Security was so tight at Columbia College last week for President Warrick Carter’s annual State of the College address, he could have been delivering the State of the Union. Columbia security staff, bolstered by uniformed private guards, were stationed both outside and inside the single open entrance at 916 S. Wabash, where Carter was to be speaking on the fourth floor. They were checking for college IDs.
So I had to wait until the next morning to hear Carter slip out of presidential mode and tell a student questioning his $650,000 annual compensation, “Oh, shut up.”
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In this situation, he said, “We’ve got to discontinue those things that don’t serve the college well.”
Last week a faculty committee released its own recommendations, which while sparing the CBMR, are more sweeping and philosophically radical than anything the provost specified. Most striking among them: a proposal to back away from Columbia’s tradition of proudly open enrollment to a “more selective policy for undergraduate admissions” that would focus on “those who are academically prepared for success.”
