President Zimpher gave her State of the University address recently. She started with scary budget talk-particularly the kind that cuts over 80 administrative positions. She spoke of University accomplishments under its #1 goal: “Put Students at the Center.” She later ended with: “Let’s get to work!”
I must say that Zimpher’s Central Student tends to strike a chord with me.
Certainly she isn’t including us cast-offs at RWC who have to fight for food after 2 p.m., are corralled into trailers that pretend to be “pavilions,” and battle the dust bunnies in the stairwells.
She wouldn’t be meaning us, would she?
She couldn’t be referring to us Central Students who had to fight to start a student government again. Or the computer stalkers throwing guilt at myspacers in the computer lab.
Or the woman in the restroom wrestling the auto-flusher for her sani-seat cover, right?
But, you know, shortly before Zimpher gave her speech, we here at Raymond Walters had an opportunity to hear from our Dolores Straker in her Dean’s Forum.
Unfortunately, where Zimpher gave somber numbers and glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel, Dean Straker claimed communication breakdowns.
And where Zimpher talked student focus, Straker talked planning focus-the kinds of plans seeking proposals for ideas on how to construct procedures to implement strategic thinking about the future of planning for RWC.
Plans to forecast strategies for planning that employ divergent thinking and offer notions of student involvement in planning methods to be implemented upon review of information that will once again come boiling up from the pits of all departments that now make a living out of planning.
No plans to fix the rogue toilets or pick up the hairy creatures living in the stairwells or for a new building or more parking.
No plans to bring wireless internet to the only UC campus that has no plans to offer such a horrific beast.
No plans to feed the starving students that are packed into the walls of our campus until all hours of the night.
No plans to explain the numbers she presented to us at her last Dean’s forum in the spring.
No plans to offer any incentive whatsoever for students to become involved in their campus.
No plans to excite the students about the opportunities available to them here.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I love our Dean, and I love this campus.
We have the most dedicated faculty and staff-some of the most interesting and interested students-and we have beautiful grounds, excellent programs, and a lot of perks that Main Campus doesn’t have-most notably, we have the ability to get to know one another.
But I’m tired of offering up solutions to an administration that prefers to plan.
Because, see, I may just be a lowly student, but, I prefer to hear these kinds of words:
Actions. Results. Communication. Accountability.
And “Let’s get to work.”
Want to join the fight?
Come to our office, Muntz by 265.
Visit us at: www.rwc.uc.edu/rwcsg and <www.myspace.com/realitycheck_rwcsg.
Email your compliments and complaints to cowanka@email.uc.edu.
And, hey, you!
Got wireless?