If there’s one thing that most people have in common other than breathing, it’s their dislike for queues. I am one such person. To start of my day I need a shot of caffeine. Now, waiting in a queue for over 15 minutes when my body is aching for coffee, is not what I consider acceptable. After numerous occasions of having to brace the blazing sun outside Rhodes’ popular meeting spot, the Kaif, to get my coffee, I was getting annoyed. At first it did not occur to me that it wasn’t just that people where getting hungry or thirsty at the same time (hence the long queues), but rather that there were just more people at my university this year.
The situation continued to get out of hand when the dining hall queues grew to unimaginable proportions and the popular book store ran out of books within the first two weeks of term. Okay, first I have to starve while waiting for food in the dining hall, then I have to dehydrate while shaking for my morning dose of coffee, then there are no books for me to use to take notes! Something had to be done. One would think that the situation could not have gotten worse, but after having arrived late for a lecture (because I was waiting for my vital dose of coffee) I found that there were no seats available so I had to sit on the floor. Instead of extending my upper lip at the situation, I got thinking. Together with a class mate of mine, we investigated the reasons why the university was suddenly over populated. Had we missed a baby boom that had caused the influx of bodies onto our campus? Or where more people suddenly addicted to coffee and morning lectures?
During our investigation, this is what we discovered: The reason there were more people on campus was because of the new high school curriculum that allowed for more university entries than in previous years. (Ahh, that why everybody was looking so young!) Because of this, more first years had flocked to the university and increased its numbers by 10%. This explained many things: more first means bigger lecture venues, so, older students had to use the smaller venues for their classes. This explained people having to sit on the floor and the long queues in the dining hall and the Kaif.
So if that the case, then surely there should have been infrastructure or at least a plan to accommodate all these new people. This thought led us to a University official who explained what was been done to make us all feel comfortable. As it so happened the university was extending its library and two new residences have been built. Furthermore, the university is planning to be stricter on its acceptance of new students to avoid this overcrowding in future.
In case you’re sitting there thinking I’m just a grouchy coffee overdosed student who has suddenly realised that there are people around me, but alas! Judge thee not! I have proof, check out this article on the topic of overcrowding: