How many of us have asked what direction our University is taking? During my tenure on this campus, I’ve witnessed a dazzling array of construction and renovation. We revolutionized South campus living, building massive suite-style dorms, each with their own individualized apartment space. A pristine man-made lake majestically offsets Lakeside, and each new academic building is regally designed with columns invoking the rich, cultured heritage the University aims to inspire and maintain.
In addition, we offer enough trendy eateries to rival Midtown Plaza. However, what is the price of these renovations and “improvements” beyond concrete, contractors and temporarily inconvenient parking arrangements? I will tell you; it is a loss of the academic and communal integrity of our university and an increasing cost burden for each succeeding generation of students.
How many of us, at a state university, can afford a campus apartment for four or five thousand – or more – a semester when its amenities do not even offer a kitchen? Where do we place students when they cannot afford these options and we continue to build more of the same buildings with yearly rising costs?
We confidently and proudly display new Subways, Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and mini Buffalo Phil’s, but what of affordable dining halls for every freshman compelled to buy a meal plan at fifteen hundred per semester? Many of our buildings are beautiful and majestic, and our lawns roll with lush and well-trimmed verdant greens, but save for our Saturdays in the fall, our campus has no spirit – it offers attractions designed to amaze spectators and ensnare gullible potential students.
Every dollar we spend on new attractions erodes the fabric of our community and teaches our campus community that fashionable trend outweighs integrity, and we are increasingly willing to pay the cost. Instead of massive hotels with no life and large, unused plasma TV’s and ballrooms; build larger, more affordable traditional-style dorms which foster community and decrease individual cost. So what if you sacrifice the convenience of your own room or bathroom?
Leave your room and go meet your community. You may discover something or someone valuable and interesting if you burst your neat little bubble, and those of us with siblings will tell you that sharing a bathroom is not the end of the world.
In lieu of symbolizing culture and academic prowess with our domed buildings and graceful columns, invest in graduate programs which strengthen our academic quality and attract high-caliber professors and students. Our competition at UGA and UF can certainly lay claim to strong undergraduate and graduate level programs, and I do not speak merely to the number of high test scores of their students.
So if we must build, construct dorms so that the RAs in Tutwiler Hall do not sleep in renovated utility closets and RAs in Ridgecrest Residential Complex do not share a room with the students they must guide. If you must renovate, renovate our rules so that class size is not dictated by the maximum occupancy of a room, but by the maximum number of students who can learn well.
Convenience and beauty does not equate to quality; it costs more than we think and should be willing to spend. While The University of Alabama is most certainly not alone in pursuit of these new fashions, we are not helping to make the cost or quality of life and education at the college level worth what we sacrifice in dollars or time.
