Commentary UAM cares about students

Photo by Katy Murray

Special appearance — San Francisco singer/guitarist Austin Willacy performs March 9 in the Patio Café between noon and 1 p.m. Interested artists should e-mail Ashley Corbin at lynna@uamont.edu for more information if they'd like to perform.

   If you missed the Patio Café performance of Austin Willacy on March 9 then you also missed an opportunity to see a great up-and-coming singer and guitarist.

   The Student Activities Board presented Willacy to the University of Arkansas at Monticello campus on the same day as the Wellness Fair and managed to pack the Patio Café during the show between noon and 1 p.m. Over the course of the past year the SAB has taken various steps to get students more involved in campus life.    

   Willacy is part of a new program at the University Center. “Big name” artists like him will hopefully come to perform once a month at the Patio Café giving students the chance to take part in campus life.  

  In fact the SAB intends to give a UAM student the chance to perform once a week. The student will be the feature artist of the week. For example talented students could play music, sing, read poetry or even perform a comedy act. This particular program hopes to better utilize the Patio Café. So the big question is do students care?    

   Certainly a moderate number of students attend the campus events and enjoy them but why not more? Could it be because UAM has a great deal of commuters or non-traditional students? Regardless many events occur during the middle of the day, mainly during lunchtime, meaning the campus should be buzzing around that time of the day.    

   The SAB obtained Willacy to stop in and perform as a special treat. They even paid for his stay at the Days Inn in Monticello. The organization works very hard to make campus life at UAM more pleasing and unlike larger universities, the reception is most often dim in comparison to the number of students enrolled in classes here.

   It sure is a shame that a school that cares so much about its students and goes to such great measures to make them happy gets taken for granted. It’s also a waste of the activity fee students pay every semester, which is $45 a semester if students are enrolled for 15 hours.

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