No need for weekend bags

LAURA VAN DE PETTE STAFF WRITER LCV722@CABRINI EDU

It’s a crazy Thursday night and resident students cannot find a single parking spot on Residential Boulevard. The campus is alive. Every building is booming with voices and the streets are filled with the sounds of a typical Thirsty Thursday.

Friday afternoon comes and the college campus is deserted.

Where does everyone go?

On a typical Friday afternoon

I am working in the admission’s office as a student ambassador most likely giving a campus tour to prospective students and their families. We walk through New Residence Hall and I ask them to have a seat in the second floor lounge while I look for a room to show them. I search up and down the halls.

Not a single room on the second floor is opened.

I search the first floor and after 15 unanswered doors, one door is finally opened and the student welcomes me inside. I bring the family downstairs and show the room. As we leave New Residence Hall, the fami- lies are unusually quiet.

Then the dreaded questions from puzzled parents. “Is Cabrini a suitcase school?”

“Why was that dorm building empty,” another parent asks.

How do I explain this phenomenon? Every weekend I am mystified by the quiet campus and the deserted dorms. Last weekend I counted seven cars between house one and house three. Seven cars! Three of the cars were from my room!

Why has everyone left Cabrini to go home?

Why do students willingly pay nearly 10 thousand dollars every year to live on Cabrini’s campus from Monday to Friday morning?

Would you pay for an expensive sweater and then leave it hanging in your closet all winter?

Would you buy a pair of shoes and then leave them in their box?

I highly doubt it.

So why do you pay for housing at Cabrini and then leave it every weekend?

I have visited friends at several other area colleges and their campuses are as crazy as Cabrini’s on a Thursday night. The difference is these other colleges consider Thursday to be just the beginning to an equally once they’d charged.

“You should read the book so you know what you’re doing.” My mom said. I remember looking up to see her nose buried in the small print of page 15 out of 60 some odd pages of manual from the friendly folks at Motorola. I bit back a snicker as I had already completed 95 percent of my phone’s setup.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve showed my dad how to enter a name and number into the phone’s phone book. He calls me up frequently to leave me voicemails during class about getting to his voicemail.

I don’t mind helping, but it’s got to be frustrating to have to constantly ask your kids what something on a tiny pixilated computer screen says. Equally, it’s frustrating knowing how to use all these tech objects only to have them glitch constantly and breakdown.

As I ponder all of this, I am now in my room at night, finishing the last of my work. I think about all the electronic interaction I’ve had today and it makes me cringe.

My day consisted of an alarm clock, countless hours using email and the Internet, two hours fighting to get WebCTto let me submit what I need to submit, my cell phone’s background froze five times only to later unfreeze and go off in class once, a printer stopped working four times, the TVstarted emitting a high pitched squeal for no reason, and I once again have misplaced my jump drive in the evening. crazy weekend! Why do Cabrini students insist on ending the party on Thursday night? If more students stayed on campus the weekend would simply be a continuation of Thursday night.

Did I mention that the Honda car salesman, who was trying desperately to convince my Father and I to buy an Element at the beginning of this year, actually used the fact that the car held 4 times the amount of computers used in the Apollo space mission that landed on the moon? Considering my track record with computer dysfunction, that wasn’t very comforting.

Of course, this is coming from the person who turns off her computer at night, because I’m convinced that while I sleep my computer is learning things without me with the intention that one day it will revolt and murder me in my sleep.

After finishing the last of my homework, I shut the computer down and proceed to pick up the remote. Curling up in bed preparing for sleep, I find myself flipping through channels. A news channel I land on tells me about a computer chip that is the size of a grain of rice that certain governments around the world are contemplating using. The chips can hold medical data, identification data and even be used like a credit card, linked to bank accounts to pay for things.

Changing back to Cartoon Network for a cynical episode of “Family Guy,” I roll my eyes-the technological world is going too far. Haven’t any of these inventors seen “Gattaca” or “Minority Report ?” Hello, “The Terminator” anyone?

I just do not understand how students can throw away 10 thousand dollars every year What is the big attraction that beckons college students to habitually drive home every Friday after their last class? The best part of the college experience is when a student finishes their classes and their homework and is able to let lose and party with their friends on the weekend.

Why then do Cabrini students ignore the best part of their college experience?

This phenomenon will continue to mystify me and the few other students that stay on Cabrini’s campus every weekend. I cannot encourage the rest of Cabrini’s residents enough to stay just one weekend and experience the campus. I can guarantee that you will have more fun here than with mommy and daddy.

You should give Cabrini a chance this weekend because you are paying for it!