The disruption of life-plans — short-term, long-term, and everything in between — can be painful and harmful in its own way. We should not minimize the pain that students are going through right now. Such reductions in well-being ought to be recognized for what they are.
Structural change requires collective action: action that is possible only if we all take responsibility for our choices and for making better ones.
The app that I propose would streamline that process. Rather than having to search by department, by class or, worse, manually through all possible options (this semester alone, the registrar lists 1,559 classes), we would have a system where we could search for rooms by building.
When we refer to our peers as apathetic, we are tacitly charging them with being overly concerned about their personal interests and priorities, to the detriment of being concerned with larger social and political issues, like gun reform.
It’s also true that it is a sign-in club, which means that if it changes to bicker, a possibility suggested by the Board, this could change the calculus of joining a club for underclass students — a goal that the Board seems to explicitly endorse, even if it does not necessarily endorse this particular means.
My suggestion, though more modest, could lead to more radical outcomes for our privacy: change Tigerbook to a purely opt-in system.
Above all I think it’s time for us to have an earnest discussion about our endowment.
Midterms are a stressful time for us all. Because of that, I think it is important to remember that the time spent not studying can be just as valuable as the time spent studying.
Smaller class sizes, more direct engagement with students, and — perhaps controversially — more writing would all go a long way in making us an even better university than we already are. But all of this should be done cautiously. Overcorrecting might prove to create more harm than good.
My point in writing this has little to do with telling you about all the different options available to you. I have only been an independent for about three weeks and there is so much more out there for me to discover. I simply want to suggest that being an independent is not only possible, it can be deeply enriching.
