Tech focuses on superficial issues

My four years at Tech have been plagued with things that I personally abhor: apathy, bad grammar and a recent lack of Ben and Jerry ' s ice cream pints in the Student Center Food Court.

I can overlook the zealots on Skiles who never stop pushing the remains of needlessly slaughtered trees into my tightly clenched fists, and I can even enjoy all of the new " dining options " that abound on campus - although their hours are not sufficient. I must admit that they are better than the constant fare of Wingzone and Papa John ' s that I survived on freshman year.

However, I must strongly object to the blatant insincerity that screams to me from virtually every corner of campus.

While the Tech Tsunami Relief effort was fairly well conducted and generally a wonderful idea, why did its organizers choose that event? Was it the attention that the media lavished on it? The catastrophically high number of people who died? If TTR really cared so much about helping those affected, why did it wait until the end of its prolonged campaign to cut a check?

With the increased attention that Tech has placed on " internationalizing " our majors, students and campus, why not implement a simple " study abroad requirement " for our majors, as is required by schools in the University System of California? If we are really sincere about how wonderful of an effect this kind of experience will have on students, why not make it obligatory?

Why does Tech spend so much money on superficial surface alterations without fixing any of the fundamental problems?

Examples of this abound: from repainting the Student Center three times last summer to budgeting $125,000 for a single day of student appreciation.

I would assume that the Student Center painting was to improve the " look " of the campus - let me assure you that there are places that look much worse, try the bathrooms in Skiles or the lighting (or lack thereof) in the parking garages.

A free concert on campus provides for a fun night and potentially even a few later nights of reminiscing. However that does not improve student life. A concert with a really cool band is just that: a concert with a really cool band. Student life is comprised of the little things, the everyday things.

Don ' t even get me started on the idea of placing a coffee shop in the library. While I am forced to admit that I like the Student Center Commons (I was a huge skeptic), there is no way that a coffee shop in the library is a good idea. It ' s a library for heaven ' s sake!

Improve the bathrooms, the lighting, the A/C and all the little things that make us sigh when we realize that it ' s virtually the only place to study on campus. (The flag building is alright, but it ' s only open during the day, and the Student Center is really, really noisy.)

Not that I would object to having a coffee shop near the library, perhaps even in the little basement area. Hey, if they can put a coffee shop in what used to be a bathroom in the Student Center Commons, I think they could probably put one anywhere. As long as it had decent hours (hopefully the same as those of the library), it would be a great addition.

Administration: let ' s try to focus on something besides what makes you look good. Yes, the new management building is gorgeous, but the noise and smell created by the disrepair of the ESM building makes it more than a little hard to concentrate.

Why do some of your students receive LCD screens outside of every classroom when architecture students don ' t even have enough room to store a model while they are trying to draw sections of it? And don ' t try to feed me the line about " rich alumni. "

Is Tech a corporate whore? It ' s beginning to look that way. We have a Ford ES & amp;T building, a Barnes and Noble bookstore, an Einstein ' s coffee/bagel place and Coca-Cola everywhere. Do we really need to sell ourselves to get ahead? I know what the fountain of all wisdom (a.k.a. my dad) would have to say about that.

The recent swarm of soon-to-be high school graduates and their accompanying parents only serves to make campus that much more annoying. Their ridiculously sanitized version of how great Tech is makes me want to vomit.

Along a similar vein, FASET applications read that they only want " positive and enthusiastic " leaders. Why not try getting real people? People who actually know about the real Tech life, complain about it constantly and secretly love it in spite of all of its flaws.