Question: What year do you consider a student with junior credits?
Answer: The sensible answer would be a junior. But according to Residential Life, not necessarily.
I find myself in this situation, as I entered Quinnipiac with quite a few credits from Advanced Placement exams in high school.
My first year was different than most of my peers. Being exempt from English and Humanities courses, I was taking classes with students who had another year of experience under their belt.
When I went online to vote for SGA members, I did not come across the familiar names of the first year students I had met in the Ledges dormitory. I was voting for the sophomore class, with people I did not particularly know.
And it was not a mistake–the same thing happened this year. Because of my extra credits, I was considered a semester ahead.
So credit-wise, right now, I am a junior. I plan on graduating early. But Residential Life has decided to look away from credits, and look simply at start dates.
I do understand their position, which is to reduce mixed groups where one first-year student with sophomore credits carries a group of freshmen to a better housing pick.
But this plan also deserves a warning. Do not begin to treat your students like statistics. Do not grow disconnected from the people who make this very university flourish.
SGA President Sean Geary had a distinct feeling that the housing changes will be “severely debilitating to a sense of community.” And he has a point. But Quinnipiac’s plan is to, one day, have the Mount Carmel campus be entirely made up of freshman and sophomore housing.
Many consider the QU administration to be looking too much to the future and not enough towards its current students. I will not speak for or against that, as I understand that every school is constantly looking to improve.
But on the same token, we cannot let the administration and the student body grow apart. Over the course of this year, we have seen a serious rift develop after the hate crime incidents, the graduation plans of 2010, and, now, the housing controversy. That rift needs to be bridged.
It is necessary for the administration and the students to treat each other like humans and equals. It is necessary to open the lines of communication. Otherwise, there will be no bright future.