We’ve got a few new things to update you all on before you arrive.

First and foremost of the crapcampus priorities, we now are arranging regular weekly meetings with the office for undergraduate deans! Finally someone is willing to bring us in to the reformative process that babson needs! Although, our consulting comments/critiques are still being offered for free, we are excited to embrace our new friends in Babson’s faculty.

PREPARING FOR WAR: Babson’s Blue Collar War

To remind our old readers, and for those who don’t yet know, I’m a blue collar boy in my roots. Both parents, grandparents and other immediate relatives, are blue collars. I’m also the son, of a Local Union VP for the International Association of Fire Fighters. The union blood and rough working hands run deep and strong with unbreakable pride within this young man. And it is for that reason, that I announce a declaration of war on the managers in charge of facilities and grounds. Shelley Kaplan, Stephen Tolley, and Nick Butera because I am going to name names. Over the weekend, I snapped pictures on my phone, of union work being given away from a deeply and definitely excessively cut staff of Union employees here at Babson. The grounds crew here, has been cut to five people. The facilities staff has suffered even more losses in the past year, after receiving a devastating layoff of 26 employees last summer. What is the worst, is that these guys are doing the best they can and its still not up to management’s expectations. They’ve repeatedly been asked to work harder and harder with no additional assistance. All the while, these guys are saying, “hey, we know this is fucked up, but what do you expect when you are the ones telling us to pull weeds for a week from a flower bed behind a dumpster!?” HEY BUTERA, ITS CALLED HERBICIDE, AKA ROUNDUP! Rather than hire another few employees to assist and adequately staff for the tasks at hand, babson will pay an extra 50 percent more than OT pay, just to have an outsourced company take care of it.What I’ve seen on campus this summer, especially within this past week, is an all time low for the facilities and grounds management. It truly is depressing to think that a school that prides itself so highly in business, lets people run an entire division of the campus’ appearance so poorly. And I gotta tell you guys, though the strike was just a rumor, these blue collar boys are pretty pissed off and more importantly than that, they really are counting on some support from the students and more importantly the parents of students. They like us and they want to keep working with us, but the management is grinding them into the dirt and they simply cannot complete the tasks requested with the staff provided. So when your bathroom hasn’t been cleaned for a week, you run out of toilet paper, or you live in Map Hill and no one shows up to clean the bathroom for a week, remember its not their fault for not getting there in time, its the management that has cut away some of the muscle and overburdened an understaffed department.Now these aren’t even the opening shots, this is just the declaration. But believe, this one is definitely going to be a shooting war. So stay tuned.

We owe special thanks to Dean Hanno for taking an initiative to improve all aspects of student service here at Babson, everything from the gym to the dreaded office of campus life.

Raise your expectations! OCL has been restaffed!! We here at crapcampus, I feel, should consider this a great victory as the purpose of renaming our front page as OCLruinedmycampuslife.com has been fulfilled. Now, I’ve been asked if since such staffing changes have been made, would we consider retiring our OCL attack tag?

I was honestly considering having the web address restored to just crapcampus but the keyword there is “was”.

I’ve currently started a new job in the area that I greatly enjoy and greatly require housing for. The problem is, my housing arrangements end earlier than when Babson’s move in date begins. So I sent an email to my new “Area” director, Dennings Aaris, requesting an early move in after explaining my situation. I included in the email my adress to the concerns for those who would be undergoing orientation in the week before move in, and apparently, my early arrival causes too much of an inconvenience. The 27th was the best they could do. No longer wishing to burden my friends with my boarding, I decided that I should ask OCL if maybe I could move in too, since the sports teams and RA’s and majority of Babson’s dorms are here and ready to be moved in (I’ve walked around and checked and just about everything but Putney is as ready as its going to be). So just about an hour ago, I headed into the office, with hopes high, and for once, with positive expectations. Sadly, my friends, I have only disappointment to report.I arrived in the office, and while waiting to speak to someone like Lisa Virga, I overheard the following the following phone conversation being had between a parent and a student assistant in the office. It apparently was a parent asking about the move in date for their son who was on the soccer team. It quickly caught my attention as soon as I heard the student verifying the parent’s question. The question was can my son still move in early? The student asked, “your son is on the soccer team? No, he quit? Ok let me check with someone in the office….(she goes back into office and comes back to say)…. Yup, I just checked and his move in date is still set for the 18th. You’re all set.” Now here’s a kid who has no need to come to campus earlier other than just the convenience that his parents enjoy of not having to change their orginal travel plans.Things get worse.When I finally start talking to the student assistant, she informs me that the only way I’m gonna get in touch with Virga is through email, she’s too busy running around. And thats when Rita stepped in. At first, I appreciated her stepping to the plate. But as soon as she started talking downward to me, and reminding me of the “old guard’s” policies of requiring an on campus activity to qualify for early move in, I wanted to burst out laughing. My hope for a better OCL was shocked into near hysteria. This gal, got so nasty in her snippityness, and her mightiness of position (excuse while I laugh Rita, you barely have your own desk), I couldn’t help but lash back and try and suggest a departure from their old ways and to inform them that I expected a much higher concern and willingness for student service. If they would have said, well get a letter from your employer and we’ll take it into consideration, I’d have been back before they closed, just so I could have one less thing to worry about. Instead, here I sit, reporting from the library, with no place to live.

I really wish that for this part of this entry, I had a more positive and uplifting finish that would really be a great example of real improvement in the OCL staff. But truly, I will remain a skeptic warily watching, listening, and testing the ranks of OCL. I encourage all of you, to do the same, and to remain cautious of any potential activity with OCL.

TO THE STAFF OF OCL: you’ve been warned. We are expecting major improvements, specifically in your communications with students and level of service offered to students. I won’t go as far as to start saying that you all are already as incompetent, incapable, and infuriating as the last people who held your positions, but I suggest you make damn sure you distance yourselves from their way of thinking as much as possible or you surely will not be here for long. And believe me, I would love to hear of someone in OCL who inspirs me to say, “Wow, I never want them to lose that job. They’re where they need to be, helping students.”As far as me getting our Crapmaster (congrats again on joining the alumni community), to rid them of the OCLruinedmycampuslife curse, I’ll make you a deal. You improve student services, and make sure I hear nothing but positives from the trenches, all the way till mid terms, I’ll get it taken down.If I hear rave reviews all the way through finals, and I see collaboration with SGA and other Student Organizations and some strong attempts at some good events, I’ll throw a luncheon for the whole office, right a letter of thanks and apology, and the food will be the finest Italian Roast Beef imported and catered from Chicago, Illinois. I’d much rather be working to assist you people and help improve what is wrong with your office rather than be sitting here now. I don’t do this for personal pleasure, believe it or not.

That will be all for now. Remember, you can talk to me in real time! Message Reverend Esby on AIM and I’ll get back to you asap.

Signing out,
Bryan “Reverend Esby” Steward