Senior year in high school, many of us, especially Asian students, spent a lot of time scrolling down a list of top prestigious schools that we wanted to be apart of. After reading Why We Should Fear University, Inc. by Fredrik DeBoer, I wonder if the seemingly significant university ranking really means anything when campuses are no longer a safe place for mere education.
I remember taking a tour at Columbia University and I was immediately attracted to their campus. The reason I liked the campus is certainly not because of those “cool” fraternity houses with colorful lights, full blast music, and lots of weed and alcohol. Instead, I was in love when I saw a professor surrounded by students sitting on the grass giving a lecture. Such pure educational interaction between professors and students is what I had always dreamed about university life.
Who is responsible for corrupted American universities? Students? Fraternities and sororities? Or the Social norms? I would say neither of those is the mere problem but universities themselves. Just as DeBoer pointed out, university only makes policies to protect themselves but not students nor faculties. Case and point, fraternity houses just one street away from campus can do whatever they want with drugs and alcohol and even sexual violence without any university authority’s intervention. Another example is when I had a job on campus, I had to compete a sexual violence training. However, if such violence does happen to me at work one day, there would be less trouble for the university because of the training we had to go through.
University should be a shelter for students and faculties. It is very sad to see many top prestigious universities in America are becoming corporations. My question for this week's reading is what we, as students, can do to prevent such corporate corruption?
YouthIncMag. (2013, June 2). Choose the Right Foreign University.
Retrieved from https://youthincmag.com/choose-the-right-foreign-university
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