To the Editor:

The concept that all majors should be treated equally is preposterous and sadly is the principle upon which the University and its scholarship program operate. Not all majors are equal in difficulty or in the amount of mental taxation on the student. There is a reason that the average GPA of Parks College is lower than that of other schools, and it’s not because Parks attracts a bunch of dunces, quite the opposite. Some of the brightest minds on this campus are in Parks, but the class load that is demanded of the average engineer is overwhelming. I have no doubt that my GPA would be a full point higher if I started off as a communication major, but instead for some strange masochistic reason I picked biomedical engineering.

Now, anyone who even thinks that a communication major is as challenging as BME is out of their mind. I can attest to the challenge of BME first hand; it chewed me up and spit me out. I have the utmost respect for my former colleagues, and my prayers will be with them next year as they experience what is truly the most intense, undergraduate experience this university has to offer. The problem is that the scholarship requirements operate under the premise that all majors are equal. So a person with a Xavier Service Fellowship Scholarship, for instance, has to maintain the same 3.4, whether that person is a BME or a communication major.

Now, I’m not saying that anyone should be treated unfairly. Aubrey said it best when she said, “Treating people fairly is not a ridiculous concept.” I am saying that it is unfair that the scholarship program holds all majors to the same status. I respect every major, but I do not respect them equally. There really isn’t a problem on this campus with the non-technical majors getting persecuted, but there is a major problem with those more extreme majors being held to the same academic standards.

Sean MacLennan

Sophomore in Philosophy