OUR VIEW: Better academics before recreation

When we first heard talk about a new recreation center, like you, our first question was — who is paying for this? As we suspected, we learned the construction of the recreation center was coming out of our pockets, and at a time when the economy wasn’t exactly recovered.

During the fall 2011 semester, we learned yet another project could be added into the mix. USU Recreation leaders were looking into artificial grass to put in place of the current HPER fields. We won’t be surprised to see an item on the upcoming ASUSU election ballot where students can indicate whether they want to pay more student fees to give these fields a makeover.

Recently, we caught word of a student-formed group titled Students Against Academic Waste. These students intend to first campaign against the HPER field project, informing students about exactly where there money is going and possibly suggesting where it could go instead.

Nothing makes us more excited than to see students who are aware of their circumstances and care about their educations enough to take university politics into their own hands. This is democracy at its finest and we love it.

These two projects made us feel more teased than excited. We knew acquiring these new installments on campus would be anything but smooth sailing, especially with the annual fear of budget cuts from the state legislature and knowing full well our state politicians don’t see the true value in higher education.

Our question is why is so much time being put into improving our capacity to socialize? Don’t they see the impacts of a decreasing budget on our academic experiences? Don’t they have this realization in their own schooling? Well, we can see it. Before we get a new lap swimming pool, we’d like to see more course options and smaller class sizes. Let’s upgrade the archaic buildings, such as the Ray B. West building, before worrying about the state of the grass we play on in our free time. Wait, what free time?

We’d like to put the sole reason why we attend college — to gain knowledge — at the top of our priority list. This is also where we would like to put our money.