Goble: Final thoughts from this graduating senior
Corban Goble shares his thoughts with the University.
By Corban Goble (Contact)
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
In a couple of weeks, I leave this school for good. Although my cubicle-driven malaise will likely create a grand romanticization of my college years, this place ain’t perfect. Here are my suggestions for how KU can change, grow and redefine what a university can be.
1. Student Senate — Let’s face it, people. Democracy, even though it sounds nice, doesn’t work. The whole process gets mucked up in bureaucracy, a slowdown of all processes that finds committees taking years to decide whether KU should get Gmail or not. My solution? A Student Dictator.
I know, I know. The term “dictator” has been associated with some pretty negative things during the past century. But you know what dictators do? They get stuff done.
Want Gmail? Presto! You got it. More books in the library? As long as they are propaganda, sure! The filling up of Clinton Lake in order to erect a child-labor driven textile factory? Now we’re talking.
2. Progressive Schools — KU has a medical school, a law school and an undergraduate business school. Pretty good. However, institutions nationwide are ignoring the single greatest threat to mankind, a threat greater than cancer, global warming or snakes on a plane — time.
Anyone who was in my physical science class in ninth grade knows that time can flat out stop. I hope this University will be the first institution to create a unique school that can capture this phenomenon, enabling lengthy naps, Zach Morse style “time-outs” and solutions to those situations where you need to be two places at once, which happens in every teenage sitcom ever created.
3. Free Beer —‘Nuff said.
4. More Fireworks — If coupled with No. 3 on my list, KU will see an enormous rise in enrollment.
5. Bitter Relationships with the Dean — Now here is something I’ve always wanted to harp on. From my viewings of all the classic college films, I was led to think that my time at university would be plagued by a series of battles with the dean. The dean, attempting to look good and maybe land a better dean job or impress a local business (you pick the plot, I don’t care) would naturally bristle with the party-loving coeds at the school, resulting in an endless number of pranks and “double-secret” probations. However, every dean that I have interacted with has been caring, modest and interested in what I had to say. That needs to change, as I think I’m missing out on an essential college experience here.
6. More Parades for the Basketball Team — Is one really enough?
7. Gondolas for the Hill to avoid that horrible steep climb from the Student Ghetto area —The student dictator would most likely get these puppies rolling.
8. More publicity for my solo project — Given time and a lot of patience, I really think Corby and the Funkbots are gonna be huge.
I’d like to think that all of these suggestions are feasible, and when I return to the school in a decade, students will be whizzing by on Segways drinking complimentary Red Bulls and properly fixing buckets of glue above the dean’s slightly cracked doorway. Heck, my potential donation to the school is riding on the possibility of these changes.
All said and done, KU is pretty great. Asking for improvement is like asking Gilbert Arenas to say crazier stuff.
Let’s not get spoiled here.
However, let us take the opportunity to improve ourselves, improve our school and download Corby and the Funkbots’ mp3s until your hard drive is full.
Goble is a Mission Hills senior in English.
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