Thursday, June 12, 2008

What's the deal with.... GW?

So my staff and I have been working non-stop since Spring Break after I won the Student Association Presidency but I have to pose this question to everyone...

What's the deal with GW?

Or more specifically, what's wrong with GW? Is it dining? Is it printing fees? Is it advising? What is it that makes YOU unhappy when it comes to GW and what would you do to fix it?

It's funny, I was talking to a few friends of mine and they said that it's the small things in life that GW fails at.

"It's hard to care about a school when there's never enough soap in the Marvin Center bathrooms, when students have to pay for a transcript, or when I have to stay on hold for twenty minutes just to talk to financial aid for three minutes."

In the spirit of blogging, I thought I'd end this post with one of my favorite songs... Enjoy!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why can't I get a good meal on campus?

Anonymous said...

Why is it that I'm treated like a customer, not a student?

Anonymous said...

http://tinyurl.com/6kumfn

This GWBlogSpot post about CVS taking the place of Tower Records sums it up, on 2 fronts:

"According to The Hatchet, the SA (rightly) pushed for a Barnes & Noble, but were told there wasn't enough space to accommodate the book megastore. Most likely, however, the real reason is GW doesn't want to give students an easy alternative to the school's own outrageous bookstore prices."

Students should be priority #1...the university making money should only happen when it's in pursuit of serving students. Intentionally ripping off students with higher book prices and denying students the higher quality of life that would come with a B&N on campus is not serving the students.

Then this: "Apparently there are other companies in the hat, but GW won't tell us whom. This secrecy seems a little uncalled for, particularly given university spokesperson Tracy Schario says the administration is looking for the 'business [that] will best serve the neighborhood and student needs.' That said, I think she pretty much sums up GW's attitude to the affair: 'Will we actively seek input from the student body? No. Are there mechanisms for student input? Yes.'"

Seriously? The top-down decision making, supposedly done for the benefit of the students but without real student input, is a problem.

Does that answer your question?

Anonymous said...

I don't appreciate that quite often you HAVE to have your parents call on your behalf to get something done.

GW wants us to become well-rounded, responsible adults, but yet they reward us only when we run to mommy and daddy to make things all better.

frustrating. some of us even pay our own tuition (and therefore, we NEED TO BE LISTENED TO).

so yeah, get on that vishal.

GWBlogSpotAdmin said...

What's an example of the parent thing? Not questioning it, just saying an example would be good.

Name said...

The advising system is a crapshoot. We've ranted about it here before, but there's never any way to get a straight answer out of anyone. It'd be helpful if, even if your adviser didn't know an answer, they knew of someone who definitely would. I know everyone is double-majoring or minoring in another school or something else wacky, but some kind of help in navigating that bureaucracy would be helpful.

And although I'm not the above commenter, here's my story of parents having more power than students: when I was accepted at GW, I wasn't getting any financial aid. When I'd visited, they'd seemed to indicate that national merit scholars got some sort of financial aid. I called for an explanation. No dice.

After two weeks of my mom calling every single day, they mysteriously gave me a scholarship. Which I was grateful for -- otherwise I couldn't have afforded to go here -- but the whole process was a pain.

Anonymous said...

I hate the gwu.edu . It's tacky and very commercial.