Editorial: A Year in Review
By The Tower Staff
As another school year at Catholic University comes to a bittersweet close, students in all majors are both looking forward to beach days and looking back on fond memories shared with their classmates. It was a great year for the Cardinals in the field, in the classroom, and at the Hill, and a great year for the ever-growing collection of Basilicagrams on social media! Non-official (but like… pretty official) stats for this year include the average amount of Pryz fries eaten by students (25 pounds a semester), most popular Uber destination (darty house… RIP), and the most popular search on the catholic.edu search bar (“Helpppp”, four p’s).
Looking back on some of the year’s biggest moments, there were definitely some highs and some lows. The #MeToo movement, mumps, and Super Bowl LII fanfare were all present on campus. CUA students welcomed the Plain White T’s, Charles Koch, and Carly Fiorina, among other famous politicians, businessmen, speakers, and performers. Students criticized yet another tuition increase and wave of faculty layoffs, but welcomed the idea of a new dining hall and the opening of Murphy’s.
With almost four months of break in between this school year and next, it’s important for students not to lose momentum. Enjoy the warm weather (if it ever gets above 50 degrees), long hours of sleep, and visits with friends from home, but come back to school next fall ready to hit the ground running. Bring your passions and opinions back to campus with you — look how it worked out for the Media and Communication students who took a stand over something they believed in. The 2018-2019 school year could be a rough year for Catholic, with the current financial state of the university and lower enrollment, but if students bring the same passion and ideas with them that they flock to Twitter with every time the administration does anything, the future of the university will be in good hands.
Reports of CUA’s imminent death as a university have been greatly exaggerated, but there are still so many ways that Catholic could be better in order to overcome so many challenges ahead. Students find it hard to walk anywhere on campus without noticing or being obstructed by construction projects, and it doesn’t seem like it will end any time soon. They receive dozens of emails encouraging them to donate to a university that simultaneously informs parents of 3% tuition increases for the following year. And while changes to the curriculum may be a sign of modernity, major terminations of tenured faculty could threaten the quality of small classroom sizes and teacher-student relations during office hours.
As we’ve seen this year, it is ultimately up to the student community to become more aware of everyday situations going on around campus. It’s been a great year, but we need to speak up, stay alert, and get involved as much as we can to sustain the best qualities of this university.
