The NYT reports that MIT is posting student blog entries on the Admissions homepage, without any sort of censorship. This is a pretty cool idea, since it allows prospective students and alumni to see what life is really like at MIT. Yet, it is also a dangerous idea, since it allows prospective students and alumni to see what life is really like at MIT.
If this is the biggest issue so far, they're doing pretty well:
And not all posts are positive. Ms. Kim once wrote about how the resident advising system was making it impossible for her to move out of her housing — expressing enough irritation that the housing office requested that the admissions office take her post down. Officials refused, instead having the housing office post a rebuttal of her accusations; eventually, the system was changed.
Cornell's Life on the Hill blogs are a pretty lame attempt at student expression. Bloggers post infrequently, and while it's fun to read students' own words, most of the posts are simply "perspective" pieces: students write about what they did that day, or some fun event they went to. There isn't a lot of big-picture stuff.
I'm not saying that Cornell should start letting crazies like me post things on admissions.cornell.edu, but it might be cool to let the outside world see some of the thinking that happens on campus. Pick a contentious issue on campus -- it can be something as benign as the issue of whether Cornell should have class on Labor Day. Have a student from each side write a short essay and publish the two pieces in a special section on the website. Do something to show that Cornell students really care about what happens "on the hill," and demonstrate that they can interact intelligently with the world around them. The "Dear Diary" entries aren't going to cost Cornell any alumni donations, but neither do they prove that Cornell students know how to think.
No comments:
Post a Comment