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Archive for April 9th, 2007

QOTD: … step off that road in another direction

Monday, April 9th, 2007

“Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms omnious or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road in another direction.”
— Maya Angelou

So glad to have graduated

Monday, April 9th, 2007

My God, get over yourself.

University officials say organizing an inauguration is so time-consuming that it can’t be coordinated with a president’s actual arrival on campus.

“It’s a mammoth job,” said Kathy Stafford, KSU vice president of university relations and development. “It would have been really, really difficult to get something organized for the fall.”

(But they can search, screen and choose candidates entirely in private and organize a mass press conference during exam week when no students are around or are too busy studying to be bothered learning who will lead their university into the foreseeable future, all before summer officially landed in Kent. ??)

While the M.A.C. Center can accommodate 6,000 people, the university will adjust the seating for a more intimate setting of 1,500, with about 1,200 faculty, students, government officials, alumni and the like expected to attend the free ceremony at 2:30 p.m.

In his speech, Lefton will lay out his vision for Kent State. So far, he has said he wants to elevate Kent State in the all-important national rankings, shape the university into a national leader and become more selective in what it offers.

I want to know how many students they’re actually expecting to show up. Realistically, they’re probably adjusting the seating because it would look pretty empty with an extra 4,800 empty seats. I’m just sayin’.

All this is modest when compared to that of many other colleges and universities. Some take the inauguration of a new president as a reason to roll out an entire week or month in balls, guest speakers, symposiums, concerts and the like.

“We think it’s an important celebration that the university needs to have to launch the new leadership, but considering how tight money is these days, we don’t want to make a bigger deal out of it than it is,” Stafford said.

“We’re trying to keep this much lower key” than the university did with its last president, Cartwright, in 1991, she said.

I’m betting most universities don’t wait a year to roll it all out, therefore diminishing the interest in the “new” guy. And even if they do, they’re just being silly, too. And I don’t care what Cartwright’s inauguration was like. Was she entering at a time when tuition had pretty much doubled over the last four years? (Seriously, I paid almost twice as much for my last semester as I did for my first.) Was she entering when college tuition was at an all-time high, especially relative to the average family income? I don’t know the details of her appointment, or care. Honestly guys, I was in first grade. I was more concerned with finding out where spot was always running to than who was heading some university. I’d like to know how much all of this is going to cost, and more important, where that money is coming from. It seems an awful lot of preparation for a guy who likely won’t stick around to see the decade out. Again, I’m just sayin’.

Kent State is poised for great things, [Lefton] has said over and over: “We’re poised to bust through the plexiglass ceiling.”

Wow, how witty. The ceiling isn’t glass anymore, it’s plexiglass. Doesn’t that make it harder to break?

I also love (read: am confused as to why) that they don’t have story comments on the story. Because I would have liked to see what other community members were thinking.