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 his junior year he used social media and won the Academic Affairs Representative position.

In one of Steven's first successes, he worked with the registrar to release the schedules of finals earlier. He, with the Academic Integrity Task Force, then though of implementing an honor code. This would include an honor pledge to be recited by all incoming students during NSOP, a signing of an honor code, NSOP programming about academic integrity and wellness, and a short version of this pledge to appear on all Columbia Blue Books. Despite all the student councils passing a resolution that favored these measured, ESC decided to rescind their vote on the grounds that such an effort needed to be discussed more with the students, and that ESC members were not aware of how well the administration knew of the plan.. Steve and other members of CCSC were surprised with the reversal as the discussion had been publicly documented since November, the administrators who would implement the program were informed, the organizations are called student councils for a reason, and ESC did not bring up any of their concerns when they initially rubber stamped passed the resolution. The intention was to use the honor code as a way of uniting the four schools, but with ESC's sudden departure, Steven went ahead and convinced SGA, CCSC, and GSSC to pass a version of the proposal without a clause stating that all four schools had to be included.

Steven undermining ESC's legitimacy like a bau5

As if relations with ESC weren't peachy already, Steve asked them for help implementing a course waitlist. Since none of the ESC members were free to attend his meetings with the registrar's Barry Kane, Steve recruited a non-ESC SEAS student to help him get engineering input on the issue. Steve's past action with finals schedules proved useful; the registrar said they would be able to implement most of his suggestions. The last step was to present this completely-safe, no-brainer plan to the councils, and of course, ESC found something wrong with it. They argued that it was more fair for students to relentlessly click refresh instead of using a waitlist because it ensured the people who wanted the course the most would get it and people who had better registration times wouldn't be able to hog up all the waitlist spots. Forget the fact that people actually want to use engineering technology to reduce work in their day, and that it would be in a senior's best interest to drop a course if they got into too many from the waitlist. ESC again felt there hadn't be enough discussion about the matter among the students, and they advised the registrar to refrain from implementing any new technologies over the summer, insisting that they engage in negotiations in fall 2013 for possible implementation in 2014 (though the most likely reason is that ESC figured any progress from CCSC would make ESC's lack of progress less embarrassing). Luckily for us, the registrar doesn't take anyone's shit when it comes to making progress.

Though less drama filled than his honor code proposal, his first-semester Pass/D/Fail was probably the most controversial. During his election, students asked him to implement academic policies to reduce student stress. He concluded the root of the problem is that students placed alot of the stress on themselves by taking a bajillion credits and tying the worth classes to GPA instead of learning the material. He first considered trying to lower the credit limit, but assessed this would be spurned by students. Instead, he looked at how other schools implemented a pass/fail policy. He compiled this report which outlined the strength and weakness of the policy. The general consensus is that students would put less work into their classes, but they would learn for learning sake, and that students who come from disadvantage from high school would have a semester to adjust to the rigors of colleges without worrying about it forever harming their gpa. Pass/Fail would not apply to core classes. CCSC passed the proposal 23-4..

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 concern at the end of his senior wisdom came true, and he failed to graduate because he neglected to take his swim test!!!!