Fall 2013 won’t go down in LSU’s history as one of the best semesters — not by far.
Last semester, former opinion section editor Chris Grillot wrote a column about how corrupt he found the University’s administration after two years of continued investigation as part of The Daily Reveille’s staff, and how much hope he held for the fresh-faced future.
Sure, new LSU President F. King Alexander seems nice enough, and turnover of various college presidents allows for hope, but if that’s all we’ve got in the face of endless budget cuts, falling-in buildings and ever-present institutional racism, I believe we might be on thin ice.
Then again, the University — with its 30,000 students and more professors — could never be stable as a whole.
What I’m left wondering at the end of this semester is whether or not this University is an institution that’s worth the struggle.
As Alexander so aptly pointed out in his email to the University on Friday, money is the hitch. His entire message addressed the importance of funding and looking good to the federal government, after the requisite plea for students to graduate.
He also lauded our “fundraising professionals” for raising the money to renovate Patrick F. Taylor Hall. Thank goodness, because it’s not like half the buildings in the Quad are liable to fall apart at any moment, and the art students definitely aren’t sick from breathing in the rust and mold that plague their out-of-date studios.
Other departments couldn’t put that $50 million to good use at all.
Now I understand that certain funds are available to certain programs and whatnot, but come on. As a flagship university, we should be able to find even the most difficult funding. We’ve got professionals on our side.
We’ve also got a tiger.
So my real question is: Why haven’t we used that to University’s advantage? It would be pretty simple to grab a crane from the other side of Tiger Stadium, attach a contractor to the hook block and dangle him or her over the cage until we can hash out a fair price for services.
Of course, we could never do that unless Mike agreed. Maybe we should hire professional tiger-enticers to help out.
This University boasts the best landscape architecture undergraduate program in the nation and one of the most prestigious French departments as well.
No campus can touch our game days, no matter what any drunk Ole Miss fan claims or whatever sign the esteemed men of DKE decide to hang on their fraternity house.
Some would say it’s our attitudes that allow us to accept the positives and disregard the negatives to lead a happier life, but the negatives this semester have continued to impact students too much for us to afford remaining complacent.
We all have grades and jobs and families to worry about, but we should also keep the reputation and actions of the University we will represent for the rest of our lives on the list of priorities somewhere.
It will continue to show up on our résumés until the day we die.
Because of this, we should worry that there’s no new information about the six-year-old murder of graduate students, and at this point no one’s holding out much hope.
We should concern ourselves with the fact that the University still expects cyclists to fend for themselves on winding campus streets, catcalling is still an accepted medium of communication of women’s worth and homelessness rates rise daily.
Do not sit idly by. We do have power, and students win if it comes to numbers. So let’s agree on something: We need to reform this University’s priorities.