Last week, there was a scholarship dinner for prospective freshmen. I was able to find out what it was that the future students ate and when I did, I was astonished. They had a seafood bar available to them, which was stocked with crab, oysters and shrimp. They also had other goodies such as a dessert table and steak. A friend of mine who helped wait tables for the dinner told one of the prospective students that this would be the best food they would ever get here.
My point of this little story is not about the school’s atrocious food. My point is that I think the incoming students should see exactly what they are getting into when they think about applying to Seton Hill University (SHU). When they get here, they might not see what they get during a visit to the school.
By Andrea Perkins,
Senior Staff Writer
Last week, there was a scholarship dinner for prospective freshmen. I was able to find out what it was that the future students ate and when I did, I was astonished. They had a seafood bar available to them, which was stocked with crab, oysters and shrimp. They also had other goodies such as a dessert table and steak. A friend of mine who helped wait tables for the dinner told one of the prospective students that this would be the best food they would ever get here.
My point of this little story is not about the school’s atrocious food. My point is that I think the incoming students should see exactly what they are getting into when they think about applying to Seton Hill University (SHU). When they get here, they might not see what they get during a visit to the school.
I see tours walk through the school all the time, and I wonder where the tour guides take those poor, bewildered students. Perhaps the tour guides should take students to places like the Cove and our pool area. These students should see our art studios and our music department. The guides should take students to all the dormitories, and into the rooms, since each one is a viable place where they could be potentially living.
Nobody walks into Havey Hall and says, “Wow! What a great place to live!” Maybe they should sit down with a member of residence life and talk about everything that could be irksome with the living situation later on, such as: the exorbitant price of cable, no laundry rooms in Main Complex, and the $10 fine of locking yourself out rule. And as long as we’re talking about living on campus, these incoming freshmen should try living with parking in Lot D.
They should also see things like our science labs on second Lynch and our new gym, of course, but they need to see everything they’re getting into. They should see how some class sizes are so large that students have to sit on the floor because there are no seats. They should stop in on Admin 206 when the classroom is filled to capacity, and then decide if the 15 : one student to teacher ratio is really truth, or just an average of the big classes and the little seminar classes that only the seniors get to take. Then, they should count how many kids are sleeping in that huge class, and how many are actually paying attention.
They should sit in the desks in Maura Hall and see if their rear ends enjoy the unforgiving wood of those chairs (and if you’re left handed, good luck being comfortable in them).
The tour guides probably don’t have time to do all this, but I think then, the prospective students should be informed of certain important day to day errands of being a SHU student. For example, when your semester begins, they should be told that it’s a good idea to wait until a professor actually says they’ll use a book before going to the bookstore to buy it. Sometimes you’ll go to the bookstore and buy two books and end up dropping $200 (this happens at every school, not just SHU).
Also, they should be told of the struggle you might have dealing with the various offices on the first floor of the Administration building. Be aware: these offices have almost no communication with each other. I remember days when I was running back and forth between Financial Aid and Student Accounts to figure out if I had enough aid or if my bill was paid. Oh yes, and have fun when you go to Student Accounts, where you’ll find out if you still owe three grand. The online pleasure of Student Accounts also exists through Campus Connect, which is soon transforming to GriffinGate, which hopefully will be more tolerable.
Numerous times I’ve checked my bill online, only for it to tell me that my bill is wrong for some reason. You can also register for classes on Campus Connect, except when it doesn’t work. Freshman year, I remember when most of the freshman girls on third Brownlee were up at six in the morning because we wanted first crack in our class at registering. One small problem: it didn’t work, so a parade of about 10 of us tramped to the Registrar in our bathrobes and pajamas from Brownlee to turn in our program cards.
It’s not fair to these incoming students to not tell them the whole story, or to show them only the good bits of the school. When they get here, they’ll learn all the dirty bits, and all the little things that make life here a little more aggravating each day, and wonder why they weren’t told this before. After all, we can’t all go to the dining hall and find shrimp and crab for dinner, can we?