In my experience, I’ve often found that one is wise in learning to pick their battles. For—while there are many noble causes one may choose to pursue—I believe many would be well advised to learn to strive within the bounds of reality. This belief led me to hesitate before heckling the obvious problems at the university. Tuition is increasingly expensive, not all the professors should be professors, and Indira makes a little too much money. These are issues, but—for better or worse—they are also largely beyond my control. So, before pondering where one sits on the aforementioned matters, one must ask where they sit at all.
As trivial as it may seem, a substantial proportion of the buildings at our university find themselves with a shortage of things students can sit on when not in class. What this results in is a rather pathetic game of musical chairs in the buildings most affected. Monday to Friday, I find myself finishing class at 11:00 and making a mad dash (well, perhaps a mad speed-walk) to CCIS so I can find somewhere to have lunch before my next class starts an hour (and a half) later. Even then, my success rate is less than impressive.
As a large university, we have multiple departments devoted the wellbeing and success of the student. That being stated, it should come as no surprise that sitting on a concrete floor and propping oneself against a wall or into a corner is not conducive to learning—or much else for that matter. Nonetheless, every day I see people do this. Even now—as I write this very sentence—I watch as a group of girls furiously peck away at calculators and scribble answers onto loose leaf that sits on the floor beside them. What solutions they’ve found I do not know, but the problems they face are all much the same.
In the grander scope of things, my complaint has a relatively simple solution—especially when compared to the nature of more complex issues such as tuition and staffing. At an estimated cost of $250 for a set of four chairs and a simple table, the university could retrofit its buildings campus-wide with seating for 4000 students at a cost less than the salary of any of our faculties’ deans. Considering the fact we are consistently building entirely new (and often arguably unnecessary) structures, and the sheer scale of our university’s budget, it is difficult to fathom that basic seating is beyond our means. Even if such was the case, I wouldn’t think it unreasonable to sequester a single lecture hall in the major buildings, assuring that it is not booked for class—at least during the lunch hour, when the seating is most needed. All being considered, and costs being weighed, I’d my wager my complaint and its solution to be reasonable. Today I was one of the lucky ones and am seated relatively comfortably in a table overlooking quad. Tomorrow I could just as easily not. The girls left a moment ago. Perhaps, like myself, they have a class in ten minutes. Maybe they simply got tired of working on a hard, uncaring floor. Regardless, for over an hour, there they sat, and indisputably they should not have had to.
