LETTERS: SEMO ALUMNUS LISTS GOOD POINTS OF THE UNIVERSITY

To the editor:

To attend Southeast Missouri State University costs $117 a credit hour. Renting school books costs $14 per course taken. Experiencing Southeast as a student is priceless.

I am a Southeast alumnus and proud of it. To the people who continually put down the university and always complain about what is wrong with it, how about saying what is good about the university as well. I never read about how happy people are about saving money at the university by renting books vs. buying them.

Other plusses are the class sizes and working with such professors as Charles Wiles, Karie Hollerbach, Charlie Pry, Bert Kellerman, Susan Gonders and Ferrell Ervin, to name a few. They took their time with me and held a genuine, personal interest in my academic and career goals.

As for the 1997 Southeast graduate's "qualified" comments in Speak Out a few days ago ("Clamp down on campus"), I recommend that this particular individual do some research and get all the facts. As for parking, the university is in the process of building a new parking garage. As for the housing issue, the university has approval and funds to build a new dormitory. Every single need cannot be taken care of at the same time. It is just not fiscally possible.

The university must expand and offer more services, facilities and courses to make itself more attractive to the region it serves. Southeast is not trying to be a big, glamorous university. It just wants to be all that it can be, just like the students who attend here.

VANCE S. PAWIELSKI

Cape Girardeau