Dr. Keren Mezuman, a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Climate School’s Center for Climate Systems, has been repeatedly contacted by Recovery Management Services collections agency regarding a debt contracted due to the mismanagement and misinformation of Columbia University’s American Language Program, a tuition-free benefit Columbia offered to postdocs.

Dr. Mezuman enrolled via email in the program after learning about it through an orientation event of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs. She was not informed at any point that she would be automatically signed up to pay for student health insurance, despite the fact that her healthcare was already provided by Columbia University as part of her postdoctoral appointment.

Dr. Mezuman requested to cancel enrolment from the program just 11 days after registering to the program; the university took one additional month to process her request. During that time, she received an email saying she owes the university $2,881. When she reached out to inquire about the matter, Dr. Mezuman was told that according to the Assistant Director of the American Language Program it was due to a delay in processing and that “Once the withdrawal paperwork is processed by our withdrawal team the charges on your account should be reversed.”

Trusting that the issue was taken care of; Dr. Mezuman waited for the administrative process to be resolved. Two years later she learned not only that the issue had not been resolved but that Columbia University prorated the charges for the withdrawal processing period ($1,235) and transferred the debt to an external collections agency which has added its own collection and late fees raising the debt to $1,731.25, and which has been seeking the return of the full amount, disrupting Dr. Mezuman’s work with monthly calls that cause significant anxiety and stress.

This is totally unjust. The matter has caused Dr. Mezuman great anxiety and stress.

The university is responsible for this debt, not Dr. Mezuman.

We, the undersigned, call on the university authorities to (i) cancel Dr. Mezuman’s debt in full, and (ii) to automatically exclude anyone already working for or studying at Columbia University with a US visa to ever be able to be enrolled in health care services via the American Language Program, given that they will already have health care as a condition for their visa.