Our View: Be a catalyst for change

Home Archived Opinion Our View: Be a catalyst for change

Published: October 25, 2006

PJC is like a small community.  We all belong to this community, filling roles as students, faculty, administration, and other personnel.  We all contribute to making PJC what it is.  Though it seems like we should be a unified front for campus pride, we are not.  The morale on PJC campuses has sadly taken a nosedive.

The hardest part is putting a finger on what is so wrong.  Our school offers many organizations that cater to the particular interests of students and participating faculty.  Having these smaller groups of interest is good for rounding out the college experience, but the big picture on campus seems to be falling apart.  Shrouding our school community is a lack of campus pride.

The overall atmosphere on campus is thick with bureaucracy and dread.  Students are stressed by juggling the demands of classes, jobs, and families.  Most of the faculty, especially the adjuncts, are overworked and underpaid.  More specifically, the adjunct instructors that are in abundant supply at PJC are receiving the lowest adjunct pay for community colleges in the entire state of Florida.

The environment at PJC does not seem to be very supportive.  It seems that we are cutting corners, both in time and money, on things that could make PJC a more enriching place to learn and work.  The Corsair aims to recognize some of the issues that are holding PJC back from the “greatness” that it once was or could be.  It is our goal to look into some of the issues on campus with in-depth investigative reports.

It is our hope that we can be a catalyst for change on our campuses.  There are problems big and small that contribute to why people feel so short-changed lately.  We want to begin a campaign for positive changes at PJC.  We need ideas and input from you, the members of this community, about how we can make PJC a more fulfilling place to be.