Thursday, January 22, 2009

The Real RIT, thoughts and concerns

So I haven't posted in a while, so I figured I'd writing an editorial about some RIT stuff.

SG recently challenged several RIT administrators to live in the dorms, eat at Gracies, walk the quarter mile, and park without a reserved pass. I unfortunately couldn't make it to the closing meeting, but I did read through the blogs that were posted by the administrations and they seemed very positive. I'm not sure they got the "full" experience. It seems the admins completely missed out on several joys of campus living I got to experience.

1. 15 hour days. The reason sleep schedules are so odd in the dorms is because of how hard students have to work to survive. Between classes and work, some of us start at 8AM or earlier and don't get to put face to pillow until almost midnight. When you're looking at something like that, try to imagine what video games at 3am feel like. NOW try to go to Gracie's and eat that salad or that wrap, after a long day of frustrations that started way too early.

2. Sexile. It happens, even at a place like RIT. I bring it up because of its affects primarily on morale. Yes it keeps you up sometimes, and sometimes keeps you from getting into your room to do your work. But unless you get your own chance to do some sexiling, being forced to do your work in the hallway or the lounge because your roommate is bumping uglies is a pretty crushing blow to your morale. Couple that with the bonechilling cold of walking the quarter mile in winter and all the other frustrations of life at RIT (Parking, bad professors, over priced food, class registration, etc) and you have a recipe for a miserable existence.

3. Parking. Someone had to say it. It was part of the poster. When did these administrators have to deal with THIS daily thorn in my side? As far as I know, never. Actually, from what I read on the blogs, they marveled at how easy it was to walk to their offices from the dorms. SG, what gives? I wanted to see Destler tooling around E and F lot in his Prius for 20 minutes trying to find a spot not marked reserved. These administrators have dedicated parking or easy access to reserved passes, in the spirit of the challenge shouldn't they have had to deal with parking like the rest of us do? Yes, this is the DORM challenge...but why would you so obviously ignore commuters? Personally, I'm a little disappointed by this.

4. Food outside of Gracie's. Yes Gracie's is bad, we all suffered but then moved on. Unfortunately the food on the rest of campus isn't particularly good...or more to the point, fairly priced. It really puts my nuts in a twist to go to the SAU and see people running the line to grill twice as fast as people going to the Deli, walking out with these greased up cheeseballs that cost worlds less than getting a salad and yogurt. Living at RIT, going to class, suffering the weather makes it hard to WANT to eat healthy, and the PRICE makes it hard to afford eating healthy. It's crap. Sure administrators can deal with it since they pull down some decent change, but what about the student employee limited to 20 hours a week for minimum wage? The cost of good food on campus hurts.


And I'm sick of writing. Go go gadget "Publish Inane Rantings to Public" button.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree. A lot of what does on at this campus is iffy. 20 hours a week making minimum wage is tough and it blows. Hell if I want to eat a nice lunch on campus its almost an hours pay and I better be drinking free water.