To make this a more inclusive community, I would suggest opening up contributor registration to anyone who wants to. They can keep it anonymous, but you will start to get original content that wont be read anywhere else. Empower your community to generate content.

Yes this might lead to mixed views, but it will be that more exciting. If you allow the Babson community to speak freely, you will be agreed with, challenged, and questioned. That is when a site like this could really take off. Until now, I dont think Babson has anything like that.

You are all right, Babson is facing a lot of change right now, and I guess it is different than 2 yrs ago when I graduated. Those changes should be articulated from the community, or else they are just 2 people’s opinions. Find out how to plugin real-time voting polls, post-votes, etc….

I would suggest going to WordPress for this, their software is truly amazing.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Francesco

to add to your discussion on babson as a big school in a small school’s closing, i wholeheartedly agree. i came from a larger private high school, about 1,000 students, 300 or so in the graduating class. i felt like an integral part of the community there. i’m by no means a very sociable person with a lot of friends but at least there the administration treated me with respect for what i could do and had done. my participation in the community (however unfortunately small it was) felt like it was valued highly. i knew a lot of the high level administrators personally (there was no “middle level administrators” there) and would talk with them on a weekly basis – not just business ish either, but small talk, good-to-know-you bs. i don’t need much, but that kept me involved, and that’s one of the reasons why i donate highly (to my high school – not babson.)

here at babson, you have to fight for your time with your class dean. after three years here, i’m starting to finally learn who are the important individuals in this organization. at my high school, on the first day the administration sought me out to tell me how it was organized.

i’ve met some great people at babson and maybe it’s my fault because of who i am, but i really haven’t met enough. i’ve met people that i want to keep in close contact for the rest of my life, but i still find myself wanting more. there’s still time, though.

but since day one at babson, i’ve felt like the administration has treated me just like another ‘customer’. P04-0435, here’s your ThinkPad, welcome to a college without a heart. that has been very disappointing. and yes, some people will probably point out that my disappointment is largely my own fault. and it is, i recognize that, i know that 95% of the problems that i face are my own fault – trust me, i understand this. i am no stranger to bad decisions. but that other 5% has inspired me to go on an outspoken campaign to describe my disappointment.

as for the rich mommies and daddies comment – i’m not even going to go there. i need way more time to organize my thoughts on this. needless to say, i agree with you.

and as far as what babson does give you, it’s friends and connections. i really have met some great people at babson, i’d name them here but i’d blow my cover. i’ve met people that are going to be critical in my career – both professors and students alike. hell, i’ve worked for babson alumni for the last two summers. it’s because of those people that i try to write with care and consideration – they are relying on the babson name just as i am.

but what babson didn’t give me was that small school atmosphere. which is crap. which is why ocl ruined my campus life and now i live off campus and waste my time writing bitter diatribes about babson. instead of a college, i got whats up wednesday and a pub that’s run by sodexho – that just fucking recently started to open on the weekends. christ.

first, congratulations on graduating. you lucky bastard.

as far as carrying on the babson-hater torch, i will unfortunately be stepping up for that infamous babson tradition. i’ve been preparing a series of articles for the babson free press, posted under my real name, to help articulate the positions and observations that i have heard around on this site and experienced while i’ve been a babson undergrad. whether or not the ‘free press’ will print them is another story. but i’m sure they’ll appear on crapcampus and i’ll continue my steadfast support of this website and the readers and writers that contribute their efforts for it.

(btw, i saw a oclruinedmycampuslife t shirt the other day. where can i get one of those?)

and to Francesco DeParis, this site has really only begun. because, truth be told, babson is in a sad state right now. where is it heading? who will be the new president? what will happen to barefoot’s global strategy (which i’m preparing a post/article about)? now, probably more than ever, there is a need for a blog like this.

and i hate to be part of something that has been described as an “annoymous hatefest” (http://www.firehed.net/2007/02/07/what-is-it-with-shitty-teachers#comment-1722) – but i think what most people don’t realize is that we’re actually helping the school. it’s perplexing – i started writing here to help deter would-be business students like myself from making a bad choice. now, a year and a half later, i realized what i was doing was just articulating to babson (in a roundabout, somewhat malcious way) what kind of school i wanted.

babson can of course, choose to ignore me. but about the same time that i realized what i was really doing, babson started to change exactly like i wanted. first it was the suggestion boxes, then barefoot resigns, and then the map hill residents weren’t charged for the elevator. not to mention more people then ever are reading and participating in this blog: every post on the main page has 6+ comments (except mine, haha), polls are getting much, much bigger responses.

i know there are people that don’t like this site. and i want them to realize that babson is changing to accommodate my fellow writers/commenters and my views. i want to know how the crapcampus haters feel about that. maybe they should start writing more (aren’t they always the ones that say they are so involved?) they better get typing because it’s starting to look more and more like the bloggers that write here are having a growing impact on babson college.

and as far as how we are a bit hard on babson, i agree completely. posting at crapcampus is walking a fine line: it’s very easy to get malicious and go over board with your disappointment with babson. i’ve actually made some factually incorrect statements about babson (which i’ll be clarifying in the future), statements that i later regretted making. but the way i see it – the college needs to learn how to respond to bloggers. in the years ahead, there will be a crapcampus type site at every single college. students are always going to express their “feelings”, and it will most likely be done anonymously and harshly. it’s up to the college to learn how to respond to these attacks. we have an obligation to be honest in our observations, but we also shouldn’t feel bad about being negative. as long as we’re honest in our observations we shouldn’t feel shame for what we’ve done. (i.e. if you wouldn’t say something in public in a babson college classroom, you shouldn’t say it here.)

that said though, i am a little disappointed that i’m probably going down in history as a ‘babson hater’ – i’d much rather be the ‘babson architect” that you mention. it’s dirty work writing for crapcampus, but somebody has to do it.

anyway, Craptain Hook – thanks for your work on this site. and even though you graduated, you are still involved in the babson community. your observations and thoughts on babson are just as informative, whether you are in babson park or not. i hope you continue writing.

Very good point about offsetting the exaggerations of Babson’s marketing. We know we’re going out of our way to expose all the problems, but I don’t think we exaggerate any more than the marketing campaigns. I’ve tried to stress that before and I’ll make sure it’s more transparent as the site gets additions this summer.

Also…as to your transfer comment…it’s not like that thought never crossed my mind. But if I transferred, my FME and all my weird-ass classes would be lost in translation. That would mean I would have to tack on an extra year (or at least a semester) of school wherever I decided to go (I actually did look into it, and this was the case). Not to mention, I did stress that our quality of teaching was high. If there had been only one of those two things, I probably would have transferred. But the two combined was just enough to make me bite down and finish up what I started.

Once again, I would like to make it clear that maybe we do end up being too hard on Babson now and again. I mean we focus a lot on the negatives and less on the positives. But I think that’s the nature of disappointment and frustration. Besides, you get enough positives from the marketing campaign that I don’t think it’s necessary to reiterate those as much as it is to call bullshit on the stuff that’s misleading. In a way, we’re auditing Babson’s marketing efforts. We do our best to expose the stuff that most people coming in would want to know in order to make an informed decision. That’s the way I look at it, and I think it does a good job of helping people make better decisions about their college choice, as well as it influences people in charge to make appropriate changes in order to make the school a better place.

There definitely are people like yourself that come through Babson and love it. Just in my personal experience through writing for this site for two years and working with different people outside the scope of this site, though, I’ve found that the people unhappy with Babson far outnumber the people who love it. We’re just trying to separate the two and focus on those people like ourselves that would have made different decisions (or at least prepared ourselves differently) had we been exposed to a site like this.

The end result is a two-fold benefit. One is that we are helping Babson end up with students who knew all the facts up front and are much more likely to enjoy their experience and decision to go there. The second is that we are helping the people who go here get more of the things they want around campus to make their experience more enjoyable. So everyone wins. And in the meantime, you get to vent your frustrations in a safe environment, and honestly who in the world doesn’t like to do that?

Anyway, thanks for your comments, they are much appreciated, and thanks for the congratulations, as well. Best of luck.

There is no reason to drop a good idea due to graduation, just let it grow.

Babson isnt for everyone either, its an intense environment in all respects: scholastic, social, etc…

Lets hope they prepared you for the next big step in your life. Congrats on graduating!