Every year at Carnegie Mellon, changes are made to campus, policies, and even to our eateries. This year we have the brand-new Highmark Center, designated bike paths, Shake Smart, and hundreds of new students. All very exciting new developments, although some changes will take longer than others to get used to. (Yes, we’re talking about all the dead grass.)
This week, your favorite Tartan Editorial Board got together to discuss how we feel about all of the new things going on at Carnegie Mellon and what we’ve noticed about the changes. Most notably, we’re worried about this incoming class of first-years. One of our editors notes how these new students seem to be spending too much time on work and not enough time building kinship with their community. We reminisced on our own times as first-years, and how we didn’t feel as busy. While we can’t know for sure if professors are getting more intense as the years go on, we urge anyone struggling to reach out for help or refer to last week’s EdBoard for some ideas on how to enjoy your time outside of academics.
Of equal importance, we discussed how frustrating it is when True Burger switches chicken tender vendors. Not really, but it is a genuine frustration of the Editorial Board’s chicken tender enthusiasts. But we did discuss how dining on our campus is a double-edged sword. While it is amazing to have so many different places to eat spread around campus, it can also be really hard to get to those places whether that be because of physical distance or lack of motivation to go. The members of the Editorial Board that lived in the Morewood community know that it was hard not to default to The Underground, now known as Stack’d Underground, for any and all meals of the day.
Another change we noted was in some classroom policies that haven’t been employed previously. We’ve been seeing a rise in professors allowing for two unexcused absences in line with a possible university policy change. I, for one, noticed some of my professors referring to how they’re not ‘supposed’ to ask about the reason for such absences and how they want to put more emphasis on taking care of yourself. Another member of the Editorial Board noted how some of their classes are employing a flexible due date policy which greatly broadens the range of time an assignment is expected to be done in. The STEM majors in the room did not have that experience, but tried to imagine a world in which our problem sets could be due later. (Spoiler alert: Chaos would ensue.)
Finally, we all came together to attack our common enemy in our classes: iPad users. While not an entirely serious discussion, we found it interesting how tablets are treated inside of the classroom as compared to laptops. A lot of professors don’t allow laptops in their classrooms, but do allow iPads in many cases. It is understandable that one might take all of their notes on their tablet and want to maintain their organizational scheme, but isn’t the no-laptop policy supposed to eliminate distractions employed by our devices? One member of the EdBoard noted watching a classmate sitting in front of them in class playing “Clash of Clans” on their propped-up tablet, effectively distracting them from class. Although we are all guilty of opening the New York Times crossword on another tab or checking our messages on our laptops, we believe that tablet users can be guilty of this too.
So either we all get iPads or none of us can have them. Your move, Carnegie Mellon.