Our "Tobacco-Free" Campus

Despite FIU’s “Top 10 reasons for going smoke-free” there is nothing being done to actually enforce this policy. As noble as it is, the ground continues to be littered with cigarettes. You can’t walk anywhere without encountering at least one person smoking. And considering how big our campus is, that is a problem.

          I believe that we could actually make a compromise; keep the school mostly smoke-free, while allowing the smokers a safe haven. Recently, I visited a friend at Broward College’s central campus and there were designated smoking areas all over the place. The students who smoked used them and only them to enjoy their habits, while the ones who didn’t knew exactly where to steer clear of.

          As much as FIU and Florida and pretty much everyone else would like to stop people from smoking for health reasons or anything else, there isn’t much we can do to actually make them. Quitting is up to them. All we can do is help those who would rather avoid getting caught in a cloud of secondhand smoke. Building designated smoking areas, with their own benches and ashtrays built in would be beneficial to all. It would give the smokers somewhere to be and even encourage them to not smoke where they would be penalized or looked down upon. 

Breezeway

I'm SURE I speak for my colleagues with a meal plan that live on campus when I say that the prices of food and beverages at Breezeway are OUTRAGEOUS, BARBARIC, and RIDICULOUS.

Every time I step into our little convenience store on campus I just want to begin cursing and walk out. I thought Publix was expensive until I stepped foot into that place.
$4 for MILK? $6 for a BOX OF CEREAL? Obviously they have failed to realize we are college students which means money is scarce and our wallets are tight. Just because we have panther bucks doesn't mean the price of the food items do no matter. BUT WAIT what about the people who don't feel like eating at the restaurants on campus and decide to stop by? They must see the prices and want to runaway because I would. If it weren't for my wise use of my panther bucks I would never buy anything from Breezeway. The only thing I am comfortable with is the cost of their slice of pizza because their pizza slices are huge and delicious.. oh and the crack cookies... anything else is overpriced. I mean come on they must know that this isn't right. I think Breezeway should be like any other grocery store where it has buy 1 get 1 free and discounts. FIU is already sucking out enough money out of us as it is. With tuition, housing, and fees I feel like they should give us a break somewhere. But if Breezeway has been around this long and these changes haven't been implemented then maybe they never will... I just wish they would...

Class Times

Seriously FIU? Who wants to wake up before the sun officially rises for an 8am class. We have to do better. Some classes are not conveniently offered during times that students are comfortable with. Some students would rather have an afternoon class rather than a morning class. And what about students that work and have to have their work schedules revolve around their class schedule? Because of the availability of the class some students may not be able to take the classes they need at the appropriate time and fall behind or have to withdraw themselves from being full time students and drop to a part time student. Which only causes or graduation rate to plummet.

For Example, next semester my microeconomics class is at 8am on MWF -________- what is the world coming to? there is no other optional time and now it has just ruined my whole schedule. Also, the class is OPTIONAL to attend since it only has a certain amount of seats and there are more students enrolled than seats in the classroom so I can just watch the videos of the class online. But for a students like myself who actually like a teacher to teach at a reasonable time when I will be awake and alert I don't think its fair to me or my fellow colleagues that are Business majors.
Please FIU do better.

Creative writing as a BA major

                I wish they would offer creative writing as a BA major, I know that it’s a MA program at FIU but, for people such as me who wants to do some screenwriting in the future it’s frustrating that at most there is only a film certificate that could couple with a main major.  Often  people just take an English major instead of creative writing but I feel so much can be offered in creative writing course that can’t be attained in other majors.  In the creative writing class I took over the summer I got encouragement from my peers and the professor gave very useful critics for my writing.  I don’t know how many other people feel the same way but I find a large flaw in this university for not having this as a major.  

This is my list of demands dammit!

FIX THE DAMN WIFI!!!
For the love of gosh, I can't log in to this damned FIU wifi. And when I do, I get booted off. :/
Tough titty, I know.

WHATS UP WITH THE CONSTANT FLOODING YO!
Its like, I just got my pedi done and junk, and there these puddles errr where. Whats up with that.


Yeah, it was a two part rant. There will be more coming, I assure you.

If there was anything else that I would like to change about FIU it would for them to fix their financial aid office. They seem to be very unorganized and end up pissing me off, I have been there at least four times this semester. They would calculate things wrong and say I owe thousands of dollars when I actually didn’t. They said financial aid would be put through September third which it wasn’t.  Due to them being so unorganized I would have to pay a lot of attention to my.fiu.edu account and I would have to be checking it almost every day to see what new information would pop up. I didn’t want to over pay money because I’m not the one paying for it but my parents were. I don’t want to drain them of their money just to send me to school. What bothered me the most about this office is the threatening emails they would send.   I once got an email saying I would get my classes put on hold if I didn’t pay money that my scholarship was supposed to cover. Like it was my fault they were working on the scholarship and weren’t disbursing it properly. So when I went to this office to talk to them about my email they said don’t worry about it that it will be fixed. Why did they send the email out then? To make me hate them? They need to not send out emails like that if they are going to be working on the financial aid money. All they did was stress me out when I didn’t need to be stressed. 

If there was anything I would change about FIU, it would be the parking. The parking here sucks. More than sucks, it is horrible, atrocious, and just very terrible. The sad part about this is that I live on campus and I have to say that the parking sucks. The parking lot they have for housing that is right in front of Panther Hall fills up so fast. The moment you back out there is someone waiting to take your spot. Usually if there no parking there which is always, the next place to park is the field. If it rains the field floods and driving through that is a disaster. It makes your car so dirty and disgusting.

I really wonder why FIU continues to expand this campus when their parking is already so shitty. They have a special parking lot by Parkview Hall but it is 225 dollars extra PER SEMESTER to park there. That is way too much money and I think that it should just be free. How can you build a parking garage and then expect people to pay for it when there is already a parking and transportation fee that is included in the tuition. That is the most ridiculous thing that I have ever heard in my life.

I remember this one morning when I had to drive here in the morning because I hadn’t come back the previous night. Finding parking was so hard. People are just circling around in their cars in the parking garage hoping someone would come out and they would get lucky. FIU really needs to improve its parking. That is the only thing I request of this school; that and getting their financial aid office in order. 

Menus, options, and times!

I wish Fresh Food had a WEBSITE where they showed the day’s menu. For the students who live on campus and who are freshman, there are two options for the meal plan. You either chose to utilize the VIP 5 or VIP 7. For the people with the VIP 5, they have to plan their eating around what Fresh Food is serving so that they are not buying what they could swipe their card for and eat.

As a student at FIU, I wish they would provide us with a daily food menu of what they are serving so that I don’t have to walk all the way to GC to find out that I don’t want anything at the menu and would rather go to Breezeway which is a two minute walk from my dorm. It’d be easier for the student to plan their day if he or she knew that for the following days they’re not wasting their time walking and looking for something to eat because they swiped their card on Monday when Friday would have been a better day to swipe it. Eating is an important factor in remaining healthy and getting through one’s day, but if we don’t know what’s on the menu, we can only assume so much.

Yes, I know that we’re growing and hungry students but it doesn't mean we like being surprised by the menu, and having to walk all the way over to Fresh Food to find out we don’t like anything on the menu. Having a menu would not only be beneficial to the students but staff as well, as it would allow them to gauge what the students are demanding and how they can make a bigger and better profit day to day. Florida International University is a great school and offers a variety of activities and options for students, and I believe making the breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu available to its students and personnel would be great and much appreciated. 

Sincerely,

The voice of many students forced to have a meal plan.

I Wish They Wouldn't

The Florida International University, or FIU for short, is a campus with a wonderfully beautiful layout. Everything is pretty well situated and easy to find; from the gorgeous golden panther to the numerous lakes filled the hungry, but friendly turtles, everyone seems to get along just find...except me. I truly believe that the absurd amount of construction that's currently taking place at our lovely campus is ruining it. Did we really need another Starbucks? What about that one building near PG5 that nobody seems to know what FIU is constructing? These little areas are being consumed by construction which just makes it that much harder to commute around the campus, especially when it's raining and you have only five minutes to get to your class. Constantly having to route one's self and make accommodations in order to make it to a class on time. All the construction sites are extremely inconvenient and I may be wrong, but I doubt their usefulness or necessity. I could understand creating more parking lots or classrooms, but instead we get a Taco Bell. Do we honestly need so many eating facilities especially since most of them open and close around the same time? I honestly wish they'd stop investing so much time and money on constructing things we don't truly need.

STOP SITTING IN YOUR CLASSROOM

It has been almost two years since I first walked onto FIU’s campus, and I can still remember gawking and feeling belittled by the sheer size of some of the buildings that surrounded me, not to mention the professors and students that that filled the inside of them. As I looked around I thought, “I made it, this is college, huge buildings crazy professors and lots of papers that will be due in the near future.” Now here I am two years later and many crazy professors down and honestly I have to say I’m still trying to figure out this whole college thing. But if there is one thing that I have learned it’s that your college experience is not made sitting down in the classroom and its definitely not made in those wee hours of the night pulling out your hair while studying for exams. It is my belief that everyone’s college experience is made outside of the classroom where you’re not engaging with fellow “students” but with people and friends, the kind of people that will help you out on that day when your car decides to break down on the busy south side of I-95, or when your computer decides not to work the night before a term paper is due. These will be the things you remember and take away from college, not your exams or the insane amount of classes that you will be required to take by the end of it all, it’s the people and events that will make college memorable for you.

Alright, so I’m sure by now you’re asking yourself why is this guy ranting about getting out of your classroom and enjoying you college life.  Well it’s because I think FIU needs to be focusing more on this idea and offering elective classes to students that would get them out and  involved with students, allowing them to set up events and activities that people might actually get excited about going to. I know there are already clubs and things like the SGA that are set up to handle things like this, but I’m argue that there are students out there who want to be involved, but simple do not have enough time in there crazy college schedule to commit to a full time club, so what’s the solution? FIU needs to offer these classes as electives, so those students will be able to get involved while still earning the required credits and able to keep the tight busy schedules that they need to. There are many things that current students are expected to do throughout their college career, but all of these expectations usually have to do with academics, I believe that being involved outside of your classroom is just as important as being involved inside of it, if students are not giving the opportunity to get out and get involved then they could be missing out on key memories that can simple not be made anywhere else in there lives.

-ADAM BOYETTE

 

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/twice-the-college-advice/2011/09/13/5-reasons-for-getting-involved-in-college-and-how-to-go-about-it

Parking and Transportation

I wish they would improve the transportation and parking accessibility at the MMC campus.  I’ve heard far too many complaints about the fact there isn’t enough parking for students. By the time it’s even 9 o’clock in the morning and most people can’t find parking spots any given place in the school and even as the school spends more money on parking garages the problem isn’t getting resolved.   

            The problem lies in the fact most students drive to school and realistically the school can’t accommodate the sheer number of students that drive to school therefore the parking regulation is terrible.  Instead of chaotically trying to squeeze all the students into limited parking spots there should be more effort in providing better alternative transportation and encouraging carpooling.  The money currently going into parking garages could instead go to creating bicycle racks and putting more money into better buses at school.  At the moment the engineering bus is small and usually comes about every hour and the bus for the CATS shuttle and Golden Panther Express to BBC costs about $2.50.  The engineering bus should come at least every ½ hour and be much larger to accommodate students who need to ride it.  Meanwhile the Golden Express Bus fare should be reduced to be at least $1.50 instead of $2.50.  I also wish there was a bus provided by FIU, that stops at key locations such as the international airport, dolphin mall, Publix and any other major streets for students who simply can’t drive to school  for various reasons.

this is a testtttttttttttt