CLASS OF 2001 : Let's not graduate Still fighting for fair treatment

As our final issue of the year comes to a close, let us not go quietly.

At the beginning of the year an uncountable number of complaints were made about the living conditions here at Cabrini. Some students were forced to live off campus at Rosemont College in conditions that they called "less than satisfactory." Residents of House 2 weren't allowed overnight visitors even if those visitors happened to be family members. Student government was outraged, meetings were held, commentaries were written and complaints could be heard from every area of the school. Whether people were trashing Public Safety or the stylings of Dr. Valente, we did not have a very happy student body.

Coming to a close, one would have to wonder if things have actually improved or if the students have just learned to live with the inadequacies.

At year's end some new issues are starting to evolve, but with little time left for the students to be heard, it appears that things will continue to digress until May 16.

Recently, some major issues have hit campus. Once again, one of these issues has to do with housing. If you are a senior with 89.5 credits you are not permitted to live on campus next year, thus forcing students who have relied on on-campus housing to find other means of living.

But maybe all of this isn't so horrible. We won't always have things handed to us in our lives so maybe it's about time that we start learning how to fend for ourselves.

Complaining can work, fighting can work. Lying on your back and not do a thing about what drives you crazy doesn't work.

Next August will mark the beginning of another school year. New students will enter, some faculty will change but the heart and determination that the students have put forth this year should remain a staple of what it means to be a responsible individual.

Let's end the 2000-2001 school year on a good note. Cabrini is made up of incredibly bright students who care apout what goes on around them. At the spring convocation ceremony well over a hundred of our students were celebrated for their hard work. Our sports teams have brought us four PAC championships this season and some show no sign of slowing down as they approach the NCAA. It's been a good year, and for those who will be here next year, we hope you enjoy it and for those graduating, good luck.

The editorials, viewpoints, opinions and letters to the editor published in Loquitur are th.e views of the student editorial board and the individual writers, not the entire student body or the facultyand administration. . .

So, I guess this will be my last commentary for the Loquitur. I think that Mike 80s Butler and myself were the only ones in the Class of 2001 who became addicted to the validation one gets from writing weekly commentaries. There is a reason why Andy Rooney has been doing this kind of thing for the past 50 years.

Whether attacking the administration's backwards style of running the school, the Republican Party's gradual destruction of life as we know it, or the always popular reflections on drunken weekends, it's been a pleasure to write about and publish whatever the hell was on my mind. I've been able to convince some people that I've written all my commentaries late on Thursday nights, when I am at my beer-induced philosophical best. That's not always true, by the way.

So, now that I am losing my captive audience of Loquitur readers, what comes next? Where does a "writer" such as myself fit into our sound-byte society? Who is really reading anything these days anyway? It has to be time to move on.

Ok, so now like many others I'm looking to get into advertising/sales. After all, "that's where the money is in communications." Some of us who were writing not so long ago about sweat-shop abuse in clothing companies will likely end up in marketing jobs for those same companies, and happily so. Those of us who attacked authoritarian policies regarding our college will be annoyed by having to share bar space with noisy college students during our little spare time. We will grow hair in places where it does not belong.

Faced with these harsh realities of growing older (and not necessarily wiser) our time at Cabrini seems almost too good to be true. Sure, we have often been told what to do, where to live, whom to live with, how to live, etc. But the majority of us over time figured out how to tweak, if not downright change, the system to suit ourselves. It's going to take a little bit of time before we figure out how to handle landlords (a gutsy term, literally meaning "lord of the land.") And the majority of us will have to spend some time living with the RD's commonly known as Mom and Dad. Try sneaking in overnight opposite sex guests through the front door. Better yet, the bedroom window. See, the thousands of dollars we all owe this college weren't just for the classes, cafeteria food and shuttle service. We were paying for the lifestyle. And for the most part, getting what we paid for.

For those of you who aren't graduating for a little while, I know a lot of you have thought about transferring. Hey, the thought crossed my mind early in my college career too. But I'm glad I didn't. I've enjoyed the ride, not excluding the bumpy parts. Hey, those were what gave us character. How many of us have been told we would be living off campus by the lottery system? And how many of us were actually forced off campus? And, finally, of those few students, how many didn't find their way back on? If this place was so bad, why did we all fight so much to stay here?

Just something for the younguns to think about. This place has its issues, and it is not paradise, but, faced with small-sized, highrent apartments, bills, and entrylevel jobs, it can seem that way. Enjoy your time here, fight the good fight. You'll thank me later.

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