Our Word

Chancellor Wendler: Thank you for the letter assuring us and our bill-paying parents that you still consider students the administration's No. 1 priority. But we beg to differ once again.

Yes, it was a nice holiday gesture to reaffirm our suspicions that after paying four years of tuition we will still receive a degree if we are in good academic standing. Anybody would be a fool to suggest we wouldn't receive a degree. You couldn't pay people to attend here if that was the case.

What we really want to know is whether our degree will have any merit after we get out in the "real world." Will it be given the same amount of credibility that a degree issued at any other graduation would receive? Or will it be tagged with a little clause at the bottom that says we received this degree on our honor, without actually completing the required classes?

We think the administration should stop telling us things we already know and give up the tough answers.

For example, how exactly did our poor, impoverish school come up with the funds to send out about 20,000 virtually useless letters? Besides the cost of postage, which is considerable, there's paper (not your standard cheapo white copy paper), envelopes, ink and labor.

Most people who have money invested in this University have been following the negotiations, whether it be through the major state newspapers in their region, the Daily Egyptian, our website or word of mouth through their children. So we don't understand the point of regurgitating the very same information at a high cost.

We find it a little frivolous to send out these letters when this school does not have enough money to mail out report cards or class schedules to students whose money goes to pay for that type of thing. Students are inconvenienced, once again. But we are supposedly No. 1.

So we question again: Are students really the first priority?

We surely aren't the first priority if class schedule books won't be printed because of cost, but the chancellor can send out junk mail at our expense.

We can't possibly be No. 1 if budget cuts on campus have reduced our library, which we depend on to advance ourselves academically, to only staff librarians and information people on the first floor. This means a student on the sixth floor, who has a simple question, has to go all the way down to the first floor to ask it.

The deans recently handed over their proposed cuts to the chancellor. We can't help but wonder what will be taken from students next. Maybe there will be a pay-at-the-door admission fee to all of our classes. We don't really need electricity ˜ let's learn by candle. Heat? Who needs heat? We can huddle together for warmth.

Don't tell us we are the first priority. We clearly aren't and nobody is buying it anymore. Not us, not our parents and certainly not the working people of this University.

Actions speak louder than words. And we see where we rank.

Copyright 2009 - Daily Egyptian