It pays - USM Forum -- Message Board

Magnolia · Status: Offline

It pays

stinky cheese man · Status: Offline

this is cryptic. can you be more specific?

Magnolia · Status: Offline

Stinky:

Very few classrooms at USm have computers at every student seat. the one in the library is one of maybe 2 that I know of that aren't regularly scheduled for classes. This is probably because of the expense of putting that many computers in a classroom and the fact that most classes don't need that kind of access all of the time. You can reserve the one in the library (or at least that has been the case for about 10 years) for occasional use. I have used it many times over the years for my classes. The director of the library school saw the room, liked it and asked for it. Then, because she has been an SFT supporter, she gets to schedule all these LS classes in the room for the entire semester. I'm told that there are 50 or 60 other class sessions scheduled in that room for the fall semester and now these classes have nowhere to go to get this kind of room for the class sessions the faculty have already planned for.

It stinks.

DJ · Status: Offline

A professor I know over there tried to reserve that room for students to take their finals online. Was told it was available but that each student would be charged a fee of $17 to take the exam. This is to use something that, so far as I am concerned, they are already paying for. Outrageous!

Magnolia · Status: Offline

As far as I know the library has never charged for the use of the room. At least my students have never had to pay anything. Maybe this is a new way to wring more $$$ out of students.

Bookie · Status: Offline

DJ wrote:

A professor I know over there tried to reserve that room for students to take their finals online. Was told it was available but that each student would be charged a fee of $17 to take the exam. This is to use something that, so far as I am concerned, they are already paying for. Outrageous!

There has never been a charge for that room (Room 207, Cook Library). That is, or was, the beauty of the room. Any instructor or professor could use it, for free, at almost any time, day, night or weekend. Was the professor you wrote about having someone serve as a proctor for the test, thus incurring some cost?

I can assure you that the library does not charge a penny for the use of that room.

Tonka Truck · Status: Offline

I think a larger point is possibly being missed. Yes, the administration and their friends have innapropriatly commandeered a teaching facility. However, the real problem is more disturbing - in essence, the university admin - namely Cynthia Moore - have essentially walked into a department on campus and taken their departmental space AND their equipment. The library owns and maintains all of the computers, projecters, etc., in this classroom as well as owning the space; Cynthia Moore has basically told the library to shut up and take it as the space committe takes the classroon; Oh, AND she expects the library to provide full support (technical, administrative) of the university's usage of the equipment, software and activity.

Therefore, the issue is this: if the admin can just waltz into the library, take their and take their equipment, what's to stop them from doing this to anyone's area, anywhere? What if Cynthia Moore decided, based on political needs, that English or Psychology wasn't utilizing an expensive projector enough? Or a classroom?

Further, I understand that Moore and Norton have supported their coup with falsified data, and more likley, have outright lied to the space committee and the libary about the existence of some dummy log of usage data - Norton and Moore have no real way of gathering data on the usage of library space, and to say that they do is specious if not just a simple-minded lie.

I also understand that the current library administrator is choosing not to fight this activity, and is apparently letting himself be bullied by a vindictive department chair and an incompetent university admnistrator into letting his overworked technical staff support equipment that the library will no longer be using, and to let a significant allotment of library equipment, purchased out of their flat-for-10-years budget be used for non-library purposes.

Why is it that working for USM often make a person feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy's football? aaaargh!