Rider University

Date: Mar 25 2003
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
I attended Rider University enticed by the reputation of their Education Department. I wanted to be an English teacher and this was touted as the place to be. I found a lot of the Education teachers to be tough but fair, and in general a good group of people, in fact more than 90% of the faculty is very good, and approachable, but the things I HATED about this school far outnumbered the positives. For example:

Rider was built on an old cranberry bog, so whenver it rained, everything flooded. And I mean everything.

Given the flooding and readily available water, Rider has a large population of ducks and geese on campus. The geese are surly, often attack the students, and the waterfowl have crapped everywhere. You can't take 3 steps before you're dodging duck crap on the sidewalk. No one's cleaning it up, no one seems to care.

The food's lousy. It was getting better as I left, but it wasn't as good as the pipe dreams I was told about with campuses having food courts, and many meal options, etc.

The architecture was ugly, many of the buildings were falling apart, and they weren't taken care of. Which brings me to the students.

Most of the students live within an hour of campus, so when the weekend came, everyone left to go home and hang out with friends. The social scene at Rider was terrible. Nothing ever happened. People tried to make things happen, but everyone's so apathetic.

There are several sports teams and underground fraternities hell bent on destroying the campus. Several times, cars ended up in the pond, dorms got destroyed, showers and bathrooms were vandalized, no one seemed to care about the campus around them.

I joined a fraternity and had a blast, but some of the fraternities were violent and continually tried to pick fights with every other fraternity. Some of the sororities were very snooty and stand-offish, and it was just sad to see them act like they were members of an all-exclusive country club.

I would have enjoyed Rider more had the people around me been nicer and cared about the University, but almost every student was surly, rude, unapproachable, snooty, and not worth getting to know. I tried so many times to make friends and it always failed.