<p>What I find most humorous about this thread is the obvious silent elephant in the room: GS. </p>
<p>I tend to side with Barnard in these arguments (though I did not do my undergraduate work at Columbia, so I can look at this somewhat pragmatically), but what I find interesting is that nobody is questioning the legitimacy of GS students as bona fide members of the Columbia undergraduate community. By all accounts, GS is the easiest division of Columbia to get into (far easier than Barnard), and it doesn't publish the statistical averages of its incoming students, because they are all non-traditional, though some have simply taken a year or two off before returning to school. Yet, because General Studies is a co-ed program on the Columbia side of Broadway, nobody seems to question its legitimacy as a "true" Columbia program.</p>
<p>At any rate, I see both Barnard girls and GS students as members of the greater Columbia community. I've found that Columbia is highly disjointed and is more a collection of smaller academic communities under a bureaucratic umbrella than it is a singular entity with its own identity. </p>
<p>I am a graduate student here in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and even I have been told by undergraduates that I am not a true Columbia student, because, they say, <em>true</em> Columbians must live the undergraduate experience, should have their first drink at the West End, should take LitHum, etc. Regardless, I have taken courses with students from almost every graduate and undergraduate division (SIPA, GSAS, the College, Barnard, GS, and even SEAS), and I find it very difficult to distinguish between them in an academic setting.</p>
<p>I went to undergrad at Northwestern, which with 6 undergraduate schools, was disjointed in its own right, but never was any student in, say, the School of Music or the School of Education or even the affiliated seminaries made to feel as though he or she was not welcome in his or her own academic community. </p>
<p>This argument clearly will not be settled on this thread or elsewhere, but as a fairly neutral observer, I see everybody on this campus as intelligent people, all of whom are part of an excellent academic tradition, be it that of Barnard, Columbia, or both. From where I sit, it's discouraging and disappointing that they would be reduced to petty bickering over something as inconsequential in the grand scheme of things as the wording on the Barnard diploma.</p>