Pay more attention to current UA students

There were two articles in your June 30 edition that seemed to have very much in common. There seems to be a direct correlation between falling retention rates and lack of housing for freshman this coming fall.

It seems that the university can't keep its students here, so in order to keep making money, they have to pack the freshmen in like cattle.

So what if there is no room in classes, or professors have to cope with heavier work loads and high school graduates who can't write a decent paragraph? At least the U of A will keep raking in the dough for attendance rates.

Instead of finding more housing for freshmen who wouldn't make it at a self-respecting institution of higher learning, how about putting more effort into retaining the already enrolled students who have already made an investment toward their college education.

I am talking about the quality of service on campus. We all know that advising in some colleges at the U of A is a joke. You might as well pick your classes from a OUIJI board as go to the Office of Academic Services for help.

Why aren't advisers accountable for what they say and do? Supposedly there was supposed to be ASUA action on the matter but that is another story for another day.

What about the quality of classes we have to take to graduate. This past semester I took a class where I attended maybe one out of three lectures, wrote a 10 page paper in about four hours ON the day it was due, went into a test with no prior knowledge and eenie meenie miny moed my way to an A+ in the class. And I know for a fact that I was not nearly the only one to do so. Did I get anything out of it? Sure - and easy A, and the knowledge never to take another gen ed class if I wanted to maintain my self-respect.

The University of Arizona excels in some major areas. But as a whole, the university does little to make its enrolled students feel welcome and cared for. To compensate for the loss in returning students, they enroll more and more freshmen with less and less talent, free thought, and sense of responsibility.

If this university truly cared about the students it is entrusted to educate, it would make an effort to keep the students it already has, instead of burdening them with an incoming class too big and incapable of handling a university education.

Veneranda Aguirre
Political Science Junior