A TC community forum on financial priorities will be held in the Student Lounge from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on October 29. The forum is open to students, faculty, and staff members.

Joseph Brosnan, the chair of the Financial Priorities Committee (FPC) and Vice President of Development and External Affairs, will make a presentation about the role of the committee and the need for input from the TC community. The President, Dean and Vice President of Finance and Administration will also be in attendance.

Additional forums will be held later this academic year. After a consensus is reached on priorities, a recommendation will be given to the President and the Board of Trustees. The final report will serve as a guide for the new Capital Campaign the College wants to launch next year.

If there is one thing the TC community agrees on, it is that the physical plant needs to be renovated. The question before the Financial Priorities Committee is how much should be done and what should be done first.

Fred A. Schnur, Vice President for Finance and Administration, presented a list of possible projects to the committee October 1. A team of architects surveyed the College and concluded that doing everything that should be done would cost nearly $100 million. Year after year, TC has deferred maintenance. We put off what should have been done yesterday, Schnur said. Today it seems like an impossible task to achieve.

Realistically the College will not spend that much on renovations, which means the committee and the TC community must decide what should be given top priority.

At a minimum, some $13 million in repairs and renovations must be completed to prevent further structural damage, said President Arthur Levine, who is a member of the FPC. "The rest is a just a matter of where the priorities are," he said.

Schnur suggested that the committee recommend spending $56.5 million to "revive the heart and soul" of TC. That would provide enough money to fix what must be repaired, revamp classrooms, and renovate areas that are used by the total campus community, like the library and Horace Mann auditorium.

For more information about Schnur's report, please see the TC Communiqué, which is distributed on campus and is available on the TC Web site (http://www.tc.columbia.edu/~newsbureau/). Comments about the planning process may be posted by electronic mail to fpc@columbia.edu or to the newsgroup columbia.tc.fpc. The newsgroup is accessible via Pine, Netscape or other browsers. Questions concerning subscribing to the newsgroup can be addressed to Nancy Masterson-Newkirk at 212-678-4147.

The TC community also can give feedback at any time to members of the committee. A list of FPC members was published in the first edition of the Communiqué, which is available on the TC Web site. The newest members of the committee are Antonia Grumbach, chair of the National Campaign Committee for TC and a member of the TC Board of Trustees; Marion Boultbee, coordinator of International Student and Scholar Services and a representative of the Professional Staff Executive Committee; and Tamara Webb, a student.

Published Tuesday, Apr. 9, 2002