Universities: Agony on Morningside Heights

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Although plenty of Columbia's students and faculty are indifferent to the plight of their Harlem neighbors, the university is using $10 million of Ford Foundation funds on projects designed to improve housing, schools and legal services in the neighborhood. Nonetheless, Columbia Vice President David Truman concedes that "we simply have not been tooled up to manage our public image." Other officials concede that some residents of the rooming houses were ousted without proper regard for relocation. Belatedly, the university has set up its own relocation office, sometimes offers small grants to help tenants move. The great irony of Columbia's agony is that it all could have been avoided if the university trustees had only demonstrated a little bit more foresight back in the 1890s. The Morningside Heights area was then mainly countryside and, in moving Columbia from its old mid-Manhattan campus, they could have bought all the acreage they needed at giveaway prices.