Category Archives: Blogosphere

“Construction season” comes to the corner of Oakwood and Washtenaw

Posted on June 10, 2011 by | Leave a comment

After the “continue reading” part, I following information about the upcoming construction from my Normal Park neighborhood association; I am certain it will be of interest to folks commuting into campus to finish up their spring term and starting their summer term classes, too.  The project is slated to begin next week and to until mid-August, and it’s being funded by both the Michigan Department of Transportation and EMU. There will apparently be a public meeting about all this on June 13 at 5:30 PM in the student center.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Buildings and Grounds, Ypsilanti

“Why does Eastern Michigan Play D-1 Athletics?”

Posted on May 10, 2011 by | 11 Comments

A loyal EMUTalk.org reader passed along this piece from the MGOBLOG, “Why does Eastern Michigan Play D-1 Athletics?” Here’s a quote:

The financial straights of the lower tier of FBS, specifically the MAC, Sun Belt, and post Boise State WAC are also largely driven by football. Unfortunately for them, the train has fallen off of a cliff instead of chugging towards the land of monocles and gold toilets.  These schools are reduced to selling home games to artificially increase attendance numbers and playing body bag games to pad revenue.

Specifically, this is about Eastern Michigan football and EMU athletics. What, if any, benefits does the school derive and what are the costs associated with those benefits? Why do they field teams at all on the D-1 level?

The piece is mostly a rehash of the kinds of things we’ve talked about here for years at EMUTalk, and I guess it’s fine enough.  But I’m not exactly crazy about the tone here.  Maybe I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder because I teach at EMU and I have zero loyalty to U of M, but what right does a Wolverine fan blog have saying what we should or shouldn’t do at EMU?  It almost makes me want to support EMU in BCS football.

Almost….

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Posted in Blogosphere, Sports, University of Michigan

Sorry for Snyder– wondering what that means for a recall

Posted on May 6, 2011 by | 6 Comments

Man about town Mark Maynard has an interesting post at his blog, “Rene Greff on her support of Rick Snyder for Governor.” Greff (and her husband) own the Arbor Brewing Company, which includes Ypsilanti’s popular Corner Brewery, and the Corner Brewery is a place popular with EMU groups like the EMU-AAUP, other faculty groups (my department recently held a retirement party there), and local around town and mostly progressive causes.

So a lot of locals/patrons were less than amused when it emerged that the Greffs made reasonably significant contributions to Rick Snyder’s campaign for governor.  In Maynard’s post, he quotes at length a response Greff has about this criticism.  Among other things, she points out that Arbor Brewing continues to support lots of important local and grass-roots sort of events, that the Democrat running didn’t have a chance. and she more or less implies a level of regret for supporting Snyder now– that is, if I knew then what I know now, etc.

I actually have a lot of sympathy for this, especially that last one.  I recall having conversations with a number of left-leaning folks who know a lot more about Michigan politics than me who thought Snyder would be reasonable and not as partisan/right-wing as the alternatives.  In the early days of the Wisconsin mess, I thought “well, at least Snyder won’t do anything like that.” I think a lot of people thought that.

Which, by the way, is one of the reasons why I personally support a Snyder recall:  he hasn’t turned out to be the kind of Republican many folks thought they were voting for.  Not that the recall has a lot of chance, but still….

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Posted in Blogosphere, State Government, Ypsilanti

“Cameras provide coverage, but university turns to students too”

Posted on April 26, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Here’s one of those stories I love stumbling across via my Google Alert that searches for “eastern michigan university:” from the web site Security Director News comes “Cameras provide coverage, but university turns to students too.” Here are the first couple of paragraphs:

When Greg O’Dell retired as a deputy chief of the Ann Arbor Police Department and took a job as the Chief of Police for Eastern Michigan University, he had no experience with video surveillance systems. “In the city, we had no cameras whatsoever, and when I started here there were 225 cameras on campus and I was just impressed the first time I saw that,” he said. “I was shocked how good the camera system was and how much area we could cover with that system.” The use of cameras—now up to 375 cameras—has added eyes to his police force of 33 sworn officers, who are responsible for covering 800 acres of property with 122 buildings, including 14 residence halls.

While the cameras are primarily used as an investigative tool following an incident, O’Dell said the department recently upgraded the system to make it easier for dispatchers to use the system during an event. “If dispatchers get a call of a suspicious person in a certain area, they routinely will pull up the cameras and have an image of the person before the officer arrives on the scene,” he said.  For example, last fall an unarmed robbery occurred off campus and the suspect ran across the university’s campus. O’Dell said dispatchers were able to go from camera to camera tracking the suspect and notifying police about his exact whereabouts in order to make the arrest. O’Dell said the investment the school made in the Nextiva Video Management software from Verint enabled the dispatchers to better manage and control its large video system. Dispatchers now have a mapping system, which allows them to easily pinpoint camera locations to follow a suspect through campus.

And I should point out that O’Dell goes on to say that EMU police and cameras aren’t enough, that they also rely on alert students and other members of the EMU community.

Anyway, I’m not sure what I find more interesting and surprising, the use of cameras described in the piece or the fact that there’s a web site devoted to “security director news.”  But there you have it.

 

 

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Posted in Blogosphere, In the media..., Security and Safety

WCC interviewing for a new president

Posted on March 9, 2011 by | 3 Comments

This in from the web-based Ann Arbor Chronicle: The Washtenaw Community College President Search is underway with three candidates coming to visit campus.  Here is also a link to the WCC “news and events” web site about all this.  Besides the fact that EMU has lots of connections with WCC in the form of transfer students and part-timers who teach at both places, I thought it was interesting/surprising that I do not recall reading about this in annarbor.com at all.  I wonder if they even have someone on the WCC beat?

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Posted in Blogosphere, Washtenaw Community College

“Where Can I Get a Hard Hat For My Tot?”

Posted on March 2, 2011 by | 8 Comments

A loyal EMUTalk.org reader and concerned parent sent me this message and photos anonymously this morning:

Dear EMUTalk.org,

I have attached two photographs of an unusually treacherous-seeming condition at that Rackham Hall entrance to the EMU Children’s Institute.  The concrete landing just above the first floor entrance has been leaking gravel, dust, and increasingly large chips in recent days. I assume this condition is worsened by the day/night thawing and freezing cycles we’ve been having lately.  This is especially alarming to parents who walk their young children through the doors twice each day.  When I mentioned it to the office staff at the CI, I was told they have been having a difficult time getting anyone to take it seriously as a point of urgent concern. They also said they’ve been told that no larger pieces of concrete will be falling any time soon. Still the sidewalk below bears fresh, daily evidence that the ledge is crumbling, and the yellow police tape across the second floor exit is not exactly reassuring as it suggests that somebody doesn’t regard the landing as solid enough to walk on. It sure would be a shame for an unexpectedly large chunk to fall from the ledge when someone was walking below.

Sincerely,

Where Can I Get a Hard Hat For My Tot?

Here are the pictures of the crumbling landing:

For those of you not familiar, this landing is on the north side of Rackham– the same side as the playground for the Children’s Institute.  Now, I don’t know if this is comforting or even more distressing, but this landing has been in a pretty drastic state of disrepair for some time.  I remember wondering about it when my son was in that program eight years ago.  But I don’t remember it “leaking” as my correspondent here describes, and you’d figure after almost a decade, someone could get around to fixing it.

So, buildings and grounds people:  what do you think?  Can some get over there and take care of this before there’s a headline along the lines of “Crumbling Stairway on EMU’s Campus Collapses, Kills 3 Pre-Schoolers?”

 

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Posted in Blogosphere, Buildings and Grounds, Security and Safety

Passing along from Mark M: “A letter to EMU faculty on the growing threats to collective bargaining”

Posted on February 23, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I’ve been kind of busy lately and haven’t had as much of a chance to post here about various labor unrest out there, but fortunately, Mark Maynard has made up the slack and then some:  see “A letter to EMU faculty on the growing threats to collective bargaining,” which reprints the email EMU-AAUP president Susan Moeller sent around recently about, well, growing threats to collective bargaining.  Some very interesting comments here, too.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Budgets, EMU-AAUP, Faculty Life

“Office Hours” at Juniper College kinda funny, kinda not

Posted on January 7, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Via CHE, I stumbled across a YouTube show called Office Hours, which is about the “humorous” aspects of higher education viewed through the eyes of an Anthropology adjunct at a small liberal arts college.  Here’s one of the first episodes:

It’s kind of funny, but it is also one of those “you had to be there” kind of funnies.  I remember there was some comedian years and years ago– maybe Steve Martin, when he still did stand-up?– who set up and proceeded to tell a plumbing joke, one related to the complexities of plumbing that really would only be funny to other plumbers.  The “joke” was in fact how unfunny it would be to anyone else.  In a way, this is a lot like that:  probably a lot more funny to academic-types than to those in the outside.

Still, since I am one of those types, I chuckled.

The “About” story is also interesting in that it describes how this was a project that came about because so many of resources for making quasi-professional videos like this are so readily available on many college campuses nowadays.  Perhaps next there will be EMUTalk, the movie.

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Posted in Blogosphere, College Fun, Faculty Life, Student Life

Alternative use of a study carol– er, carrel

Posted on December 17, 2010 by | 2 Comments

Oops– never could spell.  And I should point out that what I should have posted earlier was “Someone I know posted a link to this on facebook from failblog.com:

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Posted in Blogosphere, College Fun, Student Life

“It’s Not the Dark Side. It Just Sucks.”

Posted on December 14, 2010 by | Leave a comment

That’s the headline of an interesting blog post from Dean Dad posting on Inside Higher Ed about the rewards (and lack thereof) of administrative work.  “It’s not the dark side. It just sucks,” was apparently a comment on the Dean’s blog about the lack of appeal of work in academic administration, a sentiment that I agree with whole-heartedly.  I don’t think administrators or their work are “bad” or “evil,” and I have met plenty of people in the faculty ranks who I would comfortably label as “bad” (though probably not quite “evil”).  I personally have just always thought that if I had wanted to be an administrator, I would have kept working at a “real job” outside of academia.

Dean Dad does go on to describe some of the joys and benefits of administration as he sees them, but frankly, I think his reasons for not being an administrator are more compelling.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Blogosphere, In the media...