Students on the NC State campus are not allowed to have access to the gym and music center facilities at peak hours of boredom during the weekend. During the week while the student’s are hurrying to and from classes, they are busy, hard working, and tired of the stress that comes along with balancing academics in college. When the weekend comes around, everyone should be allowed to have a way to vent his or her stress and do something productive and positive. With the closing of the gym and music center, students are limited when it comes to possibilities and options and therefore have nothing to look forward to.
The weekend is just “time without a cause” and people suffer from this cause. In order for students to be more comfortable and have a better mindset about their schooling, there should be more incentives when it comes to entertainment on the weekends. In order for a change to be made, the focus should start with the three main classifications of people associated with the problem. They include students, workers, and employers. The student’s objective should be to speak out and be heard. No one has ever made a change by sitting quiet and unheard from.
The workers should make themselves available on the weekends. A job cannot be run without people to run it. Finally, the employers should allow workers to earn a profit from working at such an inconvenient time. People that sacrifice their time should be awarded accordingly. During the week, many people don’t get a chance to spend time with their families because they are so busy at work.
A supervisor from a Massachusetts gas plant said that, “On the weekend, the only thing that I want to do is kick my feet up and relax. “When an opportunity presents itself, most people don’t think twice about what to do with it. When it comes to the weekends, most people will take advantage of them and direct their activities as far away from work as possible. On the weekend, many people would just like to home and maybe help their daughter complete a Barbie puzzle or maybe show their son how to throw a football. This tends to be the problem with the employers. Instead of slaving away in the hellhole that has prevented them from enjoying their families, they would rather sit back and relax with no business responsibilities at all.
The last thing that they want to do is work on the weekends. Another problems tend to lie in the financial area. The school really doesn’t have the funds to support the longer hours that the students want. Therefore they couldn’t possibly afford to increase a raise if the earnings of its employees. Alena Hoch, a NCSU student, stated that the only way that she would work on the weekend is if she were getting paid more money than she already was. For the employees, the reasons for not working differ.
Age plays the role as the discriminate that separates the weekend work. A survey taken in 1997 in showed that 87% of kids with jobs, that work full time, do not work on the weekends. (Jet Magazine) In the area of satisfaction where the employers just want to go home and settle down, the employees rather go out and hang with their friends and party. The reason being is due to the low amount of money that is received by the employees.
They feel that they are being underpaid and they are not willing to sacrifice their freedom from paid and academic work when they feel that they can be doing better things. Some go to the parties with ambitions of meeting new people, getting telephone numbers, and even sweet-talking to the opposite sex; hoping to take something home and have a little pleasure. In order to forget their problems, others drink and smoke and end up only making their problems worse in the long run. Matthew Felton, an NCSU student, said, “on the weekends, I love partying and drinking with my buddies. There is not nothing else to do and this campus is boring as all hell.” However, with drinking comes problems that could lead to death or even a long sentence in jail. Still, there are those that don’t wish to do what the others are doing but only want to utilize the facilities that the school has to offer.
The facilities include the” Carmichael gymnasium” and the “Price music center.” I myself would love to have the opportunity to sharpen my skills on the piano and build some more muscle. The students want to be allowed have access to the facilities because of their interests and lack of other options. When the weekend comes around, people look for fun. They have been attacking their schoolwork day by day and only wish to have an opportunity to entertain them selves. My father, Sam Bradley once told me that college was going to be the best year of my life. Right now, I really don’t see that.
The college campus alone does not provide enough entertainment to occupy the minds and wills of the kids on campus. Their minds vary in the way that they perceive ideas of fun. One student may want to move his body and another may want to read notes from a sonata from Beethoven. Everyone does not enjoy the late night parties with the guys and girls, rubbing all up on each other. Tiki Barber, a student at Chapel Hill, said that she hated parties.
She stated that too many people tried to talk to her and that annoyed her. Everyone also does not enjoy drinking and then suffering the side effects like: walking around like you just had been punched in the head by Mike Tyson, only to wake up the next day with a migraine. Everyone also does not enjoy being blinded by smoke while its burns through your lungs and interferes with your normal behavior. Some people just like to do quiet subtle little things like press down the black and white keys of a piano while they bless the room with a tuneful melody. Some rather lay down on a bench with their teeth clenched while sweat pours into their eyes as they attempt to lift a bar of pure iron that weighs twice as much then their own weight. Altogether, the possibilities of allowing longer usage of the facilities seems to lie within the participation of both, the student body and the school officials.
If the officials come to acknowledge the benefits of the facilities, then maybe things could change. Many of the misfortunes that happen so often on college campuses are from students that were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are several studies indicating that the crime rate for teenagers drinking on the weekends is at an all time high, reaching 47% for the late 90’s. (Billboard Studies) If the schools provided the students with more options, then they could be elsewhere and occupied with something positive that can only help them. The students must do their job and voice their opinions. If no one says anything then nothing will be done to satisfy the desires of the silent majority.
You can’t help some one if you don’t know what the problem is. In the black, employee movement of 1965, thousands of black workers stopped working and declared that they wanted to be treated as equals and they won the argument. (Spoken Voices) The act shows that if people want there to be a change, then they have to stand up for what they believe in and take affirmative action. As for the employers, they can still spend time with their families by appointing an employee to watch over the facilities in his absence. Then they can spend as much time as they want on the weekends without having to commit themselves directly.
In return, the employers can earn a larger amount of money and provide the students with other places to go to entertain themselves. Andrea Johnson, a NCSU administrator, helped raise the pay rate of the staff by allowing more students to work on the weekends. Also, the employees can stop worrying about wasting their time and work with a cause that is worth while. The earning of extra money brings a smile to everyone’s face. As for the students in favor of the longer hours, they can be awarded the option of fulfilling their ambitions. Wandering around futilely will lessen and maybe the some of the violence will decrease.
This way, everyone can be happy doing what he or she actually wants to do. History shows us that many people and groups have succeeded in winning arguments that they all believed in there was a level unfairness. There was the bus crisis in 1967: One that allowed blacks to sit in the front as opposed to the back of the bus. There was also the courageous civil rights leaders that encourage their people to speak out and stand up for themselves: In doing so they overcame a world wide case of racism. There was also the” Board of Education vs. Plassey “: In which a young black girl fought for the rights go to school with white children.
All in all, people must be heard in order to get leverage and for this reason, the students of NCSU must start now.