Renee GersteinWith Andrew Learned catapulting to SG President this spring on comprehensive promises of change, and his recent resolution on student oversight of the judicial process sparking hope, The Minaret decided to talk to the students to find out their biggest desires for change at UT.
Improving the availability and quality of food was the number one issue of concern to students, according to a non-scientific poll conducted by The Minaret.
Loosening the campus alcohol policies was a close second, followed by enhanced parking facilities, better athletic infrastructure, and a more effective security force.
While The Minaret poll makes no claims to being representative, we did interview 358 students, or over 10% of full-time residents.
Therefore, we do consider our results to be worth considering, since students were polled in nearly every major residence hall, including Smiley, Austin, Vaughn, Urso, Brevard, Stadium and Straz, with a roughly equal proportion of upperclassmen and lowerclassmen dorms.
Our main regret is that we excluded commuter students and non-residents from our poll, and we admit that, though we did this for reasons of practicality in limiting our polling to residence halls, it may well have skewed our results.
Nonetheless, when discussing the attitudes of our full-time residence community, we believe that the proportion of students that we polled in our sample of convenience renders the results considerable.
Better dining options!
Nearly 80 of the 358 students polled indicated that superior dining possibilities are the number one thing they wanted to change.
Most respondents who chose dining options were either concerned about what they considered a restrictive meal plan policy, a lack of a variety of food offered, or dining hours that were insufficient to their needs.
Over a dozen students recommended a 24-hour eating venue on campus, while many others wished to implement a standard for meal exchanges that would allow more flexibility.
Abolish the new alcohol policies!
Coming in second, with 60 votes, was a severe alteration or outright abolition of UT’s alcohol policies.
“They’re too harsh,” was a common refrain heard in multiple residence halls. Some students had limited demands, such as relaxing the restrictions of those over 21 or easing the termination of housing sanction for social hosting, but others felt that nearly the entirety of the policy had to be re-written.
Improve parking!
In a distant third place, parking concerns were the number one nuisance to over 25 students polled. Among those students, it was unanimous that the university needed to provide more spaces for parking.
Some went further and claimed that a new parking garage was necessary, while a minority opted for prohibition of freshman bringing cars on campus.
Football and the gym!
Athletic concerns were the top priority for fifteen students.
The majority of these students wanted a bigger gym with better equipment and more flexible hours. Eight students, however, listed a football team as their top priority.
More effective security!
Just over ten students listed security as their top concern.These respondents conflicted over whether they wished security was more vigilant, less intrusive, or whether they simply wanted them to leave their new posts as night-time guards in residence halls.
Roughly an equal number of respondents mentioned each of the above changes as their reasoning for selecting security issues.
Other answers
The remainder of those interviewed, in fact the majority of those interviewed, selected issues that either no one else or very few also selected.
Some students were very creative in their answer to the question. One student said that all dorms and buildings on campus should be converted into trailers, so that UT could turn into a “traveling carnival of education.”
Others seem to have borrowed from the legal code of the Netherlands. One student requested a regulated brothel at UT, and another wanted all drugs legalized on campus, in opposition to federal law.