Editorial Board/FIUSM Staff
Move over, Biscayne Bay Campus students, you may soon share your campus with Royal Caribbean performers and entertainers. According to a proposal plan by the University, they are to take over Bay Vista Housing.
While this is a tentative plan that has yet to be finalized, The Beacon is concerned about where this plan is taking BBC.
This comes at a time when the University has expressed interest in promoting student life at BBC.
The Student Government Association allocated $2.5 million to help promote student life at BBC by renovating Panther Square. The funds used were intended for emergency purposes.
These goals are contradictory and we are guessing that the latter will take a backseat to the University’s $2.2 million business deal.
No housing and non-students on campus? So much for fostering student life at BBC.
Having this foreign program on campus will perpetuate student suspicions of a lack of unity, spirit and sense of home at BBC. It will further diminish the “college experience.”
The experience has become show up for class and get out of there before the traffic gets any worse.
Royal Caribbean performers will not be the only non-FIU persons on BBC. Maritime and Science Technology Academy students may be using the campus as well as there is an expansion plan which entails bringing MAST students to FIU in order to give those high school students taking dual enrollment courses at MAST the opportunity to experience college life.
The University hopes that when these MAST students are ready for college, FIU will be their top choice to finish their degrees.
With all of these changes, The Beacon believes that student life is getting pushed out instead of being included.
Student life on a college campus is vital to both happiness and excitement that surrounds the University.
Whether it is a Greek organization meeting, the astronomy club or student government, students need somewhere to go once their classes end that besides their home.
Give students more of a reason to hang out on campus. During the week, students already have to share the basketball court, tennis courts and swimming pools with elementary school children enrolled in summer camps.
If students have to go off-campus to do these sorts of things, then why stay for anything other than classes and homework?
We think the students at that campus need to be invested in more, especially with one of the university’s largest programs at BBC, Hospitality.
Students are investing enough money into their education and we think that it’s time the University reinvested that money into keeping students on campus. Help student organizations out by investing more money in them to give them more options when it comes to staying active and involved on-campus.
It’s the only way to achieve these lofty goals.
opinion@fiusm.com
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