Monthly Archives March 12, 2014

Fairfield professors have become increasingly vocal about the decision that, they say, would effectively delete 10 years of data, software development and reporting algorithms. Mentor, the course management, registration and information hosting platform, is set for official shutdown on March 30.

Students’ interests were honored with the relaunch of my.Fairfield’s landing page on Feb. 20 after holding various focus groups, altering the way users access information on the site.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal hosted a roundtable discussion about sexual assault Friday in the Dolan School of Business Dining Room with students, faculty and administration from Fairfield, Sacred Heart, Quinnipiac and other area schools.

Classes will be over, summer will be just days away and Juicy J is scheduled to be in Alumni Hall. On Wednesday, April 30, the last day of classes for spring semester, rapper Juicy J is scheduled to be the main performer at the FUSA spring concert. His opening act is scheduled to be announced later today.

Tuesday, 3/4 6:00 p.m. A female student reported to DPS that she was being harassed by a former roommate since September. The incident has been referred to the Office of the Dean of Students.

It is a bittersweet end for us seniors. We have spent our Tuesdays cooped inside an office in the lower level BCC for four years. We have worked on many stories for this paper and have met many people – students, faculty, staff and administration.

CNN recently reported that a New Jersey teenager has sued her parents who she claimed forced her out of her home and refused to pay for her private high school tuition and college education. Rachel Canning, the girl who made headlines with this outrageous situation, claims that her parents mistreating her is enough justification to sue them in order for her to continue going to school.

Just two weeks ago, the Maidan square in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, was a bloody, burning center of revolution. Authorities shot at hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, leaving a hundred people dead and thousands of others missing, wounded, maimed or beaten senseless.

Since August 2013, we have followed with dismay the events surrounding the abrupt decision by the university’s Information Technology Systems service to end the use of the Mentor course management system and replace it with Blackboard. We have heard the ITS argument that Mentor has security problems, but we have seen no credible evidence that Mentor could potentially compromise the security of student records or any other sensitive information.

I am writing this letter in support of the work of the Educational Technologies Committee and the many faculty across campus working to re-instate Mentor as a course management and institutional tools system at Fairfield.