This has been a semester of renovations and promises for Bakersfield College that have kept students waiting patiently for results as they change their routines to suit BC’s efforts.

While students were promised changes that would be beneficial in the long run, all they received was a long semester filled with accomodating bad traffic around the school, a lack of parking places and rather unreliable Campus Center tables and chairs.

Beginning with the solar panel project in the northeast parking lot that was supposed to be completed during the summer before classes began, students stuck it out and parked wherever they could around this crowded-to-capacity campus.

The appreciation by BC, however, was handed out to students over and over in the form of ticketed citations on their windshields, because the school still demanded that students pay full price for sub-par parking as though it was the students’ fault that caused the parking structure delays. There really should have been some sort of discount offered to students for parking, or at least, open parking after a certain hour to help alleviate the grumblings felt by the student body all over campus.

Students who would have otherwise parked in the places they paid for were made to park far, far across the school or come to school way earlier than usual to be sure that parking spaces were found. It’s hard to feel grateful for eco-friendly energy sources with sore feet.

We also received new amenities in the Campus Center quad that are nice and modern, but they didn’t arrive until after mid-semester and left students that choose to socialize there stuck on easily-breakable plastic chairs and fold-out tables. The Student Government Association had plans and expectations this semester to renovate these tables before the semester began and had the tables picked out well in advance. However, like the solar panels, BC students needed to wait for the tables to be put in by the contractors hired – which took a few days to do when they eventually came around to doing it. Though there undoubtedly is a reason why they took so long, this is an institution that is paying top-dollar with your finances to acquire these products, they should’ve been installed months ago.

Another SGA project was the remodeling of the game room in the cafeteria. The project, which was under construction when the semester began, was completed midway through the semester yet was not opened until a few weeks before the end of the semester. Again, an answer for the delay is sure to be found, but students don’t want answers, they want results. And so do we. The closed doors of the game room have been an unnecessary tease that should have been rushed to complete or open.

So, bottom line, if you’re going to pay for it with our money we should get to enjoy it sooner rather than later. And if you’re going to conduct campus renovations that are going to displace students from their daily routine in a manner that is more than comparable, be prepared to offer some middle-ground, appreciative gesture to appropriately assist students. If those powers that be, who are responsible for these remodelings, renovations and restructurings, are going to mess with the way things are, they need to be prepared to allot the necessary means to get around them.