SGA CRISIS CONTEST!
by Hiba Fakhoury on March 15, 2009
It’s time to start getting paid for thinking!
As you all know, the economic crisis has affected our financial situation significantly and we need your help in dealing with it. So, the SGA is holding a CRISIS CONTEST; we need your input and we will pay you for it.
To participate: Send an email to sga@middlebury.edu with a brilliant and original idea of yours that you think will reduce cost in any of the following categories, there are no limits as to how many ideas you can send, but please specifiy the category when you email us:
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Residential Life
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The Commons
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Dining
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Library Services
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Affiliates of Middlebury College (Schools abroad, the Monterey Institute, Language school, etc.)
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Auxiliary Operations (The Grille, Midd Express, Golf Course, Wilson Café, etc.)
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Student Organizations
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A Revenue Generating Idea in Any Category
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Other
Rules: All ideas must abide by the college’s priorities in dealing with this crisis (i.e. you can’t eliminate faculty/staff jobs, financial aid, etc.). Please refer to President Liebowitz’s notes for more information and updates:
Deadline: This Friday, March 20th 2009
Prizes: There will be two cash prizes in each category. The first prize is $150 and the second is $50.
Results will be announced shortly after spring break.
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You can read about my five proposals at mluby.blogspot.com. They address the following topics:
1. Alcohol Citation Tax
2. Exchange FYC/RA stipend for room draw number
3. Improve Faculty Web Literacy
4. CompSci class to redo College website
5. Encourage Student Orgs to seek grants
* Hold SGAFC accountable to student body
Michael starts some great conversations while proposing some money saving efforts. I definitely encourage the SGA to post any and all of the tips they get after selecting the winners of this contest. The contest serves not just a way to generate ideas but for getting students in the cost-savings mindset, which is just as important in getting students to engage in some of the tough decisions being made on campus….
A response to Michael’s #3/4:
Asking a ComSci class to remake the Middlebury website is simply not feasible. If you have any doubt, read the RFP that the Web Makeover group released: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfsgbdf7_3xm3d3shn. Linked from that document is a list of hundreds upon hundreds of requirements of a new website.
But besides, I want to point out that the majority of the website redesign is being done in-house by our talented web services staff in LIS. The vendor will be helping mostly with design and IA consulting. This considerably lowers the cost of bringing in a vendor to help with the WebRedo project.
There will be a huge effort this summer and next fall (mostly) to train faculty and staff in the use of the new website. I don’t think it’s enough to just wait for professors to retire to naturally raise the web literacy and web use of older professors. I know that my advisor is pushing seventy and is one of the most computer literate people I know. He was itching to attend one of the recent focus groups for the web makeover.
#2 sounds like a great idea.
#4 I’m not so sure about. This is in no means meant to jump down your throat, but I figured a CS major might as well give his two cents and back Ryan up on his analysis.
While 312 is an important and worthwhile course, it simply cannot cover the issues related to running something as large as Middlebury’s website. The jump from a couple thousand line ruby on rails + mysql site to one which has to not only have all the features mentioned, but also be completely reliable and secure (a huge problem), and be fast is pretty daunting. Even though the CS majors are a bright bunch, it would be very much infeasible for us to be able to produce something like Middlebury’s website in a semester (and also maintain it in the following ones).
Also, very openly directing students’ coursework to do work or save money for the college makes me uneasy: why not also make students try to sell their creative writing?
As one clarification note: the operating systems course doesn’t actually involve writing one. This isn’t the department’s fault at all, though: writing even a simple operating system involves major practical hurdles and so much work that it would be inappropriate for a undergraduate course at Middlebury (especially a 300 level one).