Ever Becoming, Never Completed

If you don’t know where Enfield, CT is, or the controversy surrounding where to hold graduation ignore this.

It seems that the Board of Education in Enfield voted to rescind with their proposal to host graduations on the high school campuses. That decision was made in response to a frivolous and misguided threat by the ACLU over hosting graduations at First Cathedral (here and here for discussion of why the threats are both bad and pointless). Before the board voted to rescind their January decision they held an hour’s worth of public comment on the issue. One person spoke out against the proposal. One.

My first thought when I read this article (it’s paywalled so unless you subscribe to the JI ignore the link) was where are all the people who oppose First Cathedral as a graduation site? To be fair this wasn’t a discussion of whether to rescind not holding graduations at the cathedral, just to not hold them on campus. But still those people who supposedly oppose holding graduation at First Cathedral refuse to step forward and voice their opinions on the issue. They have so far refused to propose an alternative or simply explain why they oppose the measure. I’ll call these people what they are: cowards. They are cowards who feel big and tough when they hide behind the ACLU but when asked to explain themselves publicly they run and hide. That is the definition of a coward.

Secondly I want to readdress an issue raised by the one lone dissenter, one Robert Tkacz, who the paper lists as a former board member. I’m not sure when he was on the board but I’m almost 100% certain it wasn’t when we initially proposed First Cathedral as a graduation site in 2006/7. Mr. Tkacz stated in his dissent:

The only resident who spoke against the proposal to rescind the decision was Robert Tkacz, a former school board member, who said the graduations should be at the high schools because the school system can’t afford having an elaborate off-site graduation.

“We have a reality here,” Tkacz said. “The money is not there.”

Now I can’t confirm or deny whether First Cathedral raised their rates since we recommended them for the 2007 graduation, and my argument here is based off of information from then and I haven’t followed up on the school board meeting outside of what I’ve read in the papers. Anyway back to the financial argument. When we proposed First Cathedral in 2007 it was actually cheaper than a graduation on campus for a few reasons:

1. First Cathedral provided a flat rate for all their services (Building/staging/security/Audio-Visual etc.) whereas hosting graduation on campus or in town varied depending on rates for tents, chairs, etc.

2. Hosting graduation on campus or in town meant the town needed to pay janitors to set up and break down the equipment. The janitors were paid overtime for all of that as well.

Both of these issues not only applied to on-site graduations, but also anything done by the school board (so holding the graduation at an off-campus site in town would still require town employees being paid).

I know that if graduation where held on the campus football fields the town was quoted as needing close to $30,000 dollars in insurance to fix potential damage to the fields from heels, chairs, the stage. That alone presents a serious issue for those arguing that on-site graduations are more fiscally conservative. Again this vote wasn’t whether to hold the graduation on campus or at First Cathedral, but unless someone proposes a better site that doesn’t involve the high school gym as a back up (which rules out anything in town) then we’re back at First Cathedral.

So to those people who supposedly oppose First Cathedral, please step into the open and propose a reasonable solution to how to hold a graduation that not only ensures an adequate number of guaranteed tickets to students, but is also at the value offered by First Cathedral. My email inbox is waiting. Or even better tell Dr. Gallacher or the board of education. Both would love to hear from you I’m sure.

Updated below with end result, skip down read that, then return to the top

I just wanted to let you know that you have forever lost me as a subscriber to your paper. I would have figured that given the state of your industry (though I know nothing of your current financial state) papers should be more than willing to listen to their customers and work out issues, but you have proven to do just the opposite.

My paper that I paid for, at the reduced TU rate, has not shown up for the last two weeks. I sent emails asking you guys to look into what was happening, and I called at least twice, and nothing has been done for two whole weeks. That’s not surprising though, because the circulation email you list on your site comes back as not in use even though you splash it all over your site. Is it your company policy to treat a paying customer so badly? Or do you just do this to TU students? I would figure you guys use the TU discount program as a way to pull in younger people who might not otherwise even look at your paper. If that was your goal you guys were doing good, I like your writers and you had a good sports section, but anymore it seems you want people to not subscribe. That you also do well.

Your paper is, in my eyes, an unequivocal failure. I have had nothing but issues with getting delivery on a daily basis and in a manner that doesn’t involve a paper boy throwing the paper from the ground floor up to the third. I was more than willing to pay you full price once I graduated TU to continue delivery of the paper, but seeing as how you show no interest in giving a paying customer what he needs I’ll just not subscribe.

So Tulsa World you can keep your paper, tell your paper boy to not even bother with the rest of the semester even though I paid for it. I don’t want it, it’s not worth the hassle or the time to continually call you guys or send emails that go nowhere. You might also want to look up what happens when someone writes publicly that your company is a business that doesn’t provide the services they promise, offers no form of communication, and employs unprofessional people.

Addendum

I got a call from my mom about half an hour ago telling me that the Tulsa World had left two(!) messages on her phone looking for me. Beside the fact that her cell phone hasn’t been listed as the contact number for me for two years now and the fact that my contact information is readily available if they checked numerous emails I’ve sent to them; it was a step forward. Then I decided to open my door and see if they did the simplest thing they could do, deliver the paper. They actually did that.

So yes the Tulsa World apparently is now delivering my paper as they should have been and as I was paying them to do. But I’m not going to take down this post because it shouldn’t take a blog post and hassle to get someone to listen.

Sidenote II: this doesn’t change my refusal to subscribe to the paper after this year. They’ve still lost me, but at least they listened at some point.

Sidenote III: I just realized my email address isn’t public on the blog. blogreply@bck.otherinbox.com

I’m hesitate to discuss Google Buzz as I see no real redeeming value in either discussing it or using it, but at some point Google’s Tactics get so out of hand that you’re left with no choice.

I popped into my inbox yesterday and found Google Buzz turned on. I can’t remember signing up for it or clicking ok, but somehow it was there. After searching around I finally found how to turn the damn thing off (way down at the bottom, tiny link). Now it’s being reported that Buzz determines who you follow based on who you talk to on via email or google talk.

I use Gmail yes, but if I need to do something serious or personal? Hell no. Granted I don’t do that kind of email often or at all, but anyone who does that in Gmail is a grade A idiot. Which brings me to my question of how Google gets away with it.

Google failed at making a social network once with Jaiku (ok I guess dodgeball or whatever it was called counts too), and now they’ve solved their issue of market share: just force a social network down everyone’s email throat. Next they say “hey you probably have no want to use this, but let us help you automatically follow people.” Through all of this early adopters and social network pundits can’t seem to understand why everyone is so upset¹.

Google is growing tentacles into everything and yet no one in the tech field sees anything wrong with it. Just look at what Google has a hand in:

1. Advertising

2. Search

3. Office Suite

4. Email

5. Telephones

6. Browsers

7. Social networks

8. Desktop OS

9. Mobile OS (which to be fair I own, and I guess in a way phone hardware)

10. GPS

11. Broadband internet

I can go on but you get the picture. I use Google and Gmail but only because they are frankly the best option out there (oh and my college signed on to allow Google to host our webmail rather than running our own imap servers). People berate those who attack a service while at the same time attacking it, but what are we suppose to use when Google has driven all the other potential competitors out? Guatemalans termed the United Fruit company el pulpo or the octopus because it hand its hand in everything (fruit, electric, rail, shipping). The term applies to Google just as much.

Not only am I going to link to Techcrunch, but I’m also going to give them a ton of credit. Daniel Brusilovsky, the teenage wonder kid as some called him, has been fired from Techcrunch, for asking for stuff in exchange for writing stories about the companies he covered. Shocking.

Arrington:

On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.

After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post.

The intern in question has admitted to some of the allegations, and has denied others. We suspended this person while we were sorting through exactly what happened. When it became clear yesterday that there was no question that this person had requested, and in one case taken, compensation for a post, the intern was terminated.

I remember the first time I ran into Daniel in Chris Pirillo’s IRC chat room (yes very dark days that I tend to not think about whenever possible), and I couldn’t figure out why he was so touted. Sure he seemed like a good kid and a lot of the moderators loved him and willingly let him take over for Chris for periods, but there was nothing of newsworthiness in his story.

Daniel at the time was on maybe one or two boards (qik from what I can remember), but he quickly starting showing up everywhere. He founded some social network for Teens and ended up writing for Techcrunch. But I still had no idea why he was so hyped. My first impression was frankly that it was some kid with connections, the life isn’t fair deal. Granted that could be because he kept floating the new stuff he was getting (namely macs, hmm…).

I vividly remember one of the moderators (one of the first to discuss Daniel) saying “he’s a good good kid,” oh the irony indeed.

At this time last year Mike Jones the associate editor of the Tulsa World used his bully pulpit of the Sunday Opinion section to tell all of us why newspapers just aren’t going to die. His larger point was that newspapers fill a niche of hyperlocal news gathering that just can’t be matched by the Internet or Television news. I don’t want to pick apart that point of contention, but what I do want to point out his is statement in regards to the Ice Storm of 2007 and newspapers being there:

As for the winter storm. Television news and weather did a great job of reporting and keeping their viewers informed. That’s because during this storm the Tulsa area had electricity. We all can remember the ice storm of December 2007. Some people went without power for nine days or longer. Most were without power for at least a day or so. During that time there were no TV reports because there was no TV. There were some battery-powered radios and TVs and some people had generators to keep the power going. But for the most part, Tulsa was, literally, in the dark. My power was off for eight days. My lifeline was my newspaper. It was at my house every day. It is how I learned when and where the power crews were working. And it kept me in touch with the rest of the state and world. I suspect that the folks in southeastern Oklahoma and part of Arkansas were glad to have a daily newspaper last week.¹

He paints an excellent picture of the Tulsa World’s deliverymen risking live and limb to ensure his “lifeline” to the outside world was there. Maybe I just have terrible delivery people but a year later Tulsa just got hit with another winter storm packing some ice and snow and my “lifeline” wasn’t there. Good thing I didn’t lose power because it’s pretty clear Mike Jones and his lifeline are living in some alternate universe (or it could just help he’s the associate editor of the paper not some random person who pays for delivery 365 days a year.)

This morning on Twitter I congratulated the University of Tulsa for having the foresight to pre-treat the sidewalks on campus before the impending ice storm. Unfortunately for students that is where TU’s effective management ends.

TU stated in their announcement last night that the school would be open today, but they would continue to monitor the weather conditions and alert students if the campus was to be shut down via

TU home page – www.utulsa.edu

Social media – Twitter (twitter.com/utulsa) & Facebook (The University of Tulsa

Local media school closure lists

Email notification to all students and employees via TU email accounts

TU emergency text messaging system

Well the campus is shut down, and of those two only one worked as expected. TU’s communication director sent the email announcing the closing at 1:51 PM, 9 minutes before the scheduled closure as evidenced by this screencapture:

How about Twitter? Nope they only updated that 5 seconds ago, at 20 past two, 20 minutes after the scheduled closing:

The emergency messaging system delivered the text message to me at 2:17, again 17 minutes after the scheduled closing. As well the University of Tulsa homepage failed to display the closing until just a few minutes ago (roughly 20 past 2).

Because of all of this, many of the 2 PM classes were about ready to get started and hundreds of students were out on campus with no knowledge that the campus was closed. The class I had at 2 PM actually voted to hold class even though the campus was officially closed. We all decided we might as well do something seeing as how most of us walked across campus for nothing. Unfortunately the dean of the college overruled us and we were forced to leave.

I cannot state this enough, this is a serious failing on the part of the University of Tulsa. There decision to close the campus with under 10 minutes before one of the busiest time slots for classes is one of the most idiotic decisions I have seen while attending this school¹ I understand TU’s unwillingness to cancel classes as it presents serious issues for professors, but the school and its administration need to make these calls with a reasonable amount of time to ensure all students receive the message before it happens.

I can only hope no student was injured walking back across campus when they should not have even been out in the first place. I hope that the University issues a formal apology and investigates how an unequivocal failure like this managed to happen.

Obama is set to announce a spending freeze on everything but defense spending during his State of the Union speech on Wednesday. While it’s nice to see him willing to take some steps towards reducing the deficit, he continues to avoid confronting the major source of spending in our country today, Defense.

When Dwight Eisenhower left office in 1961 he warned Americans of the so called Military Industrial Complex saying:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.¹

Obviously President Eisenhower was right, and we failed to heed his warning. Today the defense industry controls vast sectors of government and has enormous clout over our elected officials. Just last year 40 senators voted to continue funding of the F-22 stealth fighter program, even against the express wishes of both the President and the Secretary of Defense. This happened because the Air Force spread the production across 46 states, meaning that if the F-22 was cancelled, a good majority would vote against their states.² In essence these Senators were voting for billions to fund a relic of a plane because of the defense industry ties to their states.

It’s not only cold war era planes that are funded by the unstoppable ball that is the military industrial complex; our current worldwide base system is as much a relic of the Cold War as the F-22. As of 2008 the United States has 865 facilities spend across 40 countries with 190,000 troops deployed in total. These facilities cost the United States $250 billion (with a B) a year to maintain. According to Nick Turse in his book, The Complex: How the Military Invades our Everyday Lives, the US could clear 4.8 billion dollars off the budget by liquidating two bases, the one at Guantanamo Bay and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.³ The US can be just as effective deploying troops for the current anti-terrorism campaigns with potentially half the bases we currently have, given the improvements in technology over the last 20 years.

Not only would cutting bases improve out budget’s bottom line, but it would improve our image around the world. The US marine base on Okinawa in Southern Japan has long been a hot-bottom issue for the Japanese and has put a serious strain on US/Japanese relations. Just this week a mayoral candidate in Nago, on the northern end of the island won election opposing the base relocation. His city had long been named as a site for the base relocation, but with his election Japan and the Obama administration are left scrambling. Not only would any reasonable person oppose a base for it’s noise and environmental issues, but the US base at Okinawa has long been home to numerous crimes by service personnel. One of the most heinous crimes happened in 1995 when a 12 year-old girl was kidnapped, raped, and almost murdered by three service personnel stationed at the base.⁴ While the US government turned over the offenders in that case, thousands of other offenders are not turned over to local officials under “Status of Forces Agreements” (SOFA) that the US government regularly signs with countries that harbor our bases. These agreements all but exempt personnel from local laws, allowing 83% of the 3,000 plus troops who’ve committed crimes on Okinawa to escape trial.⁵

Empires breed corruption, and the US is certainly a neo-empire under any definition of the word. On Wednesday Obama has the chance to put his foot down and not only end the military industrial complex, but also to liquidate the needless empire the US currently has. That is not to say that we should stop funding defense entirely or that we should pull out of all our bases around the world, just that the United States can move out of the Cold War and into the 21th century. Even though Obama has the opportunity to enact real change, one would be naive to expect it to happen, because as we saw with his surge in Afghanistan he is all too willing to bow to Republican pressures. Republicans like James Inhofe are all too willing to twist the logic and attack any defense cuts as irrational and bad for US security, and those who propose them as soft on terrorists. Obama needs to step forward and tell the hawks in Congress and the American people there is a difference between spending cuts, and smart business practices. One would not question changing how a business works if it would save them billions with no ill effects, so why do we continue to bow to fear mongering in regards to defense spending?

I don’t follow late night TV outside of the few clips that make it viral on the Internet, but for some reason I’ve been keeping my eye on Leno’s experiment failure. The one thing about the whole twisted story that has me wondering is Conan’s contract. You would think that given the experimental nature of Leno’s show Conan would have signed a contract only with the express promise of no changes to his show or time should Jay’s fail, but obviously he didn’t.

Should we feel sorry for Conan because he signed a bad contract? Hey at least he has a job unlike Carson Daily in a month or so (yeah totally didn’t know he actually had a show on NBC late night but he does/did).

Xeni Jardin’s message:

This is a Delta international flight. No going to the bathroom, no laptopping, no helping kids or elders in adjacent rows last hour of flt.

Gizmodo’s interpretation:

Multiple sources, among them Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing, have also been told that no electronics are allowed on international flights. None. So you can’t even play video games to distract yourself from how badly you have to pee.

Techcrunch and other’s have picked up on one other tweet which says no electronics on international flights. Blogs that are bitching about the no electronics rule are relying on one tweet, and interlinking to others which base their understanding of the situation on the same tweet, and in the case of Gizmodo totally misreading a tweet. The New York Times and every other news service reports that the restriction is no electronics last hour of the flight, which makes sense with how the TSA operates and fits with Xeni’s tweet.

I’m more than willing to accept blogs can report news, but this is bullshit. Tweets are 140 characters and much of what is written on the service is easy to misunderstand (or in the case of Gizmodo, blatantly misread), and the situation itself is easy to misunderstand. The TSA even says on their site that many of the restrictions are “unpredictable”. Blogs have shown they are way too willing to embrace terrible sources and make sweeping generalizations when they shouldn’t.

Are you a high school senior? Are you thinking about applying to the University of Tulsa? Do you want to attend the school? If so you probably went on the propaganda tour with the “University Ambassadors” where they walked you around campus and raved about all the excellent things the university of Tulsa has to offer you for your 30,000 dollars. Unless they changed the tour from when I took it you probably weren’t given some bad things to think about. Right? Well I’ve got a few reasons to consider not coming here, all of these are from my personal experiences here during my three years. So lets have at it:

1. Not all professors are full professors

This was a huge thing for me when I applied because I didn’t want to be paying hundreds of dollars for class hours to be taught by a graduate student. Even those lowly basic courses would be taught by full professors. Guess who taught my freshman English class? If you guessed full professor you would be wrong, it was a grad student. To be fair that was the only class where that issue arose, but it was still a flat out line by admissions. I assume they are still investigating this issue two years later because I was told I would receive a reply but never did.

2. You were trying to sleep because you had tests? Oh sorry we’re working

Freshman year I lived in the all freshman dorm residence hall and towards the end of the semester I started getting woken up to saws cutting metal and other banging around 7:30 each morning. Being a college student and because I didn’t have classes until 11, I enjoyed sleeping in some. But that was impossible when they’re doing construction right outside your window. Apparently no one thought that college students could possibly be sleeping at 7:30 in the morning. Of course that isn’t surprising seeing as how….

3. Management is management

People like to kid that management people are dumb. Well TU’s pretty much are. Freshman year I left my keys in Connecticut by accident, my fault yes, but I was willing to own up and pay for the new locks which I knew would happen. I wasn’t planning to end up locked out of my apartment when they called the locksmith and changed the locks without informing me. Alright technically I just went down stairs and had the desk use the master key, but I couldn’t leave my room for over an hour until management got off break and brought up the new set of keys.

But you know who was even worse? The manager (Resident Director in TUSpeak) at the all male dorm. He (and his staff) had no control over the dorm, people left garbage on the floor of the bathroom when they took the trashcan out. When people didn’t flush the toilets (disgusting I know) or wouldn’t bring their trash to the dumpster – opting to leave it on communal trash cans – the director threatened floor wide fees. Or how about the time a test of the fire alarms went off at 10 in the morning and he didn’t inform people (by email) until 20 minutes before. Or better yet what about the time four rooms (including the RA’s) flooded because the cold water pipe for the AC broke and the director sent no communications. Did they even check all the pipes to make sure nothing like it would happen again? But anyway back to the dorm itself…

4. All Males Dorm is a letdown

Club Mabee sounds awesome right? Yeah it sounded cool when the ambassadors told me all the stuff that happens there. Then you find out its a big room with a few chairs and couches and a 20 year old big screen that remains locked a majority of the time. The basement of the dorm likewise is comprised of a warped ping pong table, a broken foosball table, a floor with numerous broken tiles and some vending machines. A-fucking-mazingly. Plus if you luck out like me you’ll end up in a dorm room with a tree planted right outside the window so that no natural light gets in. But at least I had a place to study right?

5. Overcrowding leads to no study lounges

Yeah about those study lounges. Last year the dorm was so overcrowded that they were turning doubles into triples and moving people into study lounges. Hope you weren’t planning to get your money’s worth out of those because theres a guy in there in his boxers eating lucky charms. Sorry. See the issue with the dorms is that we had more than four dorms at one point in time, but then it was revealed two of them had no sprinklers and someone realized it was probably dangerous to house a bunch of college kids in there. So the school built apartments and opened them up to upperclassmen at the same time that they were increasing enrollment. More freshman but same amount of housing space do the math.

6. Vending machine card readers regularly broken

For the last two semesters the first month or so of school has seen the vending machine card readers broken. You can still use the machines, but when you have hundreds of dollars worth of dining dollars to use to get your doritos you’ll be using your own money. It’s sad to admit, but I spend quite a bit at those damn machines seeing as how all my classes are centered around lunch. So if you’re like me you’re going to lose out on quite a few dining dollars when they’re down. But hey at least I can get a refund right?

7. No changing meal plans after first week and no canceling between semesters

I took out one of the senior meal plans this semester figuring it would be a good idea and I didn’t have many meals to use up. But something funny happens when you live in an apartment with a full stove, you cook for yourself. I didn’t use much of my meal plan this semester and figured well I might as well cancel it and save the money. Not so fast my friend, you can’t do that. See TU only allows you to cancel plans during semesters if your withdrawing. So obviously you better be able to predict the future when taking out meal plans for the year, because once you do you’re roped in for the year. Sure you can downgrade, but don’t think about getting your money back.

8. You pay the electric in the apartments…and AC/heat is electric based

Now I have no problem paying the electric bill for my apartment, in fact I think it’s a smart thing for TU to do. It cuts down on their costs and forces students to think about how much electricity they use before heading out on their own. Hell I don’t even mind that they made heating and AC electric, but I do have an issue with the drafty windows. These windows are nice and let a lot of light in, but at the same time you can sit near them (as I do on the couch and here at my desk) and feel a good 5-10 degree difference in temperature. The windows are terribly drafty and in the winter my heat kicks on quite a bit just to keep the apartment at a cool 62, don’t even think of going higher. My first full month at the apartment was December and I paid over 70 dollars for electric that month. One person, 70 dollars.

Side note to this part, the windows are not only drafty but I’ve found small puddles of water on the window sills numerous times after cold nights and rain storms. Too much leakage.

9. Triple check your account

This semester was an interesting one. First I had issues with loans not posting, then about five weeks into the school semester I found out I had work study money that I was never adequately told about. The financial aid office tells me I was, by email, but oddly no other email besides the first one I got (and returned to them) shows up in my archived mail. Even if I was told about it in April of last semester, how exactly did they manage to wait until October of this semester to tell me? Wouldn’t you think that a school looking out for you the student would have at least contacted me within a week of school starting? Or maybe over the summer? Nah let the money go to waste and then tell him. I’ll take the blame for this, but just remember TU wouldn’t be watching your back for you.

10. We totally recycle…kinda

TU has tried to be environmentally conscience, but they’re terrible at it. The recycle bins outside my apartment are hardly emptied and most of the time they’re overflowing. You regularly see bottles, cans, and newspapers lying on the ground in front of the bins (which are basically big garbage cans inside a large metal container. When TU does empty the containers know where a lot of the recyclables on the ground go? In the garbage, least the two times I’ve seen the bins emptied.

11. The Arts & Sciences College is potentially hazardous to your health

I cannot stress this enough, this one has not been confirmed by the EPA or anything like that, but theres quite a bit of talk about mold issues in the building. First off when it rains around Tulsa, it rains. Downpours, the sidewalks turn into rivers and the second floor of Chapman hall has leaky windows. If you go to TU head over there next time we get a soaking rain and look for the big puddle by the windows. Next we had a ceiling tile fall in one of my classes last year, and it looked like it was going to fall for a while. The tile was yellow like it had been absorbing water for a while now. When it finally fell TU stuck a bucket underneath it and when it dried up they stuck a new tile and took away the bucket. The room for the next two classes smelled terrible. Oh and did I mention the lecture hall is lined with asbestos and the plaque telling you this was hidden behind a door until last year? Listen to all the professors in the departments and you’ll learn most of them cough regularly, even though they don’t smoke.

12. That promise to get a job on campus? Better be work study.

Last year I saw flyers around campus for front desk assistants in the residence halls. I read over the flyer and noticed it didn’t say work study which was excellent because I figured it was one of the few jobs that I could maybe get on campus seeing as how I didn’t have work study. So I filled out the online application and was told to attend a training seminar where we would also schedule hours. A month or so later (I filled out the application over the summer and the training seminar was about two weeks into the school year) I headed off to the seminar, which turned out to be two hours long before we headed off to fill in our timesheets. End result? I didn’t have a timesheet, because well they were only hiring work-study students. This was said no where on the flyers, no where on the application (in fact when I filled in a form at the seminar it offered a work study/non-work study option). The person in charge of our dorm even said he saw my application (in which it said non-work study) and yet they did nothing to inform me I was not eligible for the position until I sat through 2 hours of training. By the time I found out I wasn’t eligible the businesses off campus that I was interested in working at were not hiring because they were full.

Now that I’ve told you all the terrible things that happened I’ll share some good stuff, because unlike the ambassadors I enjoy giving you the full picture, not just the side i believe in. So here goes

1. The teachers are excellent

I can’t stress this point enough, the teachers I’ve had (excluding 2 – the English teacher and a physics professor who missed quite a few classes and gave us our take home final close to a week after we were suppose to get it) are excellent. All of the professors in the political science, history, religion/philosophy, sociology, and economics are great and friendly (I say these because I work in the department). Most of the professors are more than willing to work with you and are usually very open to helping students outside of office hours and class.

2. The food isn’t too bad

We have a Chik-Fil-A on campus and a pizza place that regularly has long lines. The food court’s food is cheap but good, and the cafes food is better than stuff I’ve had at some restaurants. That’s not to say all of the food is good, but it’s better than what you expect for college cafe food. Theres also three coffee places on campus which make it easy to get a coffee or pastry quickly.

3. The redone library is great

TU just finished a redone library and it is probably the best building on campus. It has 24/7 computer labs, numerous chairs (comfortable ones too), one of the coffee places, and tons of helpful staff. The book selection varies depending on what class/topic, but you can generally find enough to get you started, and interlibrary loan will do the rest. TU Copy is cheap for copies when you need them, and you have a generous printing limit per semester.

4. Security is quick

People joke about Campo, but security on campus is one of the few things I won’t knock. Every time I’ve called them to deal with neighbors and the few times I’ve locked myself out, they were quick to response and checked out the whole situation. They’re also willing to drive you if you need a ride somewhere on campus.

So there you go, the good, the bad, and the ugly about the University of Tulsa. There are obviously more reasons both for and against the University, but I’m all out for right now. I’ll update this post if something else should arise, or if I get any responses to the piece. If you’re planning to look at TU and you found this article I recommend you come tour the campus, but don’t take the words of the propaganda team for face value. Tour the campus on your own time as well, talk to students, and best of all ask the ambassadors to name one negative thing about TU. Press them on the question if they try to work around it.

If you are a student, facility member, or adminstrator of the University and want to add something to this post, whether more information to a particular point, or a rebuttal to any of the points feel free to send me an email and I’ll post replies as they come in.