Natalie Urias
In your previous Letter from the Editor, you mentioned, “At Pierce, we learn the tools of our trades, the latest in software and technology…to realize we are the innovators of our industries.”
The public relations students on campus have learned something quite different. We learned that Pierce values tuition, book and parking money over student safety.
We learned that they choose to turn a deaf ear to our requests for classroom relocation.
We learned that Pierce opts to be a reactive institution, not a proactive one.
At least, one draws those conclusions when five weeks into the semester, we still haven’t found ourselves assigned to a safer location.
As part of the journalism family, publicists also enjoy “being in a profession that embodies First Amendment rights and exercises it daily.” So, in that spirit, we’d like to ask Pierce, “Why?” Why is public relations assigned to meet in the Agricultural Building? Why are we the only class to meet there on Thursday nights? Why don’t we gather where the other media and journalism classes meet?
Why have our instructor’s requests to change rooms been met without results? Why haven’t any of the empty classrooms in the Business or Fine Arts buildings been made available to us?
Why aren’t administrators concerned with the fact that P.R. students must venture across campus from Lot 7 to a slippery, muddy, non-ADA compliant gravel path, in the dark, just to get to class?
Why do the P.R. students have to be ready to outrace the coyotes we hear howling nearby just to gain our education? Why wasn’t the El Rancho Drive road closure, established over three weeks ago (due to construction, rain damage and SUVs getting stuck in huge potholes), enough to warrant a new classroom location?
Honestly now, why is it so incredibly difficult to move us to a safer, more appropriate room on campus?
In business, everyone knows you must address the clients’ needs and issues. At any college campus, the paying student is the client.
We communicated our desire for a safe, well-lit, appropriate environment to learn from. That’s part of what students pay for upon registering for a class.
A group of predominantly women staying till 10 p.m. at night, walking through an isolated construction zone in the dark, is a rapist’s or thief’s dream come true.
We have to wonder, when someone does eventually become a victim to some horrible crime or injury on that dangerous path, will Pierce College then allow our classroom change to happen?
As good P.R. agents always do, we advise that Pierce reconsider this potential P.R. nightmare!
Signed,
Deeply Disappointed Pierce P.R. Student,
Natalie Urias