ITCS decided to take a semester and renovate part of Pierpont into a computer lab. This ITCS is a lab that anyone can use not just engineers. So they spent an entire semester to make a computer lab that is 350 feet from the largest computing site on campus. That didn't really bother me though, because it is a nice little lab. It only has 11 computers. For those 11 computers they put in 2 high speed laser-jet printers. And for those 2 printers they installed these.
Can you see the face? Can you see the boobs shooting out pink silly string?They put in 2 huge flatscreens to show the printing queue for each of the 2 printers. The pink circles show surround the actual queue on the screen. The rest of the space is either blank or ITCS tips and news. Who approved this? I can only imagine someone's thought process at ITCS.
ITCS: We should add 11 computers in Pierpont. And we should put in 2 expensive black and white printers so that people wont have to wait for someone else who is printing. And for each of those printers we should buy 60 inch flatscreens to display the 13 inch queue. Putting them both on the same flatscreen like they do at the Fishbowl would never work.
This is the sort of thinking that my tuition supports and it sickens me.
3 comments:
I remember the huge hullabaloo that was raised after they put the two flat screens behind THE POSTING WALL, where they were instantly covered up with flyers. Things that would be more useful to students:
• Water slide (a la Blank Check) from the second floor of the Grad Library down to the Diag.
• Upgrade from free Lifestyles to free Trojans for the one or two people on campus with active sex lives.
• Digital clock on the North Campus tower
• Plasma screens in all of the busses
• Parking (either convenient or non-convenient)
I remember bringing this up to the Board. It turns out that ITCS, like every other U-M dept., has a budget. If June rolls around and they have extra $ in the budget, then they must spend it or else they lose rights to it.
Here's the problem. If they don't spend it, their budget will be trimmed the next fiscal year. Administrators think they don't need that $. So what does ITCS do? They find some way to spend the $. Case in point: printer and flat-screen redundancy in a dorm-room sized lab.
So, the system is flawed. But it's like that in industry, too. If you don't spend the $, we'll assume you don't need it.
But you are right about the phone calls--expect to be asked for a donation before you get your first check.
Well then they clearly don't need all that money. So every year they have to find more frivolous projects to spend their extra money on so that they can get even more money the next year.
I'm just glad you're out there fighting the good fight, and that the Daily is out there doing nothing.
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