onefixedstar | Student government

I haven't figured out yet if relations between faculty and students are truly that much more acrimonious here than at my previous department, or if it's just a few domineering faculty and a few bitter students, but we were regaled with more stories at yesterday's Graduate Sociology Student Association meeting. The stories involved such weird occurences as a top secret meeting at which a rules was passed to prevent the grad student rep from speaking at faculty meetings (apparently this failed because some of the faculty were a bit irritated at being excluded from the top secret meeting, and a few even throught that the graduate students ought to have speaking rights). The most recent rumour says that in response to the top secret external review conducted last year, the department is going to take away some Ph.D. student offices and use them for...something. RA space, possibly. I've decided to ease into the politics gradually. I signed up as the liasion to the Graduate Student Union, which I'm told mostly involves forwarding email. That ought to give me a chance to see how things work before being thrown in the middle of them.

I think this afternoon, I'll bake muffins. And shop for a lightbulb.