Every semester, it feels like The Montclarion’s opinion section has the same old complaints about Montclair State University. Dining sucks! Parking sucks! There are too many students! Frankly, it is just repetitive.
So, this semester, the editorial team has decided to compile these age old complaints into one, big article and grade how the school has done in each category over the course of the 2024-25 academic year thus far.
Dining Services
The 1908 Pub has been undeniably impressive. The food and drinks have been quite good, and the games, televisions and overall atmosphere have turned the space into a great place for students to congregate and unwind after a long day of classes.
But as for the rest of dining services’ work, much is left to be desired.
Sam’s Place is still the same old Sam’s Place. Freeman and Blanton are both prettier, and while they have improved the seating situation since last semester, they still have less overall capacity than they did in years past.
Of course, there is also the seemingly permanent closure of the Red Hawk Diner, a Montclair State staple. It would be lovely to spend my flex dollars at the diner- oh, yeah, flex dollars!
They still make Village residents pay for flex dollars, and commuters pay a dining deposit. The commuter deposit is less egregious since they get a refund, but the Village residents being forced to pay is cheap and aggravating.
It could be far worse, but that is hardly the qualifier you want for your food, right?
Grade: C-
Parking and Traffic
Remember how class times were reconfigured to reduce congestion? How’s that working out? There are still seemingly more cars than spots and gridlock coming out of places like CarParc Diem and the Red Hawk Deck.
For a school primarily attended by commuters, you would think they would nail down the commuter experience by now, right? But the act of driving on campus can still feel like a matter of taking your life in your hands. It certainly does not help that the drivers on campus tend to be nuts, but you would be too if you were stuck in the labyrinthine depths of a parking deck with a dumb pun for a name.
There are two primary solutions: build more parking or accept fewer students. The former is expensive and time consuming, and the latter, well …
Grade: D
Class Sizes
There are too many freshmen being accepted to this school!
Make no mistake, much love to all of my freshmen who know how to read, but I have to add that qualifier because there are so many students being accepted that I have to imagine some illiteracy is slipping through the cracks.
The effects of the larger student body are being felt everywhere, because there are simply far too many students and not enough classrooms, parking spots, dining services employees, shuttles, you name it. The school is quite simply at critical mass.
Grade: F
Shuttle Services
The shuttles are a great asset on campus, but the biggest struggle is their inconsistency.
The TripShot app is a joke, and a bad one. The arrival times listed are rarely accurate, and the live shuttle tracking is completely unreliable.
The Night Hawk service has improved significantly since its introduction, but the leap has been from “completely broken” to “I can get home if the winds align.”
However, many of the overall problems with shuttle services can be chalked up to the prior two categories, so there’s a bit of a pass there. Their primary areas of weakness are late-night consistency and availability.
Grade: B-
Registration
This is the one area I have seen honest-to-god improvement in over my time at Montclair State. Sure, it can still be finicky, but what was an hourslong process for myself in Spring 2022 only took roughly thirty minutes this past Fall. Not bad, right?
Grade: B
All in all, one of the most difficult things about attending Montclair State University is an overwhelming feeling that things do not get better, and are never going to get better. I do not think that is 100 percent true, however, the feeling is valid and hard to avoid. Four years of taking one step forward and three steps back takes a toll on the student body, and it is well past time for Montclair State to get their grades up.
