UMBC: Its Own Worst Enemy, Part 4

I thought I'd hold off on a few of these for a while, lest all 25 subscribers think that this space has become exclusively negative.

Everybody in student life, especially those of us in SGA, want UMBC students to take "ownership" of the campus. We'd love for everybody to have the kind of experiences that David Hoffman frequently describes. Unfortunately it seems that not all parts of the campus support that goal - in some cases even actively suppressing student demonstrations of campus ownership.

One such event happens nearly every year. A few brave artistic students decide to create chalk paintings around a residence hall - their home at UMBC. The next morning, as students are busy taking pictures and wondering about the mysterious artists, an email arrives from a Community Director. The gist of the message is always the same: "Lovely art, but remember that in your community living guide, chalking is prohibited."

Is that the message we should be sending at UMBC? "Lovely expression of campus ownership, but unfortunately we don't allow that here." How can we spend valuable resources begging students to get involved with UMBC, only to turn around and trample them when they do?

UMBC has taken a very proactive approach to campus policy, an approach that says, "we will use policy to prevent problems from occurring." I think we could stand to have a more reactive policy, one that says, "we will use policy to eliminate problems if they do occur." Chalking hateful messages around a resident hall would certainly be a problem - but isn't somebody's chalk art a positive community message? Is it really fair to students to destroy the positive just because there is the possibility of negative?

I would love to see students decorate True Grit before a game, or put a festive Santa hat on Walter Sondheim for the holidays. I also wonder how fast such a demonstration of campus ownership would be removed...

Webmail (@UMBC.edu) - Follow Up

In response to my recent post about UMBC's webmail system, SGA President Jay Lagorio sent a copy to Collier Jones.

At the end of the correspondence I found out that it is, in fact, possible to enable HTML display by default for the webmail interface. From the main webmail page, follow these steps:

Options -> Display Preferences -> Show HTML Version by
Default

Thanks to those who helped give me this answer and I hope this information will be useful to others in the future.

Webmail (@UMBC.edu)

While on my own computer I have all of my email accounts configured through Outlook, I often find the need to access my UMBC.edu email account via the web-based interface. While for the most part this system works relatively well, one of my ongoing dissatisfactions with the setup is its lack of HTML support. Many of the newsletters UMBC sends out, along with mass emails from several organizations and newsletters to which I subscribe. While many emails do contain links to HTML versions that can be viewed in a browser, I have noticed that some of UMBC's emails do not include this feature, instead rendering only as a mass of links and bracketed HTML code.

This prompts me to ask the question, is it possible to add HTML support to our web-based email client? That being impossible, could we instead promote in-house the sending of plaintext option emails with links to view the formatted version outside of the webmail client?

Undergraduate Research

There are a lot of things to like about UMBC, but one thing that has been quite frustrating for me this semester revolves around undergraduate research opportunities. I have been attempting since the semester began to secure some kind of research internship either on campus or at one of the surrounding medical centers, like Hopkins or UMD.

Unfortunately I seem to be running into a lot of dead ends, both on their ends and on UMBC. Like many other students, my inbox is bombarded weekly with emails from the Career Services & Shriver Center - all containing links that have little or nothing to do with my pre-professional aspirations. I am also often encouraged by other departments on campus to go to the Shriver Center (which I did last semester) for assistance setting something up.

Well, the Shriver Center looks at your resume, helps you get it online, and then tells you to apply to positions via UMBCworks. I've gone through the simple application process on that website tens of times now without receiving a single acknowledgment of my submission. Naturally I wonder what I am doing wrong - how can others profess such success when using the Shriver Center while I flounder?

My next step was to contact the person in charge of pre-professional based internships to schedule an appointment to see what was going on. Three emails over several months later, I have yet to secure an appointment or even an response.

Meanwhile, links for internships at the places I am looking into keep appearing on UMBCworks, and I continue applying to no result and much discouragement.