It's the table thats making headlines. As recently featured in a story in Cosmopolitan, UNH just spent millions renovating the popular dining hall better known amongst students as HoCo. Somewhere along in the renovation process, the school found it necessary to purchase a table worth $17,000 -- which is almost the same price as a years worth of tuition for an in-state student. Yes, the table lights up, but was it really worth it? If you ask me, there's a couple things that I would personally find more important to purchase instead of the new table -- certain things such as:
1. More washers and dryers for residence halls
If you live in an overpopulated residence hall, then your used to having your own mini Hunger Games in the basements to try and wash and dry your clothes. Maybe these problems could have been avoided if we bought $17,000 worth of washers and dryers.
2. Fresh fruit in the dining halls
If you love fruit like me then you can agree that only having apples, oranges and SOMETIMES ripe bananas can get pretty old pretty fast. If only we had $17,000 in the budget we could buy more fresh fruit for the yogurt bars instead of frozen, bagged strawberries and blueberries. Some grapes wouldn't hurt either.
3. Air conditioning
There are a numerous amount of lecture halls on campus that are practically ovens. Maybe if we had some extra money, we could afford to cool down these buildings for the poor students who are doing more sweating than learning during class *coughs* HORTON 4.
4. More residence halls
Of course $17,000 isn't nearly enough money to construct more residence halls. However, instead of wasting that chunk of money on a glow up table, maybe we could have put that money towards designing new residence halls to de-populate some of the larger, more crowded dorms. Maybe this could also help UNH accept more students and make more money.
5. Other renovations
At the moment, UNH is undergoing a lot of renovations. With the remodeling of Boulder Field, Hammel Rec Center and Hamilton Smith, I'm sure $17,000 would have gone a long way in any or all three of those projects.
6. More, less expensive tables
There are certain hours of the day where its like a mosh pit in the dining halls and trying finding a table is like finding gold at the end of the rainbow. Impossible. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on one single table that can comfortably seat up to about 16 students, we could have bought a ton of less expensive tables for the dining halls.
7. More safe rides
Going out on Friday and Saturday nights are all fun and games until it's time to head back home. As a college student, it's tough enough paying for coffee downtown -- let alone pay over $20 for Uber rides to and from campus on the weekends. I'm sure the money they used for our light up table could have paid for more safe ride vans to help students get home safely.
8. Better WiFi
If you go to UNH then you know the only thing more unstable than your grades is UNH Secure. Maybe we could have spent that large sum of money on improving the WiFi here...
9. Scholarships
College is expensive enough and every college student has learned that every penny counts. With that being said, I'm sure the $17,000 would have gone a long way in giving out scholarships to students who need more help paying for school then a table that lights up.
10. Supplies
I can almost guarantee that any education department at UNH could have benefited from some extra money in the budget. The money could have purchased new lab supplies, books, or even new computers -- supplies students could actually benefit from.
