The great lockout

My goodness, the j-school is abuzz today, isn’t it?  In case you’ve been living under a rock you aren’t on Twitter, Brian Brooks sent an e-mail this morning this morning telling students that they risked arrest if they were still in the buildings after hours.  He also sent an e-mail to the faculty explaining that students had been propping the building doors open after hours, practically inviting homeless people to live in our buildings.

It’s not news that many students spend every waking hours at Lee Hills or RJI because that’s where the equipment they need to use is located.  It’s also not news that students who do have access to the buildings after hours – TAs, grad students, etc. – often let their friends and peers in late to do work.  And as someone who’s done both (oops?), I understand where all the anger is coming from.  But I also understand where Dean Brooks is coming from.  He had every right to tell students that the building are off-limits after hours.

But here’s where he went wrong.  Talk about a difference in tone between the e-mail he sent the staff and the e-mail he sent the faculty (I’d actually read both before learning that students were up in arms).  When framed as a safety concern, his issue seems very reasonable.  With the faculty, he also seemed to start a dialogue – which kids should we allow in the building, when should we let them in, and how do we grant them access?  The e-mail he sent students should have reflected the “best and brightest” attitude he usually has about this school.  It should have said, “Folks, we have some serious safety concerns about students being in the buildings after hours, but we’re going to work together to find a satisfactory solution to the problem.”

I don’t know if a sit-in in the complex is the right answer.  Remember, many of those sit-ins in the ended in arrest.  If you’re passionate about after hours access to risk getting jailed, by all means, join in.  I agree that 9 to 9 access isn’t enough in a 24-hour news cycle.  But I also agree with the convergence faculty, which worries that 24/7 access, with swipe cards and without TAs, means a lot of unsupervised students with a lot of high dollar equipment.  That’s a multimillion dollar liability I understand not wanting to take.

So where do we start?  With journalism faculty who don’t put in 10, 12, 18 and even 24-hour days recognizing that some of their students do.  Then, a conversation about what constitutes reasonable access.  Twelve hours clearly isn’t enough, but what is?  I think keeping the lab open until midnight, when the library closes, would be a good a start.  Since the problem is access to equipments/program, can we check out laptops with Avid and CS5 to students who really are working round-the-clock to meet a deadline?

Let’s start a dialogue, not stage a demonstration.