Monday, December 24, 2007

Broken Promises and Billion Dollar Investigating

In his most recent post, Matt Williams of Academic Senate fame, noted that despite a commitment by President Richard Joel to create "No Smoking" areas on campus, no progress has thus far been reported. This bothers me.

What bothers me is not the second-hand smoke blowing outside Furst Hall, but the administrative smoke screens clouding the communication and trust in this university.

I don't have an issue with smokers. But when President Joel makes a commitment and doesn't follow through, we should all take issue with that.

For all I know, the YU administration may have spent billions of dollars and countless hours investigating and preparing to tackle this issue. Yet, even if President Joel spends billions of dollars investigating and preparing to tackle the issue, if he doesn't tell us, if he doesn't inform YU's students, alumni, and faculty, do we have any reason to think that anything is being done, that his commitment will be followed through?

I, as a loyal fan of President Joel, believe that he must be working on this. But I wish I did not have to rely on emuna peshuta. I wish he would just tell us.

Has YU made other commitments which have not, as yet, happened? Would you like to hear about what is taking so long? Please let THE YU VENT know about 'em in the comments. We will try to do something about it.

[UPDATE: At the last Town Hall, if I remember correctly, President Joel promised a new Wi-Fi system that would extend across the whole campus within weeks, not months. He got a big applause for that, but even now I can barely get wireless in the library, let alone anywhere else.]

4 comments:

Yair Silbermintz said...

I unfortunately missed most of the town hall, but I was there for the wireless question. President Joel called on the new CIO to answer the question, and they ended up talking about their plans for wireless on campus. They specifically said that they were currently working on Cordoza, and that work to put wifi everywhere on the uptown campus had not begun.

Noah said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Noah said...

Yair:

Here is how I remember it, differently: After the CIO said that they are currently working on Cardozo and will do Wilf next, the student who asked the question [BTW, if you or anyone else know this guy, please get him in touch with me - ngreenfield@gmail.com] followed up saying, basically, that every day YU pushes this off they lose tons of money and he could do it for them really quickly - it is easy to do and should just be done.

The CIO responded, and I believe this is verbatim, "Alright - we'll do it now!" which received a happy applause.

Unless I imagined that whole scene, the administration has a responsibility to either follow through or tell us what is taking so long.

Anonymous said...

and if YU can't seem to be able to do it let that kid who asked the questioned set it up, apparently he can do it in a day