excerpt:
Several alert readers sent me this story about Southwestern College, a cc near San Diego. According to the IHE account, the college has banned several faculty, including the past and current presidents of the union, from campus. Their indirect support of a student protest appears to be the reason. (The President is apparently on an extended vacation, which doesn't help.)To read the rest, posted on Inside Higher Ed, click here.
I won't go off on the evil of banning critics from campus, since I take that as given. And I won't do the usual administrators-are-the-source-of-all-evil rant, either, because it's neither true nor helpful.
Instead, I'll offer a critique as a college administrator. Simply put, Southwestern's administration is looking amateurish. This is not how it's done.
You can also read it on his blog: click here.
Tracy Daly's Board meeting highlights now available.
22 comments:
I really apprecaite the recent attention paid to our colleagues 100 miles down the road -
but what is with the ever changing format of Dissent?!?
Please. Please stop. It was perfect before.
I changed the blog format/template about two weeks ago--it just seemed like time for a change. Though I loved the new look (with the blue stripe on top and three columns), the template often failed to load properly. I got fed up with that and switched to a simpler all-black template that made graphics really pop but, for some, made text unreadable. So I just switched to blue to reduce the contrast, but then a Very Important Person told me that he or she hated the blue. OK, so I switched to some kind of tan, but, well, that just sucked. So, finally, I went with a totally new look that I like. It's the one you see today. Now, here's what's gonna happen next. Some will say: I like it, cuz its readable. And some will say its readable but ugly. And some will say go back to X, while others will say, no, go back to X+1 or X-1. And, as usual, I will have no recourse but to go by my own lights, such as they are. Sheesh! (But, honestly, do provide any feedback about our look: what you like, what you don't like, what you prefer, etc.) --R
Yep, I like this one. With the others it was mostly "Ugh", or "yuck" for me. Your VIP was right about the blue! I think that after a short while it will grow on those that don't like it...
ES
I like this one best.
Could it be that I've made a good choice?
How odd that good fortune smiles on me in such tiny affairs while the world at large ...
You generally make excellent choices, Roy! Love the blog. Everyone does.
Well, hell; as usual, I seem to be in the minority. (I'm one of those people who decides they really like something--a flavor of juice or gum, a TV show, a blog format--only to see it promptly disappear from the shelves or the schedule or the blogosphere.)
Sure enough, I don't much like this oh, so WHITE, blindingly-bright look. And for some reason, the page doesn't fit on my desktop any more. What the--?
Oh, well. It's true that you've got to LOVE the blog!
MAH
I agree MAH - the new white ain't the old white. Somehow it's too bright. And the sidebars run into the main posts - at least in my brain.
Still, LOVE the blog and the blogmeister.
As predicted!!!!!
I'm with MAH--love the blog, hate the glaring brightness.
My vote is for the blue. It was gorgeous and also seemed to fit since IVC's school color is blue.
I like it!
'tween you and me? Disliked the blue the most.
Don't judge me by what I am about to say, but the look reminds me of a stack of papers, and a stack of papers is usually a very satisfying thing.
Feeling anxious; 40 minutes before his first UCI midterm BS
I've very tempted to change the template/look of the blog again, but that would surely be a mistake. Now, in fact, I've changed the template perhaps five times in the history of the blog. I learned long ago that there's no satisfying everybody though. There will always be those who very definitely dislike any given template. It's a bit of a mystery to me that this occurs, since I would have thought that people share more or less the same sense of color and design, but no. I like this template because it is very clear and mostly elegant, despite it's overwhelming white-itude. The white-itude doesn't seem overpowering to me. I actually tried changing the background color (last night), but nothing seemed to work. So there we have it. -R
I like the white but find the absence of distinct columns a bit confusing - and the varying font sizes and colors. It's difficult for me to discern one article from another.
But I will read the blog no matter what.
Any update from SWC?
Do you really think that people share the same sense of color and design? Whose ass did you pull that out of?
12:05, I was being charitable. It is true, however, that most people that I know (and, admittedly, this is not a representative sample of the human population) do seem to share more or less the same like and dislikes concerning music and literature and films. It is precisely that set of people who amaze me by taking such violently different views about blog templates. All of my friends seem to love (e.g.,) my furniture; and yet they are distinctly divided about my blog design choices. Surprising. -R
I just gotta say, 12:05, that I would be happy to go the rest of my life without encountering again the expression "whose a-- did you pull that out of," and any expression that refers to pulling things out of that particular part of the body.
Ugly, ugly, ugly. Don't know how widely this element of my taste is shared. But I'm quite "staunch" (as Roy would put it) about it.
Thank you for listening.
MAH
Well, yeah!
Roy has the most beautiful furniture in the world!
NO one of any sense or sensibility could disagree.
Just kidding--but it IS beautiful.
Except for the fabric choices.
Yes, there exists one soul who preferred 50s era geometry over the traditional designs that were settled on. I do believe he'd live in Monsanto's "home of the future" if he could. (The old Disneyland exhibit, made of plastic, I think.)
Harrumph!
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