What is This Sucks?
This Sucks is an e-mail address run by the Student Life Committee that seeks to hear any, and we mean ANY, complaints from the student body.
- Do you have a problem with the meal credit system?
- Are you pissed off about your classes?
- Do you hate the chairs in the UGLI?
This Sucks is here to listen to any concerns, academic and non-academic, that you may have about the school.
Some things that have been changed because of complaints sent to This Sucks are:
- Added ash trays around campus
- Better laundry facilities
- Smaller credit brackets for registration
Please leave a comment below or e-mail us at ThisSucks@umich.edu with any concerns and we will do our best to fix the problem or at least find an answer for any of your questions.
Daniel Katz says:
The laundry machines are thieves! We cannot let them go unpunished any longer.
John Monaghan says:
In the racquetball courts in the IM building, there are no hooks for your coats so you have to keep all of your stuff on the ground. Seems like a little thing that could be easily fixed.
Mike LaMarra says:
I used to live by the CCRB and I always liked that when I locked my things in the lockers there I would get my quarter back after I re-inserted the key. However, now that I live by the IM building and workout there I’ve noticed that I don’t get my quarter returned to me and instead the lockers keep it. I mean for all the money we all already pay for these facilities, is it too much to ask to have free lockers?
John Gunnell says:
The bathroom stalls in mason hall men’s room have large, open gaps along the doors. I don’t enjoy meeting the eyes of onlookers while I do my business.
Diana Parrish says:
You want to know what sucks? I’ll tell you what sucks. I hate that when we hold events at the Union we are forced to use their overpriced and poor quality catering service. Considering how sub-par the food is, I would really appreciate a more substantial discount for student groups who aren’t able to pay $9 for a gallon of fruit punch. Either let me go to Kroger, or charge something in the realm of reasonable. Thanks much.
Sasha Tandlich says:
It sucks that the university makes you leave 24 hours after your last exam. As a freshman, I didn’t even know about it until my roommate told me. Apparently it’s up on the walls, but I think we should be notified more officially and a lot earlier. I’m an out-of-state student, so I need to be able to buy my ticket knowing this information, and I don’t want to wait until it gets expensive. Also, I think the whole idea of it is ridiculous. We shouldn’t have to move out until the building closes. Most people want to leave early anyway, so I don’t think it will result in a bunch of people moving out at the same time. Since I’m not from Michigan, my parents can’t pay to fly here and back to help me move out. So, it’s hard to have to pack up and then ship/put in storage all the stuff alone. I don’t want to worry about this while I’m studying for my exams, and it will definitely take more than a day to get all my stuff pulled together. In addition, I want to stay for the Dalai Lama lecture.
Ada Dominguez says:
I live in Northwood and you know what I think sucks? I think it sucks how Northwood only has 3 buses running through the entire campus, while Bursley and Baits have buses every 5 minutes. Bursley-Baits is such a short route, while Northwood is really long, and there are a lot of undergrads that live in Northwood who need the transportation. The Northwood buses also make a lot of long stops. I think we can fix that.
Melissa Englund says:
There are far too few electrical outlets in the Union. It would be great if there was one at every booth.
Steven Benson says:
The flickering lights in the UGLI. Can’t the maintenance staff change the light bulbs! It is 3 am and I am trying to study, but I am about to have a seizure because the light above me keeps flickering! Go lsa-sg!
Maclain Wiltzer says:
CS-LSA degree requires creative-oriented people to take Calc 1-3, and guess what? They are 3 out of 5 pre-reqs before you can even get into CS.
I have never had to use Calculus in real world software development. So why do they have these absurd requirements? Oh yeah, the Chief Advisor for EECS told me face-to-face that this requirement is idiotic, and yet they still keep it.
Oh yeah, they are trying to force me to retake Calc 3, because OMG I got a C, which you know totally affects my ability to develop software.
Prakash Venkatraman says:
The search engine on the Umich website sucks. When I try to search for anything the results I get have nothing to do with my search string. For example, I tried running a search on “campus restaurants” to find a new place to eat, and my results were things like “College of Pharmacy News” or “Tech Day 2007.” Isn’t there something that can be done about this?
Prakash Venkatraman says:
We also need more outlets in the UGLI. It seems counterproductive to go to the library to study only to spend about 45 min (no joke) trying to find a table near an empty elec. socket.
Travis Pashak says:
Bert’s Cafe in the Undergraduate Library should be open on weekends!!! It should also be
open later at night on weekdays. There are most definitely students willing to work the
odd hours and sales of coffee, energy drinks, and munchies would definitely outweigh the
cost of paying the workers.
Andrew Mast says:
Hey
This sucks:
At the corner of State and Madison, that frat house has a sand
volleyball court. That’s fine and all (for the three weeks of the year
that it’s actually nice enough to play sand volleyball). What sucks is
whenever it rains all the sand washes out and cakes the sidewalk. Then
it stays there forever and I have to walk through it everyday. That
sucks. They should have to clean it up. It wouldn’t be hard to take a
leaf blower out there and get it off the sidewalk or build a barrier
to keep the sand in.
Thanks for letting my voice be heard
Lindsay K says:
The bathrooms in dennison are beyond disgusting. The doors never lock and pop open when other bathroom doors open or close. Also, the soap dispensers are not even mildly hygienic…not to mention the see-through toilet paper.
Karen F says:
I think the 400 printing page limit per semester sucks! I easily go over the limit
because some of my classes require me to print out certain long documents to read from
C-Tools. I don’t even print out my lecture slides for class. It is ridiculous that with
what the tuition prices are, it can’t even cover my printing costs.
Karen Yiu says:
The University is all about “GO BLUE LIVE GREEN” but they don’t have ANY recycling bins in the dining hall and this is important on the days that the caf. uses plastic cups and plastic utensils (and Styrofoam trays). Actually, the school lacks recycling bins in most of their buildings and classrooms.
Spartan says:
the virtual sites do not have spartan ‘06. This makes it so we have to start out chem 462 labs before 10 pm the night before they are due unless we purchase the software ourselves. this sucks.
Steven Kasperek says:
THIS SUCKS: The law lib AND the grad are only open to 2am on most days. Someone should do something about that.
Sarah Severance says:
Our printing allocation should “roll over” between semesters. Some semesters you need more printing than others and it’d be nice to have the extra pages from previous semesters to help out. If we get 400 pages/semester we should get all 400 whether we use them or not and unused pages should only expire upon graduation.
Kartikha says:
The Union Underground desperately needs more power outlets. Can’t the Union get multiple socket extension cords?
Danielle says:
In summary: The toilet paper is soooo cheap, the library’s need to stay open longer! The buses to north campus suck especially on the weekends (they only come every half an hour). The bus stops suck we should have a better insulated area to stand in for 20 min. when we’re waiting for the north campus bus in -10 degree weather!!! The printing allocation sucks!!!!! I about doubled my printing because my classes demanded so much paperwork, while engineers don’t even use all of there paper! If the libraries stay open longer the north campus buses need to run longer! The washing machines bleach my clothes when I don’t even use bleach! We shouldn’t be forced out of our dorms right before exams and have to empty out our fridge.
Brittney says:
The sidewalks suck. I’ve sprained my ankle 3 times this semester from tripping over the uneven pavement. This greatly affects my ability to do well in school when I have to hobble all over campus and find out I’m 5 minutes late for class.
And since we’re on the topic of pavements, could a little salt be added to the budget? That stupid tractor/golf cart thing only sweeps the snow away to leave a layer of water left which *gasp* freezes! How effective!
Mark Chou says:
There are NINE sports channels on the cable provided through residence halls. 9. NINE! Isn’t that ridiculous?!?! I want some better movie channels. HBO, anyone?
Jessica Kursman says:
The Dana building is great because it has worked to become a “green” building by cutting down on its energy and water use. It also has a ton of recycling bins around the building, but very, very little trash cans in open areas, such as the atrium. Some trash can’t be recycled in those bins, and consequently, I have witnessed a lot of students throw trash that can’t be recycled into the recycling. If there were just a few more trash cans in the area for non-recyclable garbage, less non-recyclable garbage would be thrown into the recycling and inhibit the entire recycling process.
Charlotte says:
You know the computers in Angel Hall OUTSIDE of the fishbowl? The ones where you stand up?
How come there are no paper recycling bins out there?? People are constantly printing stuff, there’s tons of paper floating around, yet there are no bins? I walked around with about 20 pages I wanted to recycle, thinking there would obviously be paper recycling bins up by those mega printers, but no. They are all inside the Fishbowl.
Aren’t those computers up there for the purpose of students on the run, who don’t have time to search for recycling bins? Please put recycling bins up there. Thanks.
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Ryan says:
Ok, so this is really me venting more than anything, cause there isn’t really much to be done, but my problem is with the very idea behind Baits. Lets overlook the normal complaints with Baits and look at the logistics. Recently, three of the Baits houses were made to be freshman only houses. This was in response to the high number of freshman complaining about Baits. So in response to freshman disliking Baits, the University decided the best solution would be to put even more freshman in Baits. It may seem normal for freshman to get stuck in Baits, but Baits was originally made in 1967 to be graduate student housing, meaning that everything about its architecture and floor plans are designed for grad students. In fact, only as far back as 2000 only 14 in every 66 students in Baits was a freshman. On top of all of this, ALL freshman have a majority of their classes on central campus. Even engineering students have AT MOST 2 classes per semester on North Campus their first year, but the average engineering student will only have one.
Lets take a step back.
This means SOMEONE at U of M decided the best possible thing to do would be to take dorms built for grad students and fill them with freshman so they would be as far away as physically possible from all of their classes (Baits is the northern most point of U of M’s campus) not only in spite of the fact, but BECAUSE all the other freshman that got put in those dorms hated it.
WTF IS GOING ON OVER THERE?!
Christina says:
THE SCHOOL SPIRIT SUCKS. Yes, yes, so kill me. Fine, UM has a great football team. Yes, it has good academics. Obviously I’m glad I’m here since I applied to the college. But is the University of Michigan really SO FREAKING FULL OF ITSELF that it has to print the letter M on EVERY EMPTY SURFACE IN THE ENTIRE CITY OF ANN ARBOR? Do you think that I forgot in the space of walking from the Ugli to the Student Activities building that the first letter of my state is an M??? And how the administration, tour guides and orientation leaders have to reiterate on every piece of literature and in every statement they make how amazingly lucky all the students are to be here? Does UM have some sort of inferiority complex? Good god. I mean, I visited Harvard and Yale (you know, HARVARD and YALE) and there weren’t H’s and Y’s smacking me in the face at every corner.
evan says:
this sucks is a great idea. i just typed this sucks in google out of boredom and found the greatest student government creation of all time. i don’t go to umich but i will be lobbying my student government demanding a similar service.
Cathy says:
I agree with Karen F that the four-hundred-page printing allocation is ridiculous. Why should engineers get so much extra paper that they don’t use, but English majors (who often have multiple 10-15 page papers to print, as well as reading assignments) get only four hundred. I have my own printer because otherwise, I will go far over my allocation (I use at least six or seven hundred sheets of paper per semester). With all the money I have to pay to even be here, I think I should be allowed to print my reading assignments and essays.
Kimberly Buddin says:
Mprints does not support files from Mac’s pages documents. So basically I’m SOL all year if I want to use the program… this REALLY sucks!
Lisa Marchlewski says:
The internet at Bursley is so spotty around 11 when everyone gets online! I have to be sure to do my homework before that otherwise I won’t be able to get online!
Lisa Jacks says:
We need a campus-wide lost and found in a central location. I’ve come across all kinds of jewelry, coffee mugs, sweatshirts, etc and resorted to turning them into the nearest building’s lost and found. Instead of having a separate lost and found in each dorm and campus building, why not one central one in the Union? This way I only have to make one phone call or one stop if I ever lose anything (or find anything). We could send all lost articles to the Union through campus mail.
Angie Tobias says:
I can’t stand that I cannot access CTools or Wolverine Access from my Blackberry! I think that our University should optimize its web pages to run on SmartPhones. This would make life MUCH easier.
Stephen Ratkovich says:
It’s bad enough that there are barely any electrical outlets in huge lecture halls but it really sucks when the ones that do exist don’t work! I don’t know if they’re connected to a light switch or something but outlets should always be on no matter what so even when the room is dark during a PowerPoint presentation students with low battery laptops can still take notes.
Prakash Venkatraman says:
Please get the Askwith Media Library to stay open longer on Fridays.