RIO-SIDE
In the past, I’ve criticized our school’s program for so many things. Among these criticisms were the program’s inability to emerge as a legitimate and competitive university around the nation. The most recent event that supported my claims was the basketball team’s early fall in the conference tournament. There are many more things to list, but there is no need to get into that at the moment.I’ll admit, my points have been dangerously close to becoming negative and unhelpful forms of criticism, but I feel it is necessary to point out our flaws before we can proceed. That’s the theme of this column: progress.

I feel that nothing is more dangerous to the progress of our university than to believe that our talents are limited, that our accomplishments are ultimate, and that our goals will never be realized.

This column and others I have written in the past were not necessarily meant to criticise; they were meant to be a call to action. I think that there is no better time to move forward than now. Look at us. We’ve come a long way, relatively speaking, but we have yet to do anything as significant as gain the nation’s undeniable respect. We sometimes pride ourselves in being competitive and talented, but we sometimes fall just short of proving that. Therefore, I propose that we forget our past shortcomings and change, adapt and upgrade like we’ve done in the past.

We are the school that upgraded to a more competitive division, the school that defied criticisms to renovate our identity and the school that still perseveres even though odds are stacked against us. We know what we’ve done in the past and we know that we do have a proud history. That’s the first step. We must look at our previous achievements and accept that our goals are possible to realize.

I’ll end this column with the words of someone who is quickly becoming a hero of mine. Legendary sports figure John Wooden once said, “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”

Riverside, we cannot continue to accept the status quo. It’s time for a change and time for us to finally get stuff done. We’ve made small progress, but now we have to take an even bigger leap. We are a school with a lot of potential. Why waste it?