By LESLIE CHRISTIANSEN
April 16, 2006

Did you ever stop and think about how our campus has changed, or how we have changed our campus? With graduation looming closer and closer, I have been looking back over the years I have spent here at the Abbey. The Senior class of 2006 has seen a lot of changes!

We have seen friends come and go as well as faculty, staff, and monastic life. When we seniors started we had a different president of the college, Dr. James Gearity. After Dr. Gearity left, Abbot Placid Solari was our standing president until Dr. William K. Thierfelder took over in the summer of 2005.

But the changes doe not stop there! We have seen changes in our core curriculum and the majors offered here at BAC. We have lost Therapeutic Recreation and gained a Theater minor and Motor Sports Management.

There have also been a lot of renovations on campus in the past few years. “Texas creek” was turned into a pond. Stowe Hall classrooms are now carpeted, and the chalk boards have been replaced with dry erase boards. Maurus Hall has been dramatically transformed into Holy Grounds. Even our book store has changed to make way for the new Catholic Shoppe.

We have witnessed the death of Father Lawrence Willis who is still missed by the many students who remember him. Students services like Career services and the Academic Resource Center have been relocated on campus. Greek life has also changed; we lost the Zetas and gained the Thetas.

All this change has brought about a lot of mixed feelings to our campus. Some changes have broadened our choices and others have limited us. Some students feel that their food options have been limited on campus with the change of closing down the Haid snack bar to open the Coffee shop. Students miss the variety the Haid offered. Why can’t we have the coffee shop and the Haid snack bar?

The change in our food services is a change that all students have noticed. Our options have been limited and, lets face it, the quality of the food has been going downhill in the past few years! For students who live on campus, this change in the quality of our food is a major issue. If you can’t satisfy our most basic needs of providing wholesome food, then it is difficult for us to feel good about other things like our school as a whole.

You can’t build a house on a rocky foundation, so why try and build up a student body that will be unsatisfied with basic needs provided by the school? Many argue that students who leave the Abbey do so because they are not getting their basic needs met, needs like good food and hot water.

Students don’t care whether we have fancy tables set up in the cafeteria to display our food. Making the set up fancy does not make the food better. It’s not about the presentation. It’s about the taste.

For more on changes in food services, see the article "SGA MEETS WITH ALADDIN".