Almost four years ago, I moved into the Honors College at Rutgers New Brunswick and immediately began to hear about the infamous "RU Screw." What is RU Screw? It's all the ways in which Rutgers University, as an institution, significantly inconveniences the student body.
Before I go into specific details about some of my personal encounters, I would like to make a couple of disclaimers. One, I am sure that Rutgers isn't the only school with a "screw, especially seeing as it is a large school and two, Rutgers isn't all bad.
My first experience with the RU Screw was due to the busing system. I am sure it would have most likely been due to Resident life. However, because I was part of the inaugural Honors College class and got to live in a brand new dorm with elevators and properly working amenities, I had a fairly smooth introduction to Res Life.
At Rutgers New Brunswick, there is a busing system meant to take students to and from each campus in order to reduce vehicular traffic; however, it is, in my opinion, the most inconvenient thing. A bus will say it is 10 minutes from the stop and you are waiting but it never shows up, or better yet, it will say coming in 10 minutes and you will be walking to the stop 2 minutes away and see your bus pulling off. Sometimes you will wait 10 minutes for a bus that is supposed to come just for it to arrive and say "out of service", but there is no other bus for another 20 minutes.
Imagine running to a bus, you and the bus driver make eye-contact, they wait for you to get to the door and still pull off without you getting on the bus. The list goes on, but let's move on to another topic.
At Rutgers – New Brunswick, the sciences are unnecessarily tough, and this is coming from someone who did very well in all her science classes. Not only are they tough, but you waste your time coming to a lecture where you learn nothing just to spend 3-5x the lecture duration teaching yourself the material anyway. In all my science classes, I think to myself, why in the world am I paying for the education I'm giving myself? Other times, you will go to register for classes just for the system to glitch and you end up not getting anything you wanted to begin with.
After the spring semester of my freshman year, I finished with an A in a class only to receive my transcript and see a C. I can't explain the type of panic I was in, especially as a freshman. It turns out my teacher sent the right grade to the registrar. However, the person at the registrar's office did not put it in right. Luckily, it did get fixed, but I can never forget that day.
Lastly, I would like to talk about some more current encounters which have all happened during my senior year. I received a $150 parking ticket for parking in a fire zone. However, it was a poorly labeled fire zone and I tried to appeal it to no avail. Later, I found out, I am not the only person that this happens to. Instead of re-painting the words on the floor/properly labeling some fire zones, Rutgers have left them as is and continues to fine many students $150 for not being able to tell at night.
In addition, as I mentioned earlier, I did not live in a traditional freshman dorm my first year, but I currently live in one as a senior because I have a single. I must go down a flight of stairs or two in order to get consistent hot water. Before I figured it was easier to go to another floor, I used to wait 30 minutes for the water to turn hot, just for it to be ice cold (no, not even lukewarm) five minutes into my shower. There is mold on the floors and on the walls. The smells are atrocious. When winter began, the heat did not reach my floor for a week after everyone else got heat. I am not sure is it is because the fourth floor of Allen Residence Hall in an all-girls floor, but the maintenance on it is far below what it should be.
I am thankful for some of the people I have met at Rutgers. I am thankful for the ministry I got to be a part of which allowed me to grow closer to God. I am thankful for the lessons learned and memories made. However, after four years of the same old nonsense, I am ready to leave and not look back.
