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A strange air has descended upon PCC. Like wild animals, this community senses that something is afoot — that there is an impending danger.

When asked how the fall 2012 semester panned out, some students admitted that this semester indeed was their worst at PCC. However, when pressed to elaborate on how these feelings developed, many could not pinpoint the exact reason.

In light of recent decisions made by the administration, as well as the drama that continues to boil between faculty groups and the administration, it is not difficult to realize what is the problem—a campus that cannot support healthy dialogue and effectively troubleshoot.

Although many faculty members refrain from speaking about internal affairs — such as union negotiations and correspondence with the Board of Trustees — the unease they derive from the negativity that afflicts them leaks into the classroom.

The environment at PCC has unknowingly become corrosive. The integrity of the school’s mission statement and stated institutional core values has been compromised.

School is a haven for intellectual inquiry and grounds for freedom of expression. The pursuit of higher education is a time for self-discovery. What is meant to be an environment conducive to learning and personal growth has been reduced to a system which values quotas and efficiency because of things such as the Student Success Act.

The administration struggles to make ends meet when it comes to fiscal management, but in the process of weighing pros and cons, students are taking a major hit.

Students are becoming commodities. Learning for its intrinsic value has been completely disregarded, and personal growth has been left by the wayside at the hands of meeting Full Time Equivalent Students (FTES) requirements.

Students are being put on a conveyor belt, and are being meticulously scrutinized; we are becoming economic investments. The school now prioritizes those with higher GPAs and stated intent of graduation and transferring. We are cogs in the machine, a multiple to be factored into the equation of economic stimulation for the school. Once one wave of students is manufactured and shipped out of PCC in a timely manner, a new wave is welcomed in so the process may be repeated.

Students are being treated like products. Voices are not being heard, and despite protests and petitions, all forms of rebellion are met with a blind eye and deaf ear. Our environment has become stifling, and is fraught with insecurity and apprehension.

Like an overprotective, overbearing parent, the big wigs have come down upon the students condescendingly implementing what they feel is best and right for us. Our own notions of success are being dismissed as we are forced to follow the path that is recommended for us. If we choose to do otherwise, we are punished.

The tenets of education have been tainted and violated. If the purpose of going to school is not for the students themselves, but for economic stimulation, the purpose of education has clearly been snatched out of the hands of students. Meaning has been stolen from us.

What is left now seems to be a slippery slope to disenchantment.

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