As forecasted by The Weather Channel, the temperature for Tuesday, March 18, is expected to reach a high of 41 degrees. Add 15 degrees and you have a rough estimate of how much nicer it would be to be in The City (yes, New York City). This is my daily ritual.
Undoubtedly, the weather is one of the main reasons so many students are currently dealing with the second semester blues. Everyone knows what the coming of second semester means, yet somehow spring 2008 has brought upon us some tribulations that not even the oldest of BU students can liken to anything they’ve ever seen.
Besides dealing with midterms and bad weather, spring ’08 is presided over by an administration that doesn’t listen to students’ demands (read: the plans to gut Newing and Dickinson).
Given that it is the students’ tuition that keeps this school running, it would be reasonable to say that the administration’s fondness of steamrolling over our opinions and disregarding the outcome of our votes is somewhat akin to taxation without representation. Adding to the negative feelings are the stresses of housing sign-ups and the school asking us to switch over from the BUSI system to something called a “BU Brain.” Simply too much is going on around the Bing during midterms, and honestly, it doesn’t look like the staff here is capable of handling it all — much less the students.
I noticed how well ResLife botched their electronic handling of housing sign-ups with a system that went down before it could get far off the ground. I thought people were supposed to be pretty bright here at Binghamton, yet my mailbox, spammed out (courtesy of ResLife), leads me to believe otherwise.
In fact, I’ve noticed a slew of questionable behavior recently: Feb. 22, a friend of mine sprained her ankle, now a gigantic blue welt. Through the piles of snow we fireman-carried her towards Health Services, the ankle prompting sharp yelps from my fallen comrade throughout our trek. Arriving at our final destination at 4:47 p.m. and reaching the front desk, the both of us were greeted by nervous looks darting between three employees behind the counter. Finally, someone spoke up:
“Sorry, we stopped seeing people two minutes ago … the door should have been locked.”
And this is where you can cue the jaw drop. Did an injured person just get turned away from Health Services because she arrived two minutes after they should have been closed? After being carried across campus and through the snow with a severely sprained, unnaturally colored ankle, did a group of health professionals just turn this girl away?
We doubled checked — yes, we were being asked to leave.
The troubles of second semester certainly don’t end here; as all of you party animals may have realized, the Binghamton nightlife only has so many options, yet even those are dwindling with less parties provided by our good greek friends and ever-so-slightly beefed-up security at certain watering holes (you know which sordid bar I’m talking about).
I’ll just end this with the hope that as we ride along with spring 2008 that warmer weather will head our way, the administration will acknowledge our existence sometime soon and that some friendlier folks will find their way onto our campus.