Beating out some pretty nice competition…



14. Student Union

Located on the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University, the Student Union is a center for everything related to student and campus activities. All elements of a quality university are present at the Student Union, from exposure to many different cultures and nationalities to access to social and academic resources capable of enriching a mind for the future and the length of a lifetime. FAU students are responsible for the procedures and actions necessary to keep an operation of this magnitude operable on a daily basis. The success of FAU students can be observed based on their commitment to principles like working with the community, dedication to learning, and respect for themselves and others.


30 Most Amazing Student Unions | Best College Values

The rationale is… weird, to say the least.

"The success of FAU students can be observed based on their commitment to principles like working with the community, dedication to learning, and respect for themselves and others."

Who wrote this, and for what purpose?

Is FAU traffic high-yield?

Usually it's to drive traffic towards these sites so they'll rank anything. Best College Towns, Biggest Party Schools, Best Mascots, Nicest Entrance Signs… they'll rank anything so as an alumnus you'll share it on social media or other messageboards like College Confidential where people fret about where to go for college and ask strangers to decide what they should do, which ultimately always just boils down to a p*ssing contest between alumni quoting statistics anyway.

Anyway, this is nice but it's hard to take seriously. Nobody who has researched the nation's student unions would give ours that high of a ranking, especially not if they've been there. It's one of those things that feels nicer than it is and you don't realize how much better it could be until you've experienced something better, like even comparing our old on-campus gym to the new one at the Rec Center, or more appropriately for this situation, comparing our student union vs USF's or UF's. We have so much more to build, we offer too little programming, and we are shoving organizations like OwlTV into too little of a space.

We need a new Student Union.

Instead we're going to tack more space onto this one, which is okay, but that's really not the best plan. It's the cheapest plan though - outside of doing nothing - and that's been our MO for awhile. It saves students money, it's realistic in our donor environment, etc. Hopefully Kelly gets bit by the bug and works out a way to get us $50M from the state for a new facility. Sometimes they pay for those things, sometimes they don't. It might have to be a half/half deal with the students, even if they bellyache over it and the newspaper writes, "Why are they doing this for a commuter school blah blah blah"

The announcement is on Facebook and has quite a few comments. They range from "this is great" to "no way" and everything in between. 
FAU will go through more growing pains if Kelley grows the university like he plans. I'm not talking about growing enrollment. 

The Student Union is average at best.  There's other parts of campus that should get glory but not the student union.