Wishful thinking for new school year

It’s that time of the year again. Students are flocking back into Pittsburgh en masse,… It’s that time of the year again. Students are flocking back into Pittsburgh en masse, Oakland’s businesses are perking up, classes are starting and, accordingly, The Pitt News has come up with its wish list for the upcoming year.

Our first – and probably most ambitious – request is for Pitt to keep tuition low. The University recently announced a 6.5 percent tuition hike for most undergraduate students. Cumulatively, that makes the tuition 114 percent higher now than it was 10 years ago, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. We understand that it requires some amount of increased investment to keep our university competitive, but we also believe that it is possible to remain a competitive public school and keep tuition prices low for students – particularly when we are reaching record fund-raising efforts.

A greener campus. No, we’re not talking parks and courtyards. We’d like Pitt to become more energy efficient. We are proud of the initiatives that the University has taken so far to conserve energy and reduce carbon emissions. But we’d like to see more, particularly when our national government is failing to set an example on how to responsibly curb carbon dioxide emissions and preserve our natural resources. Now is the time for universities like Pitt to set to take the steps toward a cleaner planet with changes as small as installing solar powered roof panels, incorporating low-flow faucets into residence halls and university bathrooms and implementing a broader environmental-awareness student-outreach program.

We’d like Pitt to negotiate a new public transit agreement – one that is fair for both Pitt students and the Pittsburgh Port Authority. The Port Authority has been struggling, and after 10 years, our current agreement with them can barely be profitable. We know that the University is going to have to pay more for students to keep the same public transit benefits that we enjoy now. We just hope that Pitt does its best to keep the transportation fee low for students because, while the public transportation perk is incredibly beneficial to students, it is also an asset to the University.

Speaking of public transportation, we’d love if there were more of it. Last year, the city announced a plan to extend the Port Authority’s Light Rail Transit System, commonly called the T, into the North Shore. While this plan will alleviate some of the parking congestion on Steelers’ and Pirates’ game days, why not extend the T to Oakland, an area with a thriving hospital system and several major universities? Adding another leg to the T would make Oakland, a city center, more friendly to the thousands of students, hospital patients and employees who travel here – most by car – every day.

The logo change. Let’s not talk about it anymore, OK? The otter is here to stay. So let’s support our sports teams no matter what form of wildlife they are represented by.

And part of supporting Pitt’s sports teams is showing up for the games. Pitt has done a commendable job providing buses to shuttle students to the North Shore for home football games, so why not arrange buses to take interested students to away games? It would provide an affordable way for students to travel to away football and basketball games and would help to build school spirit.

Attending Pitt’s sporting events doesn’t have to stop with football and basketball, either. Because we live on a city campus, many of Pitt’s smaller sports programs are forced to play home games at off-campus locations. We’d love it if the University would increase promotion and awareness of these events, advertising upcoming games on the University’s website and arranging transportation to the events.

One thing we’d like to commend Pitt for is the new meal-plan system and dining facility below Towers. The meal-block dining system offered to students for the past several years has been convoluted and inefficient – and we are happy that students can now pay street prices for items offered at Pitt’s dining facilities. Let’s hope that Pitt continues to work to improve its student dining services one Taco Bell at a time.

We’ve heard rumors that Pitt’s scheduling system might finally go online. This would be an incredible improvement for students forced to travel to Thackeray Hall multiple times during the manic add/drop week, racing into the building only to find that the class that had been listed as “open” only minutes prior is now closed.

But until this illustrious online scheduling system is implemented, we have one request: Could somebody please move the green add/drop forms from the second floor of Thackeray down to the add/drop room on the first floor? This small change could make the entire process less overwhelmingly confusing and amazingly more efficient.

While we’re talking online, how about a streamlined my.pitt.edu? Why must we click “Webmail” twice to actually access our e-mail? Also, we’d love it if we could have a calendar of events and speakers coming to the University on the main page of the portal. Oftentimes, students are completely unaware of campus-wide events because we have no place to find out what’s going on at Pitt.

Our final wish is that students have a successful and productive year at Pitt – and maybe we could win a few football games.