<p>Ok so i am currently attending a university and im staying in the honors dorm. however i would like to make some changes to the dorm and the head of housing has asked me to make a list of things we would like to see. so no one in the dorm has very many ideas so i thought i should ask "the world". If you were living in an honors dorm, what kind of perks would you like to see that would seperate you from just a normal dorm?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Free Laundry Machines</p></li>
<li><p>Blu-Ray Player in the lounge or wherever you guys hang out</p></li>
<li><p>Free Printing</p></li>
</ol>
<p>More dorm community activities…floor/hall dinners…root beer pong game competitions…maybe a video game room…free printing and laundry for sure…etc</p>
<p>Wireless internet (if it’s not already in your dorm)
More electrical outlets (I know in my dorm room I never seem to have enough outlets for all of my electronics</p>
<p>free coffee in the morning, more comfortable lounge, since it’s an honors dorm maybe make the study room nicer, maybe you guys could see if anyone has classes together or a lot of the residents are taking a certain class and then set up study groups, or you tell each resident if someone else in the building is taking one of the classes they are so if they need notes or have a question or something, they would have someone they could go ask.</p>
<p>Wireless throughout, laundry rooms on every floor instead of just in the basement, a snack bar or coffee place where you can hang out and socialize, a plasma TV in the main lounge would be great too.</p>
<p>why should honor students have “nicer” dorms in the first place? an honor student is an honor student because of his/her studies. plasma tvs, coffee shops, and blu ray players certainly don’t support that. okay, i can sort of reason with the idea of a more comfortable lounge for studying, but still…creating nicer, more luxurious dorms for honor students can allow for a sense of elitism. all students are at college to study and attain a degree. an honor student is just able to take more challenging and higher level smaller courses, but both an honors and regular student are still learning and accelerating toward the same goal. it’s not fair to give some smarter-than-average kids nicer dorms when all students are decently intelligent and, to different degrees, willing to learn. </p>
<p>this kind of structure in america’s public education systems socially reproduces the capitalist nature of modern american society. in early schooling, kids of the working class are consistently unengaged with their teachers, who have come to assume that all working class kids will proceed to lead the same kind of lives as their parents and grandparents. they don’t inspire. it is mostly white, middle to upper middle class kids who receive attention from teachers in defined neighborhoods with smaller class sizes, better funding, and wealthier students. it is these kids who then have a higher capacity to succeed in high school, apply to four year universities and colleges, and ascend the social ladder in pursuit of a career. the working class, however, remain in their culture with little inspiration to aspire something greater. there is the occassional success story (andrew carnegie, for example) but those cases are few and far between. it is the socioeconomically secure population that reproduces american capitalism, something fueled in part by institutions that we take for granted, such our public education system. </p>
<p>sorry for the rant there. sort of random. for the record, a sibling of mine is a honors student who feels similarly to me. she says people of many backgrounds and financial status are in the honors program or honors housing, but still feels the potential enhancement of honors dorms would just be another reminder of socially reproduced capitalism in our public education system. lol, she and i are both sociology majors too, haha.</p>
<p>I like how my cousin from the redneck side of my family in West Virginia was shunned for going to college. On the other hand, I was raised in a family where both my parents were engineers and had gone to college, so there was never any question that I’d have further schooling.</p>
<p>Ever think it might have a bit to do with a person’s upbringing as more so than this supposed class warfare instigated by our school systems?</p>
<p>Anyway, I think you guys should try to get nicely furbished study rooms or maybe try to get them to give you guys snacks/food during finals since you’ll probably be spending more time in your room studying than the average person.</p>
<p>It’s the way the world works. Students with more resources certainly have a higher chance to succeed and get a better education, but this is not the only factor to determine success.</p>
<p>You basically are impyling that any student who is attempting academics be treated equally. Our society is based around rewards. It’s capitalism.</p>
<p>Do you suggest we disband honor rolls because they give out rewards to students with A’s and B’s? Or perhaps students with C’s and D’s be added to them because they come from a different socioeconomic background.</p>
<p>“occasional success story”??? First of all, I don’t think you need to be a rags-to-riches case to display success. There are many students that come from low income backgrounds who go to college and do great there.</p>
<p>Sorry but your post just seems like an attack on capitalism. You have some valid points- but you mainly just seem like someone looking to blame society because you didn’t get the cookie and certificate Straight-A-Sally got.</p>
<p>it’s not necessarily an attack on capitalism, but more of an identification of the negative aspects of an institution we take for granted. </p>
<p>i am also not saying that students with Cs and Ds should be added to an honor roll. in my mind, perhaps a removal of such displays is the best idea. i am arguing for the blurring of the line in which social classes are treated differently in our school system.</p>
<p>i am not so arrogant as to “blame society because i didn’t get the cookie and certificate Straight-A-Sally got.” i did well in high school and am happy to be at college. </p>
<p>and “it’s the way the world works?” yeah, it unfortunately is, but there are some things that should be noticed and fixed. giving honors kids nicer dorms is not a step in the right direction.</p>
<p>I dunno, I kinda liked the times in college where I was able to excel enough in order to get the 3.75 and make honor roll. Yeah, it was a bit of a kick in the pants the two or three semesters I got a 3.72, but it made me just want to try that much harder so at least it would happen once.</p>
<p>Anyone has a chance to get into the honors program. Maybe in high school you didn’t have the necessary resources to do well but everyone in college does. In my school, it’s very possible to transfer into the honors program if you do well enough in your classes. The fact that the kids in the honors program get rewards for doing well is another reason to try harder in your classes.</p>
<p>i’m down for academic excellence and achievement, but i don’t feel it should be inspired by rewards or perks. i like to believe one is usually an honors student because he/she has a true passion for his/her studies, not any kind of reward. yes, recognition of academic excellence is satisfying, but granting those students better living accommodations isn’t fair.</p>
<p>watchman, is honors students getting a few rewards for working harder a bad thing? and yea white kids in middle class neighborhoods tend to do better in school, but thats also because their parents probably know the value of an education and raise their children to do well in school. also, astleast where im from, california, white kids are hardly the majority in college, they are roughly tied with asians, and sometimes the asians outnumber them. </p>
<p>its not just about being born white and living in the suburbs, i know plenty of asian kids from ghetto neighborhoods (im not a fan of politically correct euphemisms) that succeed in highschool and get into college(top colleges at that). It has alot to do with the childrens upbringing and cultural values. Can anyone deny that asian families value education more than black/hispanic families? hell they even value it more than white families.</p>
<p>its more than just neighborhood and school too. i went to a highschool in the suburbs, but it was a magnet school where lots of kids from ghetto neighborhoods were bused in. they got to go to school with the middle class kids but that doesn’t mean they succeeded, most of em didn’t give a **** (except for the asians, of course) </p>
<p>im not a fan of the cycle of poverty but your a lil naive if you think the existence of honors programs is the cause of this extremely complex cultural epidemic.</p>
<p>i never said the existence of an honors program was the cause of social reproduction. the public education system is merely one facet of a multifaceted issue. the existence of an honors program is fine, but i don’t feel honors students should receive any kind of benefit beyond recognition. and the fact that black families don’t value education in comparison to, say, white or asian families is precisely my point. all of these socioethnic groups have different cultural values that have not necessarily been crafted by themselves alone. society and its constructs have in part created that too. you say african american families don’t value education, but why should they? they have been socially ostracized for a long time. granted, the fact we have now have an inspiring and progressive african american president demonstrates a step forward, but otherwise, many black families have accepted that they historically cannot succeed, and thus they aim for working class goals and satisfy the capitalist structure.</p>
<p>but as you say, that’s not the case for all african american families and people, or any minority. some do aspire for more and do amazing things, but that is not a universally common occurrence.</p>
<p>read “ain’t no makin’ it.” it’s a fantastic book written by jay mcleod. it is an account of his field work as a sociology/anthropology graduate student, studying different young male high school student from different racial backgrounds in a working class neighborhood. i apologize if my comments thus far have struck some of you as unwarranted or naive, but this book has been the basis for many of my arguements and offers a stellar insight into what kind of values or lack thereof that our education system instills in different types of students.</p>
<p>Why shouldn’t people who do well at what they’re supposed to get nicer living arrangements?
In real life if you do well and make money you can afford nicer housing, so how’s this different? It shows students that hard work can have actual rewards.
How is it unfair that people who do better get nicer things? That’s the way the world works. Everyone has the same opportunity to do well save a very few exceptions.</p>