![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bzarcherFirst this happened, and I just had to respond as you see below.
I had a really good day yesterday. My Senior I.S. is bound and I was looking
forward to turning it in Monday.
I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in a year. My family came. But the
most important part was my sister, Alison.
Those of you who actually bother to pay attention to me know that my sister
has something called Postural Neurotachycardia Disfunction Syndrome.
What it basically means is that her nervous systems doesn't know how to make
her heart work. Just standing up from a chair can put so much stress on her
that she blacked out.
Thanks to a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic and some experimental medication,
my sister was actually lauging, smiling, and -running- for the first time in
almost 3 years, and I actually broke down and cried because of how happy I
was.
Then I got a chance to spend time with actual friends, and it too awhile to
get back to the building I had considered home. I realized I needed to get
some stuff done for my mid-term, and that G-board had already started, and I
wanted to work on that midterm before I had to actually go to class, and so
I could actually go to bed at a decent hour. Funny, that.
I woke up today to find the following message on my whiteboard: "Bob Walton
Thinks You Don't Care. SAFETY IN NUMBERS."
There are 2 very different ways to take that last sentence. I will do
whomever wrote it the courtesy of -not- considering it a direct threat.
Instead, lemme tell you people what I felt, based on the other meaning.
You have no idea just how much I have given to this program. I am deeply
offended and disgusted by this.
Yeah, I work for User Services 6-8 hours a day when I'm not in class. Guess
where I am working? Administration offices. I don't spent that time just
staring at their screens. I spend it talking to them. Finding out what they
feel. Trying to offer my own thoughts when they will listen. Stan and all 3
VP's know me by name and will stop to ask me what I think about something
occasionally. Believe me, they know what I care about far better than you
apparenty do, anonymous whiteboard coward.
I believed in this program. I believed so much that I was willing to give up
a lot of the things Seniors are supposed to have their senior year to live
here. I believed so much that I defended it to every person who left and
wanted to know why I was bothering to stay.
I see now that what used to be a community that believed in -being- a
community and acting out of real friendship and solidarity has turned to one
where guilt trips and grandiose, wasteful, hateful gestures are perfectly
appropriate and wonderful.
Quite a few of the S&H program and non-member residents here are my friends.
But right now, you as a collective disgust me.
Going to G-board and running the events I had planned would do nothing but
endorse tactics of intimidation, fear, and hate. Do not expect me to do so
until I see real evidence that a change has occured.
And then I got another thing right after I got done writing that.
Hey Matt,
I just wanted to send you a note about the unsigned in the Voice this week. I'm kinda mad at myself that after all was said and done in editing it, we ended up cutting out the line that actually said "thank you" to the people who actually did come in and fix it (namely, you). The point we were trying to make was that User Services shouldn't advertise hours that it can't staff, but I think that got lost in the writing as too many people looked at it and edited it and it ended up sounding like us griping about how crappy User Services treated us or something (which is completely not true, because you guys really have gone out of your way to help us, and we really are grateful for it!). Anyway, I'm sorry about the way it finally came out, and I'm going to try to work something into the Voice this week (which might be hard because I skipped Ed Board and currently have no idea what's actually going in the Voice this week).
E
So I wrote another response.
Erin:
The students of our department are composing a letter to the Voice. If you want to apologize, please make sure it runs.
Past that, I am willing to acknowledge your apology, but I'm not really that happy with the Voice et al. Any way you want to slice it, the last paragraph of that editorial was nowhere near responsible or professional in tone or content, and despite whatever message you wanted it to carry, it really had a very damaging one for both USeIT and I suspect the reputation of the Voice.
I am gonna forgive, because I'm tired of being angry at people. But don't expect to call for 25 people to be sacked and to have us forget it when you tell us it's 'not what you meant'.
I have this feeling that I burnt a ton of bridges, and I've only been up for an hour and a half. Nice.
I had a really good day yesterday. My Senior I.S. is bound and I was looking
forward to turning it in Monday.
I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in a year. My family came. But the
most important part was my sister, Alison.
Those of you who actually bother to pay attention to me know that my sister
has something called Postural Neurotachycardia Disfunction Syndrome.
What it basically means is that her nervous systems doesn't know how to make
her heart work. Just standing up from a chair can put so much stress on her
that she blacked out.
Thanks to a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic and some experimental medication,
my sister was actually lauging, smiling, and -running- for the first time in
almost 3 years, and I actually broke down and cried because of how happy I
was.
Then I got a chance to spend time with actual friends, and it too awhile to
get back to the building I had considered home. I realized I needed to get
some stuff done for my mid-term, and that G-board had already started, and I
wanted to work on that midterm before I had to actually go to class, and so
I could actually go to bed at a decent hour. Funny, that.
I woke up today to find the following message on my whiteboard: "Bob Walton
Thinks You Don't Care. SAFETY IN NUMBERS."
There are 2 very different ways to take that last sentence. I will do
whomever wrote it the courtesy of -not- considering it a direct threat.
Instead, lemme tell you people what I felt, based on the other meaning.
You have no idea just how much I have given to this program. I am deeply
offended and disgusted by this.
Yeah, I work for User Services 6-8 hours a day when I'm not in class. Guess
where I am working? Administration offices. I don't spent that time just
staring at their screens. I spend it talking to them. Finding out what they
feel. Trying to offer my own thoughts when they will listen. Stan and all 3
VP's know me by name and will stop to ask me what I think about something
occasionally. Believe me, they know what I care about far better than you
apparenty do, anonymous whiteboard coward.
I believed in this program. I believed so much that I was willing to give up
a lot of the things Seniors are supposed to have their senior year to live
here. I believed so much that I defended it to every person who left and
wanted to know why I was bothering to stay.
I see now that what used to be a community that believed in -being- a
community and acting out of real friendship and solidarity has turned to one
where guilt trips and grandiose, wasteful, hateful gestures are perfectly
appropriate and wonderful.
Quite a few of the S&H program and non-member residents here are my friends.
But right now, you as a collective disgust me.
Going to G-board and running the events I had planned would do nothing but
endorse tactics of intimidation, fear, and hate. Do not expect me to do so
until I see real evidence that a change has occured.
And then I got another thing right after I got done writing that.
Hey Matt,
I just wanted to send you a note about the unsigned in the Voice this week. I'm kinda mad at myself that after all was said and done in editing it, we ended up cutting out the line that actually said "thank you" to the people who actually did come in and fix it (namely, you). The point we were trying to make was that User Services shouldn't advertise hours that it can't staff, but I think that got lost in the writing as too many people looked at it and edited it and it ended up sounding like us griping about how crappy User Services treated us or something (which is completely not true, because you guys really have gone out of your way to help us, and we really are grateful for it!). Anyway, I'm sorry about the way it finally came out, and I'm going to try to work something into the Voice this week (which might be hard because I skipped Ed Board and currently have no idea what's actually going in the Voice this week).
E
So I wrote another response.
Erin:
The students of our department are composing a letter to the Voice. If you want to apologize, please make sure it runs.
Past that, I am willing to acknowledge your apology, but I'm not really that happy with the Voice et al. Any way you want to slice it, the last paragraph of that editorial was nowhere near responsible or professional in tone or content, and despite whatever message you wanted it to carry, it really had a very damaging one for both USeIT and I suspect the reputation of the Voice.
I am gonna forgive, because I'm tired of being angry at people. But don't expect to call for 25 people to be sacked and to have us forget it when you tell us it's 'not what you meant'.
I have this feeling that I burnt a ton of bridges, and I've only been up for an hour and a half. Nice.
