Tradition is a value at Lakeland College that has always been consistent. Take it as a negative or a positive, but Lakeland rarely sees change. When we do, it’s usually never what the students see as needing to be done. Recently, all I have seen are buildings being fixed, sidewalks being torn up and replaced and the Pub getting renovations.

Other than appearance, Lakeland has always been the same with a family-like atmosphere where the teachers can be your friend as well as your professor. Lakeland is the dream school for anyone. But do you know what else is traditional? It’s something that half the people anywhere would disagree with. It’s called change. Humans have been on this planet long enough to know that the most consistent tradition in life is change. It always happens.

Lakeland is now going through some changes, and I’ve noticed that a lot of students are angry. We’re losing professors we have grown to love left and right, and we don’t have a clue why. I understand the anger amongst other emotions that you are feeling. It doesn’t seem fair at all to be honest. But now is the time to suggest changes and ideas that students have. Now is the time to approach faculty and our president to tell them ideas that you think Lakeland should implement. Who knows better about how to make Lakeland the college it needs to be other than us?

We all know that Lakeland’s retention rate is pretty bad. That’s an understatement. It’s horrendous. But why? Why is it that students come here and leave? It’s because we have ideas from people who aren’t from our time, who aren’t even in school, trying to tell us what we want. When students walk through our buildings when they come to tour, we give them the “you’re the most important person on campus” speech and show them everything about Lakeland. But there is something missing from that tour and from those buildings. Nothing represents us as the students. Yes, we are here physically, but what about when we are not around?

Our walls are white. That’s not appealing. That’s boring for a college that claims to be a liberal arts school. We have a wonderful art program, but only two lone buildings represent the art students. That’s ridiculous. Their art should be all over this place. Show the incoming students that we have fun and that we are all about the school. We look like a business school. No disrespect to my business majors, but I’m not feeling that kind of environment.

Our music department is great, but it could be even better if we actually recruited great up-and-coming talent (no diss to our current students). We have a city full of musicians not even an hour away in Milwaukee, and yet I’ve heard that we barely look there. I take that as an insult. In my opinion, one of the best musicians on this campus is from Milwaukee. He is what my hometown has produced, so why wouldn’t it produce more? What’s so scary about Milwaukee anyway?

Lakeland has a problem of communicating with its students. The short notice emails make it seem as if notifying the students is the last thing on Lakeland’s mind, and, in all honesty, needs to be looked into and fixed. We need to find out what the teachers find out. I feel that this is the best way to keep students from being angry and also understanding the college’s decisions a little better.