RPI has a beautiful campus—especially in front of the Sage Lab when everything is in bloom, or when the Accepted Students Day arrives.
We all know it’s coming when we see clean-up crews all over campus the day before, meticulously raking, scraping, or pruning. The Admissions Office goes through great efforts to ensure that a picture perfect image of the esteemed Rensselaer—not RPI, anymore—is presented for the pre-frosh and their parents. Mulch is laid. Stones are raked out of the flowerbeds. Cigarette butts and trash are all but eradicated from the campus.
I can’t blame them. They should be making campus look as good as possible. They want people to enroll. After all, a school can only be selective if there are people who want to attend. But still, wouldn’t it be nice if efforts were made to beautify the campus all year round? It’s nice looking outside my window and not seeing trash and cigarette butts laying everywhere. The grassy common is inviting and encourages students to bring their books outside.
But, maybe the crews took their clean-up efforts too far. It almost seems as if they tried to cover up the fact that over 5,000 students walk across the campus every day. GM Week was last week and campus was bustling with activity. If you saw all the signs hanging in the CII and DCC, you probably know what I’m talking about. You also probably noticed that they were all gone by Saturday morning before the pre-frosh came to visit—along with all the other non-GM week signs hanging on campus.
A big factor in choosing a college lies in the type of social atmosphere it has. I think most people who come to RPI expect something to do besides attending class and studying. Why, then, remove nearly all posters hanging around campus? They were advertising that there’s stuff to do here and proved that students do have a life. I’m sure it would get more students excited about elections and GM Week before they got here. It might even make events better attended if pre-frosh got themselves geared up before they arrive.
