I’m the first to admit I spend way too much time on Twitter. I use it constantly to find and share news stories, post irreverent haiku, and stalk professional journalists. To many, the social networking sight seems pointless. But as a journalist, Twitter is invaluable. And as a verbose, narcissistic misanthrope, the service satisfies my urge to both be seen and engage with humans without having to actually be in the same room as them.
For many, it’s also a way to vent boring internal thoughts publicly. Like USM’s Chief Information Officer Bill Wells, who tweeted tidbits last Friday such as “Seven hours of convocating begins in 90 minutes – ummm boy,” “Yawn,” and “Help me, I forgot the ammunition.”
When I asked Wells what he meant by the last tweet-which he sent at around 2:30 p.m., in the midst of a seven hour meeting of the university community in the Sullivan Gym-he told me it had nothing do with the event. “Some of it could be what I was dealing with with the system office,” he said. He declined to elaborate, but added “I’m a strong enough person that I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to.”
After we talked, he tweeted “500 people can work for 7 hours and stay on task.” But his previous updates illustrate the danger in posting vaguely sinister messages in the most public way possible: When I read his posts, I assumed he was talking about the convocation. At the time, I couldn’t really blame the guy. The corporate retreat nature of the event seemed sort of, well, hokey. And while the event’s planners should be lauded for finding 500 people willing to ruminate on a topic as vague as the “strengths, values and assets” of USM, without a sizable student attendance, the whole affair seemed pointless.
But getting USM students to sit for seven hours in a florescent-lit gym and share their feelings is a tall order. A vast majority of our student body live off-campus, have day jobs or are parents. Some would have gone if they had the time, but most didn’t know-or care-enough about what’s at stake to show up.
The administration must take pains to explain this. If students aren’t willing to weigh in on the future of the university, then the university has no future. The fact that only 15 to 30 students attended demonstrates that the school has deeper problems than retention and budget cuts from the state legislature.
I want to make it clear: I believe in Selma Botman. She has continually aimed to be transparent with the USM community, and appears to really care what students think. But it seems the only way the school can gather the input it needs to face the daunting task of restructuring is if Botman literally walks into classrooms and asks students what they want from their university.
Barring that, maybe a free dinner and a chance to talk about the negative aspects of USM at the second convocation on Feb. 11 will draw more voices.
(When Dan MacLeod isn’t running the Free Press into the ground, he can be found wasting time at twitter.com/dmacleod1.)