I’m a senior at the University of Washington, and I have a few things to rant about. In hindsight, they’re all minor things, but I believe they’re worth ranting about, especially because I don’t rant all that often.

1: Better Dorms
The dorms are just awful. They’re dungeons, especially McMahon and Haggett. I was fortunate enough to live in Lander my freshman year, which was just as depressing as the rest with a fun, social resident population. I spent my freshman orientation in Haggett, and it was possibly the worst first impression I’ve ever had of anything.

Here’s a shot of Haggett:

2: Better On-Campus Food
The on-campus food is expensive and unhealthy. I’m talking about dorm food and HUB food. If you’re feeling like eating healthy, then you eat a salad. Otherwise you eat burritos, pizza, etc that’s more expensive than if you were to buy them outside of the school. Credit cards aren’t accepted either. Accept credit cards.

3: Better Gym Setup
The IMA is great, but it’s isolated and its hours of operation are somewhat confined. It’s annoying to get to the IMA in the rain, and it rains a lot in Seattle. This is probably unsolvable, but this post is all about rants :). Perhaps setup some sort of shuttle that goes between the IMA, north campus, and south campus once or twice an hour.

4: Police
I get an email about once every six weeks describing a shooting or stabbing that occurs in the U-district. I rarely see police officers patrolling the streets, which is probably why all this crime happens. After speaking with some fraternity friends, it sounds like it’s basically a 100% guarantee that your party will be visited at least once by the police. Let college students party (because they’re going to anyway) and focus more on preventing murders, robberies, and other more serious crimes. If my mom found out about all the crime that goes on around the UW, then she would probably throw a fit and send numerous letters to the administration (seriously). My mom is super worrisome, especially when it comes to her children, but I love her anyway.

5: Lower Student Apartment Housing Costs
Come on, we’re poor college students. UW-provided apartments are way over the going rate. Nordheim court’s starting rate is $840 / room / month, and Stevens Court starts at $597 / room / month. Stevens Court is more reasonable, but their rooms are very, very small. I could furnish an entire house for $840.

6: Better Support for Student Organizations
I’m the president of the Husky Snowboard Team, and I have had an insanely difficult time putting on an on-campus rail jam. The HUB event bureaucrats are awful at communication, timeliness, and efficiency. Read more about this here.

7: Better Carpool Parking
The UW’s carpool policy is just stupid. The point of a carpool policy is to encourage people to ride-share, which saves gas and money. UW decides to end their carpool parking discount in the afternoon when the parking lot isn’t even close to being half full. Allow carpooling discounts all day. I really don’t get it.

8: Covered Bike Parking
It rains a lot in Seattle, and most of the bike parking is open. It would be very cheap and easy to setup small covers over at least some bike racks. I don’t mind biking to school in the rain, but I get rather annoyed when my bike just sits outside in the pouring rain.

9: Better RA Training
I was fortunate enough to have pretty good RAs, but I heard horror stories about some friends’ RAs. The UW RAs are entirely too strict, uptight, and power-hungry. RAs should be trained better to be less strict, yet still aware of how to handle misconduct, emergency, etc. I think my freshman year would have been more enjoyable if I wasn’t always worried about playing guitar too late or getting arrested for having a Swiss Army knife in my dresser.

10: Snow Days
The UW absolutely will not shut down school when it snows. I was greeted with nearly six inches of snow one Monday morning my junior year, and UW didn’t shut down school. My bus never showed up, and I ended up missing my classes. This happened to a lot of people, so UW decided to keep school open again this year when we got a big snow.

This post is definitely a rant, and I feel pretty emo writing it, especially given all of the generalizations I just made. However, I have been very, very happy with UW, especially on the academic side of things. I will write a post about the great things about the UW, but in the meantime learn why I don’t regret coming to Seattle from Los Angeles. Do any of my classmates have anything to add?

Photo credit: here.