What are you doing, Daily Reveille? At one point in time I admired your paper. I went so far as to suggest to the BRCC Today that we try to emulate you. I considered the Reveille a beacon of collegiate journalism. I was wrong.
You have continued to harass not only Baton Rouge Community College but the entire Louisiana Community College and Technical College System. Our two systems aren’t even in competition. We’re not even in the same game. The Reveille, and LSU by association, seem to be suffering from a self-esteem issue. Our college doesn’t serve the same purpose as your institution, although our professors do go through the same accreditation process as yours. Although many of our professors teach in your classrooms as well. Although most of our professors hold MBAs or PhDs in their chosen fields.
BRCC and our sister colleges in the LCTCS exist to afford underprivileged students and working adults the opportunity to advance in their career fields, or get certified in a technical/vocational area. But I don’t suppose we need nurses or petroleum technicians or construction managers. Just engineers and philosophy majors, churned out at 40K-60K a pop. 100 percent of our nursing students have passed their certification exams, by the way, two years running. About 120 of them in all, only 120 because that’s all our program can handle. (There are about 400 applicants per semester. It’s quite competitive.)
I made a 28 on my ACT, but I was raised by an uncle who took me in after my parents died and had to work 40 hours a week starting sophomore year of high school. I wasn’t exactly bringing home straight A’s. BRCC has given me the opportunity to schedule my classes around my working life, and now I’m at a college I can afford with class sizes that allow my professors to give me their undivided and personal attention.
What the Reveille has printed over the past few weeks and months, characterizing our schools as “loop hole colleges” and “degree machines,” is frankly asinine and offensive to all the people working full-time jobs and struggling to better themselves through higher education. The last thing we need is the LSU bourgeoisie leaning out of their purple and gold and not quite ivory towers, sneering down at the people who didn’t get dealt the same cards in life as most of your 20 something frat-tastic trust fund set.
And I know I’m generalizing. There are a lot of hardworking people at LSU who struggled to get where they are, but those aren’t the people I’m addressing right now. I’d give them the respect they deserve any day of the week, but I’m pissed, and justly so.
But it’s all good, Reveille. Your “Flagship” University is taking on water and sinking fast. Our community college tugboat? We’re chugging right along, and while a big portion of your graduating class is searching for work, our graduates will be laboring humbly away in our hospitals and chemical plants, not exactly bringing in six figures, but giving back to the community none the less.
 
Nicholas Pierce
Op-Ed Editor, BRCC Today
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Contact The Daily Reveille’s opinion staff at [email protected]