“Pride in ownership” is a term I first heard in a pep talk from my sorority’s president.

She explained it like this: your hometown, your home, your car, your school and the organizations you join are all things that you own. If you badmouth those things, you are badmouthing things that you have given time, money and effort.

Lamar University has a negative stigma.

Students on campus wear t-shirts from other colleges. No one goes to sporting events, even though tickets for the student section are free if you flash your school ID. Lamar Alive plans events nearly every week in our student center where people can get free food, prizes and t-shirts.

No one goes.

Our dorms are exactly like an apartment complex, but only roughly 30 percent of our population lives on campus. Because we are largely a commuter school, people drive to their classes, leave without participating in anything and then complain that Lamar is stupid and they cannot wait to leave Beaumont. If something goes wrong, you hear, “well, it’s Lamar,” or, “that’s what we get for going to a cheap school.”

First, there is no such thing as a cheap college.

Second, Lamar’s campus is new, the dorms are outstanding, and the small population means there are leadership positions available to everyone. The whole faculty and staff work hard to make everything fun and easily accessible to all students, and no one shows up to anything. They leave campus as soon as class is over and complain that there are no opportunities to be involved. This season our football team started breaking records, and no one came to watch their games. Then our baseball team started breaking records, and no one came to see them play, either. But people paid for tickets to go to Texas A&M games and made the three-hour drive to watch another team play. People complain that they are not getting a “college experience,” but they stay at home and do not join organizations or stay on campus long enough to have an experience. Everyone likes to complain about their lack of effort and blame the school.

We own Lamar. And we have zero pride in it.

Our school is small and close-knit. There are endless opportunities to get involved. Our professors know our names and faces because of our small class sizes. We get free tickets to everything. We pay a ridiculous amount of money. And we do not appreciate it.

New flash: Lamar is your university. If you got involved, went to events, and wore Lamar t-shirts, it would be just like you went to a “big” school. No one is belittling Lamar except you.

Take pride in Lamar because you invest at least four years of your life into it. If you belittle that, you are doing nothing but wasting those years.