It’s no secret among students that our university, the Illinois Institute of Technology (or Illinois Tech), is struggling. It has been for a while, and, despite leadership changes over the years, we haven’t improved our position in many fronts. What was once an artery for innovation, a muscle of science, and a key player in American scientific research and excellence, now falls short of being what it was meant to be. While many of the school’s offered programs are praised nationwide and internationally, there is still too much that is not being done to bring Illinois Tech back into the forefront of technology, science, design, and engineering. Illinois Tech has the ability to become an Ivy level university.
Now, I should preface this story with the fact that this is solely my opinion. However, I think these opinions should be weighed heavily by the university, as they do bring forth deeper conversations that I feel lacked at times. It all goes back to the continued non-existent communication between students and the upper-level administration of our institution. While there is the yearly town hall that the administration has during a very odd time of the day in a season where most students are busy and stressed, there lacks a major line of communication between university admin and students. While the student government is meant to serve as that line of communication, it seems almost like a strand of communication; something that’s hanging on by a tiny string, and could seemingly be cut during convenient times.
Of course, I don’t blame the current Student Government Association (SGA) for this. After all, it was something they unfortunately inherited from the previous SGA administration. It does seem like they are genuinely interested in fixing that, especially given their continued dedication to being effective communicators themselves. SGA themselves have actually started to run their own organization to the potential that it has. With record breaking member retention, participation, and their return to livestreaming, SGA has become more communicative than it has in almost two years. Now, communication aside, let’s get into the topic of this article.
Programs
Illinois Tech is known for many of its programs within its colleges. Armour has a reputation for producing world-class engineers. The College of Architecture was once home to some now very notable designers, including the late Virgil Abloh. Even the Computer Science program has educated some of the most important contributors to technology and its evolution. All this to say that Illinois Tech has the potential to be what it once was. Yet I felt that, far too often, we forget what our legacy was in pursuit of a new legacy. While I do believe our billion dollar sermon is important, and the investments we have made to the community are incredible, we have also forgotten that the goal is to also serve that community. The decision to push academics onto Coursera was a decision I believe was part of that forgetfulness of our legacy. Making a university go online isn’t a real education, or at the very least, cannot compare to an education that is in-person.
Our university leaders have pursued higher numbers without regard to its consequences. Just last year, we ran out of housing. I don’t say that as an opinion, either, but as a fact. Me and several other students that I know of could not secure a room and had almost no alternative. Additionally, the College of Architecture has slowly had to give up a lecture space so it could turn into a studio, and more and more students are being squeezed into already packed studio desks, with many students sharing a desk that was once meant for a single person. Admin is pursuing a legacy that is slowly disappearing because of the desire to have more students. We can have more students, but we must first figure out our issues of space and housing before we outright accept more students than the year before.
I think that some of the major things that need fixing are very doable over a span of time. Renovate the university buildings so that we can start accepting more students. Create more rigorous acceptance policies so that we create a higher retention rate while also making sure our expectations for our students are set on day one. Educate our students using modern educational standards while staying in person and encourage innovation by incentivizing personal projects rather than only assigned projects.
Campus Life
Campus life is doozy on this campus, especially because, on many fronts, we lack a lot of amenities. Especially for a campus population of our size, we lack a lot. First off, we have a gym built for a university of 600, not 8000. Keating Sports Center serves a student population that it can no longer support and it is getting worse. We have been promised a new gym area for years in MSV, but what currently exists throughout the dorms is, to say the least, depressing. Most of the machines outside of Keating don’t properly work. Inside Keating, some machines are broken for months at a time, we lack student staff for early morning and late night operations that many students have requested, and the interior temperature is extremely unstable. It can be as low as 40 degrees inside during the winter months, and as hot as 110 during the summer months. I will touch more on this later.
On top of a lack of proper gym facilities, we have dorm buildings that are actively unsafe falling apart. My summer accommodation in Rowe has rust all over the bathroom and mold forming in small areas. Carman had an elevator that constantly broke down if you even looked at it the wrong way, creating accessibility issues. Kacek has continuous toilet issues. Cunningham has just a myriad of problems. MSV is MSV (and if critic needs me to elaborate, let’s go to the North wings and stay there a few nights. I will gladly keep a mask on the whole time.) Gunsaulus, well, that’s a big fat question mark on its future right now.
This also leads me into the food options and our dining hall, the Commons. Off-peak food options are quite limited during most of the weekend and weekday evenings. Now, if we really wanted to emphasize usage of the commons, we also need to realize the seating arrangement that currently exists fails us greatly, and, despite having an entire college dedicated to architecture and design, no one, not one student, was consulted on the floor layout. We the students will help when asked, but no one ever does.
Now, I will say the Office Student Life (OSL) has dramatically improved the organizational front of the campus life issue. 312 has made our organizations more accessible than ever, giving us a platform where we can budget, plan, chat, and send mass emails, all from one site. Union Board provides a continuous effort to throw events for the students that can help them destress and have fun. We also have student associations that help students get exposed to professional development and career conferences.
The future of our campus life shouldn’t be solely reliant on activities and organizations, though. We must improve our housing by creating regular preventative maintenance programs that can make sure critical systems don’t fail. We must also make sure our housing is up proper living standards, with certain communal spaces being supported as well by OSL as reservable spaces for student activities. Our amenities must start to match that of the student population that we have.
Athletics
Athletics is a big one in my opinion. Earlier, I mentioned the very limited gym options on campus, and the failures people encounter both in the smaller gyms in the dorms to the much larger Keating Sports Center. Keating has a variety of issues, from temperature control, broken machines, to a leaking pool. What was once revered as a athletics center that can outclass others is now looked at as a joke by other universities. And the fact of the matter is that we have amazing teams playing in a very unstable building. We also have many students who do join athletics and use the gym on a regular basis.
The athletes and regular students who use Keating have long demanded earlier start times, regularly scheduled recreational sports seasons, and simply more space. Keating simply isn’t built to handle the student population we have now. To add on to the already stressful and frankly sad situation of Keating, our athletics department student staff are currently short one standard shift worker due to budget cuts, which has reduced our ability to safely host more students in the building, especially at night when safety incidents happen the most.
For the future, Keating shouldn’t be the only fitness building on campus. Our athletics should get the support it deserves. Our gym patrons should get a useful and amazing gym with more than just barebones equipment. Our athletics department shouldn’t cut staff to the jobs that can protect our students the most.
Our university has the potential to be amazing, top tier, and a powerhouse of innovation, design, engineering, and science. What we need right now, though, what is extremely important, is a university administration that is actually willing to sit down with us, whether its through a monthly meeting with student org leaders or SGA or in regularly held townhalls that don’t happen at a time when they know student’s are less likely to be there. What I am trying to tell our admin is to be better with communication, do the right thing by listening to your students. If you want to do the right thing, do the thing right, and do the thing right now. Bring back the President’s Student Advisory Council, rebuild trust with your students, and help us help you. We have an amazing student population that can do a lot, it’s worth talking to us every once in a while.