My first class of the semester is in Patterson Office Tower. When I saw the location on my schedule I was excited, thinking that despite the class’s quickly filled roster (I had been trying to get in for the past year) that the class would be casually small. I rode my bike to campus, arriving fifteen minutes early. I expected the room to be mostly empty, but all of the table seats were already full. I took a desk in the back of the room.
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“This is fine,” I thought, “I’ll just show up earlier next week.” Â
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But as it crept closer to 9:30, every tiny desk stored in the back and on the sides of the room were full. Â The last few students to arrive had to grab chairs from other classrooms. The class became so full that I could barely see or hear my professor, let alone see the syllabus projected at the front of the room.
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My other English classes have been in basements, in run-down buildings no one else has heard of and one time across campus in the room above the 90. English majors get some of the worst classrooms on campus while STEM and business majors are rewarded with brand-new buildings dedicated to their major. English is my third major (following civil engineering and later geology) plus I have had general education classes in other disciplines, so I know what I am talking about.
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I just want to learn and I cannot do that if the classroom is overflowing with students, or if I am struggling to reach the room in ten minutes. If UK has the money to build the Gatton Building and the Jacobs Science Center, at the very least put the English majors in Chem-Phys or Whitehall. We pay the same amount of tuition, so just give us an actual classroom.