Published since 1915 by the students
of Xavier University
— STAFF EDITORIAL —
Your money’s worth
College has a price tag. It costs about $11,000 for a semester’s worth of classes at Xavier. Factor in room and board (around $2,000), a meal plan (another $2,000) and other fees, and you’re spending about $15,000 total per semester. So according to this rough math, it costs about $30,000 a year to go to Xavier, without scholarships and financial aid.
The Newswire is well aware that $30,000 is a big chunk of change, and for most of us, our Jesuit education and college experience is worth every penny of our (or probably our parents’) money.
However, the Newswire is starting to think that some of the students here are expecting their $30,000 to get them treated like royalty.
Have you ever uttered the words “I pay $30,000 to go to this school, I shouldn’t have to ________!” We’re sure that most of you have at least once, because some things are frustrating, but the current trend seems to be that Xavier students want their money to work for them in unreasonable ways.
Think about all the little things that are done for you each day here at Xavier. Ms. Williams always sits at the door of the caf to swipe your All Card and ask how your weekend was.
The cleaning staff works all hours of the night in Gallagher, and they move your stuff for you in your dorm bathroom if you have forgotten.
Over the past few weeks, Physical Plant workers braved the frigid temperatures to shovel snow from dawn until dusk so that we would be able to walk around campus.
Are Xavier students beginning to look at the quantity over the quality of their Xavier experience? Are we expecting to be catered to every single day? Last time the Newswire checked, college was supposed to help people become independent individuals who can function without mommy and daddy.
More importantly, are we degrading everything at Xavier because we don’t think the services provided measure up to the amount of money we pay to be here?
If you ask most Xavier students, what they take away from their college experience are things to which you cannot assign a monetary value, such as friendships and what they learn from their awesome professors.
You can overlook so much here at Xavier when you’re just looking at dollar signs, and while money is important, your time, hard work and enjoyment are important too.
The Newswire encourages you to stop and smell the roses, and enjoy the time you have at Xavier. Don’t convert everything into dollar signs, and learn to appreciate all that is done for you here. And if you don’t like it, put your money where your mouth is and go to UC.
A Piece of Opinion: Scandalously familiar
Matthew Finger
Op-Ed Editor
A lot of crazy stuff happens in college, that’s a fact. Sometimes we, the irresponsible youth of America, make the difficult decision to put down Plato’s “Republic” and pick up daddy’s little helper. That’s right, I’m talking about beer. There’s no point in beating around the sobriety bush here: it’s college and there is drinking.
And, like I said, crazy stuff happens: Billy puts a lampshade on his head, Jane sings “Total Eclipse of the Heart” as loud as she can, Soupie’s opens (and subsequently closes) and of course four UC football players and four prospective student-athletes engage in sexual acts with a UC women’s soccer player at a party and tape it.
Oh, you didn’t hear? Well, yeah, that allegedly happened according to an anonymous member of the University of Cincinnati athletics department. A letter, written by said concerned employee, was sent to Daniel Cummins, director of judicial affairs, UC president Nancy Zimpher and Barbara Rinto, director of the UC Women’s Center.
The letter claimed that during a recruiting weekend, players and potential players of the UC football team “engaged in [this] perverse behavior” with a member of the women’s soccer team, and videotaped it. The tapes were then, of course, spread throughout the dormitories of UC.
With UC’s tradition of shadiness and my already established sense of superiority to our academic neighbors, I can’t really say that I am that surprised that they did it, nor that they were dumb enough to get caught. What really caught my eye was the anonymous writer’s opinion of the UC athletic department’s staff.
The concerned employee writes, “I have seen, on numerous occasions, that the men’s basketball program and football programs have received preferential treatment by our athletic director. Quite honestly, there seems to be a separate set of rules for these two programs and their coaches.”
Hmm. Something about that sounds familiar. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but…oh that’s right, the same thing happens here. I mean, that darned cross country team gets whatever they want. It doesn’t matter. In the university’s eyes they can do no wrong, and frankly I’m tired of them running around like they own the place.
Well, that might be a stretch. But we certainly have a comparable experience with our basketball team. Yes, the basketball team brings in more money and recognition than probably every other athletic team at Xavier combined, but does that give them VIP status in the dance club that is Xavier University?
Accountability is the issue here. Just because athletes are athletes does not make them immune to the rigorous expectations of today’s society, such as not creating and distributing a videotape that contains footage of you engaging in sexual deviance with a female soccer player and seven other football players.
I know it’s a tough life having so much physical talent (well, maybe not UC football) and having such poor decision making skills. Actually, I don’t know, but I can imagine it’s a life similar to that of a male peacock. I feel bad for the coaches because their job is basically babysitting an ego that can dunk (or do some football thing).
But that’s beside the point. Coaches and athletes are responsible (I’m talking to you, Bob Huggins) for their behavior on and off the field/court/track/wherever. Just because they happen to have attained baller status does not mean that responsibility and accountability have lost meaning and relevance. I mean, come on, I’m a baller but you dont see me with any women soccer players.
Renovating Residence Life:
How to improve the on-campus housing process
Patrick Stevenson
Asst. Op-Ed Editor
If one spends over two and a half years living in Xavier’s on-campus housing like I have, one develops a few ideas about how to make living on-campus better. While I don’t think merely living on-campus for an extended period of time necessarily makes me qualified to offer suggestions to those who manage on-campus housing, I feel compelled to do so anyway. So here is how I, an average on-campus resident, would change on-campus housing:
• Give priority to students based on their academic year. As it stands now, a senior can get a lower number than a junior in the housing lottery, which is nonsensical. If a student manages to stick it out for three years in university housing at Xavier, they deserve to live wherever they choose.
• Create more premium on-campus housing. Unlike many other universities, there is no consensus best place to live on campus at Xavier. As such, no one, especially upperclassmen, gets overly excited about living on campus. However, if Residence Life were to take half a dozen apartments in the Commons and the Village and pimp them out by installing state-of-the-art kitchen appliances, more comfortable furniture and nicer flooring, students would be much more eager to live on campus. How would these improvements be funded? Read on…
• Raffle off the top 10 lottery spots. The top 10 lottery spots are a very valuable commodity that are essentially given out for free. Instead of randomly bestowing good fortune on lucky Xavier students, Residence Life should offer Xavier students the opportunity to buy raffle tickets, for say, $5 each, which would enter the student in a drawing for one of the top 10 lottery spots. If Residence Life were to create premium on-campus housing, the initial proceeds from this raffle could go towards paying for the improvements. After the money spent to create the premium housing was earned back, which may take more than one lottery cycle, all further proceeds from this raffle could be donated to a worthy cause, like an Alternative Breaks trip. Admittedly, creating premium housing would be a substantial financial investment, but the long-term returns could greatly benefit many members of the Xavier community.
Perhaps there are reasons Residence Life doesn’t do anything, and perhaps their honorable employees will grow angry at my insolence and draw an unflattering moustache on my mugshot. However, I think the housing process here at Xavier could use a shot in the arm, and I think adopting some of these ideas would help to do so.
But what do I know about on-campus housing? I just live there.
Flushing out the restrooms of Xavier
Kenny Malone
Senior Restroom Critic
Using public restrooms is not fun, end of story. We’d all love to rush home to our “home base” at the drop of a hat, but let’s face it, that’s just not practical. As a student living off campus for the first time, I’m realizing the importance of finding a home base away from home, which is why I’ve set out to review bathrooms on campus.
Now, I need to lay a few things out there before getting into the meat and potatoes of this. First of all, I must confess that I am a male, to which it would logically follow that I will be reviewing only men’s restrooms. In addition to this, I think most would agree that men are willing to relieve themselves anywhere that they can get away with. Thus, my focus will not be on the urinals of a restroom (probably one of the most pleasant places men choose to urinate), but rather on the stalls and toilets, in addition to the ambiance, general setup and entertainment possibilities of a bathroom.
In the end, my hope is that men around Xavier will read these reviews and be inspired to find an on campus restroom to call their own.
Alter Hall 3rd Floor
Rating: 
As the sounds of toilets flushing, water bellowing from faucets and doors slamming shut echo powerfully about the Alter third floor restroom, the awesome, gray marble stall walls become immediately noticeable as the dominating feature in this bathroom which can only be described as truly regal. Though the ambiance is generally cold, as overstated by the tile floors, marble stalls with wooden doors and stone walls, the lack of a plush rug under foot never really seems to dampen the bathroom experience.
In fact, I’ve found that chilling the atmosphere even more, by allowing the overhead light to remain off during day time hours, somehow makes the bathroom seem more welcoming and kingly by allowing two godly beams of light to illuminate the floor and give the room a sense of a cool spring night in a castle. As an added bonus, the end stalls each have one stall wall which extends entirely to the floor for an additional feeling of comfort that just can’t be explained.
Unfortunately, there is really no good source of reading material in or around this restroom; luckily I invented Tile Tetris (patent pending) which revolves around the three color, 3x3 checker board pattern in the tiling that has randomly scattered really dark blue tiles atop the checker design.
Tile Tetris works as follows: pick any two of the dark tiles which are close to one another and figure out which Tetris piece can best span the two dots (you can include the dark spot in the Tetris piece or not, your decision). The only problem with Tile Tetris, and the toilets here in general, is that if you sit up straight on the toilet and then lean forward past a 45 degree angle, like you will need to do to closely examine tile patterns, the auto-flush feature will kick in and cause a mildly unpleasant breeze and water spray to graze your bottom.
This feature actually causes a lot of problems for folks who like to change postures during defecation, but can be avoided by either sitting up straight the entire time or leaning the entire time. It must be noted, however, that by leaning throughout a poop, the auto-flush may never actually be activated, in which case a hand wave flush is necessary.
Despite the auto-flushing issues, and the fact that Alter is often bustling with people, an issue which can be avoided by using restrooms during class time, I find that the pots a plenty and regal atmosphere really make me feel like a king on his throne in the Alter third floor bathrooms.
10th Floor of Schott Hall
Rating:
Imagine, if you will, being dropped directly on top of the toilet at the home of Beaver Cleaver, then imagine the creation of a public restroom with the same exact feeling and design.
If you’ve done this correctly, you’ve envisioned the restroom on the 10th floor of Schott Hall. From its classic toilet designs with typical tank and shiny metallic plunger handle system (not the crappy joystick flusher) to its quiet serenity, the 10th floor of Schott bathroom really captures the nostalgia of doing one’s business in the 1950s. In fact, from the perspective of sitting on the toilet, literally everything in the restroom is in black and white, except the imperceptible wall behind the toilet which is blue. This nostalgic sentiment and solitude is pleasant and even fun for a time, but after awhile, loneliness and boredom start to set in.
With no noise to distract the ear, no color in the bathroom and a tile pattern as boring as a drive across Ohio, I found myself actually willing to try to read the many volumes of books, in their original Latin text, which rest on a shelf outside the restroom. In fact, there are literally dozens of things to read lying around the World View’s lounge, but 99 percent are in French and Latin, with the other one percent being accounted for by one German and one Spanish publication. Luckily, I can at least make sense of pictures with Spanish captions. I’m not saying there’s no validity in trying one’s hand at reading a foreign publication, but the combination of this with the restroom’s super clean cut ambiance left me walking away feeling as out of place as Odysseus returning to his home to find June Cleaver awaiting him in nothing but an apron.
While the cleanliness of the bathroom is great, and the stall doors are both well-equipped with coat hangers and outward opening, nice for avoiding undesired brushes with porcelain, I found the 10th floor of Schott bathrooms to be too boring for my liking.
McDonald Library Basement
Rating:
Typically, a pretty good recipe for red-faced embarrassment requires merely a deathly quiet place regularly full of people, and then having to drop a deuce in that place.
It is precisely for this reason that I have long feared using the restrooms in the McDonald Library.
If you’re anything like me, then I have good news and bad news for you. Let’s go good news first; the basement bathroom will protect the world from hearing a nuclear explosion, let alone a payload deposit, and, as an added bonus, sometimes there are toilet seat covers.
There is, for some reason, a stall door that, when shut, actually turns the doorway entrance into its own stall for added sound proofing.
The downsides, however, are that those toilet seat covers should not only be present all of the time, but they should probably be soaked in bleach for several days before use and that the bathroom also prevents anyone in the library from hearing screams for help. As pleasant as the solitude of the basement bathroom is, it does not make up for the fact that the facilities are a flickering lightbulb shy of being the bathroom in which “Saw” was filmed.
The greenish coloring, which has amazingly become more disgusting in its discoloration, in conjunction with the ultra dimmed lights, successfully puts into images what the general odor of the restroom would look like if it were visible. In fact, the lighting is so dark that when the stall door is shut, it is actually too dark to read anything without a flashlight, which completely nullifies the fact that a whole world of books is accessible right outside the door.
If the exact smell of a port-a-potty was hooked up to a dial so that the intensity of odor could be changed, 10 being “head down the toilet of a port-a-potty,” I would say that the basement restroom omits about a 5.12. It’s almost possible to see the green, cartoon stink waves rising from the ground and into the vents.
As if the bathroom wasn’t creepy enough, there are two mysterious trap doors in the walls, one of which is ominously suspended over a toilet. Now, I normally am not one to fear a trap door, but given the circumstances I imagine that a family of rats has housed itself within those doors and have, no doubt, developed a taste for human flesh.
All this considered, it’s shocking to me that, according to graffiti on one of the stalls, some one has taken 28-30 “sh*ts” in this restroom and lived. Unless I had just two minutes to get to a restroom, and I knew for a fact that my intestines were going to be as loud as a subwoofer, I would never use this bathroom.
Matthew Finger 
Op-Ed Editor
Pat Stevenson
Asst. Op-Ed Editor
The Xavier Newswire
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