Victoria Morrow is retiring as president of Skyline College. As a student, what do you expect from the new president who will take charge next semester? This was the question asked to several Skyline students around campus. 

With this being the last semester for Victoria Morrow, what do students want out of a new president?  

Student Sybyle Quan has been enrolled at Skyline during Morrow’s term and throughout those continuous terms, one incident really sticks out in her mind about the departing President. During the Skyline shooting incident of the fall 2009 semester, Quan remembers Victoria Morrow addressing the campus, which to her was “a really good thing to see from our president.”  

In response to the question being asked to Skyline Students Quan also stated, “I would like to see more transparency from out new president and [more involvement] in student relations, because usually the president is somewhat of an invisible force.”

Other students on campus could not agree more with Quan and feel that our new president needs to focus more on student relations.

Students like Emmy Escobar believe in the importance of the president’s outlook on student relations, “It’s important for the new president to pay attention to the students and their needs” relays Escobar. Escobar’s feelings are fueled by her past experiences with the financial aid office.

“I’ve been to the financial aid offices and they have lost my tax return forms and my dependent verification sheet which had my social security number on it” said Escobar, “So really in general I just hope the new president will pay attention to what works and what doesn’t work around campus”

Some students, on the other hand, have not been here on campus that long and therefore do not know what to expect from our new president, seeing as they barely know the current one. But some of them do have ideas of what they would like to see nonetheless.

Skyline student Beatriz Millare is a first semester student at Skyline and only vaguely knows about our current president. “I myself would like to see the new president make more activities around the campus, [similar to] what we saw in the quad during back to school week” Millare explained, “It really brought students together; this really helped me meet new people because I’m a first semester student”

Student activities on campus was an idea that several other students got behind as an agenda for our new president to pursue. Collette Yee, a current Skyline student who’s been to other community colleges, feels that sometimes Skyline can be boring.

“We definitely need more student activities around campus because sometimes it gets really boring around here” said Yee, “You know, something that really brings students together because no one knows anyone around here.”

Some students had ideas for change as they reflect on events that happened not too recently. Students like Alan Lopez and Russell Hanssen would like to see change in smoking sections and class registration respectively.

“They need to make the smoking areas closer together and in more specific areas that are easily accessible.” said Lopez “Sometimes students have to travel across campus or really go out of their way just to get a smoke”

Lopez also wanted to stress that the smoking sections themselves aren’t very attractive either as they need to be larger in radius with better benches to sit on.

On the other hand, Hanssen felt that student registration is what the new president should focus on instead.

“There should more options in classes so students don’t feel so pressed when registering” said Hanssen, “especially when some students have jobs and are forced to decide between the two.”

Among different students interviewed, many of them didn’t know what they wanted from our new president or just felt nothing needed to be changed or added.

Some students declined to comment due to the fact that they didn’t know what the president could or could not do. One such student was Sean Talamentez

“I’m not quite sure what really needs to be done on Skyline right now, but everything I’ve seen so far has been pretty good.” Talamentez stated, “When I need to eat I go to the cafeteria and when I need to buy something I go to the student store.”

Talamentez did say however that if the future president were to approach him he would have this to say.

“If given the chance, I would say to the new president ‘Keep up the good work’ “