Please be a good neighbor, and if you drink, PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY!

Please notice the lack of any mention of following the law.

• good things about winthrop university
• good things about winthrop
• receiving interesting e mails
• thomson one sucks
• art class rss
• balanced evaluation
• winthrop art majors
• art at winthrop university
• thomson sucks
• leaving clothes in washer
• good & bad things about college professors
• winthrop artwork tillman hall
• art school t sucks
• winthrop university police
• tax conclusion
• winthrop blog
• wingspan sucks
• winthrop taxes
• michael lipscomb kinard

These are but a few of the ways that people found Winthrop Sucks over the break.

My biggest complain about PDF has always been that it requires a separate program read something. I haven’t figured out why someone who has already taken the time to type something out and has alloted the time to put it on the internet would want to take extra time to turn it into a PDF. For that matter, I haven’t figured out why they think I’ll be willing to open another program just to read the message.

It seems that whoever puts together Wingspan is at least listening to my prayers.

I still don’t like that I have to open a separate program to read that direct deposit will now be required to receive a refund check unless we want these checks going to our permanent address. That’s something that is sort of important to students. I could understand if there was some fancy formatting or font that might get messed up if it was set as a plain HTML page. But there isn’t any of this. It’s just straight text with a font that comes on every computer.

What does make me happy however is that there is a warning next to the link that the message will be a PDF.

Finally, someone at Winthrop has realized that opening something in a new program without a warning isn’t something that most people will enjoy. Now if only we could convince them that a PDF isn’t necessary in order to convey a message.

But I have to give the PDF users credit, they’re not as bad as the people who make 1 slide Power Point presentations that are sent out over the Daily Student Announcements.

Um,… what?

I have never heard of a student who enjoys a Lipscomb class. There are people who know how to get by them, and thus continually take his classes because they know what he wants to see which means they know how to get a good grade. That’s as close as I ever thought existed to someone enjoying one of his classes.

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the man string together a coherent thought. He’s always stopping in the middle of a sentence and starting over, or jumping back to clarify a thought he passed on in the past.

If anything, Lipscomb is a good professor because he teaches you to teach yourself the material because of his lack of a teaching ability.

Don’t get me wrong, the man knows his material. But this isn’t the James Pinckney Kinard and Lee Wicker Kinard Award for Excellence in Knowing Your Material, it’s the James Pinckney Kinard and Lee Wicker Kinard Award for Excellence in Teaching.

And before anyone comes to defend Lipscomb, I’m not trying to say this was his fault. He’s not the one who decided who to give the award to. And I’m pretty sure I know him well enough to say that if he were on the committee who gave out this award he would either pull himself off of it or pull his name from consideration.

So I ask these question of the mighty James Pinckney Kinard and Lee Wicker Kinard Award for Excellence in Teaching decision making group: Where did you find students who enjoy his teaching? And have you ever sat in one of his classes?

The email we did receive went like this

Without knowing who the student is and who the officeer is, I would have to say this information is incorrect. In order to park on campus you must register your vehicle and obtain a parking permit. But you are not required to have a permit to drive on campus.

I believe this was a miscommunication issue.

Thank you,
“Sent via BlackBerry.”

I find it interesting that there is no mention of where this miscommunication took place. And after seeing how the rest of Winthrop University handles these miscommunications (which is almost always blaming it on the students), I find it encouraging that the blame was not placed on anyone.

For what it’s worth though, it seems that this situation is over. Or at least, if it happens again we have an email from Chief Zebedis that it’s not supposed to be happening.

Although I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the student who emailed us had gone to the police station and attempted to go through with buy a permit that would allow driving on campus but not parking…

So today I had to call campus police to jump my car after my battery died. The guy who came to jump my car informed me that my car was not registered with campus police and I could be fined $75 just for driving on campus. I told him that I don’t need to park on campus because I live very close and usually walk to class. He said the registration was not for parking, it was just for driving. I was thinking registering my vehicle meant that I just have to fill out some form until he assured me, “You could do it right now and since the semester’s almost over it should only cost you about $40.”

I told him that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard and told him I would not be bringing my car on campus anymore.

What the Hell? Was this guy serious? The only explanation that I can think of is that the guy was confused and read the regulations wrong. It would have been more understandable if he had refused to jump the car because it didn’t belong to someone with a Winthrop parking decal.

Let’s analyze the situation for a moment. If everyone who drove their car on campus was required to register the car first, then no parent would be able to drop their child off in front of the dorm on move in day. No pizza delivery car would be able to deliver pizza. Tony would not be able to have relatives visit. No weddings would be able to take place. In fact, no special events would be able to happen in Byrnes, Barnes, or Tillman either because I doubt very much that members of the Rock Hill community will register their car with Winthrop University simply to be able to drive on campus.

We will be contacting campus police to see what they have to say.

This semester for us has been the laying of a foundation for things to come. We’ve hit big stories and flops that you can measure about any way you want. We’ve had stories where Winthrop seemed to do as we asked, and where nothing happened. Yes, when Winthrop seemed to listen it was probably just a coincidence. But maybe not.

The question now is, where would you like Winthrop Sucks to focus in the future? Is there a particular type of story you want to see more of? Is there a type that we should just never do again?

Please let us know in the comments. And remember: you might not write Winthrop Sucks, but you do have a big influence on what happens on it.

Winthrop is an art school, albeit one that has other areas of study as well. Despite the fact that it started as a teacher school and is still about the best in the country in that program, it’s an art school. Student art can be seen all around campus, and is usually much better than what the school pays for (ie that new fountain). The only problem is that to take any of the art classes, you have to either be an art major or have really good connections.

We think that having some art classes designed for non-majors would be beneficial to the entire student body. We have spoken to a number of students who would like to take an art class besides Drawing without having to be an art major.

However, we do see the problems in making this happen. One of them is the professors. Will they have enough free time to be able to add another course to their workload? Would they be able to tone down the criticism since these students are taking the class for basic knowledge instead of training to be professional artists? These are questions that can only be answered from within the CVPA.

Resources are another potential issue. Are there enough empty rooms to house the classes? Do we have enough art materials to provide for the students who wish to take the class? Art majors have to buy many of their own supplies, to what extent would this be true for other students taking these “fun” classes?

Interest in taking the class is another issue. Our poll was very informal and was very biased in its sample. Would these same feelings that we found still be true when asked of the entire student body?

These questions are something that we and the CVPA should investigate. There is a strong enough interest to explore the idea, and I challenge the CVPA to either make this happen or give good reasons why it can’t.

We attempted to leave some comments on a relatively Pro-Winthrop blog only to have them deleted before they saw the light of day. This was the reasoning:

I could not accept your blog because your link is to Winthrop sucks…and my blog was created to promote Winthrop, not cut it down.

Later, we received this from the same person:

I work for Winthrop and blog my experiences with Winthrop. No they don’t tell me what to write, but prospective students have a link to my blog, and I didn’t feel it appropriate to have a comment that linked the students to a blog that is how Winthrop sucks. It is nothing personal, but its my job to recruit students, and I didn’t think that that was the best link to have. That is why I wrote you an e-mail was so that I could acknowledge that you were right and thank you for responding. But again, the link was not in the best intentions of the blog.

I apologize if I offended you, that was not what I was aiming for. Thank you for reading my blog and for responding to my question that I posed.

Here is where it gets a bit tricky. We didn’t find this blog through Winthrop in any way, we found it by using WordPress’ “Random Blog” feature. The link was left with no intention except to identify who wrote the comment.

We think that perspective students should be given the opportunity to receive multiple sides of the Winthrop story. We understand that Winthrop wants future students to see the best that it has to offer, but we feel that by allowing views such as ours Winthrop will be better represented. It just gives you more credibility when you are able to point out things that you don’t do well.

And if you really want to get down to it, this blog didn’t have any comments anyway, so the author should be happy that someone actually wrote something.