As the semester comes to an end, I am getting more and more emails from Stetson discussing "important" senior events. For some reason, none of these emails included where to get my cap and gown, but that is a story for another time. Stetson has a long history of a "Senior Gift", because, you know, giving the school $50,000+ every year for the past two, or four years, if you are a normal senior, wasn't enough of a gift, we must do something else.

This idea annoys most seniors, but the majority don't care too much about what the gift is or how it affects those we leave behind, because we just want to get out of here. However, I am not like most seniors. The majority of my friends are freshmen and sophomores, so I kind of want to leave something awesome. Something that they will actually use, or at least appreciate.

So far, the only senior gift my friends and I have gotten a chance to experience was the horrible rock formation that was met with weeks of protest and uproar, placed on campus by the classes of 2013 and 2014. Originally, it was a place for students to write their values on the rocks. The school even went and gave us chalk.

Students used the chalk as a form of protest and drew human genitalia all over them. Needless to say, the chalk was then banned, unless, of course, you are on tour or promoting an event in which case it is somehow allowed. It is exactly like how President Libby encourages people to get thrown into the fountain for their birthday, yet Public Safety freaks if you put your feet in for a photo.

I didn't want the senior gift to be a repeat of The Rock, so I checked my email waiting for a poll or something to come out to express ideas about possible senior gift ideas. Maybe funding a new parking lot, or longer library hours, or a PARKING LOT or turning our administration building into something useful since we are getting a new Welcome Center this summer.

Yet, no such email was ever sent, and if it was, the Stetson servers added it to my Clutter section like other important emails I've missed this semester. Instead, late last week, I was sent an email that told me the three different gifts I was able to vote upon. Our gift could either be restoring the Holler Fountain, adding an ADA accessible room to Elizabeth Hall, or adding solar panels to the dorms. While these all sound great at face value, there are some issues that should be pointed out.

The Holler Fountain is one of the most iconic features of Stetson University. It was what drew me to Stetson. However, this fountain was just restored in the Fall of 2013. That was actually what they bragged about at Hatter Saturday that spring. They had scraped off the old paint job that was on the fountain and redone it to look like it had when it was first put in. Why, two and a half years later, is the senior class redoing the fountain? Why should any class have claim to such an area on campus?

Though Public Safety hates it, many have been thrown in it, taken graduation photos in it, filled it with bubbles and even Easter eggs and rubber ducks. This fountain does not need a class to rebuild it, or revamp it. This fountain is the students', and should not be touched or claimed. The trees and open patches of grass are fine where they are, the fountain looks amazing, and I personally cannot wait to add to the tradition of jumping in feet first in my cap and gown (even if I'll have to walk a mile to do it rather than just across campus).

Moving on, Elizabeth Hall is one of the original school buildings on campus, and you can tell that every time you try to walk up the insanely crooked, three-story staircase that creaks and shakes whenever you step on a stair. When I first saw this as an option I was ecstatic. I am klutz, so I fall down staircases and into potholes, and over flat surfaces on a regular basis.

I have had to not go to class for the simple fact that I could not do the stairs because I didn't feel safe climbing that staircase with my injuries, or simply couldn't because of crutches. When I saw that option I thought they were finally acknowledge the idea that many students have talked about, which is adding an elevator to the building, since there is none. I then became depressed as I read the rest of description provided, which stated that this room would be located on the first floor of Elizabeth.

Stetson is expecting me and other seniors to believe that the only floor that can handle disabled students is not ADA accessible? How have we not been sued yet? Seriously? This is not a sarcastic question. How is it possible that Stetson has not been sued for not having an ADA accessible room on the first floor of a building they claim they can not retrofit with an elevator, like they did with Davis Hall, because the building is too old?

I'd be fine with the senior gift being this room, but other students need to seriously question why the school has not done this already, but rather built a welcome center when they had a perfectly fine building all to themselves already. We had students that couldn't get into a classroom, but the financial aid office and recruiters get a new space? Clubs were in danger of losing funding being in Nite Lights, when it was still open, because they were not ADA accessible, but classrooms could just slide by? Can someone find me the logic in this one for me?

Finally, there are the solar panels that they would like us to gift to the dorms. The photo above was taken at Harvard, when they installed new solar panels to their freshmen dorms in 2010. This takes the saying of, "Stetson is the Harvard of the south" to a whole other level. This is part of Stetson's overall plan to be green, though. I am all for the environment, I mean it covers my one want that my friends will actually use the gift and/or at least appreciate it.

The environment is something everyone uses. However, this gift comes with uncertainty. Stetson's dorm fees are around $6,500-$7,000 a year, as an estimated average. I see this price rising rather than falling if we were to put solar panels on the dorms because most green, or healthy, products are expensive. I highly doubt our senior gift will cover them in full, which will then cause Stetson to raise prices somewhere else. If not directly seen in the housing budget, perhaps they will be seen in smaller raises within the credit hour cost or student life fee. While I do love the environment, and am glad they finally gave up the idea of charging for printing out right, I don't want to cost my friends, or more importantly future Stetson students, more money.

I feel defeated. Not only can I not participate in the majority of senior week events because I am not 21, but the senior gift has left me angry with a school and administration I have loved and still try to. Though I may rant about the lack of communication and openness, I do insanely love my school and I wouldn't have picked anywhere else to go to. But this list was the last straw for me defending the administration as being not money-hungry.

Maybe I am looking too far into this, but how I see it is that Stetson wants a face-lift for the fountain because they are building an entire welcome center in the center of campus, and if we are honest the fountain looked better before the paint job. They also realized that this new welcome center might attract some more students with disabilities, so they probably should fix at a least one room in Elizabeth to be up to ADA code.

Finally, since they couldn't get the printing thing to go through the past few years, they had to find someway to look green to get more donors to donate and solar panels seems to be hip right now. The money that these donors donate can go to the CUB being rebuilt as well as other small projects. Stetson cannot lose, but the students can. This doesn't seem like gift, rather a greedy child asking for more.

Underclassmen, do not be like me. Do not wait until the spring semester of your senior year to offer ideas. Tell your student representatives what you want now. Better yet, tell the administration your ideas now. I don't care what year you are. Maybe they might listen if you uproar enough. Leave a gift that you actually want to leave. Offer suggestions that hopefully will be heard. Leave Stetson feeling like you and your class were actually significant, rather than feeling like a pawn in a bigger game. We are taught to "dare to be significant" from the first time we come to campus for a tour, we might as well leave that way.