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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Go Independent Collegian!

The Collegian ran a thoughtful article on Bloggie and related issues.    Click here.

Also an editorial suggesting  that Bloggie change her name:   See here.

Thank you IC. 

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I gathered from Tuesday’s A&S Council meeting is that there is a popular and highly controversial “Arts and Sciences College Forum” blog out there in cyberspace that has content described as “embarrassing,” “outrageous,” “vulgar,” "irreverent" and so on by some A&S Council members . They claim that in spite of those several disclaimers prominently displayed on its home page this “rogue” blog misrepresents to the Inter-net-worked world the identity and reality of the “Official Arts and Sciences Council of the University of Toledo.”

Owners and operators of the controversial blog (nicknamed “Bloggie”) claim that events occurring during its history and recorded and exemplified in its contents demonstrate that Bloggie successfully has served the public as an effective virtual “free speech board” in the spirit of the First Amendment, advantaging new communications technologies to speak what it perceives as “Truth” against “Power.”

It seems to me that this CAS debate about what to do with Bloggie does not boil down to a simplistic binary of “keep it” or “terminate it” (as the Independent Collegiate report implies). There are many other possibilities. For example, why doesn’t the official A&S Council construct its own website and thus ignore Bloggie and/or beat it at its own game? I suggest that these bitter enemies of “Bloggie” channel their destructive energies into creating an official UT A&S Council blog. Fin.

Anonymous said...

I am not surprised that the administrator "want to be"'s would want to close this blog. The best way to control a population is to limit the information that is passed. This blog site has been the voice of accurate news. So it has to be stopped in the minds of those who wish total control and agreement.

Anonymous said...

People who think that UT administrators would start doing the right thing, if only anonymous contributors to some blog would stop being mean to them, are compleeeeeetely failing to understand what's going on here.

Grundoon said...

Now I know I may get some flak for this but I feel it must be said. For actual time during meetings to be used to discuss a matter of which the University should have no control over is troubling. I'm all for 'sticking it to the man' and not being a push over, but when important things are getting less time in meetings because this blog must be debated about is when I start to question things. How important is it to not change the name? Once the name is changed than the University surely cannot complain and the Council meetings can spend more time doing what they should, instead of squabbling about the first amendment and the University of Toledos oh-so-wonderful image. Again, I love this blog and what is done here but I cannot accept that my tuition is paying for meetings about the future of a personal blog. So I guess I am wondering if there is a real reason to not change the name?

Anonymous said...

Grundoon. There is a real reason not to change the name. It is called pissoff if you don't like it. Let me tell you a story:

Several decades ago my mother became interested in growing roses. She dug her garden and planted her roses. The garden was in her front lawn. Her front lawn was crabgrass. Everyone else up and down the street grew clover.

Every year her roses grew increasingly beautiful (at least in my mother’s eyes). Mom hoped others would also find them beautiful, but discovered anyway great satisfaction in ownership and sense of accomplishment. After three years she began to believe everyone should grow roses, and said so.

All was not roses in the neighborhood, however. Neighbors with small children who daily passed by the garden on their way to school complained about the ever present danger to the safety of the young ones and other passers-by presented by the thorns on the roses. In response my mother put an artistic sign in the garden. The sign read “DANGER These Roses Have Thorns.” She realized some of the school children could not read, so she also added a stencil of a skull and crossbones image to the sign.

Several neighbors thought this warning was insufficient. One day they all stopped by Mom’s house and introduced themselves and suggested that Mom move her rose garden into the back yard. She considered this but said “No. These are my roses and I think they are beautiful. Please smell them on your way out.” They refused to do so.

Several weeks later a neighborhood petition was circulated condemning the rose garden and demanding its removal. The petition was submitted to the Block Watch with instructions to send it to city council and the mayor. My mother’s hair was already gray, but she seemed to take these events in stride because she considered her neighbors foolish and ignorant of her democratic right to grow roses in her own front lawn. She was proud to be an American.

A city councilwoman came to the door one day accompanied by an intern from the Department of Health and Safety. She served them tea and cookies. The councilwoman took out the signed petition and asked the intern to turn on a minitape recorder. “If you don’t mind” she said to my mother. My mother replied “Fine. Ready?” then announced “You can disappear my rose garden over my dead body!”

Two weeks later she walked to the market and returned to find tire tracks extending across her front lawn and through her rose garden. She called the cops. They interviewed the neighbors. No one had witnessed anything.

Mom repaired the damage to her garden. She also had my brother Tim drive her to Cabela's in Dundee to purchase herself a big-bore rifle. So if you walked down the sidewalk in front of Mom's house after that, past dusk, and slowly, you would clearly see that big-bore rifle through the big bay window, hanging high on a wall rack.

Mom tended her roses in peace after that, till she died. The house was sold. The new owners of the house rototillered up the front lawn, including the rose garden ... and then they planted clover.

Anonymous said...

I am not liking your incivility to Grundoon, who perhaps means well. That said, your story about your Mom and her rose garden was moving with a capital “M”. Honestly, I wept. It then occurred to me that your Mom’s story is analogous to events taking place involving this very news blog. Your Mom, for example, could very well represent the blog owners; and her garden, the blog itself. And the roses! The roses are the blooming news blurbs and updates and comments. Did you realize this? The thorns could be the ... the … Yes! They are like the thorny but significant A&S issues posted on the blog, which are buried in all official news organs across campus. The Round Table Report, for example.

The thorns might also represent the irreverent attitudes, phrasings and vulgarities popping up now and then in blogger posts of the many visitors to your popular web site. "Pissoff if you don't like it" is a thorn, right? No wonder the UT Administration and its faculty and student sycophants go apeshit when they read the stuff on this blog! I bet Bow Tie Larry does back flips and makes faces because he can't say "pissoff" anywhere in his own blog and media empire outlets if and when he feels like it.

WOW! Your story is, I guess, “literary” with a capital “L” because it has taught me a lot about good writing and what is a trope. I think this blog could even be used in an A&S WAC class or two as an example of great writing say, by some composition-challenged pre-pharmacy students who might seek to improve their writing skills by reading this blog.

Now that I have finally figured out what you and your colleagues who post on this blog are really about -- that you are a demonstrably effective new teaching modality -- I am going to go tell my Best Friend Tommy! Bye! (and don’t forget to apologize to Grundoon, who perhaps means well).

Anonymous said...

Dear Anonymous of the Garden Rose. I'm a foreign student and I read this blog a lot in order to improve my English and to learn American idioms. My friends too. I'm so impressed by your story. Are you an English professor? You're telling a true story. You're so pure of heart and your story made everything so clear. I need this blog more than anything else. Thanks. (May I read another of your stories soon?)