The List

It’s spring again, and – alas – another
school year is over. This is the part where
I’m supposed to make you, the reader,
all teary-eyed about this being my last
editorial for The CT. Sorry-that’s not
my style. I’d much rather go out with
guns blazing. I’ll save the teary-eyed stuff
for the series-finale cliffhanger of “Pizza
from Scratch” (spoiler alert: Unca Lux
gets cancer).

For my final editorial, I decided to hash
out the list of problems I see at VCU. In
retrospect, I wish I had spent more time
focusing on VCU’s problems instead of
on the world in general. After a semester
of ripping into everything from underage
drinking to roflcopters, I figured this list
might somehow redeem me.

1. James Branch Cabell Library
should be open 24 hours on weekdays
throughout the semester: It is absolutely
wonderful that VCU keeps Cabell open
24 hours, seven days a week, during
exams, but the school fails to realize
students have exams they need to study
for year-round.

The library is the brain of our institution,
and it should be treated as such.

2. Overcrowding at the Stuart C.
Siegel Center Gym: The turnout at the
gym was fine until VCU shut down the
Cary Street Gym for renovations. Fliers
slyly apologize for the inconvenience
of the temporary closing and state the
gym will reopen in spring 2010. That’s
two years from now, and by that time,
I will have graduated.

In the meantime, the students who
used to go to the Cary Street Gym now
pile into Siegel, and VCU has smushed
all of the Cary equipment into the Siegel
gym. Even if you manage to find a time
when the gym isn’t
packed, you still risk
being smashed in the
face by another workout
machine located a half-inch
away.

While I understand the need
for new facilities, VCU has an obligation
to keep its students healthy in the
meantime. After a week or two of waiting
30 to 40 minutes to use a treadmill, I
eventually just stopped going to the
gym-as many of my friends did.

VCU has another perfectly good gym
on campus: the Franklin Street Gym.
The only problem is, except for the
pool, the gym facilities are reserved for
athletes. Some of the excess equipment
from the Cary Street Gym could be
made available to regular students at the
Franklin Gym, and I doubt that would
make too much trouble. The idea that
more than 31,000 students can work
out when they want to in an exercise
room that has a maximum occupancy
of 98 people is preposterous.

3. The lack of concerts at VCU: Once
upon a time, before there was a Shafer
Court Dining Center, there was a little
place known simply as Shafer Court. The
Shafer Court offered a stage for bands
like Red Hot Chili Peppers (wearing
nothing but tube socks) to perform for
students. Except for Lupe Fiasco – and a
band of weird Beatles-wannabes in their
50s who performed next to the W.E.
Singleton Center for the Performing
Arts – VCU rarely lets outdoor concerts
take place.

The school does allow some outdoor
concerts, but only in their “allotted time”
between noon and 2 p.m. VCU needs to
host more musical events such as these
for students. Shafer Court used to have
a band perform every Friday night. We
only get bands if there is a festival.

4 . VCU sculptures:
VCU is currently
rated No. 1 for its Master of Fine Arts
sculpture program by U.S. News and
World Report. You would think, with
that ranking, VCU would select some
cool sculptures to place around campus.
Instead, VCU put out what looks like a
castrated nutsack. The “Soft” sculpture
next to Grace E. Harris Hall looks like
testicles, and confuses most everyone
who walks past it. Perhaps, when VCU
eventually takes over Dogwood Dell, the
sculpture will be relocated there with
the Carillon as a phallus.

There was a cool sculpture next to
the Singleton Center of a pair of jeans
kicking midair, but just as quickly as
it was put up, it was taken away. Does
VCU have a sculpture fairy that runs
around dropping balls from the sky and
picking up sculpted jeans? Why not
have the student body vote on which
sculptures get placed on campus so we
have the choice of whether to look at
balls every day?

5. VCU TV/Radio: Though there have
been rumblings of improvements in the
works, there has yet to be an outcome.
It is ridiculous that a school with more
than 31,000 students would not have
its own radio frequency or TV station.
VCU HDTV hijacks the PBS station for
two hours a day, and WVCW only is
available on the Internet. VCU should have its own
channel and frequency.

Imagine the entertainment that could come out of
an independent channel. With all of the creativity and
arts majors at VCU, with all of the cultural events and
festivals, VCU TV could be amazing. Both “The Tom
Green Show” and “The Whitest Kids U’ Know” started
off as college radio and TV shows. VCU’s stations also
would give communications students more experience
with their field and would be their first time creating
content unbridled by a department or grade.

6. Quality of education: In its rush to become some
giant beast of a university and own all of Richmond
proper, VCU seems to have disregarded completely
any thought of making itself a better school. Couldn’t
some of that expansionist energy have been put into
making our educational experience at VCU better?

I’ll explain this in the best way I can. I took a course
this semester about Shakespearean plays that was
held in one of the huge lecture halls in the Eugene P.
and Lois E. Trani Center for Life Sciences. When my
friend took the class the semester before, it was held
in one of the smaller lecture halls of the T. Edward
Temple Building.

When I expressed my concern about the class size
to my professor, he told me it was only going to get
larger. Next school year, the course will be taught in
Harris Hall’s humongous lecture room. VCU is creating
gigantic classes to make money, and the quality of our
classes is going down the tube.

When I hear about a friend graduating in only four
years at VCU, I am shocked. Because of all the confusion
and barriers set up by the school, it nearly is impossible
for students to graduate on time. According to a 2000
report from the State Council of Higher Education for
Virginia, the rate for earning a degree at VCU within
four years is less than 20 percent. Only one in five
VCU freshmen will complete college in four years.
This is unacceptable.

VCU is running our school like a business instead
of an institution of learning. VCU seems determined
to retain students and to milk as much money out of
us as possible. Numerous friends have cried in my
arms because VCU had screwed them over.

I was sitting in the office of an adviser and overheard
her on the phone speaking with another adviser.

“These kids-they just need to chill out and relax.
They’ll get into all the classes they need; it just takes
time,” she said.

What she fails to realize is the longer we stay in
school, the more money we will have to pay off when
we leave. For those of us at school on our own dime,
the cost of an extra semester or two is not cool. The
last thing we need to do is “chill out and relax.”

7. Campus safety: In the aftermath of the Virginia
Tech shootings of last April, school administrators
across the country scrambled to prove their schools
were equipped to respond to a similar tragedy. What
VCU came up with was an expensive siren that sounds
like a fire truck.

The siren is just something administrators can point
out to visiting parents and prospective students to
indicate VCU is safe. If VCU really wanted safety, it
would install an intercommunication system throughout
campus that could give detailed information as
to what is happening and could provide instructions,
accordingly. Texts are a great idea, but if your phone is
silenced in class, it is hard to know you have a message.
It is much quicker with an intercom system.

When siren tests took place (or when the alarm
went off accidentally), students either didn’t care to
respond properly to them or were uninformed as to
what to do when they sound. VCU’s administration
should work on a better system, then go to every class
to explain how it will work.

For all of its flaws, I do love VCU and can’t see
myself anywhere else. I love its diversity and its open
urban environment. Writing this section has been a
blast, and I hope you have had as much fun reading
it as I did writing it.

Cygnus Inter Anates,

Rich Griset

Opinion Editor