A call to action

The academic year is coming to an end, and this is the last issue of the Activist for the year. As many of you know, I will be graduating and moving on from this campus. I will miss it tremendously. I have poured heart and soul, time and money into this institution. I have been sometimes frustrated, but much more often, I have been greatly rewarded. Now, I am pleading to all of you students who will be continuing next year here at Raymond Walters College to get involved. I know, I know, you are busy. We are all busy. Trust me on this one; you can make time. You see, you are here, I presume, to get an education, right? I assume that when you graduate, you want that degree to mean something. If you are transferring on to another college or university, you want the education received here to both prepare you and make you competitive at the next institution. If you are going into the work force, you want your education to prepare you for your job and for life outside of academia. Either way, the better this college is, the better your degree is. Hence, the more your degree means.

Students, when organized and involved, can make a tremendous impact on a college. It is time for you to get involved. I, and others, have worked very hard over the last two years and some even longer to ensure that students have a voice on this campus. Now is the time to take advantage of that opportunity. Sitting on a committee often takes only a couple hours a month, sometimes more, in the past, sometimes as little as a couple hours a quarter.

Budget cuts are upon us. They are everywhere. If you, as students, do not get involved and use your voices, you will collectively lose in the end. If there is no one participating in an activity, then it will go away. If there are no student voices being heard by the administration, your fees may go up, and your services may dwindle. When it comes time to decide what to do about parking on this campus, if there are no students sitting on the Building and Grounds Committee, there may be no one presenting the impact directly on students. We are very fortunate here to have parking as part of our general fee. Lower fees help make an education more affordable to more students and therefore helps keep our enrollment up. This doesn’t have to be the case. Uptown has designated parking as an auxiliary service that has to sustain itself with no help from the general fund. For us at RWC that would mean new, separate, higher fees. When it comes time to decide how space is allocated in a new or remodeled building, administrators, faculty, staff and students each need to be present to have their needs heard. There is no one better to speak for students than students.

If you are not much for meetings, politics, or the inner workings of a college, what about fun events and parties? There used to be a Student Activities Committee (SAC) on this campus. Without active members, it has gone away and so have many of the events they sponsored. Student Life has attempted to keep some things going that used to be co-sponsored by SAC. Clearly, when it comes to budget cuts, offices like Student Life are going to have a really hard time fighting for a fair piece of the pie when students don’t care enough to volunteer just a couple hours of their time.

I came to Raymond Walters College, after leaving my husband, because I knew I needed to get an education to support my children and myself. I had many choices so I did some research. I asked doctors from local hospitals where I should go for nursing, and they felt very strongly that the best nurses came out of Raymond Walters. I came out here confident that a nursing degree from here would mean something. Even though I decided to go another path while I was on the waiting list, I still believe we have an excellent nursing program. I now know that we have many great programs here. I also know that it is imperative that the students get involved to help make this a strong, sustainable college. The administration, faculty and staff, wonderful as they are, cannot do it alone. There is strong competition out there, and I fear for our college. I love this place and hope to come back to teach here someday. Until then, I, like you, need my degree to really have value and to mean something.