Re: Affecting Institutional Change (Yeah Right)
Andrew Sackville-West <andrew@farwestbilliards.com>
> On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 10:03:18PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > On 05/08/07 21:55, Amy Templeton wrote:
> > [snip]
> > > It's a private college, and have no desire to make this
> > > anywhere near that insane, but thank you nonetheless. I'm
> > > basically wishfully hoping for a quiet solution.
> >
> > If it's liberal, and it probably is, you could claim
> > Discrimination. All the more so since you're female.
I appreciate the suggestion, but I'd rather not pull status on this
one, you know? That is a card to be saved up and used in an
emergency to which it has direct bearing, or else it loses all
meaning and becomes trite. Thanks, though.
> You could also claim hardship: why should you be forced to spend
> money for a product that is *NOT* required to complete your
> education, other than the fact that they are trying to make you
> use it. Books, general supplies, fine, but forcing one word
> processor over another is ridiculous.
Unfortunately, this would be hard to pull off since the college
provides labs in most non-dorm buildings replete with the wonderful
software necessary to read the documents. However, I just happen to
often need to access these documents at times when the labs are
closed (the counter-argument: "plan ahead"). As to my "preference"
for not using the mouse or a Windows/Mac interface (so even if I do
make it to a lab, I have a lot of trouble actually doing what I
need to do), since this isn't caused by a bona fide physical
handicap there's not much I can do there. Again, I've been talking
to individual professors and groups--I guess I'm just getting
burned out on this since it's something I have to explain with some
frequency and was hoping for some document I could just give
people. Oh well.
> Also, what is your comp-sci department like? Are they not a good
> source for at least moral support? or are they stuck using VB and
> javascript coding from a gooey IDE...
Hahaha...some of them assume I'm a "wizard" since I use GNU/Linux.
This is not the case. And let me put it this way: a friend of mine
went through one of their classes on Python and came out with no
idea that he'd been editing text files, no idea that Python could
be run from a shell, no idea what an executable was, and, in fact,
not even knowing what a shell was (even though it was apparently
taught on Macs with access to a shell!). He thought that to run a
simple script he'd written on a file, he had to open up his special
IDE program, go through a ton of menus to pick the right script, go
through a ton of menus to gain access to a file, and then manually
copy the output to a new file (instead of chmodding his script to
give it executable permissions then doing "./myscript myinputfile >
myoutputfile). And he's very smart. So no, the computer science
department isn't much help, especially since they're not interested
in what any other departments (read: the departments I take
classes in) do.
Anyway...done ranting. I don't really think this thread is going
anywhere, so sorry to waste everybody's time and inbox space. I'll
just suck it up and get back to work on being the Dissenting Voice,
burnout aside.
Thanks,
Amy
--
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited
love.
-- Charlie Brown
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