Problem Analysis on campus
As an Austin College student, I choose to be involved with organizations and obligations that are demanding occupiers of my time. Organizing and managing these demands to meet my available time can be an interesting and perplexing process. Above all these obligations, two are ongoing and consistently at the head of the race. The competing importance of my social and intellectual lives is an exceedingly delicate balance difficult to maintain. Not only do I share this challenge with other students (especially Greek members), it is also a common concern of faculty and administration members.
The importance of our intellectual lives is more readily recognized than the importance of our social lives, yet students like myself have frequently suffered the consequences of neglecting both at one time or another. Having an active intellectual life is the optimal gathering, cultivating, and harvesting of the cornucopia of options for our futures. Neglecting these duties lead to a loss of opportunities, tuition, and semesters of scholastic freedom. These factors are strong enough to send me into hiding from my social life for a partial or even whole semester, consequently living in isolation and a net of deteriorated friendships that need to be reinforced. At my best, I am cooperating with other Greek organizations and contributing to my own organizations, thus earning the respect of my brothers and sisters. We pay a high monetary and legal price to provide social events for the student body as responsibly as we can, as well as work to organize ways to give back to the community monetarily and through service. We are building social supports to share the load of what life has to offer. These supports provide shelter from crises and funerals all the way down to silly things like break-ups cured with girls’ nights out. These supports are strong enough for the weight of what we want to celebrate in life- weddings, job opportunities, new families, new beginnings, and long awaited reunions. These mutual experiences span generations and are fertile for connecting people that share characteristic qualities, ideals, passions, life dedications, travels, and cultures. Sometimes we share the same or complementary tastes in music, have similar histories of problems, refine each other’s talents and ambitions, and even share family relations of which I was previously unaware.
Two aspects of student life that impact our lives as much as tides and tidal waves impact our shores should be simultaneously important. When separated, each takes up too much time to succeed in both, so we should find a way to merge the two. It is difficult to get what I need to enjoy my college experience as well as reap all the benefits my education and social life have to offer. There is a conflict between what students like myself need and what spatial organization of our buildings and frequent environments have to offer. Libraries are focused for intellectual attention without social interaction. The cafeteria, the pub, and the Starbucks® Hopper area are spaces open for sociability but rarely suggestive of intellectual interaction. Parties and other social events hosted by Greek students and non-Greek students alike allow freedom for whatever those attending may choose. Personally, I have initiated literary and/or artistic conversations following the example of one of our recent graduates. Without someone’s intentions for this kind of initiation, parties take their usual course of events without regard to our intellectual development. I think if these intentions were manifested into an environment where a person is surrounded with intellectual tools as well as facilitators of a social atmosphere, students would advantageously frequent this environment in order to merge the two largest aspects of their lives at Austin College.
Since at least 1918, the Greek community has been a presence on this campus eager to help social, intellectual, and even spiritual situations if they can. Today the Greek community’s presence on campus is reinforced with the spirit of all those that have graduated before them. This reinforcement manifests itself in various Greek alumni networks that are becoming more involved with Student Life to bridge the college student’s perspective with the wiser perspective of a graduate and an adult. I have a project in mind to bring these two perspectives together in an effort to provide a haven for the seemingly shortsighted social life and the future-minded intellectual life to flourish together. The 800 S Willow St. block of Sherman, TX is the site of an old Sherman school. This building is now being repaired and renovated by a man who is leasing it to tenants as a residential structure. If the Kappa Gamma Chi Alumni Network (KRXAN) and other Greek alumni and networks favored the idea, they might donate and facilitate student fundraising enough to redesign the building into a comfortable environment conducive to social activity that fosters education. Each Greek organization could have a room allotted to them on a lottery system and rooms could be a cross between a library and a youth hostel. Free wireless internet access and bike rentals would be a great start for the building.
Of course, there are problems we would run into. The building is in what some would consider a bad part of town, but Austin College is surrounded by bad parts of town and I haven’t seen or heard of any real problems as a result of that. If the alumni do not favor the idea, I don’t see how else we could raise enough money for this project. Legal considerations and precautions need to be made for liability reasons, but the policies and precautions of youth hostels could be researched in order to predict and prevent what problems we may run into. If this facility was considered as a Greek-only house, that assumption could easily be refuted with personal invitations blanketed to all Austin College individuals. There are many other problems Greek functions inevitably run into, but there are multiple full-time employees on campus in charge of directing the solutions to such problems, so it may not be necessary to discuss all of them in this paper.
In conclusion, we could provide this gem to members of the Austin College community simply on the basis that they are part of the Austin College community. Masked talent and genius would be unveiled as the fog of the party environment lifts to reveal social lives weaving a tapestry with intellectual interaction. Students would appreciate the knowledge around them before they graduate, because many graduates have gone on to the real world to find out you will not always be surrounded by intelligent people. We can all understand the value of this knowledge without completely tearing ourselves away from the social lives we already have. Informal social gatherings ripe with intelligent people leaves us with the ability to fully reap the benefits of our precious education.
As an Austin College student, I choose to be involved with organizations and obligations that are demanding occupiers of my time. Organizing and managing these demands to meet my available time can be an interesting and perplexing process. Above all these obligations, two are ongoing and consistently at the head of the race. The competing importance of my social and intellectual lives is an exceedingly delicate balance difficult to maintain. Not only do I share this challenge with other students (especially Greek members), it is also a common concern of faculty and administration members.
The importance of our intellectual lives is more readily recognized than the importance of our social lives, yet students like myself have frequently suffered the consequences of neglecting both at one time or another. Having an active intellectual life is the optimal gathering, cultivating, and harvesting of the cornucopia of options for our futures. Neglecting these duties lead to a loss of opportunities, tuition, and semesters of scholastic freedom. These factors are strong enough to send me into hiding from my social life for a partial or even whole semester, consequently living in isolation and a net of deteriorated friendships that need to be reinforced. At my best, I am cooperating with other Greek organizations and contributing to my own organizations, thus earning the respect of my brothers and sisters. We pay a high monetary and legal price to provide social events for the student body as responsibly as we can, as well as work to organize ways to give back to the community monetarily and through service. We are building social supports to share the load of what life has to offer. These supports provide shelter from crises and funerals all the way down to silly things like break-ups cured with girls’ nights out. These supports are strong enough for the weight of what we want to celebrate in life- weddings, job opportunities, new families, new beginnings, and long awaited reunions. These mutual experiences span generations and are fertile for connecting people that share characteristic qualities, ideals, passions, life dedications, travels, and cultures. Sometimes we share the same or complementary tastes in music, have similar histories of problems, refine each other’s talents and ambitions, and even share family relations of which I was previously unaware.
Two aspects of student life that impact our lives as much as tides and tidal waves impact our shores should be simultaneously important. When separated, each takes up too much time to succeed in both, so we should find a way to merge the two. It is difficult to get what I need to enjoy my college experience as well as reap all the benefits my education and social life have to offer. There is a conflict between what students like myself need and what spatial organization of our buildings and frequent environments have to offer. Libraries are focused for intellectual attention without social interaction. The cafeteria, the pub, and the Starbucks® Hopper area are spaces open for sociability but rarely suggestive of intellectual interaction. Parties and other social events hosted by Greek students and non-Greek students alike allow freedom for whatever those attending may choose. Personally, I have initiated literary and/or artistic conversations following the example of one of our recent graduates. Without someone’s intentions for this kind of initiation, parties take their usual course of events without regard to our intellectual development. I think if these intentions were manifested into an environment where a person is surrounded with intellectual tools as well as facilitators of a social atmosphere, students would advantageously frequent this environment in order to merge the two largest aspects of their lives at Austin College.
Since at least 1918, the Greek community has been a presence on this campus eager to help social, intellectual, and even spiritual situations if they can. Today the Greek community’s presence on campus is reinforced with the spirit of all those that have graduated before them. This reinforcement manifests itself in various Greek alumni networks that are becoming more involved with Student Life to bridge the college student’s perspective with the wiser perspective of a graduate and an adult. I have a project in mind to bring these two perspectives together in an effort to provide a haven for the seemingly shortsighted social life and the future-minded intellectual life to flourish together. The 800 S Willow St. block of Sherman, TX is the site of an old Sherman school. This building is now being repaired and renovated by a man who is leasing it to tenants as a residential structure. If the Kappa Gamma Chi Alumni Network (KRXAN) and other Greek alumni and networks favored the idea, they might donate and facilitate student fundraising enough to redesign the building into a comfortable environment conducive to social activity that fosters education. Each Greek organization could have a room allotted to them on a lottery system and rooms could be a cross between a library and a youth hostel. Free wireless internet access and bike rentals would be a great start for the building.
Of course, there are problems we would run into. The building is in what some would consider a bad part of town, but Austin College is surrounded by bad parts of town and I haven’t seen or heard of any real problems as a result of that. If the alumni do not favor the idea, I don’t see how else we could raise enough money for this project. Legal considerations and precautions need to be made for liability reasons, but the policies and precautions of youth hostels could be researched in order to predict and prevent what problems we may run into. If this facility was considered as a Greek-only house, that assumption could easily be refuted with personal invitations blanketed to all Austin College individuals. There are many other problems Greek functions inevitably run into, but there are multiple full-time employees on campus in charge of directing the solutions to such problems, so it may not be necessary to discuss all of them in this paper.
In conclusion, we could provide this gem to members of the Austin College community simply on the basis that they are part of the Austin College community. Masked talent and genius would be unveiled as the fog of the party environment lifts to reveal social lives weaving a tapestry with intellectual interaction. Students would appreciate the knowledge around them before they graduate, because many graduates have gone on to the real world to find out you will not always be surrounded by intelligent people. We can all understand the value of this knowledge without completely tearing ourselves away from the social lives we already have. Informal social gatherings ripe with intelligent people leaves us with the ability to fully reap the benefits of our precious education.
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