but if there is anything that i want to say right now it is to warn of the evils of apathy. apathy has run rampant on the babson campus for a number of reasons. in the past some people have been disappointed with babson so they choose to not take part in the community. right now some people might be apathetic towards getting involved because they see no needs: we are already the hottest, why bother changing anything?

and i know it is the nature of a business school that most people here are involved in jobs and other extracurricular pursuits, too often we feel to busy to do anything for anyone else. but this is a truly toxic habit to get into. as you sit idly by, letting other people write articles for the free press, letting other people create or manage clubs, as other people run your student government, babson is losing your intelligent observation.

you, of course, might not care. i think that there are too many people on campus that think babson is good enough, so they just don’t care about getting involved. and it is those people that i believe are truly toxic to the babson environment – not the people that cry foul over babson’s shortcomings (the complainers, the bloggers.)

i honestly believe that you need to push your institution just as much as it pushes you. if you don’t – then we won’t remain on top for long. we need to demand to be able take whatever course that is about whatever and available whenever we want, because damnit you know you need that course in your life. and if that course doesn’t exist at babson, we need to look to olin and wellesley, we need to send your class dean emails (several, keep that in mind) about what you want to see happen to your school. because if we don’t then we will fall back into simple complacency, we will be replaced by the hundreds of other business schools jockeying for that “hottest” status.

you see, if you want to wear that ‘hottest’ tshirt – you got to work for it.

this is something i’ve tried to do through my involvement with the crapcampus/oclruinedmycampuslife website where i have written under the names firebarefoot and elliot. yes, it was done semi-anonymously and yes it’ll stay that way for now because no, it doesn’t matter who i am. (though, i’ll be the first to admit i have made mistakes in my judgement. my apologies, Mr. Barefoot – sincerely) i’m just an undergrad at babson and i’d like to maintain the right to feel free to type pretty much whatever the hell i want. i guess you could call that bad, immature, maybe even dangerous or – destructive? – but i’m young and dumb and i don’t care. i just like to write these words.

and if you don’t like it, write to the newspaper. they want to hear what you think. if you want it published, write it well. dean hanno is loved for a reason: he communicates.

babson’s a good school – perhaps even great. but there are still problems with babon’s education, just like in any ivy league school. it’s everybody’s responsibility to do their part to make sure these problems are solved – we need people that point out problems as well as people that fix problems. the good news is that there are a lot of people here at this school trying to do just that. you can thank them for their work and honor them by continuing it yourself – or you can be a prick and not care.

don’t be a prick.

i know i don’t ask for much, usually just the resignation of poor administrators and a more responsible college, but i’m asking the students today for something. the show’s in trim, in case you don’t have a meal plan and missed the emails in the flood that is babson email. it features the coolest people in the entire school. which is no lie because i calculated it in excel. i’m asking, pleading, getting down on my kneeing, for you to submit some bids for artwork.

but wait, you have a deadline. WEDNESDAY at 4pm. bids are due via Rachel Reiser’s email at rreiser@babson.edu. that’s today-ish, people. yes, i suck, i should have posted this way earlier. you can ignore that.

get out the checkbook, call up that girl/guy you’ve been eying all semester, go view and discuss some art, pretend to be smarter than you actually are. (okay, maybe it’s just me that likes to do that.) remember babson’s unofficial motto: act as if. if you see something you like, make a bid. and if not, whatever, i know you need a good reason to procrastinate anyway right now.

reid died of cancer at 20. that fucking sucks. your entire bid (if yours is the awesomest) goes to his foundation which works to make sure that shit doesn’t happen anymore. so basically, buy some art and help a good cause at the same time – The Reid R. Sacco Memorial Foundation. hows that for a value proposition?

but i really just wanted to point out that this auction and a recent number of other charitable attempts by babson students – such as the response to VT organized by the sororities and the trimsit… which, uh attempted to raise money but came up with a great idea anyway (fall??), are things that makes me proud of babson. which doesn’t happen a lot, and my negativity is even starting to piss me off, my super ego made me do it, i apologize.

i personally have made great, great sacrifices in order to afford bidding on a few pieces. i switched to natty and cheap ass vodka for a while. i returned all the empties. instead of smoking two joints, then smoking two more … i only smoked one more. i did it for the team, okay, so help me out, help out some kids with cancer and enjoy some chill artwork at babson.

please.

do it.

thank you.

there’s no knowing where we’re rowing
or which way the river’s flowing
is it raining?
is it snowing?
is a hurricane a-blowing?
not a speck of light is showing
so the the danger must be growing

With that in mind, i got an interesting email this week from barefoot (a very rare occurrence.) Guess what, friends, we’re getting suggestion boxes. finally, it seems, that barefoot is getting the message: the administration needs to communicate more (and not just to the SGA.) and, i really have to be honest – these boxes seem to be part of a recent, positive trend in the administration. they are communicating more, i assure you. and i am not drinking (heavily.)

but these boxes are a somewhat trite way of going about it. i mean, thanks – i will certainly use them. but it’s painfully obvious that this is the perfect solution for the administration. we write down their dirty little secrets and put them in a dark box and then we have no idea whether or not they are listened to or acted on or whatever. the administration loves these little boxes, especially those made of ticky-tacky that can withhold the rather (human) fact that they might not have implemented the best education system possible. (or, to put it graphically, fucked up magnificently.)

these boxes do very little to solve the problem with our administration: there’s still ‘not a speck of light is showing / so the danger must be growing.’ and yes, barefoot does say that they will announce the suggestion box results through SGA – but quite frankly, i don’t trust this administration at all. i don’t think they have the balls to come out and say that they did a poor job at anything. we will only hear about the ‘feel good’ stories, the same preprocessed, glossy bullshit that duped me into coming to babson in the first place. (fuck. i should have gone to Bentley.) what babson really needs to do is post every single suggestion received on a public board in a high traffic area. the entire community deserves to see how everybody else feels, this is one of the founding principles of crapcampus and the reason why we get read.

(oh, and here’s a tip. I’d contribute twice as many ideas to the suggestions boxes if you offered monetary incentive. if you’re going to make your customers do your work at least pay them for it.)

the administration currently shies away from this sort of public discourse such as facebook or this website. they feel a lot more comfortable in their offices that smell of rich mahogany and contain many leather-bound books. and quite frankly, if they did adopt a more transparent mentality, then they would let the cat out of the bag.

i was fortunate enough to actually hear about this cat through a phone interview with none other than the captain of our ship, president barefoot. well, not me personally, i fed questions through a friend – clark kent’s got to keep his day job after all. the main theme that i got from this discussion is that the current administration does not know what to do.

that’s right, i said it. the administration does not know what to do. i heard barefoot say this.

now, i’m sure barefoot will spin it his way, and really – i’m hoping someone will prove me wrong. can anyone at babson show me that they have a strategy over the next few years? can ANYONE tell me how babson plans to change next year? how they plan to deal with the disaster that is trim? why so many people don’t donate to this school? why nobody attends the OCL events? why knight parties aren’t even worth the free beer? why our tuition increases yet the service we receive declines? please, for the love of God, post your strategy and prove me wrong. i dare you. nay, i double dare you – because i don’t have my pride on the line, i have thousands of dollars of student loans on the line. please prove to me that i didn’t make a huge financial mistake by attending this school.

i know that the problems facing babson today are monumental, even threatening the very existence of babson as a certified educational institution. executive education, the for-profit company that our non-profit tuition dollars are boot-straping, is not helping babson. executive education teachers can’t teach in our class, our professors can’t teach in their classes. not because they can’t, because they just need different kinds of professors. the office of campus life has done a consistent, astonishingly terrible job for 3 years straight (arline maccormack: i’m looking at you.) i am downright disgusted by the fact that they still have jobs. really. (rachel rieser: you’re a super star, though.)

but above all that bullshit, the one thing that struck me as so amazingly ignorant is that barefoot doesn’t really give a shit about the quality of life at the undergrad school. it’s not even on his list of priorities. i just couldn’t get over this one. i couldn’t believe that the president of the school isn’t even concerned that the majority of it’s students are unhappy at babson. i’ll argue to the death that quality of life is the single most important factor (maybe tied with academics) in the undergrad’s perception of how well babson is doing. even more importantly, the babson graduate primarily uses this quality of life perception to figure out how much to donate, or – in my case, and many of my friends, to not ever donate to babson. (although, i am very much enamored by the idea of donating 1 dollar each year on my credit card so that babson loses money on the donation.)

and if there is anyone that disagrees with me, i want their voices to be heard. if you love babson, then please, post your opinion. we have both embarked on the same investment: babson college. i happen to think they failed on almost every single account (except for a few professors such as Lawrence Smith, Stephen Collins and Ruth Gilleran.) but really, it would make me feel a lot better if i was proven wrong.

public disclosure makes the bason administration nervous. but really, this is a business school: let’s be a maverick business school. if we want to be a world class business facility – and i really believe babson can be one – we should embrace this new philosophy of transparency. drop the carefully crafted PR/marketing bullshit for an honest, we’re-in-this-together approach. let’s all sit down, bitch a bit, converse some more. all we need is a more transparent dialogue – and it doesn’t cost anything. you can’t ever stop a site like crapcampus from airing your dirty laundry. suggestions boxes won’t do it, more money to sga won’t do it. only an improved quality of life will make this site transition from crapcampus to chillcampus – or whatever the next incarnation of crapcampus will be. hey, an improved quality of life might even completely destroy crapcampus. then, everyone would win.

even though my post is filled with harsh, bitter rhetoric, i do think the administration is catching on to the real world. it’s CERTAINLY not happening fast enough with barefoot or ocl or with the train wreck that is dining services. (another hint – just because you outsource sodexho doesn’t mean you aren’t fucking responsible for their terrible service, barefoot.) but, let me take a break from my bitching, there is one person in this administration that i think really gets it. thats Dean Hanno of the undergraduate school. his recent facebook group demonstrates a much better step forward than the president’s little ticky-tacky boxes. if you haven’t seen it, here’s the link: http://babson.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2253745216.

It was here that Dean Hanno confirmed – the first person from the administration that i have heard say this – that there was not going to be Friday classes (and Wednesdays off.) what’s happening in that group is a public discussion with a Babson administrator, something that has rarely happened here at Babson (at least during my years.) there are a lot of good posts there and i suggest that if you have the time, take a look. maybe i should start writing as hire hanno? it’s got that positive ring to it.

anyway, barefoot and company just need to realize that this public discourse is essential. you can’t stifle it. you can pander to it with suggestions boxes, but you can’t ignore voices like crapcampus and facebook. the only real option is to do as dean hanno has done: meet it head on. this is the real “digital” world, barefoot. we provided better suggestion boxes to the babson community years before you even realized this was a problem. you can either start to work with us or face a true nightmare once crampcampus gets into the top ten google searches for ‘babson.’ (have you tracked our success? we’re getting there.)

you’re the captain of this ship, barefoot, you’re the one that knows just where we are rowing. i suggest you get back up on your soap box and start telling all of us what the hell you spend all your time doing – because we sure as hell know you can’t raise money.

peace out, friends. don’t forget to vote for your sga reps. and april 20th is coming soon – better make your plans.

cheers,
fire barefoot

take a walk through our parking lots – count the benz, bmws and audis. (full disclosure: i drive a camry – with a hole in the bumper.) i’m not trying to hate on anyone with a good car – believe me, i’m jealous and wouldn’t turn down a ride. i’m just concerned about the future of babson if it is made up of (mostly) well off students. if babson truly wants to become a world class business school then it desperately needs to start attracting more students from the middle and low income classes.

why do i feel that this is important?

if this school is largely made up of students from high income families, then most ideas coming out of babson will be directed towards … high income consumers. now that’s all well and good, but there are millions of business ideas out there that don’t cater to the affluent.

i’m not trying to hate on anybody that has their eyes set on the luxury goods market (props to anyone that tries to start something, regardless of what you sell.) but really – is the best babson can do? i want babson to foster more innovative businesses who are focused on consumers outside of this wellesley bubble that we live in. i want to see more nonprofits, more socially conscious businesses. i want to see fme companies using their community service requirements by pairing with hatchery businesses. there are people at babson that are doing just this – putting their high priced education to help less fortunate people, but (maybe its just me) these people seem to be few and far between.

i’m not saying that low and middle class kids will always come up with altruistic business plans – they can be just as selfish as rich kids can be. and i’m not saying that rich kids can’t come up with an altruistic business plans either. i’m just saying that if we don’t have those low and middle class kids in our fme classes and what not, we’ll never hear their voice. if we never hear their voice then we’ll never get the best education possible. you did pay a first rate tuition for a first rate education, right?

i have no idea how possible this is with college located in wellesley, mass. i know that babson’s current financial status is … how to put it nicely? … distressed? (exhibit a: how many alums support our school? i come from a private high school where 50% of alums give money every year.) it might take 10, 20, 50 years to correct these diversity issues that i think hinder babson (and if you disagree – lets get a conversation going then.) that’s okay. but for the love of god, i hope someone in this institution is doing something to help get it started: increasing our need blind admission rates, offering tuition reductions for low income families – whatever it takes.

anyway, that’s my major problem with babson. now for something that can actually change babson while i’m still here. maybe.

it’s pretty much universally agreed on that babson’s social scene is lackluster at best. the best thing you can do here is leave. boston is a great city, but it’s expensive to park, to pay for taxis, and hell – the t stops way too early for a proper night out. babson really should get a much better bus system going. look at wellesley, they bus students to harvard and mit routinely. though it’s true that they have a billion in the bank, i can’t imagine that it would cost that much to rent a school bus one or two nights a week and have it drive around boston on a predetermined route. hell, i’d even pay for a ride if i knew that it’d pick me up when the bars close.

yes, this can be considered a drain on the social life on our campus if we just bus everyone off campus – but having more options is almost guaranteed to produce happier students. and barefoot (are you even listening?) – happier students will donate more.

just to close, i strongly support crapcampus as a forum for babson students to express themselves publicly about babson’s flaws (and benefits, as well.)

anyway, thanks for reading this long winded diatribe, my sincere apologies if i offended anyone,

fire barefoot