As the first few weeks of classes draw on, the inevitable honeymoon phase between SLU and its students begin to fade to realistic expectations and grievances against the University. These potential problems can be trifling, such as, “why does that fertilizer smell so bad?” These problems can also be bigger, with such an example being, “Why can’t we serve ourselves at Gries anymore? We want more food!”
Both of these issues, and the many more that will presently be discussed, deal with money. Money makes the world go around and that fact is no different, even for a university that is not-for-profit. Money is the truth, and people just have to live with it.
Nonetheless there are also aspects of this University that give the average person pause, as they think, “Shouldn’t there be money to make this or make this better for students/staff/faculty?” We’re here to discuss the things at the University that makes us scratch our collective heads. Let’s begin.
Our first grievance goes out to the professors that are wasting our weekend money (however we choose to spend it). A number of us have had professors that require students to print out every single article to be read in class, conveniently leaving out that most departments will print course materials for the courses for free. For those of us who don’t have a swank library job who can print articles, or make good friends with the department secretary who will print their articles, these print jobs present an undue cost on the cash-strapped SLU student. Come on professors, let us look online, or at least teach us how to cheat the system.
Another thing is the obscure 11th edition of a book about economics that cost $90 and can’t be returned at the end of the semester because the 12th edition is already on the shelf. We know that the University or publishers are pressuring you into exploiting us, but we think it’s time you make a stand.
As for the landscaping, we all think we know that a wealthy donor chooses to give all his money towards the beautification of SLU. This is great. SLU is indeed beautiful, but why are we replacing our flowers and shrubs so often? Those tulips are great, but their shelf life on campus is a month at best. Instead, we think you should invest in some hardier, more sustainable, yet still beautiful plants and use that extra money for murals or other forms beautification on campus.
We could go on and on, ‘forgetting’ to insulate the pipes of the third floor of a Village apartment, switching from security guards to students during night desk shifts, and adding taxes to credit card purchases at Aramark establishments. At some point we need to realize that despite the ‘nonprofit’ tag, SLU is very much a business and should be treated as such.
