Guest Blogger Kabir on Student Government

First of all, thanks John for having me on as a guest blogger. I could write about a million things but I’ll focus on one aspect of CBS life that you haven’t already spoken a lot about – student government.

Columbia has an extremely active student government (referred to as the GBA, though technically the GBA includes all students) that actually gets to make significant change at our school. I think a lot of it has to do with the structure of the GBA and a lot has to do with the leeway we are given in making decisions.

The GBA is organized on two levels. The first is that each cluster (CBS is organized into 65 people clusters) has about 10 members who act as functional leaders. In addition, there are 11 members of the executive board, who oversee various departments. (Take a look @ www.cbsgba.com).

This structure allows for tons of student involvement and has resulted in many concrete changes to the school, including moving start times for classes from 8AM to 9AM, improvements in infrastructure, changes in food service including a new café this year, and more. One initiative I worked on as J-Term president was giving input into the number of J-Term clusters (staying at 3!). The GBA also helps fund the Happy Hours (free beer!) and other events for the student body.

- Kabir