I proclaim that claims are left unstated

2019 shall surely go on to be recorded as one of the worst years in the history of Stevens Institute of Technology. That is, unless 2020 manages to be worse — an occurrence that would not shock me as much as I would like it to.

Life at Stevens for students has deteriorated dramatically year after year. Arduous and unfinished construction projects have led to widespread disruptions of students’ daily routines, including requiring almost Sisyphean efforts to reach classes on time due to the difficult-to-traverse campus, exasperated by the relatively recent locking of the outer doors of the Edwin A. Stevens building, which has made it remarkably difficult to reach class buildings for students who live off-campus — that is, most students — in a reasonable time-frame. Not to mention that it has become an extreme hardship for students with certain types of disabilities to travel between some buildings. To make matters even worse, as of this week the most direct route from lower campus to the Wesley J. Howe Center now has sprinklers installed directly on the most commonly used walking path!

I even had the first week’s lectures of a course cancelled because of delays in the construction of the Gateway building; these delays were not even publicly announced until well after the semester had started, leading to large amounts of confusion for both students and professors. Any student who has skipped a week’s worth of classes before can say just how catastrophic that can be in terms of total understanding of course content. There just isn’t enough time in the semester for redundant lectures, so missing a full week puts a significant amount of strain on both the professor to cover the full material of the course in the allotted time and on students who now have less time to explore the full depth of the course content and, thus, are at a notable disadvantage academically compared to students who took the course in previous semesters.

If all that wasn’t enough, the renovation of Alexander House is now eight months behind schedule — a completely absurd truth when you realize that the original project was only supposed to take around that long. The physical destruction of the only building on campus that primarily existed to serve the needs of on-campus life for students and the complete failure to provide permanent replacement spaces for displaced organizations and activities in a timely matter is nothing short of appalling. To this day, many student organizations are told that they can only access their belongings during Stevens’ business hours, when the vast majority of clubs on campus meet later at night to avoid conflicting with their members’ class schedules.

Somewhere in the excavation site beneath the ghost of what used to be some of the most–utilized student recreation spaces on campus lies the grave of “student-centricity,” a concept that the Stevens website still states is the “highest priority” of the Institution.

Based on my experiences in the last year or so of my life at Stevens, I can no longer in any way believe that I am attending an institution that values students like me as its highest priority. My money, perhaps. But not me. Ask yourself: would a university whose students are its highest priority destroy valuable on-campus meeting spaces, and then keep their own meeting spaces locked away from student use even while they remain empty for days? Would a university whose students are its highest priority shut out and ignore students when they ask basic questions about the ongoing status of the school we pay for? Would a university whose students are its highest priority leave extremely dangerous security vulnerabilities unaddressed until threatened with potential lawsuits?

The answer, quite simply, is no. A university that values its students higher than other priorities would not do any of these things. A university that truly values its students would not hold a drive to get undergraduate students to donate when they are already paying exorbitant rates and paying high-level administrators almost unfathomable sums of money, all the while damaging the student experience seemingly at almost every opportunity.

The new sidewalk alongside the street leading from Howe to Castle Point Hall is very useful, looks nice, and was assembled in a reasonable time. Beyond that, I cannot think of a single way in which my life as a student has moved in a positive direction in the last year, other than the base fact that my life is now a year closer to graduation and getting out of here. Yet, while I was writing this very column, I received an email from President Farvardin that claimed the work of the Institute was in some way “awe-inspiring.” I actually laughed when I read that, because it’s simply so absurd. The fact that basically every communication Stevens has sent out in the last six months is positive and optimistic while life for students deteriorates more and more every month is sickening. I proclaim that claims are left unstated.

I demand a rematch.

But I know that that’s impossible. Instead, I will continue to request swipe access to my booked meeting spaces and not receive it. I will continue to be late for classes because there is no reasonable way to traverse the campus quickly. I will continue to tally the number of lies I was told on my first tour here — for reference, the current count is six. I will continue to tell my younger family members and their friends to please, please go to another school, because maybe you’ll have a good experience there, but you sure as hell will not have a good life here. And, above all else, I will continue to try to do the best I can academically and hope I can afford my final year here while Stevens seems like it wants do to everything but help me on both fronts.