diversity lacking

Introduction
It was a little bit of a shock when I got here. I come from downtown Boston, so it’s very, very diverse there. You get here and admittedly, it’s primarily White, but there are just all these people and it’s so laid back, that’s the best part about Boulder is how laid back it is. It’s interesting because unlike high school atmosphere where you have a popular crowd and then everyone else. Here it’s just multiple sorts of cliques that you can run in. You can always find your own circle. I had several different groups of friends my freshman year alone. I found my own niche at the radio station. I really wish that the student body was a little more politically active still, but you can’t have everything. The students who are politically active, are really politically active. The Justice Center up in Goulden does all sorts of protests and organizes the local populace. Citizens here a really involved, but you look at the students and even in our local election, we have 25,000 students only 5,000 voted for student body. It’s a very small percentage that are getting involved and trying to be involved.

Campus Life and Social Life
Most of the people either walk or bike. You have a large number of people who drive but the parking situation’s horrific on campus. Plus Boulder is laid out in such a nice way, that we have a lot of nice public transportation. It’s not as good as an inner city where you have a subway, but we have the Hop and the Skip and all the other various movement-oriented buses.

And it’s really easy to bike everywhere. I try to bike everywhere I can. During the winter it’s a little bit too cold, but during the summer it’s just gorgeous.

The Hop, the Skip, the Bound, the Leap and a number of others are various buses that go around town. The Skip goes along Broadway, the Hop runs in a circle from the Crossroads are up Pearl Street and through campus. We have the Stampede which goes from Campus to East of Boulder. They give them these little names because they’re sort of local buses and provide flavor to them that RTD and Denver doesn’t have. CU has one bus and it’s the Buff bus and that runs from WillVille around in a circle through campus. All of these buses are run by an independent contractor with RTD which is the bus system in the Denver/Boulder area.

We do have bike theft, but they have a registration process, which is really nice. You go and you register your bike, they put a little sticker on there that permanently stays and it keeps a number so that if it does get stolen you can tell the police, hey my bike got stolen, here’s my registration information, if you see it, if you find it in a Pawn shop please let me know.

As far as bike traffic we get a lot of people getting run over by bikes. A lot of people are skateboarding. There’s certain parts of campus where you aren’t supposed to bike but I don’t think that ever stops anyone. Advertisement
Academics
You’re required as a freshman to live in the dorms unless you’re in state. And that’s definitely a good thing with a school this size. You develop friendships, you develop various interests, there are activities in the dorms.

There are student groups. You can get involved in politics, you can get involved in the radio station and they have a student-run TV station. And it’s not hard to get involved if you go out and make the effort. It’s not always obvious, but it’s not hard to get involved at all.

Student Body
The school atmosphere is very interesting especially when it comes to the football team. You have a large contingent of people who are very supportive who go there. They drink, they have fun, they kick back, relax. However, you find all sorts of other sports. I go to the women’s volleyball sometimes, the men’s basketball is fantastic and there’s a lot of free stuff that you can watch. We have a fantastic club hockey team that’s actually been national champion 2 years in a row I believe.


We are in the middle of the skinniest county, in the skinniest state in the US. And that means that everybody here is active; even the fat people. We have a lot of people who hike, a lot of people who bike, a lot of people who swim and we have one of the best Ultimate Frisbee teams in the nation. It’s a really active campus. And you walk across campus during the warm days and there are going to be people out on the fields throwing around baseballs, throwing around Frisbees…It’s blows my mind.

I really enjoy biking. I go back and forth from campus. I ride around town. There are bike trails EVERYWHERE. You can get all the way up into the mountains, bike for an entire day. Admittedly, that’s going to kill my legs, but I at least try to do it at least once a month.

One of the reasons I moved to the place I’m living in now is the pool. I’ve lived at 2 other places off campus since leaving the dorms my freshman year. This new place, we have a community swimming pool for our housing association.

In Closing...
We have a dorm room shortage here, which is another issue. We’re constantly trying to find space for more people. And actually admissions have dropped so people are hoping that that will be a good sign as far as the dorms go.

My freshman year, I lived in WillVille, which the vast majority of the populace thinks it’s the most terrific place ever, but I absolutely love it. Approx. 3,000 students live there, there are 4 different towers and yeah, it’s a little bit off campus, it’s a little bit different, but you develop this weird sense of community there. And honestly it’s like, “oh you’re a Willviller, I’m a Willviller.”

Meanwhile, you have the people in Kitchridge who have like nice dorms, Sool is at the opposite side of campus. All sorts of other dorms. And it’s all about community, it really is.

Only one dorm has air-conditioning, which is hell in the early fall and late spring. There are a lot of dorms that don’t have carpeting, they aren’t really well kept, but I wouldn’t call them gross either.

The biggest problem is the amount of room that you have. And you can’t expect to come to a college campus and fit all of your stuff in there. I definitely couldn’t do that. I actually had my computer turned into a TV because I couldn’t fit both computer and a TV in my dorm room. So it’s really important to sort of pack light and take only the essentials.