September 12, 2006
My Letter to LeTourneau (Updated)
*** Update ***
Yesterday evening I got a reply from Corey, who wound up with my e-mail. Having said that, it is almost redundant to confirm that the response was more than satisfactory. He replied respectfully to every part of my message, promised to get Rachel 4 free meal vouchers, and agreed with me and all of you in condemning the response to Rachel's original request for compensation.
He also encouraged me to be a little less . . . Well, you all saw the original e-mail, and I don't think I need to go through it with you and point out where I was fair and justified and where I was just ranting, generalizing, and taking cheap shots. However, having thanked him for all his help and promised to give a more moderate approach due consideration, I do still feel that my experiences as a student have shown me a side of LeTourneau that won't allow some occurrences to be dismissed on the grounds that those involved "have good intentions" or "want what's best for the students." So, I expanded my reply a bit with the following:
Now, as to the general tone throughout my e-mails . . . The second in particular was (obviously) composed in some haste and sent impulsively. I tossed out a general reference or two that had no place in the e-mail at all if only because of sheer irrelevance. As for the first message, had I known for sure that it would go to you, for instance, it would have been a very different e-mail because I know I can get a fair hearing and a real answer without abrasively demanding one (and I can avoid a lot of background, since you know me). Of course, whether or not my tone should ever be abrasive and demanding, regardless of the circumstances, is a good question.
Nevertheless, I am certainly aware that no employee is setting out to do a bad job, and that there are many who care deeply about the students. Without naming names, every student who has been around long enough knows the people they can go to who will do their best to resolve any problem and who will treat the students as equals in the meantime. And we also know who will be unhelpful and condescending, with responses ranging from glib and dismissive to simply curt and dismissive. Unfortunately, there are quite a number of them as well, and they occupy very important positions.
I don't know what response I would get from them in return for abrasive demands (probably a less than satisfactory one, I grant you), but I do know from past experience that politely sincere inquiries are generally met with a demeaning brush-off. Four examples of which I have personal knowledge come immediately to mind just from the past year where LeTourneau's response to something left me simply appalled.
Side-note: I didn't include any of the examples and I wrapped up the e-mail from there. However, the incidents I had in mind were:
1) In a meeting with Dr. Austin, I explained quickly but in detail the problems faced by LeTourneau history majors thanks to a very clearly inadequate number of staff members (two), rendering the major as offered by LeTourneau inferior both in terms of academic value (considering what we pay for it) and in comparison with other Universities. I didn't put it in quite those terms, I simply tried to express our rather desperate need for additional faculty. His response: "Well, accrediation only requires one history professor, so we're already exceeding that." That was it. A twelve-word response which made it exceedingly clear that his interest in the quality of our education was no deeper than his desire to make the University look good. When mediocrity brings success and acclaim, why strive for excellence, right?
2) Rachel paid a visit to the school nurse (yes, she actually found her . . . and I think she might even have been in her office at the time, but don't quote me on that) in need of medication for some sort of ailment (many of the finer details of this incident evade me at this precise moment, I'll confirm them with her later and flesh this out). The nurse, having been made aware of Rachel's asthma, the other medications she was on, and the nature of her ailment, gave her a bottle of pills to cure it. Walking out, the first thing Rachel noticed on the bottle was something to the effect of "People with asthma SHOULD NOT take these!" The entire incident raises an interesting question: When you go questing for the school nurse (no other verb adequately describes it), is it healthier not to find her?
3) As all LeTourneau students know, last semester Gary Holeman decided to impose an internet bandwidth cap of 3 GB per month on University students (if anyone jumps in with "it's not a cap!" I will stab you in the face). He was interviewed by the campus newspaper about the details surrounding said cap, and one of the questions pertained to what would happen if the limit were exceeded. Holeman's response (I should really dig for the exact quote, but most of you will remember) boiled down to pinching the offender's internet down to the equivalent of a bad modem connection. He concluded (and I paraphrase), "If someone goes over, I want them to really feel the consequences." The entire sentiment expressed here was so distressingly petty and vindictive. It was clear that Holeman regarded the cap as a punishment on evil people who would dare to use more than 3 GB in a month. Students pay a lot of money for our internets, you'd think we could use them without drawing down the wrath of an angry IT.
Holeman went on to whine in a most immature and childish fashion in the very next issue of the paper, saying that his words had been mischaracterized, that "it's not a cap, it just limits your internet" or something retarded like that, and that he was disappointed in the writers over a graph comparing LeTourneau's download limit to that of other schools (shockingly, LeTourneau was on the extreme low-end of the scale). Personally, I think he just felt betrayed because he was laboring under the false impression that the YellowJacket was a propaganda rag. Incidentally, having lived on-campus during the cap for the past 4 months, I have not noticed that the internet is much faster or better than it was before. However, on August 31st, I bled over my 3 GB by a couple of megabytes, and let me tell you, I felt the burn. Bravo, Mr. Holeman. I am completely ashamed of myself and I won't let it happen again.
4) Early last Spring someone (for God only knows what reason) stole the toilet paper dispenser out of the Village Center bathroom. Subsequently the bathroom was locked for about 2 months (supposedly out of order). This bothered me consistently for weeks until finally I went up to MSC-2 to inquire about it. As I recall, I presented the situation to Corey and asked when we could have our bathroom back. He thought that sounded reasonable enough and called Brad Bowser out and asked him about it.
I don't remember Bowser acknowledging my presence at all during the exchange, but he pretty much killed the idea of unlocking bathroom on the spot, and added words to the effect of "If they can't keep from vandalizing their bathroom I don't see why we should open it up for them." It was at that point that I realized that Bowser didn't regard the bathroom as out of order at all, but that we had been without the use of it for 2 months because we were being punished for something that anyone on campus (or, in fact, in south Longview) could have done. To paraphrase Bowser: "Oh, we can't have nice things!" The VC bathroom eventually reopened, but as of when I was last in there a few weeks ago, the toilet paper dispenser still had not been replaced.
I think each of these instances shows a level of incompetence, self-absorption, or lack of respect for students which is quite worthy of a diatribe in its own right. However, I've posted and purged myself of bitterness for the time being. I'm grateful for people like Corey that keep LeTourneau from resembling its more conservative and authoritarian bretheren. If anybody has any further fuel to throw on the fire (or water to put it out) feel free to toss in your two cents. I'm done for now. Any further dialogue with Corey will continue outside of the blog.
The original e-mail is beneath the fold.
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I'm not sure where this e-mail ought to be directed, exactly. I am not totally familiar with the structure of Student Affairs, and I hear that there has been a bit of a fruit basket turnover with various positions recently, rendering the directory on LeTourneau's website inaccurate. I hope you can see that this e-mail gets to the right person or people.
My name is Jared. Last spring I graduated from LeTourneau after attending for four years. In late May, I moved into apartment 1D with Rachel Gullman, who has attended LeTourneau for three years (this is her last year). For the current academic year, Rachel wanted the same meal plan she'd had the year before (13 meals and a certain amount of flex money). However, when she requested it, she was told that somehow, by moving closer to both SAGA and the Hive and joining the married students (a group which has their own RA, RD, chaplain, and senator and which is at least the size of any residential floor on campus) she has become (of all things) a commuter.
This seemed extremely silly, for obvious reasons, but when she asked why this was the case, she was told it is because LeTourneau has no breakdown for precisely how much a meal plan costs by itself. This was so obviously a ridiculous statement (even in comparison to the random application of commuter status) that I immediately wondered what the price breakdown could show which would prompt the administration to bury it.
However, policy is policy and at the time it hardly seemed worth arguing about. Rachel had a refund of several hundred dollars on her student account, and she requested that the "lunch every day" meal plan be paid for out of that. (Funny how there is no problem computing the cost of 5 meals a week, but figuring out 13 meals a week is beyond LeTourneau's ability.) The transaction was approved and she has lunched with no problem for the past two weeks or so. Today, however, when we went to the Hive at about 1:30, Rachel's card was refused. She was told that she could have no food until the problem was fixed in SAGA. At this point, my lunch break was nearly over and I had to get back to work, so I left Rachel to get the problem fixed at SAGA and hopefully get herself some food.
The people at SAGA sent Rachel to MSC-2. The people in MSC-2 sent Rachel back to SAGA. The people in SAGA sent Rachel to Student Accounts. The people at Student Accounts told Rachel to go back to SAGA, at which point she realized that she had wasted over an hour being given the grand runaround through the hot summer sun due to a complete lack of interdepartmental communication. After she told the people at the Business Office what had happened, they told her that their system was down and to come back in 15 mintues. At this point SAGA was long closed and all hope of getting lunch was gone.
She returned after 15 mintues. The system was still down. She was told she would be called when it was back up, but didn't receive a call until a few minutes before the offices closed. The error (of course) was a clerical one within the LeTourneau system, and it is to be hoped that Rachel's meal plan will be available to her again by lunchtime tomorrow. However, tired, hungry, and sweating, Rachel had asked hours earlier if she could somehow be given a voucher or some other form of refund for the meal she had missed due to a system glitch that was in no way her fault. She was told that "It is not worth it to us to refund the meal."
To summarize: As an "on-campus commuter" (the term makes me laugh, much the way "separate but equal" does, but somehow that's what Rachel is) Rachel is given a patently false reason for why she can't purchase as many meals as "normal" students can. Within two weeks of school starting she is denied a meal due to a problem with her card; a problem which neither of us once encountered during our 7 combined years at LeTourneau as "normal" students. The perennial problem (which rivals my experiences of third-world bureaucracies for sheer incompetence) of LeTourneau's inability to communicate between departments sends Rachel on an outrageous wild goose chase which costs her a meal (which did cost us a calculable amount of money, despite LeTourneau's supposed difficulties with the numbers involved). A LeTourneau employee, representing the attitude of the University towards its students (and paying customers), declares it "not worth it to [the University]" to refund payment for goods and services never rendered due to an error made by said University.
Every student I know has some story of a similar incident that took place at some point during their time here; an incident where it suddenly became very clear that the policy-makers at this school are a lot more interested in taking our money than they are in making sure we have a fair return on it. I have a few of these stories myself. So does Rachel. College students are young and new at fending for themselves, and it is pretty easy for the University to pull stunts like these. I never really bothered to complain before because 1) the attitude of the University seems to indicate that giving student complaints fair consideration has an extremely low priority, and 2) I wasn't really interested in getting in a tussle with the people who had ultimate power over my degree. But in this case, we'd kind of like the meal we paid for (despite the University's apparent lack of concern) . . . and maybe (although I don't expect it) the real reason why married students are only eligible for commuter meal plans.
Sincerely,
Jared
P.S.
Rachel was sent this morning by Student Accounts back over to SAGA to get her card reactivated. At SAGA she was told she would have to talk to someone named Sara, who was supposedly in the back. She never showed up, and after waiting for some time Rachel had to go to class and couldn't wait anymore. It just so happens that by a strange coincidence, I know where Sara was. She wasn't on campus at all. I work at the Longview Public Library, and I happened to notice her there today at around the time when Rachel was waiting for her in SAGA. Rachel returned to SAGA later, only to be informed that her card had been activated all morning, even before she was sent to SAGA in the first place. Once again she had had her time wasted for nothing, not to mention the stress of not knowing what she was going to do for lunch.
How does anything ever get done at all on this campus? Nobody ever seems to know what's going on with anything anywhere at any time, and the people who supposedly do know are always AWOL. It's like trying to find the school nurse.
Posted by Jared at September 12, 2006 12:17 AM | TrackBack