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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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june 19, 2003 - 1:32 ayem
at first I was going to post this as a comment on jim's site, but it started getting pretty long, and I figured it was rantish enough to warrant a post of its own. besides, people chastised me at lunch today for giving up on blogging, so here I am, caving to peer pressure.
to catch you up to date on the acm drama (for those just joining us), the acm lounge will be moving, likely by the end of the summer, from lopata 404 to a yet undecided location. at first we were told it would be moved to the first floor of urbauer where it would share space with the grader's lounge. at the spring fireside chat, a cs department question-answer-gripe session sponsered by acm, a substantial fuss was made about this arrangement, since it seemed likely that rather than peacefully coexisting, the grader's lounge would more or less swallow up acm. dr. roman acknowledged the students' concerns and seemed willing to repartition the space in urbauer to meet acm's needs. I have to admit, I left the forum feeling much better about the situation. although a new development, first broken by rubidium, has raised some new concerns.
instead of the urbauer lab, roman would now like to move acm to lopata 509, a floor up and just outside of the new media and machines lab. I suppose if you look at it from a location standpoint, people would probably prefer lopata to urbauer, especially if proximity to the CEC is important to the students. but I think the space issue is the more important one here. and Im not talking about the 30% reduction in lounge space. Im talking about the 100% reduction in office and storage space. the storage and office space in 404 is vital to acm's operation. given the amount of fundraising it does, it needs a safe place to keep its inventory (and cash). any plan that doesnt ensure acm both a lounge and a lockable office is pretty much the end of the cheap soda, which is to say the end of acm as we know it. in my opinion, storage is a much bigger issue than location, and any space that meets acm's lounge and storage needs, be it in urbauer or the seventh circle of hell, is going to be better than 509.
maybe Im wrong, but if other people agree with me, then I think the current officers need to do something (as soon as possible) to make dr. roman finally see our side of this.
Posted by on 19 June 2003 at 1:35 AM
Comments
Maybe I should post on my own blog too, but I'll try to keep my advice short. Decide what you want in space and facilities for ACM and meet with Prof. Roman to try to get that. Before meeting, figure out the minimum thing you (officers) would accept and if you don't get it, you can (threaten to) resign. Petty? I don't think so. If you can't fulfill your vision of ACM because the facilities are inadequate, then you shouldn't put in the effort and have something unacceptably substandard.
What became of the student advisory committee for CS? It was supposed to be ACM (you!). It's time you gave some advice... just my 2 cents. RKC
Posted by rkc on 19 June 2003 - 6:46 AM
It's worth pointing out that the storage space could be decoupled from lounge if absolutely neccesary. This makes it less convenient for soda, esp. if the storage space is far away, but a workable solution could probably be found. Isn't there a closet just outside of 509?
Also, if you want to create a convincing argument against less space, measure the dimensions of all the furniture in the lounge and see if it will fit in the new space. I suspect it won't.
Posted by david on 19 June 2003 - 7:19 AM