Fist Shaking Goodness

There Is NO Joy In Being a Flame….

Recently Princeton Review rated DePaul University as having the happiest students and evidently UIC doesn’t seem to like getting “snubbed” in that category. Silly school, you’re not being snubbed. Let me put this in terms that even some of our non-English speaking TAs can understand: we… ARE… NOT… happy.

True, we have low tuition compared to other schools in the area, but that seems to be gradually increasing… therefore making UIC less and less affordable for its students. This is also coupled with the fact that facilities and programs are being cut therefore making us pay more for less. Library hours: cut. Computer lab hours: cut. Classes: cut. That’s not a fact that makes poor college students happy. It’s also true that we have nice neighborhoods with fine dining on Taylor Street and Greektown which is comparable to some of the nice North side offerings. But then we also have the projects, the Streetwise vendors, and those UIC alumni selling socks off the expressway. I think that rather detracts from the atmosphere. Our buildings also have no windows and for the most part resembles a prison campus more than a college campus, this also applies to campus social life. We also have the multi-million dollar rubble in front of UH that allegedly would be a fountain which will supposedly single-handedly beautify the campus and magically make the students happy.

Students that took the survey were asked to give a numerical rating in 62 categories from their opinion on their library to student satisfaction with financial aid. When I read that Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, Michael Ginsburg said, “We think that either UIC students were not included in the survey by the Princeton Review, or that the number of respondents was too small to include us," I laughed. If it was the case that UIC students were underrepresented, then we would not even be CLOSE to being rated as happy. We’d give Montana Tech a run for its money as having the least happy students. If not them, we’d definitely tie the Illinois Institute of Technology, who ranks as the 4th unhappiest. Seeing as they share many similarities with us, like being in the middle of projects, having professors that don’t speak English, and ugly buildings. So UIC should quit its whining because they don’t WANT our opinions to be known to the nation.

Speaking Of That Stupid Fountain…

They’ve been building that stupid fountain for a while now and all that seems to have gotten done was the planting of weeds, either that or the weeds grew themselves out of pure neglect of the grounds. The original scheduled completion date has come and gone and even on the sign posted on the construction site has the complete date covered with a piece of duct tape.

What’s worse, I was walking by the rubble one day and I saw this piece of heavy construction equipment built to haul insane amounts of dirt and rubble use its giant scoop of death to play with a dumpster. It was just pushing the dumpster left… then pushing it right… then forwards… then backwards… and then made it do the hokey-pokey and turn itself about. That’s UIC for you… paying for something completely and utterly unnecessary while there’s other more pressing things that need to be fixed.

Since When Did Sneezing Become Religious?

Whenever any one sneezes, there’s almost always the obligatory “Bless you.” But since it’s the cold and allergy season, people have been sneezing a lot, sometimes stringing multiple sneezes together. But yet, people keep going “Bless you.” They say “Bless you,” so often that sneezers must feel like the Pope for being so blessed. And of course, the sneezer feels obligated to return the “Bless you,” with a “Thank you,” thereby making the blesser feel like God for being so thanked. I never knew sneezing was such a religious experience. Maybe people should forgo church and convert to Sneezianity. You get to do your thanking and blessing, which is what organized religion is all about anyways. Or you can just say “Bless you,” once and let the sneezer be because all the religious connotation is starting to remind me of the crazy Bible study people that harass you. *shudder*