I have been a proud Illini for more than five years and have thus witnessed many changes on this campus. From the renovation of Green Street and the long-awaited opening of Firehaus to the rehabilitation of our football program and elimination of the Chief, with a basketball national final appearance in between, the University has changed since I set foot in Chambana in 2002. While some changes to the area and University policies have been good, there have been several missteps.

One of the most recent failures of the University was a completely boneheaded move. At a time when Coach Zook has spent so much time and effort to rebuild the football program from figurative ashes, the University promptly undercut his success by tearing out the Michigan tickets from students’ voucher booklets. This is emblematic of the part of the school that tends to ignore its students – bad University.

The same administration continued with the Global Campus Initiative despite widespread student fears of it reducing the value of UIUC degrees. I find this even more disappointing because Illinois was consistently at the top of the national lists of bargain educations when I arrived on campus. While the University still offers a respectable education for the cost of tuition (especially in colleges like Engineering and Business), it no longer dominates the rest of the country in educational affordability. Students’ fears of the erosion of their degrees’ employment value are real, especially as the costs of the degrees increase, yet the concerns seem to have fallen on (mostly) deaf ears.

On the other hand, the University has made some admirable changes. While traversing the UIUC campus can hardly be called a safe and mindless proposition, it is considerably more secure now than it was my freshman year. That year there was a serious, omnipresent sexual assault threat. In subsequent years, pedestrians and cyclists had unfortunate and tragic encounters. While neither of these issues cease to exist, the University did an admirable job of responding to them. Certainly, a college campus always needs to improve its sexual assault and pedestrian safety records, but we clearly attend a school that cares about such issues.

Furthermore, when I came here the question, “So where are you from?” had an implicit addendum of “…in the Chicago area.” As my current freshmen compadres are quick to inform me, gaining admission to the University is increasingly difficult, partially because the school is looking to add out-of-state students. Diversity is integral to education, and a student body entirely from the same geographical region, regardless of its ethnic, racial and religious composition, is not exactly diverse. Admitting students from different parts of the country also helps sell the Illinois brand outside the state, potentially increasing athletic and apparel revenue. Out-of-state tuition, incidentally, is more beneficial to the University’s bottom line, too.

While the past several years have had their positive and negative changes, the effect of one of the most obvious to alumni remains debatable. Green Street has not always been the chain restaurant haven it is today. Such places like El Desmadre, the Record Service, Bub’s Pizza and Pub, and others predating even my grey bush have vanished from the social haven known as Green. Other local establishments have replaced some (Station 211, for example, occupies the old Bub’s), but most have seen their locations transformed into unremarkable restaurants. While these places often offer tasty food at a tasty price, as the High Life man might say, they detract from the small town charm that previously enveloped Campustown. In this respect, the campus should have followed the evolutionary path downtown Champaign has taken: Maintain local businesses and eateries and welcome new but unique establishments to take the places of ones that could not stay. The biggest travesty, however, is that campus still lacks a grocery store.

Overall, the changes on campus seem to cancel out, making University of Illinois 2007 different, but neither better nor worse, than University of Illinois 2002. For their progress, I thusly award the University and Chambana a grade of a B, a mark notably higher than my GPA will be this semester.