I find it difficult to recapture the thrilling essence of my college career without succumbing to a meaningless discharge of empty rhetoric or clichés. The value of each and every experience here is not something that transitions well into a narrative much alike the one you’re reading. From what I’ve seen, any serious attempt aimed towards this objective tends to suffer from a tremendous depth of self-indulgence. Let’s be honest, I know you don’t give a sh*t about my freshman year on Briarcliff and I don’t blame you for it.

I will therefore try not to bore my audience with a brief autobiography of the last four years. Instead, I would like to focus my reflections on a number of concerns I have with Pace since arriving here back in 2010. Whether you perceive it to be a bitching fit or bold cathartic declaration, all that matters to me is for my voice to be heard. Maybe someone will care.

First, the institution itself as a functioning promotion of academia should not be taken for granted. My departmental field of history and political science features some of the most sophisticated and inspiring intellects employed by this school. By some extent, this rings true throughout all the other colleges as well. I do not hold any qualms in how my tuition is used to support them. Pace is, after all, a business, and the business of this business is partially education.

I say “partially” because the other, more important business of Pace’s business is extortion. Since my freshman year, tuition has already increased drastically from a modest $49,800 to a major $59,200. If arbitrarily raising tuition $10,000 in only four years were actually reflected upon the campus as a whole, I may have felt differently. Yet, all of the dorms (specifically the townhouses) are falling apart, parking is limited, and payroll fails to accomplish anything. At what point does the university recognize that a $50 ticket for heinously parking in Briarcliff burdens their customer to incomprehensible frustration?

Not yet clearly. Otherwise I’d have something better to look at than a promise ensuring me things will get better. I’m sure they will, just not for me here.

Oh well, I guess I can take solace in all the memories I’ve obtained throughout my trip. In spite of the incompetency of Res Life, The Pace Chronicle, Greek Life, SDCA, Payroll, OSA, and many others, I think I liked it here. I grew quite fond for many of you who represented these platforms, as well those of you who did not.

Well, I guess except for OSA.

F*ck OSA.