Priorities

After reading this article in The Hatchet, my only response was "who cares?"

Who cares how many 'elite' students GW admits? (And who can even really define 'elite,' anyway?) Who cares what some magazine or newspaper ranks us? Who cares about the multitude of trivial measures of success and popularity that are floating around out there?

GW shouldn't be obsessed with any of these. The GW administration should be focusing on how to improve the University's academics and how to improve student quality of life.

GW students love to complain--about housing, about J Street, about class registration, about dozens of other issues that affect us every single day as students of this University. But the reason we complain is because there's real room for improvement--if we had an administration focused less on meeting the demands of somewhat-arbitrary ranking systems to attract new students and more on improving the lives of the students already here.

I'm graduating in a few weeks, and when I think back at my time at GW I don't think about our rankings. I don't think about our level of 'elite' student enrollment. I don't think about improvements in our average SAT/ACT score. I think about all the great times I had at this school, about the interesting classes I took and the fun I had being a college student at this University.

GW needs to focus on improving the lives of its students first and foremost. Improve dining options. Streamline class and housing registration. Improve academics. Build a better campus. Improve GW's academic and study facilities. GW needs to do what it can to make the lives of it's current students as exciting as possible, instead of focusing on ultimately arbitrary metrics.

So when I read an article like that, I can't help but think "who cares?" Because after four years at this university, the enrollment of so-called elite students is the farthest thing from my mind.