Published on
February 19, 2007 in
School.
For those who are far removed from their Loonyversity days, this week is (for those of us at DU) reading week, wherein people with money (or sufficient unused debt) go somewhere that isn’t cold*, and the rest of us pretend to study where it is cold. In the US, I’m told they call it Spring break. My only issue with that is, well, that it’s not Spring.**
At any rate, for your further edification (or re-edumacation), I’ll be posting all week to remind you of What Reading Week Is™.
To start:
Reading Week is finally fixing your sister’s computer
Reading Week is finally figuring out why your cousin’s computer no longer works
Reading Week is finally getting caught up on a month’s worth of Daily Show and Colbert episodes that you haven’t seen yet
*Some also go skiing, but that’s a less dramatic contrast.
**There’s not tons of reading on Reading Week either, but I’m far closer to a textbook than Spring Break is to Spring.
Published on
February 14, 2007 in
School.
Imagine a university, in the fictional town of… Ramilton, Ontario. They are aptly named Disaster University.
In the past, DU’s policy on closing the place has been if the public schools are shut down, then the University is shut down. This is largely a good idea, as DU’s students tend to commute.
However, a very recent snowfall led to school boards around the area announcing their closure the night before. Despite the local school board’s inclusion in this group, DU decided to wait until 5:30am to announce their decision. Worse, their decision was to announce that the school would be closed until noon, and that the decision would be reviewed throughout the morning, with a final announcement at 11am.
Discussion questions:
- Normally, a school closure is a boolean decision – yes or no. Does the invention of the “until noon” option qualify as creatively working within the sample space, or extreme stupidity?
- If a student who has a greater than 1.5 hour commute has a class at 12:30 – a likely possibility (given the weather) – what are they to do? Further, if they are using public transit, what if the only route that gets them there on time leaves before 11:00am?
- Disaster’s President, Greeter Forge, is one of the highest paid University Presidents in Ontario, at $410,000 annual salary – a $50,000 raise over the previous year. Just putting it out there.
- Disaster’s suggested method of getting updates is their News website. As the deadline approaches, it is impossible to load the site. Should Disaster have cheaped out on webservers, as they obviously did?
- Corollary: after having to upgrade every other web-based system on campus when it became obvious that they couldn’t handle their required load, should a policy have been devised?
It seems that the tinfoil hats I’ve often felt would be our one last refuge against Big Brother may not be that useful after all:
On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study
Unless, of course, that’s just what they want us to think.