Archive for January, 2007

How dragons drove me out of my home

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

If you’re an RIT student who lives in the dorms, you’re probably thinking “fuck the dorms, I want to live someplace way more ballin and shit”. Well, I can officially warn you kids: the dorms are way more ballin than being homeless. Because RIT kicked me out of the dorms and I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight, or any night for the next week for that matter.

It all started this past weekend….

I found a floormate’s MySpace profile, in which his username is “dragon 420″. I started to refer to him as dragon 420, or simply “dragon”. Lulz ensued. There was a facebook group created, the “NRH2 Dragon 420 Club” it was known as. Maybe this was wrong of me, personally I didn’t think anyone would be terribly offended. All it was was a facebook group with his MySpace “about me” info posted as a description. It was all things that he wrote. It was a user name he chose for himself. It was himself he chose to be offended by.

Alright, I made fun of him. It was a joke, who could have known how offended he would be? He never asked me to stop, at that point in time, I certainly didn’t realize the apparent effects calling someone a dragon could have. That didn’t last very long though. On Tuesday morning I learned the true seriousness of a dragon related offense. I’ve felt “the wrath of the dragon” if you will.

I got a call at 8:15 or so in the morning, which I was quite angry about before I knew it was campus safety as I had gone to sleep around 5:30 having been up all night working on a project. When I am told I need to come to the campus safety office in Grace Watson, I have no idea what to expect or what it could be for. I get there and I am told that I need to fill out a statement about calling him a dragon and creating a facebook group and… regarding my anti-Semitic actions and biased comments over the course of this year. I didn’t even know what to think about this. At no point in my life have I said anything anti-Semitic to this person in anyway. Yet a few hours later, when I finally get a chance to try to get back to sleep for a few hours, I am woken up to yet another Campus Safety phone call. They issue me a letter formally charging me with violating 6 different counts of RIT policy. I will list those now:

Violation of RIT Policies (Sec. B, #8 , page 5 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)
RIT Terms of Occupancy
RIT Policy Prohibiting Discrimination and Harassment
Harassment (Sec. B, #4, page 5 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)
Violation of the Law (Sec. B, #13, page 6 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)
Disorderly Conduct (Sec. B, #16, page 6 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)
Inappropriate Behavior (Sec. B, #3, page 5 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)

And then this:

You have been interimly removed from RIT housing. Effective at 7:00 p.m. tonight (1/30/07) you are to remove your immediate belongings from
your residence hall room and find another place to live off the RIT campus until this has been resolved in a hearing. Should you need to retrieve
additional belongings, you will need to be escorted to your room by Campus Safety on an appointment basis.

They gave me this at 4:30. I had 2 hours and 30 minutes to find someplace to stay for the night. Keep in mind I am a first year student from out of state with almost no contacts off my floor, and certainly less than that who live off campus. This is a result of telling a kid very much infatuated with dragons that he is, in fact, a dragon.

Not only am I not a racist or an anti-Semite, being falsely accused at the expense of my perceived character and integrity, but I’ve also missed two classes, didn’t get to finish a Java project I had due, and will most likely fail my math exam this evening due to the amount of my time and resources I’m being forced to spend on something so frivolous. So I suppose the lesson to learn from this is, if there is ever someone you don’t like, who offends you by any means, for anything… go directly to campus safety and make up a story about how you have been attacked with bias harassment with absolutely no basis for it, and you’ll get them kicked out of housing.

This is the morning of day 2, I’m sitting in the SAU as I type this story. I’ll be roaming the RIT campus all day for about the next week or so I imagine. It’s time to go get some breakfast I am thinking, unless they decided to interim remove me from my meal plan as well.

Posted in Campus Safety, I Hate It Here | Comments

Open letter to the editor of the Reporter

Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

I sent the following email to reporter@rit.edu (which is listed as how to contact the Reporter editor) Saturday night. Having waited four days with no response, I now post it for your consideration. I intend to show up at the meeting Friday afternoon to present these complaints, and invite anyone who feels the same way to be there as well. It’s at 5 PM Friday in the basement of the SAU - ask the information desk for directions.

I would like to bring to your attention three concerns I have about the content of your January 12 issue.

First of all, in the article titled “Internet TV” on page 11, it is stated that “RIT is home to perhaps one of the largest Anime-based organizations on campus.” Although I would have to agree, I would like to point out that not only is RIT home to THE largest anime-based
organization on campus, but is in fact home to every organization of any type on campus. I understand the point that the author is trying to get across, but please proofread better.

Second, the article titled “Common Sense” on page 12 is not fit to print in a magazine of the quality that Reporter claims to strive for. It is immature. Despite that some may feel that this fits the student body at large (particularly your RIT Rings editor), if you are going to request that people do not drunk dial what you always have, and even still continue to, advertise as a drunk dial line, you should not print immature rants such as Alex’s “article.”

Third, in the article titled “Messages from the Future” starting on page 16, there is one thing that stands out in my mind. I present you with a quote from the top right-hand corner of page 19:

“If the committee is considering someone from Atlanta, someone from Virginia, or someone from North Carolina, then the choice will be ‘okay.’”

This entire quote by Judi Hoffman, not only the section I have chosen to excerpt to illustrate my point, should not have been printed. Those people on the selection committee for the next president of RIT are likely to read this article, and at least some are likely, whether they realize it or not, to be swayed by this quote. Judi, having no relationship whatsoever with RIT and no experience as a professional educator, has no right to have any kind of influence over the presidential selection committee. It was irresponsible of you to allow this quote to be printed.

I eagerly await a response, as I would like to understand the reason behind the shortcomings listed above.

In the event that I get a response, I will post it here as well.

Posted in Reporter | Comments

Silent Applause for the FAA

Monday, January 8th, 2007

Once in a while we at the Sentinel like to point out something good out there, something done purely for the people by the establishment, whether the establishment is the government, RIT, or some random company that we think deserves a pat on the back.

Today we recognize the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA. This may be old news, but it has special significance to RIT.

A few years ago, the FAA made what they believed to be a minor change to their regulations. As the regulations originally stood, although all airports, even small airstrips, had the capability to use radio communications, a certain number of them, particularly small airports, were equipped to allow airplanes to land without radio contact. The FAA revised the regulations so that radio contact would be required for all flights during take off and landing. They thought that this would be only a minor inconvenience to only a handful of pilots, a small price to pay for the increased safety.
Unfortunately, they didn’t realize that there are deaf pilots.
This was, however, discovered by a deaf pilot who is also an Amateur Radio operator. When she contacted the director of the FAA about this mistake, the FAA quickly reversed their rule change, and the director stated that if at some point in the future there is a way for blind people to fly safely, the rules would be changed to allow it.

So today, we recognize the FAA for their quick response to remedy their mistake, and to help make the world a better place for those with disabilities.

Posted in Beyond the Bricks | Comments

I Hate it Here 1/5

Friday, January 5th, 2007

I would hope you have figured out what goes here by now.

When one comes to this festering cesspool of brick and wind, one’s eyes tend to be drawn and then promptly destroyed by the rusting carcass of metal that sits in the middle of the campus. Yes, that’s right, the large, obnoxious, pig-raper of an installation known to one and all as the Sentinel.

Now being somewhat of an artist myself, I have to look at it and wonder, what exactly they hoped to accomplish. I see the metal and look at untold numbers of smaller, tasteful works that could have been created by students, I see the potential for a symbol that actually means something to the student body sitting there. I also see a giant penis.

I know Freud would be having a field day, but I could care less. The jizz encrusted shell of my pants is more of an art that this overblown tribute to someone’s penis, Simone, Galisano, Samuel L Jackson… who it is matters not. Christ.

I still hate it here.

Posted in I Hate It Here | Comments

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