University High getting a bad rap
A wolf at the door
Alan Ouellette |
UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL students, in addition to meeting the demands of an accelerated college preparatory curriculum, continue to be the subject of much debate on campus.
They are constructed as representative of the immaturity that we have somehow distanced ourselves from by graduating high school and enrolling at Fresno State. As one Collegian commentator has put it, these nuisances on the Fresno State campus need “one-way bus tickets to Cal State Dominguez Hills.”
This feeling of antagonism is partially a result of a general unwillingness on the part of some Fresno State students to view the situation from the perspective of the approximately 400 UHS students that share our campus.
Admittedly, they are younger than the average student at Fresno State, result in slightly longer lines in the Student Union, and enjoy many of the benefits afforded to paying students, but, as their rigorous curriculum requirements show, they are also full of potential, artistically-inclined and lively, well-rounded additions to any campus community.
UHS students are required to take four years of music classes and two years of Latin followed by another two semesters of study in a foreign language alongside Fresno State students.
In addition, it is virtually impossible for UHS students to not encounter several Advanced Placement courses in route to graduation.
As such, their preparation for success at the university level is all but guaranteed – most having the potential to graduate with as many as 30 units of credit from Fresno State.
These figures contrast greatly with Fresno and Madera Counties, where fewer than five percent of high school graduates enter the University of California system.
These students are certainly privileged by not having to attend high schools with large student populations where uninspiring learning environments are the standard. Rather, they are able to study in a personable and stimulating atmosphere that prepares them for admission to, and success in, colleges of their choice in the future.
Indeed, UHS students, because of the relative promise they have demonstrated in junior high or high school, enjoy an opportunity that most of us did not have access to.
This leads me to speculate if the hesitance many Fresno State students have toward fully integrating UHS students into the collegiate environment is motivated, either directly or indirectly, by jealousy.
Rather than continue to treat UHS students as outsiders whose presence at Fresno State is somehow unwarranted, I feel that some of our superficial inconveniences and discomforts that stem from UHS can be easily overlooked when we consider the educational experience that this unique student population is embarking upon.
To properly welcome these students to our campus community — something that has not been properly expressed since the advent of UHS in 2000 — we should break with the efforts of Associated Students to deny UHS a new campus in our unused amphitheater.
At least on a symbolic level, the transition from portable classrooms to a proper, more permanent, learning facility is the least we can do to bridge the division between the students of Fresno State and UHS.
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