Dear Editor,
I love my school – maybe a little bit too much at times – and I am an Osprey through and through.

Lately, I have been noticing a disturbing trend on campus. Just today, I saw no less than seven students walking around campus with the University of Florida clothing on.

I understand people support the UF football team because UNF doesn’t have one, but maybe part of the reason we don’t have one is because our students are too busy supporting the athletic departments at other schools.

The Ospreys have a great baseball team led by a hall of fame coach if people are looking for an Osprey sport to support. Not to mention, the Ospreys are 5-3 all time against a certain school in Gainesville.

Those valuable dollars people spend on clothes supporting other schools are dollars that do not make their way to the UNF athletics department.

The time has long passed for UNF students to take some pride in their school.

After four years at UNF, I look back at all of the awesome educational experiences I have been provided – ones that I certainly could not have gotten at UF or any other large school where I would take second place to a graduate student’s research.

The opportunities at UNF are endless if students seek to find them and take advantage of them.

There are opportunities for international study (I am going on my second international trip in May), for student leadership, for developing student passions through clubs and events, for doing undergraduate research or for making contacts within your professional community.

Our backyard is Jacksonville, and there are plenty of opportunities for students to make contacts in the community that will provide them with jobs and a network after they graduate.  Not many schools can offer all that, so why would someone go to UNF and still support another school that offers very few of these opportunities?

If students take pride in their school and make a good name for UNF in the professional community, it makes our degrees that much more powerful. Our degree, much like our economy, is worth as much as we believe it is, and I believe that to call oneself an Osprey alum is the most powerful currency you
can hold.

Aaron Kotlarz,
Senior, Civil Engineering