I am a Xavier student. I hate Xavier, mostly because of its excessive liberal arts requirements. Why the f*** would my future employer care that I took 3 courses in English, 2 courses in history, a cultural diversity course, 2 courses in social sciences, 2 chemistry courses, 3 courses in philosphy, and 3 courses in theology? How are these courses going to help me in my job? I already had the English, religion, and history courses all through elementary school and high school. How much more of this s*** can I take before it starts repeating? In fact, I used the exact same book for Theological Foundations in high school! How much money does Paul Knitter need for this trite piece of s***? If I didn't have to take all this bulls***, I would have gotten my degree in 2 to 2 1/2 years! I waste more than 3 hours a day on courses not even in my major. I first came to Xavier because I heard that it was a good school. It has good teachers in my major, but the overall curriculum sucks. If I didn't have to write papers and have so many tests on stuff that I couldn't give a rat's ass about, I would probably be able to bear the courses. But the school believes that these courses are just as important as our major courses and that we should spend just as much time on them, if not more. I'm sick of this s***.
And don't get me started on the poor quality campus food, poor selection of extracurriculars, federal work-study rule for on-campus employment, limited notice to commuters of campus events, and poor maintenance of dorms.
Sometimes when I go to the cafeteria at 7pm, the cook in the front has already left. The dining hall doesn't close until 7:30, though that's way too early. I've had stomach problems since moving onto campus. I heard that they put a lot of preservatives in the food, probably so they can let it sit all day and avoid unnecessary work. That crumble stuff is disgusting - fruits swimming in a lake of pie filling with just a few crumbs of brown sugar on top. Dennis always burns the omelettes. They keep the same soups all day. Besides the crumble, they also have a lot of bland pudding and brownies. They only have good deserts less than one week a month. I wish they'd have cheesecake, chocolate chip cookies, and pecan pies more often. They even manage to screw up the cheesecake, for Christ's sake! How hard is it to make cheesecake? It's mostly cream cheese.
90-something percent of all the groups on campus are either religious or community service. How about some fun groups? Like for playing cards, or just common interests? Not everybody here thinks that Jesus is the best thing since popcorn. When I'm not working, I don't feel like doing something that also feels like a full-time job, like building houses, tutoring, trying to save the poor, or saving the Earth.
Since I couldn't find anything else to do besides studying, I figured I'd try to get a job on campus. Besides it might have helped me to meet people. But only people who qualify for financial aid can work on campus. This goes against Xavier's message of embracing people, whatever their backgrounds.
Why can't the campus mail commuters about campus events? Why did I have to walk all over campus to find out what was going on? Those emails don't talk about the fun stuff like movies or parties. They're just about some old professor that's coming on campus to talk about saving the Earth or becoming more diverse. That's what forced me to move onto campus for another $2,000.
Yet campus life has a lot of problems too. The toilets break and the showers have no hot water several times a month. I have to report problems to the Physical Plant several times before they fix the problems. But the following week, the problems come back. That shows you how good they are at their job. There is hardly any shower pressure. I reported it to the Physical Plant, and the custodian said that there was nothing he could do about it, though he admitted that he had seen better pressure elsewhere.
Is Xavier really worth $20,000 dollars a year? For the reasons I stated above, the answer is clearly no. Don't listen to those commercials on ESPN - the power of X, my ass! Unless more people like me complain about these problems, they are going to remain forever. Is nobody else disappointed with Xavier? As with segregation, major societal problems can only be addressed by the masses who are suffering. Don't just accept it as the status quo. You can change it for the better.