Editor:
I am outraged by the deplorable conditions undergraduate students have to tolerate. For pure greed, the university keeps on accepting more and more students with disastrous results: lowered academic standards, overcrowded classes, no parking available and strained campus resources.
The massive influx of students each semester has brought lowered academic standards overall. Did you know that your tuition is getting you a "noncompetitive" education? The UA has dropped from a "competitive" rating to its current status as "noncompetitive" compared to other universities.
A typical class is one where teachers speak with microphones and their backs to the class as they write on the board. Most don't give students time for questions or limit questions to one or two per class. Even though TAs do most of the work, some teachers administer impossible exams so they can discourage students. It is not uncommon to find only two "A"s in a class of 60 students, not because the students aren't capable but because the teachers want to eliminate as many students as possible. In this way, even the good students suffer because they are denied an "A" that they would normally deserve. The teachers who do this are not making the UA or their department "competitive"; they are eliminating extra work for themselves so they can have more time for their "research."
Everybody knows that parking permits are issued far in excess of the number of spaces and the university "recognizes" the problem. So why don't the ticketing agents reduce the number of tickets they give out or give warnings only? We have to pay twice for their greed Ÿ once by buying permits that are useless, and twice by paying fines when we can't park in a legal space.
Another "service" which the university lacks is sufficient computer labs. Most days we wait and wait to have access to a computer Ÿ and that's if the whole lab hasn't been overtaken by a "class" (often phantom). At other times, the lab is closed for an unexplained reason. For students who study in the summer, this lack of access to computer labs is especially frustrating as our assignments are due more frequently than in other semesters. If the university cannot provide enough computer labs in the summer or any other semester, then it should advise teachers not to assign any computer work and not to expect assignments on time.
Then, there is the issue of safety in the weight-lifting room in Bear Down Gym. The equipment there is so old that some of it dates to 1950! Besides that, the machines are not maintained at all, leaving students vulnerable to injury and the university liable in a hefty lawsuit. I'd like to see this room advertised in the promotional material of the UA and then see how many new students decide to come here.
We pay a lot of money to attend this university. In return, we don't expect to be treated so disrespectfully. We don't expect to be promised services and then denied them through incompetence, bad planning, inadequate maintenance and disregard for students' needs.
Al Sahara
Chemical Engineering Junior