Beyond Rate My Professor
On Monday, November 11, just in time for Spring course registration, VSG rolled out their continually promised and finally delivered online archive of course syllabi. The idea for posting course syllabi has been a campaign platform of VSG candidates since at least the Fall of 2005, yet every year, students have been left wondering when the promise would be delivered. Now, after a year and a half in the making, the course syllabi are online, but the current set up leaves little to be excited about.
The current set up began to take shape in the Spring of 2007 when then Senate Speaker Jared Anderson took his idea to the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, Dr. Lucius Outlaw. While Anderson’s initial idea was for a VSG run website that could have been ready by the end of the semester, Outlaw pushed for using Blackboard as the site to host the syllabi. The catch to this, however, is that the program could take semesters to finally implement.
On October 23, Lil Wayne and Lupe Fiasco will play Commodore Quake and open up homecoming weekend. In past years, Quake has been held on a Friday night with the homecoming game following on Saturday. This year, in an effort to further dampen Friday class attendance, Quake will be held on a Thursday night.
This year, Rites of Spring, held on April 18 and 19, will host headliners Spoon and Lil’ Jon. A little over a month ago, the Hustler carried the announcement. In the weeks that followed, various publications praised the Music Group, a subsidiary of the Vanderbilt Programming Board for their choices.
Dear Joseph Williams and Wyatt Smith:
In only its fourth year in the College of Arts & Sciences, the Managerial Studies Department has grown from single-section classes of thirty students to three-and four-sectioned classes of ninety plus students. In addition, the number of courses offered and the number of professors in the department has also increased to meet the growing demand. Last month, The Hustler highlighted the rapid growth of this department with a front-page article regarding the recent popularity of the managerial studies minor.
This month, the Office of Housing and Residential Education (OHARE) is in the process of collecting and reviewing applications for the positions of resident advisor and head resident. Like always, applicants will be placed in one of seven dorm areas. For the first time though, the Commons will be fully operational and ready to hold the entire freshman class. The master plan to quarantine all of the freshmen away from the fraternities and close to the hospital will be complete. A new bridge was even built to connect the hospital and the Commons, speeding up the transfer of students from bathroom floors to emergency room doors.
Considering the quality of new television shows this fall season, the writers are the last people who should be on strike. If anyone needs to be picketing, it’s the viewers. These shows are so bad the writing could be outsourced to New Delhi and no one would notice a shift in quality for “Cavemen” or “Pushing Daises.” Who comes up with these plots? Manatees? Are we so desperate for new show ideas that we’re starting to surf the commercials between already bad shows? What ever happened to having a show about nothing?
In late September, Congressman Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) took a break from doing nothing in Congress to call a hearing entitled “From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images.” This hearing, like the Parents’ Music Resource Center hearings of 1985, accomplished about as much as Nancy Pelosi’s charge to end the war in Iraq. Tax dollars were spent, Congress looked busy, and the public was left wondering what exactly their representatives do in Washington. Once again, Congress stuck its nose into something it cannot even begin to comprehend, the music industry. Like 1980’s Al Gore failing to comprehend Frank Zappa’s mind-blowing conclusion that printing music lyrics would cost money, Representative Rush didn’t realize that college educated rap artist David Banner would be able to speak eloquently about the industry in which he makes a living. In this hearing, Banner, along with Master P, successfully defended their right to use certain offensive words - the same offensive words, they pointed out, that appear in such required high school readings as Huckleberry Finn and Invisible Man.
With Commons construction almost completed, what began as a vision almost a decade ago has come to fruition. Four new dormitories have been completed and are currently housing students. The five “historic” buildings, as they are now euphemistically called, have all undergone some form of renovation. Only the construction of Dean Wcislo’s house and the behemoth dormitory to be known as Hank Ingram Jr. House remain.
