Ever since I first walked on this campus back in the Fall of 2008, I have noticed more Aggies, faculty, and students, becoming less concerned about the world around them.

And last week during probates it left me to ask myself ‘where are this campus’ priorities?’

For starters, this has nothing to do with the new or old Greeks on this campus. Actually, my frustration comes from the general population on this campus. This campus has shown poor leadership skills, and has breed a population that has become too lazy to question authority.

However, it is a shame to me that the general population on this campus put so much emphasis on going to probates and Aggie Fest, while there are so many other issues going on in the world today. I’ve never seen so many people skip class just to go watch a probate in my life!

For these reasons A&T is becoming less relevant as a university. When you have a campus that is more concerned about organizations that they are not even members of than they are about the near government shutdown, then clearly there’s a problem.

And let’s not just blame the students. As far as I’m concerned, the faculty and administration are just as much, if not more, to blame for A&T falling further behind. It is sad to say, but we have professors teaching subjects that they know nothing about.

Many of our students graduate unprepared for the world that awaits them because many of our professors have no idea how to prepare them.

I believe there is clearly a problem when our tuition is steadily increasing, yet we are still “forced” to cut our foreign language department. How can we expect to be globally competitive, or even significant, when we blatantly make it known that being bi-lingual is no longer a priority at our university?

How can we expect for student’s to get jobs all over the world when we are failing to teach them more than one language? Decisions such as this show me that thinking in a global perspective is not a priority at this university.

And even on a more personal level, I think it is a crying shame that we can cut majors, yet not give a legit reason to what is taking so long for the new building on campus to be built. I understand building a structure takes time, but by no means should it be taking this long.

Is this building, which has taken far too long to build, more important than Aggies being able to actually become relevant to issues abroad? Because with this recent cut, I must admit I am not sure where our priorities are.

Maybe this explains why we have far too many students concerned about Nxlevel’s White Party, and not nearly enough students worried about the issues in Libya and how they affect the United States.

Our campus has to stop being so small minded and realize that there is more to this world around us than what we see going on around campus. It is a shame that so many students on campus cried, complained and felt their whole world come crashing down when they didn’t make the cuts to be on a Spring 2011 line, but didn’t think twice about the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan.

Nor have we stopped to think about how America can spend billions of dollars a day for issues abroad, but cannot spend a couple million a year to help save many of our historically black colleges and universities.

Our lack of understanding and knowledge has become so bad that it has even left us in a position to force many people to ask if HBCUs are even relevant anymore.

Maybe this is why we rarely get students to graduate on time. Better yet, maybe this is why we struggle to get students to graduate at all.

I love my Aggie family, but I think it is time we become more focused on the issues that matter, at home and abroad, oppose to the issues that do nothing, but spark drama.

So now, perhaps more than ever, is the time to ask ourselves, where are our priorities Aggies?

• TRUMAINE MCCASKILL