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If you’re a senior like me, you’ve probably noticed that East Carolina University has gone through some major changes since we were freshmen. This timespan has likely been filled with frustration, confusion, anger, hunger and most importantly disappointment.

Bring yourselves back to the fall semester of 2015. Everything couldn’t be more perfect. You experience total freedom for the first time, you make a bunch of new friends, you go to your first tailgate and football game to watch a team just two years removed from a bowl victory, but more importantly, you believe it can only get better from here.

Everyone’s point of view is subjective so I am certainly not saying things haven’t gotten better for you personally since your first semester at ECU. But I am saying that ECU has done a lot to, though unintentionally, attempt to make it worse.

In January of 2016, ECU announced the construction of the main campus student center which finally opened last week after a five month delay. But the three year building process prevented the 301 transit bus from stopping at Joyner and also removed parking spaces that ECU is still very limited of. This was only the beginning as campus resources slowly deteriorated, including dorm buildings being refurbished, new apartment complexes under construction causing massive traffic jams, the expensive struggle of finding a parking spot close to your classroom and losing 75 percent of campus food outlets due to poor planning.

On the ECU athletic’s side of things, former ECU head coach Ruffin McNeil was relieved of his duties at the end of the 2015 football season, signaling the start of a disastrous three year span for athletic department that included the forgettable Scottie Montgomery football era and the ruthless manhunt for former ECU Athletic Director Jeff Compher’s job, resulting in a $1.26 million buyout that put ECU athletics in financial turmoil and without a leader in that position for the next seven months, playing a huge part in the $75 tuition increase for the students.

But something extraordinary was unfolding before our very eyes while we were voicing our frustrations and demands to the big man upstairs about immediate change. And that extraordinary something was that our pleas were being listened too without us noticing.

Now unfortunately for us seniors, this won’t be something we’ll have the privilege to experience. We all wish something was done about the lack of parking and poor performances in the athletics department sans baseball and swimming. But this is the perfect time to stop what you’re doing, and give yourselves a pat on the back for enduring the rebuilding process that was forced on us.

With that being said, the ECU class of 2023 will be a special one because with the combination of luck and lucrative projects finally coming near completion, it will embark on a new era for Pirate nation. Not only did ECU get the coach that they wanted in Mike Houston, but the former FCS champion head coach wanted to come here while talented freshman like Holton Ahlers for football and Jayden Gardner for men’s basketball have emerged as rising stars in their respective sports in the hopes to bring ECU athletics back to the glory days.

The main campus student center will be fully operational by the end of this semester when they work out all the kinks and open all the food options, most notably “Raisin’ Cane’s Chicken Fingers” which is has gained a lot of hype since its announcement to Greenville. On top of that, a parking deck has been built right next to the student center, the Dowdy-Ficklen southside renovation project will be finished as well as the Greene dorm building on West End so the bus can resume stopping at that location. And also, the apartment complex on 10th Street will be ready to go by the fall and the 10th Street Connecter will finally be complete since being under construction since October of 2015, hoping to reduce the rage induced traffic that has plague Greenville for years.

All and all, ECU’s future is very bright for all the new coming students in the years to come. And are very fortunate they didn’t suffer through the rebuilding process that we have.

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