I just want to say thank you. The blog has been getting pretty big page hits over the past week or two and I'm guessing it has been through word of mouth because I haven't been advertising at all... I have a bunch of pocket calenders and business cards and random printouts I have been meaning to liter campus with, but to put it simple, I am lazy. I'm trying to get the hang of photoshop and I might make a few posters, but seeing that I'm poor, I don't want to waste too much ink. Shits expensive. This semester has been pretty hectic work wise but I feel as though things are settling down. I may have finally kicked my drug addiction and alcoholism so it has been kind of rough... Just kidding! I would never do that to you. How else would I come up with blog material? Seriously though, I am still hoping to get a few guest posts going to open up the blog variety so email me if you're interested.
Also, I was unable to put up a drink of the week yesterday. So today's drink of the week is my all-time favorite beer, Newcastle Brown Ale. So delicious, you should all try it out if you haven't yet. I never met anyone who has tried Newcastle and not liked it. That is all I am going to say about that because if I keep thinking about it I'm going to need some. I'm sweating and shaking already. Okay, maybe I should speak with someone, where's Stephenson Billings when you need him?!? I'll start writing some lesser seen drinks on campus starting next week. I also have a few campus favorites lined up so keep reading. (And continue telling everyone you know about the blog.)
According to this article in the Union Leader crime on campus has actually decreased over the last 3 years, but students and faculty feel less safe. Police say that they made 347 arrests during the fall semester, compared to 445 arrests in the fall of 2006. I take pride in that I was not one of those 347, and if your weren't either, congratulations! I think the reason that more people feel less safe has been the degree of some of the recent crimes. The Halloween assault obviously gained a lot of attention as well as some other assaults and the supposed man with gun situation. Once again that article brought up the issue of the text warning system and whether or not it is good or bad for the students. I think it is good because if there is a crazy dude with a magnum pacing back in forth by HoCo, I'd like to know about it. One problem with the message alerts is that all the local media (WMUR) gets tipped off and they report it before anything is known. Then they are bombarded with parents calling for more info when nothing is known. Other people claim that the text alerts just create more tension and cause chaos when a situation comes up. It is something interesting to think about.
Stay classy, not UMassy.
I think people are more afraid....
ReplyDeleteof getting arrested.
They used a text message system at the University I was last at, and we had a similar "incident" to the man with gun thing....
ReplyDeleteThere was this game, zombies vs. humans, and it involved nerf guns and "zombies" and was a bit like constant, all day, 24/7 week long capture the flag, and everyone knew who was playing and who wasn't and some people got way more into it than others.
ALSO some people, most notably the staff and faculty of the campus were possibly NOT made to be aware of the game....
Anyways, alfred had a text based emergency alert system in place. A teacher sees a rather sketchy looking guy (in her defense, the dude WAS sketchy looking, I knew him and I prally woulda called the cops if i'd seen him and I didn know him....) in the hallway with a black handle shaped like a gun grip sticking out of his pocket.....
Long story short, the university went on emergency lock down while police searched for a armed man on campus. The txt based message system worked really well, people who had signed up for it got the word about the lockdown, and people who hadn't signed up for it heard about it from them, and the whole thing went down pretty smoothly.
Dude had a nerf gun in his pocket. For those of you that geeky and that curious, i think it was the Magnum, I don't remember.
On the other hand, there were a few times when the University closed (due to snow or weather, they are really bad drivers in snow, and i mean were talking worse than our southernly *cough* mass *cough* neighbors i never thought it possible.....) and those with the txt didn't get the message, though it only happened to a few people, were as others got the message, so maybe just a technical glitch?
At any-rate, i recommend it to the university, it seems to work well and the students liked it...
seems like any system would work better than the current system.... some guy pulled over to tell me the buses were canceled.... gotta love it......
M