Sometimes I feel like there is a lack of communication between the student body and the school administration. This is especially true for art students. Bus routes, for example, have removed Mason Gross entirely as a bus stop. At first, getting off at George Street was adequate, but when George Street closed for renovation, the closest stop was Rockoff or C-Town (depending whether you're coming from College Ave or Douglass). The EE bus to get there appears less frequently than the other buses, and leaves more quickly at the Rutgers Student Center. Scheduling classes also had some issues. In my sculpture class, the class times changed from this semester to an entirely new time, which made the class impossible to schedule because of campus conflicts (Sculpture is located in the Livingston Art Building). Fortunately the class time was changed back when almost all the class complained to the professor. I'm sure there are many events that happen just like this that can end up helping or hurting a student, whether in Mason Gross or any other school at Rutgers. It can be an issue with the school or a change that students don't like, and perhaps the student can't or doesn't have to time to formerly complain to the administration, or even if they do, have a minimal or zero impact. Sometimes this phenomenon is known as the "RU Screw," and sometimes the student has done nothing to create this problem he/she is now facing.
While it is probably impossible to prevent this occurrence, a solution to alleviate this and to provide students information is to create a Rutgers community website, perhaps a forum, that is run and moderated by the University. Overall, I feel that this solution will benefit both the university and the students. The University could post polls on recent changes in the university and see whether students like the change or not. Then the University could look at the overall response and react accordingly. The University could also ask whether or not certain changes should be made before they make a decision. This could even be separated by category, whether is a university-wide change or a internal school change. I feel this would be much more effective than the occasional poll the university e-mails its students, or changes a student isn't even notified about. In the email questionnaire, students are being asked to fill something out they may not be interested in or care about. This is also made obvious by the random gift drawing for a iPod or something similar that a student may win by filling out an e-mailed questionnaire. It's basically saying the student needs some kind of external motivation to fill out this survey. However, with a something like a forum that is integrated as a university service, students will want to know what's going around Rutgers. They can respond effectively to polls that they care about, and feel that it is making more of a change because the experience isn't as removed as a random impersonal e-mail from the university. This forum could even have ads on the the side to generate revenue as well as create jobs for students to moderate the board. There could be another part of the forum where students can ask questions ranging from general to specific, like what buses is there to take or where the satellite computer lab is located in College Ave. This would also help create a general sense of community within Rutgers. The university has so many people, and I think this would be a good way to use the information that everyone knows to help everyone else out.
