Problems In Communities

Today in class we discussed in our small groups and as a class the problems with Virginia Tech. Some of the things our group came up with were the math emporium, the size of classes, the fact that the dorms don’t have air conditioning, and the drill field is too windy. Other groups’ ideas that I thought were also important dealt with on campus parking, quality of service at Schiffert Health Center, lines at dining halls, and the ticket lottery for football and basketball games. After discussing all of these things as a class we talked about what we could do to makes changes concerning the issues we have. We talked about the student lottery for football and basketball. Our options include circulating a petition, sending a letter to the athletic director, possibly extend the stadium, or get rid of the lottery use a point system while award points to students who support other sports. Regardless of the tactic used we decided that one of the main things we would need to do is research further into the current system as well as find out other attempted solutions that already failed (to prevent repeating these attempts). Our group discussed making changes dealing with the Math Emporium. Research would include evaluating the performance of students at the emporium versus in a classroom with a teacher. We wanted to know the answer to questions such as “Why is the emporium off campus and not on campus?”, “Why does the transit schedule not coincide with the testing schedule?”, “If the emporium is so expensive why can’t we use that money to pay for more professors?”.
Now what I need to do is relate this exercise to my own community and decide what I would I think needs to change within my community and how I would go about making these changes.
This weekend I will be celebrating Halloween, and spending time creating a prototype for my engineering sustainability project.