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It seems pretty obvious that no administration could, or even should, bow to every whim of the student body. Our administration here at Oxy, however, seems to be unwilling or unable to place student concerns and student happiness on the agenda. Period. More specifically, I feel like the administration doesn’t place adequate emphasis on what we, the students, want out of our experience here.
First, Oxy appears to feel no need to have transparency. Decisions on housing, the future of the school, and the administration’s communication with various student groups, organizations, and individuals (including the paper itself) don’t seem to follow common rules of courtesy. During the summer for example, I found out that I had been reassigned to a different dorm by a friend. An email to housing, asking if this was true, provided a typical answer-silence. It was as if my email, my legitimate concern, was simply ignored.
This brings me to my second point, the lack of responsibility on the part of the administration towards students. Many rooms on campus lack basic furniture for the number of students crammed into their tiny doubles- now triples. For those lucky enough to be “graced” with furniture like myself, we’re still waiting for facilities to loft a bed-3 weeks and counting. When I asked if I could do it myself I was told that it was an issue of liability . . . Anyone in the administration want to help?
My third point is the one for which I need the most help. Where is all our money going? Our school is in shambles. The athletic facilities are a disgrace, we have a small, ancient weight room, four tennis courts (which isn’t even enough to legally hold a collegiate tennis match without permission from the opposing coach), and a seeming unwillingness to adequately fund what programs we do have (again, the recent replacement of the Men’s Tennis Coach can serve as an example). What’s up with DWA? Last I heard there are only two full-time professors on campus-the third is on leave-and the administration was forced to ask a tenured math professor to head the department.
In the end, I feel like the administration is letting all of us down. While all of these events can simply be “explained away,” there combination leaves us with a system which doesn’t hold the concerns and rights of its students at its core. This needs to change, and it needs to change now if Oxy is going to continue to be a school worth coming to.
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