faualum said

Welcome to the board owlcountry.

Thank you!

faualum said

I've done a few word battles on the wikipedia board with one or two writers. One who calls him/her self, "interestingstuffadder" I think. This person lives in the area and feels lead to take command of the FAU article for what ever reason. He/she won't back off of the "find another university" subject and is quite articulate in his arguments to keep that one line on the article.

Yep, I'm aware of the person you have mentioned. However, I believe they have bent a little bit and they haven't made changes in awhile. I understand that not everything about FAU is admirable, but there are a lot of great things about FAU – for instance, the extremely safe nature of campus – that nobody seems to talk about. They say FAU is a place for UF rejects, but by the same token you could easily argue that UF is a place for Harvard rejects. Note that I said you 'could' – provided you lacked the maturity and good sense to do otherwise.

faualum said

I don't know why FAU attracts the negativity it does.

It's too highly-variable to nail it down to one thing. I don't really believe it's students, whether from FAU or otherwise. I believe they are people in the community, especially elderly people who sent sons off to Ivy League schools because they felt state schools were insults to attempts at a college education. I believe they're operating on decades-old ideas about FAU, since a lot of their ideas about the school are either exhuasted or on their way to being exhuasted.

Case in point – the nickname "Find Another University" – a name appropriate a decade ago when the university was basically a parking lot but HARDLY appropriate now with our prOWLers, our "Let's Go Owls" banners, our top-choice medical school, our Starbucks, our Greek Week so important that Greeks spend thousands on personal trainers and costumes, our award-winning student newspaper and our FTIC rejection rate of 46%.

FAU is changing so fast… it's just a shame that I'm graduating before the football stadium, the nine-story hospital, and housing for 3000 more people comes to campus.

I'll just be glad to be part of the 100,000 alum who make up "Owl Country."

Go Owls.

Owlcountry,

You've avoided the fundraiser resignation thread. Might be the smart thing to do.

What is the state of the university from the students point of view right now? Has this news (resignation/firing) permeated every nook and cranny on the campus? Has it caused unsurmountable bad morale? How do other students feel about going to FAU?

Time to get to work. I shouldn't even be on here at work. It doesn't set a very good example.

owlcountry said

our Starbucks

Pleassseeee tell me you did not just list Starbucks as a strength for your institution.

yea you should have listed the new Wendy's instead :

illinoisowl said

Owlcountry,
You've avoided the fundraiser resignation thread. Might be the smart thing to do.

Heh. I've actually been following it via Google news since the first day it was published and I've been posting comments here or there defending FAU against the hyper-sensitive bandwagon idiots online who believe that this one action is the end of FAU. You have all these people making absurd comments, especially the ones who are saying "FAU will not get one more penny of my money" as if to imply that they ever contributed in the first place. It's really pretty ridiculous and I'm tired of the whole thing.

illinoisowl said

What is the state of the university from the students point of view right now? Has this news (resignation/firing) permeated every nook and cranny on the campus? Has it caused unsurmountable bad morale? How do other students feel about going to FAU?

Not surprisingly, people couldn't care less. Not a single student has mentioned it here. The University Press hasn't even done a story on it. It's probably making the rounds of the faculty, however.

In other words, the Post is making the whole thing out to be a bigger deal than it actually is – hoping they'll win some prestigious journalism prize, no doubt. Sure, it's a legitimate concern, but again… it's not the end of FAU. We're still going to build the hospital, the football stadium, renovate the Burrow, put up new apartments and parking garages, tighten admissions standards, etc. Life goes on.

thebrazenbull said

owlcountry said

our Starbucks

Pleassseeee tell me you did not just list Starbucks as a strength for your institution.

I did. Consider the context.

Understand that it's not to separate the university from others in the SUS – Starbucks is in no way a badge of distinction – but as an example of the progress made here towards aligning FAU with those other schools.

To some, USF Med is their top-choice medical school. Schools like OSU have specific student pride groups like the prOWLers. UF has an award-winning newspaper and obviously other schools reject 50% or more of applicants.

So, my statement really just serves to demonstrate how FAU has made strong steps upward to compete with those schools and no longer deserves the title of "Find Another University" – a place that wouldn't have features like a brand name coffee place on campus… they'd just have a coffee vending machine in a lobby somewhere (like we used to have).

Similarly, and I get the sarcasm, the Wendy's is not such a big deal… BUT the Wendy's is part of a massive restructuring of our Breezeway cafeteria to make it more like a mall food court and that restructuring IS a big deal to a lot of students here.

I was visiting a friend at UF and we walked through their food court – also done up like a mall food court. If we considered the Breezeway cafeteria as it is now and I had no affiliation to either school, I would say that the UF food court was better. Since we'll have a comparable food court now, it works to minimize the amenities differences between the two schools – differences that drive transfer numbers.

And please don't extrapolate that to mean I believe FAU students won't transfer to UF over a matter of a simple food court, because that's NOT what I'm saying.

Have a good one.

Go Owls.

Speaking of Starbucks - add this to the "Notable Professors" section of Wikipedia.

http://www.bocaratonnews.com/index.php?src=news&refno=19354&category=Main%20Headline%202

FAUFBL said

Speaking of Starbucks - add this to the "Notable Professors" section of Wikipedia.

http://www.bocaratonnews.com/index.php?src=news&refno=19354&category=Main%20Headline%202

Yep! Very cool.
That was added the day it happened actually.
However, she's on there as

"Dr. Maria Fadiman, associate professor, an ethnobotanist and member of the 2006 National Geographic Emerging Explorers"

the last part being the most pertinent, as I don't think "quoted on a Starbucks cup" would go over very well with some of the other people who police that wiki.

Maybe someone can add it to the "Miscellaneous" section though…