Thursday, August 22, 2013

A strange start to school.

Our back-to-school faculty meetings are this week.  The big one (8 hours!) was yesterday.  Yes, 8 hours, because it included lunch, and to pay for our lunch we had to listen to speeches while we ate. 

The college president spoke early, and usually he is informative.  I was hoping for some solid enrollment numbers from him, but nope.  During the q & a session, someone asked about enrollment.  The admissions lady was called up to the podium, and she said a lot of hemming and hawing and gee, not everyone has enrolled yet, and it's hard to compare from last year, and we have no solid numbers, and gee, we really hope it's not down too much, and blah, blah.  She either did not know or did not want to say.  I'm not sure which is worse.  All of the faculty, of course, noticed that the question was never actually answered. 

However, one of the faculty in this department has a wife who works in the tutoring center.  She somehow has better access to this kind of information than we do.  Her latest information is that the enrollment is at about 1100 as of yesterday, which is a little better than we feared, but not by much.  We are expected a group of internationals to go to advisement/ enrollment tomorrow morning.  Hoping for the best.

Last week I heard a rumor that the big student cafeteria would be closed this fall and that all of the dorm students would be fed at the snack bar, due to the small number of students in the dorms.  Yesterday, we were informed that the cafeteria would indeed be closed, though the announcement did not mention the number of people in the dorms.  They said it was due to the fact that the students would prefer the snack bar because of the TV and pool table.  But, there is no way they could do it if the dorm numbers were not down significantly. 

So, here we go. 

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