"This is going to be the best semester ever."

[mandolin]

So I was going through the archives of MacHall and cracked up when I hit comic #149:

It wouldn't be half as funny if it didn't make me think of Dr. Petersen near semester's end.

...well, I don't know about office hours at the bar, but still. :)

Comments

[alex-garg.livejournal.com]

Heheh.

And in a strange twist, our computer science chair... died; and instead of carpeting the office for a new chair, they're just cutting the major.

And hiking our tuition $3k/semester.

...

That's not as funny as the comic, but meh.

[jonathlee.livejournal.com]

... the chair died, so they're cutting the major? ... *blinks* That makes about as much sense as cutting, say, English, because the department chair dies. As in, it doesn't.

And $3k a semester? That seems a little... excessive...

[alex-garg.livejournal.com]

It's a strange, strange world down here in nowhere Virginia. These things eventually make a kind of morbid sense...

...which scares me to no end.

[jonathlee.livejournal.com]

I have... no words. Like, seriously. I have no way to reply to this. It is completely outside my experience.

... I realise that universities are private institutions, but... shouldn't they at least TRY to do something for the students?

... it just doesn't make sense. Like, what about all the other professors in the department?

[alex-garg.livejournal.com]

shouldn't they at least TRY to do something for the students?

They probably should, but they don't.

The administration of this college Emory & Henry College (screw anonymity) doesn't give a rat's ass about us as students. We're cash-cows to them.

In four years the tuition has gone from $8k/semester to now $19.5, grants and scholarships have not been inflated, professors have been forced out, and the college purchased 100 acres of land for the sole purpose of preventing the state from developing that interstate exit; our money (well, they *say* that the purchase was from a separate fund, but that's horseshit) went neither to us nor our faculty but to buy empty farmland to keep it empty farmland.

I looked to transfer my freshman and sophomore years when these problems came to the surface, but the admins kept bribing me back in with grants (in hindsight not so much because they cared about me as a person but because they just couldn't stand their retention rate getting any lower).

Also my majors (PoliSci and MassComm) are staffed by some brilliant and determined professors (who are also being treated like shit by the administration, so the departments probably won't be so staffed in a short while); so though the school is essentially wasting what money I do have to pay in as many possible ways as I can imagine, I am getting a good education - at least in my fields - not to mention getting a hell of a character building experience.

As far as the other professor for computer science, he's been relegated to teaching introductory computer classes to fill students' general studies requirements - which most students test out of (I didn't because it's an easy, three-credit-hours A).

This place is truly insane. If ever you hear of somebody looking to apply here, stop them.

...And if you have any friends at the IRS, please ask them to review the college's files.

[violetbloom.livejournal.com]

My technology/engineering driven alma mater would jump at the oppurtunity to drop English and all of those other pesky fine arts majors. Until they arrive at that kind of excuse, they just made us painfully aware of the fact thay they did not respect our existance... I had more required English classes in the old funky basement of the chem building than I care to remember. Not to mention the creative writing class in the converted broom closet... while they were building a new physics building... Sigh.

[weirdweb.livejournal.com]

...the hell?

Um, the chair of Hood College's English department passed away in 2001 - and they just assigned an interim chair and appointed two professors as joint chairs the next year. (And I'm talking a college that was nearly BROKE at this point...)

But cutting the whole freaking major??

Did they at least allow people who were currently majoring in CS to finish their majors and phase the major out rather than just axing it? Hood at least did that when they chopped the Studio Art major (otherwise, I suspect there'd have been a mob after the president).

[alex-garg.livejournal.com]

No, what the school usually does is outright axe majors - seniors have to make up how other classes are relevant to their majors (or, as happened when our sociology prof. died last year and they axed the major, they'll have to make something up like CS-Bio or CS-PoliSci) and everybody else has to go searching for another major.

Fortunately my departments are plentiful in professors, so a single death would be greatly tragic but not major-ending; but, here's hoping they don't all get on an ill-fated flight before I graduate.

[weirdweb.livejournal.com]

seniors have to make up how other classes are relevant to their majors (or, as happened when our sociology prof. died last year and they axed the major, they'll have to make something up like CS-Bio or CS-PoliSci) and everybody else has to go searching for another major.

Holy SHIT.

I am never allowed to bitch about my alma mater's penny-pinching ever again.

If Hood pulled that with the Studio Art major, there'd have been hordes of outraged juniors trying to burn down the registrar's office - and the student body at Hood tended to be kind of apathetic, too. I could just imagine the number of parents pulling out the lawyer stick on that one. (Then again, our Dean of Students was actually effective and gave a damn about the students, too, so maybe that's part of the reason why they couldn't just kill the major outright.)

[jennies.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the thing about Hood you have to remember is, at that point, it was a women's college.

Full of clever, cunning young women with free access to the science laboratories, matches, and dorms with 2 minute burn times.

And a history of things burning down. (Granted, that was generally the Pergola, but still. Anyone who's ever seen the lengths women will go to to get mad, get back, or just get even could've predicted the violence would've been mind-boggling and clever in a locked-room murder sort of way...)

[violetbloom.livejournal.com]

He he he he he. And the issue of burn times is revisited. I love it!

[kevenn.livejournal.com]

We had our final for our Directing Class in a bar. BEST. FINAL. EVER. I had a big ole White Russian while we sat around a table eating and discussing our final projects - and our professor picked up the tab for the food. BEST. FINAL. EVER.

[ecogryff.livejournal.com]

i've had profs who held their office hours in coffee shops, but i don't think i ever had one who used a bar. damn. : )