Students at Columbia University, discouraged by the lack of initiative taken by the administration, are hoping to inspire action in addressing escalating birth control costs on campus triggered by changes Bush made in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The Columbia University Democrats is leading the charge and have drafted a resolution to lay out options for the university to consider taking. The Columbia Spectator reports:

A coalition of campus groups has crafted a resolution urging Columbia to alleviate the cost of birth control for students after a federal law took away subsidies last year.

The resolution maintains that in reaction to these cuts Columbia should assume the added costs, which have raised the price of birth control from $10 a month to $60 a month.

The coalition of groups that created the resolution, which includes Students for Choice, Take Back the Night, the American Civil Liberties Union at Columbia, and the four undergraduate student councils, outlined four separate strategies that the University could implement to benefit students: subsidizing birth control costs, creating a dispensary, linking with Barnard’s dispensary, and inviting Planned Parenthood to campus.

While a few universities have taken simple steps the protect their students (Dartmouth, Barnard and Princeton), the vast majority of colleges, like Columbia, have done nothing. College women are those at highest risk of unintended pregnancy and have higher rates of abortion than any other demographic. If we were talking instead about a concentration of avian bird flu outbreaks on college campuses, universities would no doubt rush to subsidize vaccinations. Colleges should help protect students against a real outbreak plaguing college campuses: unwanted pregnancy.

The organizers are cautiously optimistic, but know that if their gentle ways don't work, harsher measures must be taken. As Jonathan Backer, spokesperson for Columbia University Democrats explained, "“If Health Services doesn’t seem to have a resolution, we’ll look into ways we can put activist pressure on the administration. We’re operating under the assumption that it will take a degree of activism.”

There's one degree colleges hope their students don't get.