Gmail and TCD

fiveone

jmccrohan wrote: »

Hardly **** fodder.. I use all of those features daily, as do many others

Would you pay for them? Or would you rather whore your personal information?

Jonathan

lydonst wrote: »

Would you pay for them? Or would you rather whore your personal information?

Yes i would pay for them. I'm happy getting them for free in exchange for my browsing habits tho

Out of interest, which email provider do you use for your private emails?

fiveone

If I had a choice I'd pick myzone! Alas.

Danger Bob

lydonst wrote:

But then the SU didn't even bat an eyelid, so I guess you can't win.

Ahem....there's a slight difference between not batting an eyelid and actually agreeing to something. The SU and the GSU were consulted on this before any contract was signed. Both sets of officers, having considered the pros and cons agreed that this was the best move. Then, from an SU point of view, we consulted with our exec and our council and both seemed quite happy with the switch. As such, we agreed to the changeover.

Mymail was unstable, slow and quite ugly. Myzone has many more features, considerably more storage, seems to work a bit faster and is quite a bit prettier. And, one year later, the vast majority of people are quite pleased with it while it's still a tiny batch of naysayers in the college community who have a problem with it.

Ever consider that maybe it's just your opinion that it's bad and other people's opinion that it's good and that neither of you are particularly right or wrong? As far as I recall, the vast majority being happy, based on their beliefs and opinions is a fundamental tenet of democracy. And you do believe in democracy, don't you?

fiveone

Democracy requires a decision from every member actually - only the SU was given a decision without any consultation of the student body and furthermore democracy is based on an informed decision - Neither of these criteria are satisfied here. The coke debate had a referendum, and this should have had as well. I didn't even know the SU were involved, but thanks for going ahead and making the decision - seen as the former president lost his coke project maybe you might have gotten an accurate estimation of student's opinions had you put it to referendum and actually informed people about the pro and cons. As usual the SU just goes with the flow. I didn't hear a peep about this is the record all year by the way.

Edit: I suppose this goes hand in hand with the new can crusher / advertisement-canvass in the middle of the arts block? And handing out lucozade and Burger King vouchers to people leaving there exams? What are you people like? Any tenuous excuse "for the benefit of the students" to squeeze a bit of advertising into student life.

Ron DMC

lydonst wrote: »

Democracy requires a decision from every member actually - only the SU was given a decision without any consultation of the student body and furthermore democracy is based on an informed decision - Neither of these criteria are satisfied here.

It was raised at SU Council. Any student can attend and voice their concerns. All Class Reps had a say in it.

The coke debate had a referendum, and this should have had as well.

Perhaps that's the case, but unfortunately the result of any such referendum done by the SU mightn't have even affected the decision ISS and the College would have gone with. The Coke affected what was sold in the SU shop, not the catering run parts of college.
In the same way, any decision the SU had made would have little effect.
They were consulted by the College (which was merely a gesture), but at the end of the day the College can do whatever they like with their email service.

I didn't even know the SU were involved, but thanks for going ahead and making the decision

Again, it wasn't a decision for the SU to make.
And as for communication, being informed etc, anyone at Council (reps, convenors etc) knew all about it. The fact that they didn't filter down this information is another issue, but from what I remember the SU's involvement was mentioned in the President's weekly email (something about the Officer's trialing MyZone before it was fully launched. Perhaps you didn't read it.

- seen as the former president lost his coke project maybe you might have gotten an accurate estimation of student's opinions had you put it to referendum and actually informed people about the pro and cons.

I'm not even going to get into this.

As usual the SU just goes with the flow.

I can understand how it would look that way, but unfortunately the SU don't have as much power as you might wish they did.

I didn't hear a peep about this is the record all year by the way.

The Record is not the only communication outlet for the union. Again, I refer you back to the President's email.

Edit: I suppose this goes hand in hand with the new can crusher / advertisement-canvass in the middle of the arts block? And handing out lucozade and Burger King vouchers to people leaving there exams? What are you people like? Any tenuous excuse "for the benefit of the students" to squeeze a bit of advertising into student life.

The can-crusher is part of the College's recycling efforts (you can't possibly have an issue with recycling). So what if there's ads on it, it helps the college cover costs.

ilovemybrick

lydonst wrote: »

Democracy requires a decision from every member actually - only the SU was given a decision without any consultation of the student body and furthermore democracy is based on an informed decision - Neither of these criteria are satisfied here. The coke debate had a referendum, and this should have had as well. I didn't even know the SU were involved, but thanks for going ahead and making the decision - seen as the former president lost his coke project maybe you might have gotten an accurate estimation of student's opinions had you put it to referendum and actually informed people about the pro and cons. As usual the SU just goes with the flow. I didn't hear a peep about this is the record all year by the way.

Edit: I suppose this goes hand in hand with the new can crusher / advertisement-canvass in the middle of the arts block? And handing out lucozade and Burger King vouchers to people leaving there exams? What are you people like? Any tenuous excuse "for the benefit of the students" to squeeze a bit of advertising into student life.

Ill-informed doesnt begin to describe your stance on the SU's involvement in the switch. Without getting into and rebutting every little point you make I will say this. The most important thing that makes the union relevant is not that they represent you to the outside world and to college as the representative structure of the student body but rather that when any college authority wants to have student input it is to the union they go.

As such it was to the SU that the option went. The SU within its own system did everything to debate the point. If you arent happy with that then that is your problem and the onus is upon you to get involved with the current system that is in place for college to engage with its student body and do something about representing your views. The SU cannot be blamed if something occurs that you don't agree with if you don't do anything about it. Every student has a class. Every class has at least one class rep position available to that class If a poor class rep is elected or if nobody takes up that position then how can it possibly be the fault of the Union if something that you dont like happens.

Democracy does not require a decision by everybody, it in fact requires the potential engagement of those who must abide by the decisions of the same democracy. If the potential is not met then it is the fault of the non-engaging members of that democracy and further it is their responsibility to act upon it.

And you know what I bloody love myzone.

Jonathan

ilovemybrick wrote: »

And you know what I bloody love myzone.

+1

fiveone

My apologies to the forum, I seem to have unleashed the SU swarm. I could be childish and chop up your posts as you have done mine, but its counter-productive and really just padding distracting from the main issues. This argument isn't about the democratic nature of the SU, or what it hypothetically could or could not have done.

I give you the point that if I was overly concerned my own involvement in the SU may have been warranted: yet as far as I can remember this idea was introduced in non-term time, I may be wrong. The SU is present all year, and post-summer I see certain officers smiling with Hego in from of the exams building with shiny new laptops. Fight the power lads.

Search up thread for the gist of the argument: advertising and privacy. This is the real issue, and seen as you have responded to my points selectively I direct you again to the Lucozade / Burger King promotions, which I in fact did get in touch with the Pres about, and while he responded promptly and fairly I still disagree with these methods.

As far as Gmail is concerned, as I see it, it is your responsibility to be aware of potential dangers in dramatic shifts in major college services and to inform the students about it. It's a full time job after all.

Danger Bob

In fairness, lydonst has a good point about the out of term-time thing. The SU officers at the time clearly made this decision when there were no students around so that they could bypass democracy. But that Quinn guy is a wily bastard. That's why he went back in time to have the following (clearly offensive) photo and article published on the college website on March 8th.

http://www.tcd.ie/Communications/photo.php?headerID=563&photoID=505&galleryArchive=2007

What a bastard!

And then he had the audacity to have Trinity News write the following article on it, posing as a story that they'd written about it during the college year.

http://www.trinitynews.ie/articles.php?tn=1&issue=5&id=315

And to add to that... oh he's clever.... he got the Trinity News journalist to cite an even earlier article in the University Record as part of his opinion piece, suggesting that there'd been a previous article about the switch in said newspaper. However, as lydonst has reliably informed us, there was never any such article.

Look, I completely accept that I'm completely biased in any argument concerning the SU from the year I worked for it but if you're going to make comments about things not being reported in a college newspaper, then you actually have to READ that newspaper. As far as I remember, there were two such Record articles that year, a few Trinity News articles on it, and a few mentions in the weekly e-mail. The SU officers did a lot to communicate (maybe more could have been done) and we did what we believed to be best and I don't think any of us regret that call. A referendum on every idea would just be costly, difficult, inefficient and would defy the reasoning for electing officers.

Apologies for unleashing the SU side of this argument a little and I do understand your concerns about privacy, ones which your perfectly entitled to have and to express. However, if you're going to insult or undermine someone's work in public, it's only reasonable to expect a response, especially ow that your point has been proven to be based on a number of inaccuracies.

fiveone

Insult or undermine? No specific names were mentioned so if anyone is bringing character into this it's you, basing your whole post on Dave Quinn when its clearly not simply about him. I don't see any article under your link to the picture, it merely states what has already been agreed upon: "Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and Google are to collaborate to provide the College’s 15,000 students with Gmail." Trinity News is not the SU paper, and I'll wager whoever wrote it wasn't part of the SU.

In the hypothetical situation that the SU did their very best to convey this information to students (postives and negatives) it still leaves the problem of the SU's attitude to advertising and complicity in Hegarty's eagerness to privatize. This includes lucozade workers being over present in the arts block, burger king vouchers, lucozade games in the arts block, willingness to remove the Coke ban.

Leaving Luce hall for exams this year I saw a former SU officer handing out lucozade bags with Bk vouchers in them. After the exam mind, not when lucozade might have been "beneficial to student welfare." As students left these bags practically flung in student's faces as we left in single file. Now seeing as you SU guys obviously know the inside story to all these issues would you care to elaborate on why this was so necessary?

edit: the can crusher is clearly an overly large advertisement under the thin veil of enviromentalism. I for one don't want to have to walk around college and be subjected to more slogans than is absolutely necessary. There are better ways of going about enviromentalism.

Time Magazine

I, for one, thought the BK vouchers were of fantastic use. During my finals I had no time to be cooking. By that time I'd also ran myself into considerable debt. I used up all my BK vouchers. I went with a friend each time, so I wasn't the only one.

Personally I was drinking a stupid amount of Lucozade each day. I wasn't drinking it during the exams but rather at 8pm when the fatigue kicked in. Although I didn't like the particular flavour so stuck with my original flavour, it was close to being very useful.

The vouchers were a life-saver. I thanked members of the SU at the time and I'll do it again. By the way Danger Bob, PM your address if you want those Transport essays.

You had every right to turn down the bag. I don't think they were over-bearing or can be considered objectionable in terms of bad taste. Do you think your views on corporatism take precedence over my preference for cheaper food? Do you really think the socially optimal outcome was to withhold from me the opportunity of cheap food to avoid you saying no to same?

Ron DMC

I like free food. I really, really like it.

fiveone

Antithetic wrote: »

The vouchers were a life-saver. I thanked members of the SU at the time and I'll do it again. By the way Danger Bob, PM your address if you want those Transport essays.

I can see you're attempting to fill the role of "student on the ground." On the basis of this line above I'm going to ignore your post.

It is more than possible to eat cheaply without resorting to Burger King. Have some self respect for god sake.

Jonathan

lydonst wrote: »

It is more than possible to eat cheaply without resorting to Burger King.

Ehhhh? You try find somewhere that gives you a drink, chips and a burger for €3?

BOGOF vouchers ftw

ilovemybrick

lydonst wrote: »

I can see you're attempting to fill the role of "student on the ground." On the basis of this line above I'm going to ignore your post.

It is more than possible to eat cheaply without resorting to Burger King. Have some self respect for god sake.

I thought I was argumentative. You're picking meaningless fights with mindless points. Ask the manager in BK how many vouchers they get in at the time those offers are on. They are incredibly popular. By all means don't eat there but stop picking childish fights. Let the majority be the majority.

Time Magazine

lydonst wrote: »

I can see you're attempting to fill the role of "student on the ground." On the basis of this line above I'm going to ignore your post.

You don't do a very good job at ignoring my posts.

I know Rob as he was in my class in first and second year. I've never been involved with the SU at any level above getting paid to count votes.

It is more than possible to eat cheaply without resorting to Burger King. Have some self respect for god sake.

On the basis of this line I'm going to ignore your posts.