Noel Rodriguez
staff writer
Opinion Piece
On Division Street before hitting Harlem Avenue, you will find yourself at Dominican University, Priory Campus. This is Dominican University’s extension that houses about 80 undergraduate and additional graduate students, offers courses for our international ELS students, and graduate courses.
Compared to the main campus, this is the “quieter” campus, the campus not many people go to unless you live there or are in involved with the School of Social Work.
If you have ever visited the Priory campus, you get the sense that there is some lack of care.
Most of Priory campus looks, in plain words, underused. Bird feces covers the walkway up to the front entrance. Only a handful of classrooms have an a/c and some classrooms and dormitories are still carpeted. The Chapel is beautiful and almost always empty but there is fountain outside by the ghosted “Quad” that doesn’t work. There are dining halls that only a select number of students know about and it doesn’t seem to be used that often for the exception of big conferences or meetings.
The elavator seems to be out of order, yet I am unsure of how long it’s been since it has moved. All students pay tuition and all resident students pay for room and board so it only seems fair that both campuses have a working elevator. Especially, if undergraduate students already have the hassle of living in a campus a mile from where their classes are.
There was a spark of interest that drove me to want to bring awareness to Priory’s lack of security. I’ve been to Priory myself a few times and the lack of security allowed me to get into the campus with ease given that the front and back doors were left open. Now, I am a student, but if I wasn’t a student, nobody would know.
Resident Assistant Laila Mitchel informed me that security does in fact, make their rounds around Priory. RA’s work the front desk on the weekends and must stay on campus as well. Like the residence halls at the main campus, students need to scan their ID to enter every floor but that is the safest factor I noticed at Priory.
Another factor making Priory the “quiet” campus, is the lack of events.
After speaking with Laila Mitchel however, the reality is that everything happens at the main campus because that is where students spend most of their time (undergrads).
Graduate students taking classes at Priory don’t take place until later in the day, so events wouldn’t be extremely popular.
RAs try to create an fun environment by hosting movie showings and free ice cream/food in the lounge.
All in all, I was nit-picky about the issues I deemed problematic at Priory, but only because I know what the main campus has to offer.
Given that this campus seems blatantly uncared for, the cause of this may be the under usage and the lack of students voicing these issue. The impression that was given to me, is that if students started to voice their concerns about sanitation or repairs then there’s more of a possibility of changes taking place.
nrodriguez1@my.dom.edu