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Arizona Daily Wildcat


By Renee Congdon
Arizona Daily Wildcat,
September 10, 1999

I am very angry. I am so angry that I am on the verge of going down to the Bursar's office to demand my money back. For the last four and a half years I have willingly sent this university a check for thousands of dollars in exchange for the promise of an education. This is the first semester that I have gotten so fed up by the third week of classes that I would even consider asking for my money back. You want to know what's pissing me off? Construction.

When I agreed to pay my tuition this semester, I was under the impression that I would be given a fair opportunity to learn. I guess I was wrong. So far this semester, the noise of the construction has interfered with at least two of my classes.

The first interference was last week; I had a quiz in one of the classes that I am required to take in order to graduate. It was in the Psychology Building, and the noise from the construction outside was so loud that I was unable to concentrate. I don't want to publish my grades, but I will tell you that I didn't do very well.

The second time happened this past Wednesday. I was sitting in the one interesting class I have this semester, listening to a lecture that I needed to hear in order to do an assigned paper, and again the construction noise outside was obnoxiously loud. I missed half the lecture, even though I wasn't sitting more than four feet away from the professor. This sucks, because I am supposed to graduate in December, and if I do not do well in my last classes, then I will not be able to get into the graduate school of my choice. Maybe you freshmen cannot relate to this, but I know that you juniors and seniors can.

The construction has not only gotten in the way of my learning; it has also made it near impossible for me to get to and from classes without threat of serious bodily harm. I am not blaming the pedestrians or the bikers. They did not put the fences up that block off all of the sidewalks. Why is it necessary to block off huge sections of campus that are not actually being worked on? Why don't they make an alternate route for either the bikers or the pedestrians so they don't have to keep running into each other?

You know, when I first got to the UA I was extremely impressed by the way the campus looked. I took lots of pictures and sent them to all of my friends out east to brag about going to school at a 'resort'. But now, this place is so ugly. I don't even want my parents to come here in December for my graduation, because they will be disappointed about how much money they and I have poured into this eyesore.

I'm not going to be here when the campus construction is done, so why do I have to pay for it? I don't mean monetarily, either. Why do my grades have to suffer for the people who are going to be here in 2001? Why do I have to get hurt as I make my way around campus? There are many other things about the construction that I could complain about, but I am sure that by now you are already angry enough. So what should we do? Should we go down to the Bursar's office and demand our money back? Should we boycott classes until we get the quiet that we need? I don't know what the right solution is, but I do know that I am fed up.


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