Student Life Archives

While academics is the most important aspect of your college experience, your ability to do well in your courses is directly related to the quality of your living experience. Even though I think Maslow is a tool and his hierarchy of needs has been proven to be about as useful as a bicycle is to a fish, his classification of types of needs isn’t that bad.

Residential Life is in charge of providing us with our physiological needs, e.g. sleep and shelter. The less stress we experience in obtaining and using the facilities provided by Residential Life, the easier the rest of our college experience becomes. Unfortunately, the employees of Residential Life seem to make it their personal goal to make living on campus as horrible as possible. The reason they are allowed to get away with this is that they answer to no one, and our hands are pretty much tied when it comes to critiquing our experience with ResLife.

Is case you don’t read the news section of Student Life, the University has a major malfunction concerning the fire safety codes of the City of Clayton. Earlier this year we were given a remarkably poor score in comparison to the other St. Louis area universities, and the front-page article in Monday’s newspaper highlighted the disturbing cause for our rankings.

On the South 40 alone, 15 dorms do not have any type of automatic sprinkler device at all. This doesn’t include the numerous off campus housing developments owned by the University that are also without sprinklers. Am I the only person who is outraged by this? I was fortunate enough to live in Hitzeman my sophomore year and was protected by the asbestos insulation that they removed in 2003. Now the people who live there are completely unprotected.

Wait…asbestos. My father has the lucky job of telling people that they are going to die due to lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Why in the hell did the University have buildings with asbestos insulation in them until 2003? Back in 1986 the EPA required universities to develop an asbestos plan and required yearly notification to both students and employees of this plan. Anyone remember getting this letter in the mail? I sure as hell don’t, and I don’t think we would have forgotten receiving it.

Back to the incompetent buffoons who run ResLife. In case you’re wondering why ResLife thinks it’s OK to have asbestos in dorms and not OK to install automatic sprinklers in buildings where students live, I think I have a pretty good answer. ResLife has deployed a crack team of insurance assessors and attorneys to force me to dismantle the climbing wall I built in my suite. That’s right, ResLife has spent more time this year harassing me than they have on the fire safety concerns of the entire South 40.

However, I don’t feel special. I feel that the staff of ResLife should all be fired. To them, a seven foot tall climbing wall in a room with eight foot tall ceilings is more dangerous than asbestos insulation or the fact that fires would rage unchecked in the maze-like buildings that are Beaumont, etc.

You would not believe the vitriol-filled e-mails I received concerning “insurance hazards” and “university liability” that they fired my way. Whenever you point a finger, there are three pointing right back at you. These people are obviously demented and take more joy in punishing students and making our lives miserable than they do in actually helping us. They should do us all a favor and go work for the DMV; their job skills would be put to very good use there.

I just hope their incompetence doesn’t kill me first.

Homeless at WU

Dear Editor:

Re: “Is WU a Rich Kid School?” [Nov. 15, 2004].

I feel the article merely scraped the surface of a much greater, silent and ignored problem on this campus. While students from low-income families do indeed receive scholarships and loans from the financial aid office, greatly lessening the burdens of tuition and other “necessary” fees, they essentially turn a blind eye to the real necessities-text books, school supplies, food, shelter, and sleep.

For those of us without parents-without family-given just enough financial support to kindle the hope that we might make it through another semester, how do we actually survive?

I have attended Wash U for three years, 10 academic months of which were spent living in my car, not able to afford our hotel-like dormitories. Most members of our prestigious community frequent the AC in order to exercise or socialize, whereas, for me, it was simply a place to bathe-a fantastic use of my outrageous activities fee.

How many of the people asleep in Olin or the study lounges in the dorms aren’t really power-napping? How many of them are even deprived of their “Miserable Sundays,” instead needing to work all weekend, every weekend; just to emerge with unfinished homework, running on borrowed time and borrowed energy? What prescription does the Health Center have for that?

I know I am not alone. The Director of Student Financial Aid reports that 60% of students are on some form of financial aid, but how much of that $51 million is actually going to the students who need it the most: those who have no family, no external support and no credit with which to get a loan?

I think it is time for this community, a community that I am proud to be a part of, to stand up for those here who are less fortunate. Why not run food and clothing drives for the poor and homeless among us? Why not donate your extra points at the end of the year to those of us on campus that can’t afford food? Or are we, as a community, not ready to see past the manicured lawns and granite facades, not ready to see a real student’s life at Wash U?

-Erika Simmons,
Class of 2006

From a student to a housekeeper

Dear Editor:

A couple of responses to my original article have been printed within the past week, and that’s great. The first, by Taylor Guthrie, was simply asinine. I think she was reacting to the article she wished I had written, and she completely missed the part where I wrote, “Surely, not all housekeepers resent students. Even if they did, not all would steal given the opportunity.”

That being said, I’ll instead respond to Draga Orescanin, for whom I have much more respect. First of all, I have to apologize for the title of my article: “Caught red-handed”. It was Student Life’s incendiary choice, and it certainly didn’t capture the spirit of personal privacy I intended.

She asks if all police officers should not be trusted. To answer her question, I will restate the main point of my article: students should have to option to forgo housekeeping services. Specifically, I would like an enforceable way (a standardized sign from ResLife, perhaps) to let housekeepers know that it’s forbidden to enter a student’s room if the student does not invite them in. If a housekeeper can’t legally be in my room when I’m not there, the chance of him or her being caught stealing increases, and accordingly the incentive to steal decreases. If I had my sign up and returned home to find a housekeeper in my room uninvited, I would be as suspicious as any would be if they returned home to find a police officer in your room uninvited.

Orescanin also asks me if I think she is poor. Honestly, I never thought about her specifically until I read your letter. I do think that housekeepers in general make less money and get less respect than people working in many other professions.

But I know that there are lots of worse jobs. One winter I found a job as a minimum wage janitor in a meat processing plant, and a place to sleep on the couch in a complete stranger’s apartment (You know who you are, and to this day I’m very grateful.) I didn’t feel poor. I totally agree that “There are more important things in life than expensive, beautiful things.” But just like anyone else, I would like to keep what belongs to me-expensive or not.

-Craig Pacheco,
Class of 2006

Pacheco sounds snobby

Dear Editor:

Re: “Caught red-handed” [Dec. 1, 2004].

Craig Pacheco acted as if he was going to respect the housekeeping staff by stepping into “a housekeeper’s shoes.” Instead, Pacheco showed incredible disrespect by (1) lumping them into a faceless mass with homogeneous living conditions, goals, and perspective on students and (2) representing these aspects of the housekeepers’ lives negatively.

Attention Pacheco: being a service worker does not make you pitiful.

You think they shouldn’t steal; nobody should steal! Rich folks do it too. Write a column about them.

I agree with him that a lot of folks seem to be rich at Wash U; but this is only a problem if they act snobby and mistreat others. Rich or not, Pacheco sounds like a snob: haughty, ungrateful for the housekeepers’ work, prepared to separate people into groups and label their traits.

Then he asks Student Union (not without rudely questioning SU’s value in the first place) to make housekeepers optional. If Pacheco really wanted SU action, he picked a terrible forum. Not only might SU people simply not see the paper that day, but Pacheco has also reached out to a campus full of students that already don’t appreciate the housekeepers enough, trying to make another point against the staff.

So to the readers who are not strongly for or against advocating for the housekeepers, please do not be swayed by Pacheco’s column. If you’re lucky enough to live in a building that members of the housekeeping staff work in, try to talk to them (which is something Pacheco hasn’t done, evidenced by his stereotypical, uneducated view of what their lives MUST be like).

-Rob Collins,
Class of 2006

“Student Union: your student government”-so begins the constitution of the Student Union of Washington University in St. Louis. Unfortunately, the actions of the past semester have proved it is anything but. Starting with the ousting of Katie Leikhim and culminating in a secret meeting held last night to select her replacement, SU has only proven to us that it is nothing more than an insider organization that serves only its own self interests at the expense of the very people they were elected to serve.

For those of you who only read my column and aren’t quite sure what exactly is going on, I’ll give a brief explanation of what happened. The democratically elected Vice President of Student Union Katie Leikhim was unable to fulfill her duties this semester due to a personal leave of absence. Katie has since returned to school and was actually at the meeting last night. Why wasn’t she replaced earlier if she felt that she would be unable to carry out her term? And why did the announcement of her “resignation” come from someone other than Katie herself?

I, as well as many others, believe that Katie was forcibly removed from the post of vice president and was replaced by a hand-picked Student Union insider. The process that I was witness to on Wednesday night only furthered the opinion of impropriety.

Were I not an editor for Student Life I probably would not have been aware that the vice president was being hand-picked by the Senate and the Treasury two nights ago in a closed meeting. There obviously wasn’t much publicity for what turned out to be a very important meeting. And it was obvious that very few people were happy to see three members of the press at the meeting. After the initial fluff, David Ader, the president of Student Union, voiced concern and asked that all members of Student Life present at the meeting identify themselves and the methods with which they were recording the proceedings. He did not seem amused when I informed him of my photographic memory.

You can read all about the three-ring circus that was last night’s “election” in the news section and staff editorial, and I highly suggest you do before you read the rest of my column, because it is very important. All finished? Great, let’s continue. It’s obvious that they screwed up last night either by accident or by gross negligence. However, there is something we can do about it. We can either prove them right by not doing anything and letting the most powerful organization on campus run amok with around $1.7 million of our money, or we can hold them accountable for their actions and prove that we aren’t the apathetic sheep they obviously take us to be. The following is my weapon of choice.

Beginning on line 340 of the Constitution of the Student Union is the method by which we, the students, can hold Student Union responsible for their actions through judicial review: “[The Constitutional Council must] review the actions of any member of the Student Union for consistency with the Constitution or Statutes of the Student Union after receiving a challenge from two percent (2%) of the members in good standing of the Student Union [and] hear all cases of discrepancy regarding elections and referenda, and activities of the Election Commission.”

With approximately 5,700 members in good standing of Student Union, only 120 or so students need to sign a petition that would call for an official judicial review of the election process. While it would be futile to protest on the grounds of “somethin’ ain’t right,” the staff editorial highlights several disturbingly blatant violations of parliamentary procedure which occurred during the course of this election. To be honest, the good folks of the Ukraine have been foisted with a much less blatant violation of democracy. Viktor Yanukovych could stand to learn a few things from our most exalted leaders in Student Union.

Maybe I’m idealistic, but anyone who personally knows me would beg to differ. I think I’m just fed up with people in positions of power blatantly abusing their power to my own personal detriment. It’s no longer PC to riot in the streets and my guillotine is a bit rusty, so this seems like the most logical course of action. The people directly responsible for the gross abuse and direct violation of the parliamentary procedure concerning the election are Marc Bridge, Ed Banti, and Jessica Jones. All three members of Student Union were elected to positions that called for them to enforce the crystal clear rules of parliamentary procedure. All three should be impeached for their gross failure to carry out their duties.

In the coming week we will all be inundated with finals, etc. Want the chance to actually take control of something that is happening to you? Now is the time.

Congress has done the nation a great disservice by approving a bill that could result in cuts to Pell grants. The grants, which are usually awarded to lower-income college students, were capped at $4,050 for the third year in a row, ignoring the realities of inflation and soaring tuition costs.

This change has been in the works since the summer of 2003, when it was buried in a huge omnibus bill. After opposition from Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ), the change was suspended for a year in December of 2003. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi claims she only supported the bill to keep the federal government operating.

What’s really changing isn’t Pell grant funding directly, but the formula the government uses to determine Pell grant eligibility. Experts say that up to 90,000 students will lose their Pell grants, while about a million students will have their grants cut by an average of $300. Moreover, many states and private aid agencies use the federal formula to calculate aid eligibility, so many students will be doubly penalized from the Pell formula changes.

As part of the omnibus, Missouri is getting some pork funding (literally): the bill gives the Show-me state $50,000 for feral hog control. Missouri lawmakers clearly didn’t bring home enough bacon, though; the $50,000 is a tiny fraction of the $60 million of pork in the omnibus. And compared to the $23 billion in pork Congress allocated for fiscal year 2004 (according to Citizens Against Government Waste), that $60 million is barely a warm up for what we can expect from Congress this year.

Four thousand dollars may not seem like much compared to the University’s $40,000 sticker price, but it means an awful lot to those that can barely afford to come here as it is. We’re not holding our breath, but Congress still has the chance to do no harm by not changing Pell grant funding. Better yet, it can do the right thing by adjusting Pell funding upwards to reflect the rising cost of higher education.

The University has pledged to make up the losses for the eight percent of students that get Pell grants. In fact, Student Financial Services is sensitive to all fluctuations in circumstance. This is a great policy, since it ensures that unexpected surprises (like the Pell grant cuts) don’t prevent the neediest from finishing their education at one of the nation’s best universities. Unfortunately, this policy only works because of the Univesity’s substantial endowment and financial aid expenditures; students at less affluent universities will feel the hit.

However, as Erika Simmons alleges in her letter to the editor below, the University’s financial aid policy may not be great to begin with. There still are students who can barely afford to study here, and our admissions are shockingly (for an institution of this caliber) not need-blind. The University, one of the wealthiest in the country, has the money to be more generous in financial aid; all it takes is a shifting of priorities. As much as we love the new buildings, the money could be much better spent keeping students out of the poverty Simmons lived in.

In the holiday spirit, we’d like to see the University and Congress pledge to cast off their Scrooge policies of financial aid. Even if that means holding a building back. People are more important than construction projects.

It’s positively shameful that the meat of Student Union’s decision to elect Pam Bookbinder vice president was done in absolute secrecy. While the candidate statements and interviews were done in public, the legislature held its discussion of the candidates in a closed executive meeting.

Closed meetings are anathema to a democratic government, which is based on openness and accountability. It’s no accident that Missouri’s Sunshine Laws are purposely expansive and inclusive-it allows the public to check up on their elected (and unelected) representatives. While the Sunshine Laws do not bind SU, we expected that they’d agree with the spirit of the laws.

There are some legislators that met our expectations, like Jeffrey Waldman, Tony Zand, Diana Westerberg and Abram Rose (apologies to others we omitted). But the majority of the Legislature thought that their responsibility to some of the VP candidates superceded their responsibility to their constituents. Their argument to close the meeting was based in part on a need to be “nice” and considerate to the nominees to ensure that the discussion didn’t damage relationships between SU officials.

Being “nice” isn’t part of an official’s job responsibilities, unlike being accountable to a constituency. If the nominees couldn’t separate their personal feelings from their professional role, and would take offense at the legislature’s criticism of how they handled their offices, tough.

Moreover, Bookbinder was not properly elected. The Legislature allowed several members of each house to vote by proxy, expressly against SU’s statutes. Parliamentary procedure is based on Robert’s Rules of Order, which state, “It is a fundamental principle of parliamentary law that the right to vote is limited to the members of an organization who are actually present at the time the vote is taken in a legal meeting.” Departures from the rules must be expressly authorized in bylaws, but no such exception exists.

Splitting hairs? Not at all: Bookbinder was elected by a bare majority in the Treasury and Senate. It is more than conceivable, it is possible, that had the Speakers of the Senate and Treasury followed proper procedure, then Bookbinder wouldn’t have won.

Of course, Marc Bridge and Ed Banti, the respective speakers, say that the spirit of the law was followed, though Banti agreed that the letter of the law seemed to have been broken. But the spirit of the law was broken. Again, Robert’s Rules say that prohibition on proxy voting constitutes “a fundamental principle of parliamentary law.”

In light of this breach, Senate and Treasury need to reconvene and get the process right. Sure this will inconvenience the bodies, but democracy isn’t founded on convenience or expediency. If legislators have complaints, that’s understandable; the negligence of Banti, Bridge, and Parliamentarian Jessica Jones is inexcusable.

As Senator Aaron Keyak put it, “When we took our oath as elected officials, we took our oath to follow the constitution and the statutes.” The student body deserves no less.