Leaning Tower of Northeastern

On this campus where most of us spend at least the four years, there are a lot of things that go unnoticed in our daily lives. Structurally speaking, I am talking about the leaning lamp on the corner of Greenleaf and Forsyth street and which is right next to the art and sciences building. I have passed this lamp for all the years I have been in this school but never really thought anything of it. I realize that the pain of walking from my Huntington Avenue apartment to Ryder for my 8am class has made me notice quite a few things. I then wonder what more I would observe if I lived in a place like Kennedy Hall.

Whenever I see the leaning lamp, it serves to represent a lot of things to me. For one, the lamp seems to be leaning in order to reach out to something I cannot explain. I see myself in the lamp in the sense that I like to reach out to people, my fellow students and furthermore to get them to be involved in student activities. I like to get involve because I have had the experience to know that I manage and use time more efficiently and do better in school when I am an active member of a student group or when I participate in community service as opposed to when I am inactive and I think of everything but tend to do nothing. So for one, the leaning lamp is saying, go out there and get involved.

Secondly, I see the lamp as representing the student body. During the recent workstudy impasse, when the school administrators decided to put our money where their mouths were, the students quickly came together and "leaned" on the school administration to do something about it. We must have leaned so hard for it to rain $130,000, which the provost figures will enable students to now work up to 20 hours a week. As for me, I have leaned on my parents for a while and unfortunately, it does not rain that heavy. Sometimes I have to look up and sing "send down the rain."

Unfortunately, it is not all the time that the leaning lamp represents good for students. The leaning tower has come to represent the school administration. The ever increasing and high tution and fees placed on us by the school and the weight of our personal problems connive to knock the wind out of most of us. With the weight of our education rested heavily but uneasily on how shoulders, I begin to wonder how many actually benefit from their education once they graduate considering that someone who majored in Finance may well end up answering the telephone at Maxwells. Graduation is around the corner and believe me, a lot of seniors are like the green train at a red light, they want to go but cannot move. One graduating senior I talked to wants to go to business school but that is not possible now for three main reasons. One, she cannot afford to go since she does not want to be further in debt, two, she is yet to repay the thousands she owe in her undergraduate loans and thirdly, she needs a job to pay off her loans but there is none forthcoming. So what does she do? You may call it a dilemma but I call it a crisis in American higher education. As graduation day approaches, you are likely to see some seniors shedding tears. The left eye will shed tears of joy, rejoicing that the finished line has been reached while the right eye will shed tears of sorrow, an acknowledgement that they are just about to begin another race. The race to pay off their student loans and the race to begin a new life.

Lastly, the leaning lamp represents Northeastern as a whole. A school trying to stand up straight and provide more students. It would be an understatement to say that a number of things are lacking on campus. The computer labs are a case in point. I need to know why we do not have a 24 hour lab. We have to deal with the fact that the lab closes at 12 midnight on most days of the week. Take David, a typical day college student who belongs to a student organization. He has classes all morning, he spends his afternoon dealing with organization matters, he spends this time planning activities that enhances Northeastern's image. He goes to the library after his dinner ends at 7pm. He puts in three hours of study and heads over to the computer lab to do some work. Two hours later and halfway through his work, David is kicked out of the lab. At some other school, David would have finished his work and would not have to give his professor any excuse.

The same problem applies to the library. At 12 midnight, students are basically evicted from the library. Only a small section of the first floor is left open till 2am. Since my freshman year, I have been looking for the ingenious genius who figured that all the students on the second through the fourth floor would fit in the small section of the library that is left open after midnight. If you are one of those who has a roommate that turns in early, then you would know that short of studying on the library quad with light from the student center, you might as well go to sleep with your work undone. My suggestion is to ask for student volunteers and I am sure there will be some and if the second through the fourth floor has to be closed, why not leave the entire first floor open. This would prevent the library looking like a refugee camp after midnight. I am sure we dont have to perform the half-moon dance in order to get something done about this.

To Northeastern, I say "stand up straight, didn't your parents teach you not to lean!!! Whenever you see that leaning lamp between Forsyth and Greenleaf street, take a look at it, it could mean something to you.