My input

We were asked to offer our experiences with the technology conversion our college just went through, specifically experience with classroom problems. Even though I'm not teaching, I sent the following response. It'll be interesting to hear if my sentiments get sent on; they're rather incendiary:

"Thanks for this opportunity to offer input about the IT debacle: although I'm not teaching this semester, I'm on a search committee, and the conversion caused major problems for anyone trying to do work for the college. For example, I could not access my email from off campus until I called the Help Desk (they were friendly); I could not access my files from off campus (still cannot - despite following the instructions). Both of these things are/were needed for me to do my job.

"In my opinion, the extremely huge number of problems resulting from this conversion should result in the FIRING of the people in charge. I'm serious. Many of the "problems" that resulted should have been anticipated; that's the job of an IT team, to anticipate and then prepare so that problems of the magnitude we've experienced do NOT happen.

"I'm very, very serious in my opinion here: this rollout was mishandled in a way that points to utter incompetence, utter disregard for the college community and how it does its work, utter disrespect, really. And now the college community is being lied to about the conversion and its aftermath. We've been lied to before about what's possible/impossible with our technology (at least when compared with what's possible/impossible on other two-year campuses), but the magnitude of this particular event astounds me.

"Please convey my sentiments to anyone who is in a position to do anything. The more pressure the faculty puts on administration, the better, I think. We're not luddites and not resistant. We're professionals who need our colleagues in non-faculty positions to be equally professional.

"Thanks,
Julie"

Some people have said that every IT department works at odds with the rest of the institution, but it's not true: conflict, lack of awareness, and outright falsehood do not have to be the MO. We'll see.