What Happened To Our Beren Campus?

By day, Beren Campus is full of Stern women, but by nightfall, it evolves into a new place; it “becomes like a different school,” one student commented.

Over the course of the past few years, YU’s Katz School of Science and Health has moved onto the Beren Campus. Since 2022, the Katz School’s enrollment has nearly tripled. Yet, throughout this time period, the YU administration provided little to no explanation to the students affected most — the undergraduate students of Beren Campus — about the intent and the future plans behind the move. 

The first and only time the movement of Katz graduate students to the Beren Campus was discussed with undergrads was in an email to the Beren Campus community in August 2023. At that time, the administration told students that the “limited space on our campuses is posing logistical challenges” especially on the Beren Campus, which, the email said, was “temporarily” occupied by the Katz School. Students were told that updates would be provided regarding “progress on the long-term plan which assigns the requisite space for each of our schools.”

Since then, the administration has provided no context nor further information as promised. In August of 2024, with no official statement or notification of students, YU updated its website to list the Katz School as one of the schools operating on Beren, this time with no indication that the change was temporary. A drastic move such as this, without explanation, prompts confusion from students, and at times, discomfort. 

YU’s undergraduate schools claim to have an educational mission of Torah Umadda and fostering “a deeply religious experience including two single sex campuses,” as President Ari Berman stated in an email sent out in 2022 regarding YUPA. Now that Jewish people and values seem especially unwelcome at our nation’s secular colleges, YU must offer students a proud Jewish alternative that refuses to compromise on its commitments. Once Stern undergraduates are forced to share resources with an expanding coed graduate program, it is a frightfully slippery slope to its precious campus character following suit.

Many students choose to attend Stern because of its single-sex environment. “It’s uncomfortable sometimes to see tons of men around when I expect Stern to be a Jewish all girls [school],” an anonymous Stern student mentioned. Another student said, “One of the main reasons I came to Stern was to be in an all women environment so it’s frustrating when our campus now seems like a co-ed environment.” When you wander the halls of your school at night, but find it filled with males and females from another school, it’s confusing to say the least. What happened to our all-women’s campus?

For the full-time Stern College undergraduate students, the Beren Campus is their home. Our limited space is now being shrunk further by the influx of a large number of students, many of them only part-time, enrolled in Katz. Sharing space is not something we signed up for when we enrolled in Stern College. 

Stern students were “here first” and having to share the already-limited resources for which we are paying tuition with an entire college of a similar scale should not have been put forth without some semblance of asking their approval. Most of all, it was the sudden change and noticeable difference, without the YU administration’s open communication with the student body, that is unsettling.

Is Katz under renovation? Is this temporary or permanent? The fact is — Stern students are not in the know.

Our two libraries on the Beren Campus, which usually are filled to the brim during midterms and finals season, pose a new challenge to the question of physical space. “I find the libraries to be packed with Katz students and there’s no room for me to study which is frustrating,” a Stern College student told The Commentator. Mikaela Amos (SCW ‘26) said that when she first saw Katz students in the library she was confused because she “didn’t know who they were or why they were there.”

Other than the library quandary, another place where limited space becomes an issue is the art floor of 215 Lexington. Having adequate space is crucial to some foundational art courses, such as Beginner’s Paint, which requires room for equipment such as easels as well as open space for art displays to be critiqued.

YU suddenly allotted classrooms on the art floor to Katz for graduate classes. A current studio art major, Shalva Englander (SCW ‘25), explained the ramifications of the Katz move onto the art floor to The Commentator. With the understanding that there is already a limited space for the Stern art students, “... imagine how big a deal it was when YU went, ‘Hey guess what? Two of your classrooms on this floor — with limited space for your classes to begin with — we are going to give them away to the Katz school.’” She stated that the thing that frustrates her the most is “they just don’t give us a reason why… if I had a good reason why it was happening, I would be less weirded out but it just feels like a big mystery that just came to be.” 

“If there was more room on the art floor for there to be more classes, then we would have the ability to offer more courses each semester and that would mean more spot(s) for people to take these foundation courses,” Englander elaborated.

Why does it have to come at the expense of the Stern students?

The move was perceived by some art students as hurtful since — as they understood it — YU thought that art is a small major that didn’t matter as much as their graduate program. Since then, YU has performed renovations on the art floor which helped ameliorate the space situation and was appreciated by students. Nonetheless, it did not completely solve the space problem since the art majors still lost one large classroom on the art floor to the Katz graduate school.

Moving Katz to the Beren Campus and allowing them to use virtually all our facilities casts doubt on YU’s dedication to the needs of their undergraduate students. The chemistry laboratories, for example, sometimes lack proper equipment. On a national level, YU’s faculty salaries and compensation rates are outpaced by the average salary for private independent universities. All the while, YU chooses to invest more in its graduate programs.

Echoing a similar sentiment, Josh Makovsky (YC ‘25) told The Commentator, “While YU’s ambitions in investing in the University’s graduate school programs, particularly relating to STEM and business studies, is a pragmatic one which will hopefully yield greater revenue, I fear it will come at the cost of what makes the university a place for higher learning — liberal arts.” 

How can the school justify turning their focus away from our undergraduate institutions? 

I do not mean to disregard the innumerable times YU has addressed students’ concerns. For example, YU added housing options on Beren due to increased enrollment and not enough space. An out-of-town committee was created in order to enhance out-of-towners’ experience. In fact, I am only saying this because I know the university might listen. 

Undergraduate students give the university its identity. The mission of YU, Torah Umadda, the idea that Jewish students ought to and deserve to study Torah and the liberal arts on a high level, is the very reason the school exists. YU abandons this sacred goal only at its own risk.