Despite promising a warm welcome for new transfer students to Barnard College’s tight-knit community, Residential Life & Housing rejected and waitlisted nearly all housing applications from transfers. By August, only 30 out of the 160 incoming transfer students received on-campus housing. In other words, 81% of Fall 2024 transfer students had to find off-campus living accommodations.
“Transfer students? Aren’t they the Admissions Team’s responsibility?” A confused Residential Life Assistant asked The Fed.
While some transfer students found off-campus apartments or got off the housing waitlist, others gambled solely on getting on-campus housing — and lost. With no other options, a small number of transfer students scoured Morningside Heights to find a last-minute place to temporarily live. The Fed was able to interview a few of these students to ask about their living accommodations.
The Sewers Underneath Barnumbia
Four transfer students said they were discovered at the 116th Street–Columbia University station and taken in by a large mutant rat. The rat, reportedly a master in Ninjutsu, has been providing the students with extensive training in the martial art. On Saturday nights, after a long week of classes and Ninjutsu training, they like to order pizza deliveries right to their sewer home.
Doing it Taylor Swift style.
A transfer student from Los Angeles says that her father booked her a suite for an “indefinite amount of time” at The Plaza Hotel. She then Ubers to Barnard for class and back to the hotel every day where she enjoys a room service dinner and a cocktail hour in the Royal Suite. On Friday evenings, she Ubers to LaGuardia Airport, gets on her father’s private jet, and goes back home to her Beverly Hills mansion. On Sunday evening, she boards her private jet and returns to New York for the weekdays.
In The Great God Pan’s loving embrace.
With no friends or family in the city, one transfer student said she found unexpected solace in the The Great God Pan sculpture on Lewisohn Lawn.
“I lay across Pan and rest my head on his bronze, muscled arm,” she said. “I like to imagine that he’s playing his reed pipe just for me. The nights at Columbia are cold, but he makes me feel warm and welcomed — something Barnard Residential Life doesn’t do for transfers.”
