at both barnard.edu and columbia.edu. There are some who believe this is unfair because Barnard students are only affiliates of the school. However, most would point out this is policy is for academic simplicity. This way, teachers can just email all their students at their Columbia email addresses using Courseworks, instead of having to figure out which students have Columbia email addresses and which have Barnard email addresses.

Facebook

A related issue is Barnards presence on Facebook. Specifically, that it doesn't have one. Rather than create overlapping 'networks' like they did for the Claremont McKenna Colleges, the facebook programmers decided to create only one network. Since facebook networks are largely based on e-mail domains (the @yourschool.edu part of your address), there's really nothing to do.

Complaints

Typically Barnard's administration is fiercely territorial when it comes to getting equal billing with Columbia (for example, NSOP is the "Barnard-Columbia Orientation Program." Past NSOP coordinators have reported getting shit for failing to make sure Barnard appeared alongside Columbia in all instances.) Where's the agitation for Barnard's "identity" on facebook? Or e-mails? For a school that insists on having its own "identity", there's no issue about getting "columbia" addresses. A possible solution would be to grant barnard students "@barnard.columbia.edu" domain addresses to differentiate barnard email addresses. Other divisions of the University do similar things for their students or faculty (@gsb.columbia.edu for the B-School, @law.columbia.edu for Law faculty, etc.) The same applies to diplomas- why don't the Trustees of Barnard College confer degrees on their students? Barnard's more than happy to take those Columbia issued degrees without a peep about identity.