10/14 Michael Rauser <mrauser@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> wrote on csua@csua
: I apologise for the recent spam to csua@csua. It is intended as a news
: mailing list (minutes, official announcements, etc.) and not as a
: discussion forum. I have altered the list to make it moderated, requiring
: posts to be approved before going out to the full list.
\_ This is a marked and until now unannounced change in the nature
of csua@csua. When was advance notice given of this change of
csua@csua to a moderated list? --Jon
\_ The ua part of the 'csua' title means that the undergrads
don't need to get permission from alum for everything.
--darin
\_ "It's [the CSUA] not a democracy. We're democratically
elected, but once in office we have near complete
authority to implement the policies that we see
fit. Think communist russia ..." -amckee, CSUA President
\_ and if it's not obvious, the above was not posted
by me and was taken out of context. thx psb. -amckee
\_ Could you explain how the quote was taken out of
context?
\_ This is the organization that was left to us by our
faithful alumni. We do not have a congress, a judiciary
system, or any vestiges of democracy within the typical
power structure. Quite honestly, I'm not aware of any
student group here that's run differently. At some
point in the past, the CSUA was your organization to
run and shape as you saw fit. I'm sure you each had
issues that you felt were important to deal with,
things that needed to be chanrged relative to
tradition, and so forth. I'm sure each of you also
would have resented it had a group of people who have
no awareness of the current organization's culture and
needs kept expecting deferrence to their ideas and
beliefs about how the organization should be run. The
students, at some point, trusted you to run the
organization to the best of your abilities. Right now,
the students trust us to do that. We may fuck up, we
may piss people off, but these are our mistakes to make
- just like they were yours, at one point. We care
about the alumni community and feel that they
contribute a lot that is valuable to the CSUA, but our
charter is clearly the service of current
undergraduates. We would love to make alumni happy, but
as i'm sure each of you can see from these threads,
that's obviously impossible. In the end, we will always
chose the path that we think is in the best interest of
current students. I'm sure you each would have expected
the same, when you were students. As it is, this server
is barely utilized by current students. This issue has
comprised probably 50+ manhours of politburo time -
time that has directly detracted from what we could
have been doing to help out current students. We
continue to spend thousands of dollars on this
hardware, when the main reason it needs upgrading is to
cater to the ever growing alumni ranks. The donations,
sadly, are a far way from making this environment
self-supporting. Quite simply, this whole server
infrastructure costs this organization more in terms of
time and money than current students reap from it.
Again, we do care to keep a close alumni community, but
a bit more appreciation of the efforts we go to would
also be nice. And a bit of understanding that, this
really is -our- organization right now, to make better
or to fuck up, as it once was yours. We welcome your
insight, but we really resent the sense of entitlement
that many of you think we owe you. That alumni have
accounts here is at the generosity of the CSUA, and
directly against UC Berkeley policies. There is no
current desire to change this generosity, but a bit of
perspective on your part would be nice. We don't owe
you explanations of changes we make to our boxes, we
don't need need to justify every decision we make. When
we do, it's because we value your insight and wisdom,
but don't expect it to be binding. I know many of you
disagree strongly with our choices, but the students
have entrusted us to shepherd this organization and you
just have to trust that we have the best interests of
the CSUA at heart, even if you disagree with our
actions. -amckee
\_ Ok uhm yeah. So anyway, if the ever growing ranks of
alums are a burden, how about just booting them all?
If the number of current students is low, how much
active recruiting does the CSUA do these days? Do
they still do donut runs at project times? Sponsor
and advertise tournament events? Go into freshman
classes at the start of each semester and tell the
gathered hordes the CSUA exists and why they should
join? And once these people join, well, uhm, to be
blunt, what do they get from the CSUA anyway? I see
two things from out here in alum-land: fantastic
tech help/tips from top notch industry pros from a wide
variety of fields and access to jobs they'd otherwise
never hear about, much less skip HR and go straight to
a hiring manager. Passion is good. Directed passion
is better. I assume everyone gave some pretty speach
prior to being elected to politburo full of promises.
Did any of that stuff happen? Mission accomplished?
Honestly, I don't actually really care all that much
about any of this stuff but let's get some perspective.
\_ Yes, we do donut runs (as do other groups now),
yes we go into classes at the start of the term,
yes we do helpsessions and shill our name, and
yes the ranks are still low. The current breed of
CS student is unlike what you were used to - many
are completely apathetic about student groups,
many don't identify as CS nerds, and many haven't
even watched Monty Python. It's a mainstream
field now and the people here have a lot less in
common than the CS nerds did when I was younger
(I'm 30 and started with this whole internet/cs
stuff over 20 years ago) I do not doubt at all
\_ Are you related to
Trevor J. Buckingham?
that students -could- leverage a lot from alumni,
but right now they don't. They don't read motd,
they don't really use Soda, and mostly they just
come to our free food events. It's a problem that
many politburos recently have had to face. We
welcome suggestions, of course, but things are
definitely different than they used to be. People
join now to hang out on our couches, use our
office/lab machines, and make friends. I'm trying
to bring in more speakers (hopefully some alumni)
to try and give various talks. Hell, maybe a
panel of people that graduated 10 years ago could
come back and talk about life after
Berkeley. Right now, though, none of this whole
mess that we call Soda or MOTD is much of a
benefit to current students. And, quite frankly,
that's unlikely to change. It's just no longer
the sort of service that is necessary. The entire
login service could go away, and most people here
would never even notice. No, there are no plans
to do so, but when the politburo looks at things
to put its attention and money into, the minimal
value this -currently- offers students is a
factor. And jobs typically come into jobs@
now. Our current focus is much more on
face-to-face services, since that's the only
thing that seems of value to people now,
anyways. -amckee
\_ Whoa! I've seen what's coming into jobs@. That
is not at all the same as real jobs. An
announcement from some consultancy that they're
recruiting is *nothing* like having an alum
hand your resume to someone and say "hire this
person". If you get nothing else out of your
time at Berkeley, get this: networking is more
important than your gpa, major, or anything else.
And yes, it's true I haven't set foot in years
and I'm out of touch, but if politburo is so
in touch and active then why can't they get
other students interested? This has nothing to
do with Monty Python. I'm not even sure why
you mention that. shrug.
\_ How much more donation do you need? There is no
information as to how much is needed, how much has
been donated, what the money was spent on, etc.
No detailed accounting is being asked for here, just
a rough breakdown. Otherwise, how would we know
how much to donate. - soda donor
\_ I know I'm going to get flamed by mrauser for saying
this, but the largest issues facing the CSUA right
now are not cash related. What we need more than
money is a way to get students more involved with
their school and major, to introduce them to better
coding practices and non-academic technologies, to
provide tutoring and help to a breed of students that
may never have seen a command line - on UNIX or
Windows. Basically, we need to help build a community
of current students that is as vibrant as what those
who used to be here knew. (I still think we can do it
while acting professional and mature, but enough of
that.) I don't have the specific budget in front of
me for last year, but we requested something like
$4000 last year in hardware expenses (but received
less) and around $1000 this year (which we
received). Although the money is important and does
make it easier to buy random upgrades or components,
the bigger need is just 'more time'. New Soda has
been largely held up due to lack of this precious
resource, not cash. And, since so few current
students use this resource, it's hard to justify
spending too much time on it (for those of us in
pburo), when we could use this time to try and
coordinate speakers, corporate info-sessions,
help-sessions, etc. The better donation, in all
honest, is the wisdom, time, and insight that each of
you have - whether it's to help the root staff debug
an issue, come talk to the students about a topic
either technical or pragmatic, or basically help
foster a sense of community outside of the insular
confines of Soda and the MOTD. There hasn't been a
lot that we haven't been able to do, due to lack of
cash, but there has been a lot that we haven't been
able to do, due to lack of time. Hence the
proposition to -slightly- expand the size of the
politburo. But, to keep mrauser from killing me, we
love cash too. (cough) - amckee
\_ I had a longer post, but I suspect it was wasted
breath, so I rescued some precious motd bits. -mice
\- ms amckee suggests i did not provide sufficient
context. pls see
http://home.lbl.gov:8080/~psb/Articles/CSUA
for fuller context. "by my words you will know me".
it is odd to see the motd discussion turn into an
alumni issue. |
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