“Oh, the sweet sight of red bricks and more red bricks in the morning truly bring joy to my heart,” said nobody ever.

This weekend I took a trip to Duke University to explore the campus and unexpectedly drown in jealousy. I love NC State’s campus. I really do, but after seeing Duke’s campus, I can conclude that our campus is very ugly. 

Duke’s campus looks like a more inviting and architecturally pleasing version of Hogwarts, while ours looks like a big pile of bricks (literally). Not to mention how our campus is falling apart. 

People are tripping over loose bricks on a daily basis, usually on their way to a brick building. If students have a negative connotation of the bricks they are tripping on, then they will undoubtedly have a negative connotation of the bricks that hold the building they are learning in also. That only means one thing: Students will start to resent the building and therefore start resenting class, and then drop out of school altogether. 

Does the NC State administration want to have a low retention rate? No, I didn’t think so. 

The administration should also consider the fact that nobody will want to enroll. Sure, the Wolfpack is made up of more than 34,000 students, but I’m sure nobody saw the campus in person before they shelled out the cash. After seeing the campus, even students who are offered full scholarships won’t enroll. How could they? How are students supposed to learn when all we see is a sea of red brick? 

College campuses are supposed to promote creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. NC State does not do that. A campus is supposed to make us feel happy. NC State does not do that either. 

The only possible explanation I can think of for our ugly campus is that State grew too fast. They were constructing buildings for space and didn’t have time to consider their appearance. For example, Turlington and Alexander are older residence halls, which are more visually appealing and only have three floors. The tri-towers, Metcalf, Bowen and Carroll are newer, less visually appealing and are tall and out of place.

That being said, I pose one question: If the people who designed our very buildings did not take pride in them, how are we supposed to take pride in any of our work?

We just can’t. The people who built and designed our grounds should have left a positive example for students to follow. We have absolutely nothing to work with, and if we have nothing to work with then we sure can’t be examples for incoming students.

Campussqueeze.com reported NC State as the seventh ugliest campus in the country. Students are held to such a high standard at NC State, yet the school was ranked seventh in a category where it is a bad thing to have a low number attached to the name. That just does not make sense. 

We, as students, need to do something to urge our administration to fund beautifying our campus. If they don’t feel like making our campus more visually pleasing is important, then I guess they don’t think earning A’s is important either. 

Hopefully you thought I sounded ridiculous.

Yes, when walking around Duke’s campus I was bitter, and I did think I’d do much better if I could study in that environment. But then I realized that is completely untrue and unfair for me to think that way. How hard I focus depends on me, not how many flowers are planted around campus or if the only material used is brick.

What we truly need to do is be accountable for our own failures and successes. Our generation seems to have a problem with this concept and will do anything to blame others for our slip-ups. Success comes from within and has nothing to do with what we are given.

An ugly campus has nothing to do with ugly academic performance, but ugly effort does.