“It’s definitely different and I’m still getting used to it,” said Lois Kim, a freshman from Suwanee. “But Koofers has a lot more on it than the Key did and I think it’s a good change.”

As I told the Red and Black, we wanted to improve the access students had to information that would help their academic career, and I think Koofers exceeds that goal.

“UGAKey.com is one of the most widely used sites in this category, particularly for the course registration process,” Hatfield said. “It is a popular tool with solid data.”

Emily and I made the Summit Daily News today!  Click on the image for a screenshot of the full page.

And special thanks to our good friend Josh Weiss for taking our awesome wedding photos.

Classes in local government were first offered at the University of Kansas in the late 1940s, when city management was becoming professionalized in reaction to corruption, says Marilu Goodyear, chairwoman of its department of public administration. Students today — including civil engineers, firefighters and police officers seeking to advance to leadership positions — are often interested in careers in city management or finance. Internships are part of most M.P.A. programs. Kansas’ are distinctive: students intern full time in city government their second year. With campuses near Fort Leavenworth, the university also attracts military personnel involved in nation building and reconciliation in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Maj. Robin W. Montgomery, aide to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, graduated last summer.)

Kansas tops the U.S. News & World Report rankings for city management and urban policy.

My friend and classmate Rob (Robin) got a huge mention!  Way to go, Rob!

Public administration is an incredible field, but it often gets confused.  You tell someone you work in government, and they assume you are a politician.  Public administration is typically about the professional government worker (nonpartisan during working hours and unbiased) implementing policies handed down from politicians.

I would recommend an MPA for anyone looking to start, or further, a career in professional government.  If you are starting out, I would recommend attending a program that has very good connections to internships.  Or, find a job in a government and later go back and get an MPA.  Either way, the important part of the degree is the application of real-life experience to MPA classes.

And with all this talk of MPA degrees, I have to brag about the one I just received!:

It shouldn’t be the responsibility of the state and its citizens to continue a students’ education beyond graduation requirements. Smart and applied students can continue their learning at graduate institutions, rather than continue to use up taxpayers’ dollars. Rather than worrying about “earning without fear of financial burdens,” why not invest in your own future? I would imagine if students paid their own college tuition bills, they would graduate in four years (or maybe even sooner).

Chris M. Lindsey, Denver (UGA ‘08 in four years)

My letter was written in response to an editorial published December 14th that explained why “super seniors” who have high grades should get continued support from Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship beyond the mandated 127 hours:

What I don’t comprehend is why students with the highest level of pride in their studies, students who dedicate time and energy to rising above the norm, are not given the chance to continue or even finish their goals [...]

My proposition allows students with a 3.5 grade-point average or better to be granted the chance to appeal scholarship revocation due to exceeding the 127-credit-hour limit [...]

I felt compelled to bring this injustice to the public’s attention. Yes, I could have earned one degree and graduated last May, but my résumé would have been void of a much-needed internship, and I would have had to sacrifice the presidential role of a club I have invested my heart into at UGA.

If you must have more experience, more degrees, or more résumé fillers (injustice?), please pay for your own classes. It is what students everywhere else are forced to do for their own education.  Stop wasting the money of the taxpayers of the State of Georgia. It is not their job to help you with your résumé.  It is this mindset, that people have the right to HOPE Scholarship, that will eventually run the HOPE Scholarship fund dry.

An undergraduate degree paid for by the State of Georgia is a privilege.  Enjoy it, but remember that it might not always be there.

I walked out the door of my apartment earlier than normal to find an inch of snow on the ground (picture).  The surprise, though, was that no snow had been forecasted (and I had checked the night before).  So I sent off the picture to Emily and my folks and left for work, glad that I was leaving early.

The drive into work is where complications happened.  While driving on Interstate 70 eastbound, just before the interchange with Interstate 635, a massive wreck happened in front of me.  I had noticed the fast lane getting icy, so I quickly moved over and slowed down.  Then, someone hit their brakes, and a chain reaction started.  By the time it was over, more than 20 cars and a semi-truck were involved.

It was incredible watching a huge wreck happen, and I snapped 2 pictures on my new Blackberry as I drove by.  In retrospect, I should have stopped and offered assistance, but two Kansas State Patrol officers were at the wreck before I was, and it was incredibly cold and I was already late for work.

When I got to work, I uploaded the pictures to Flickr straight from my Blackberry (the Blackberry Curve was my birthday present, so this was the first time I had used the Flickr app).  And since I can’t login to Twitter or Flickr at work, I appended the url of my Flickr page to a Twitter tweet and shot that off, using my Blackberry, just for friends to see.  Here are the two pictures I shot from my car:

For that second picture, click through to the large version and look closely in my side mirror. You can see someone standing on top of a vehicle that is on its side, having been hit by a semi.

Now, a quick note for those who see words like Twitter and Flickr and don’t know what I’m talking about:  Flickr is an online photo-sharing website (my pictures here), where people can interact with other folks through their sharing of pictures and videos (for more, read Wikipidia).  Twitter is a micro-blogging service where users send small updates, called Tweets, and others can see what you are doing right now (for more, read Wikipedia).  My tweets are here.

Later on Friday afternoon, a Twitter user by the name of Josh_at_Wibw noticed my tweet and looked at the photos of the wreck I had posted on Flickr.  It turns out that Josh is a videojournalist with WIBW, the CBS affiliate television station in Topeka, Kansas.  Josh was interested in having my pictures on the evening newscast at WIBW, and managed to find my website (linked to from my Twitter page) and contacted me through my contact form here on this site.

We spoke late in the day, and WIBW used my pictures in a short segment at the beginning of the evening news, and WIBW even noted that the pictures came “via Twitter” (with the Twitter logo and everything).  You can see the video here.  Josh even let me know the url for the video through Twitter.

Here’s the news story that ran on WIBW in Topeka:

<Big Conclusion>

I know that was a long and confusing story, but here is the point.  Today’s technology is incredible.  The first pictures that I took on my internet-enabled Blackberry were featured in an evening newscast.  That is the influence that you carry in your pocket!  Even more incredible, the pictures were found by someone I had never before seen, met, or talked to, and he managed to get in touch with me in time to get my permission to put the pictures on the evening news.  Through a long chain of hyperlinks and searches, he found my tweet about a crash (I still want to know how), followed the link to the pictures on Flickr, was so intrigued he made his way to my personal website, and contacted me through an email form.  That might seem like a lot of work, but with cable internet, that takes less than a minute and likely took Josh five minutes or less to find the pictures and email me.  Amazing.

A bigger example of the social media connection is the now-infamous picture of the US Airways plane that went down this past week in the Hudson River.  That picture was posted from an iPhone to TwitPic, another site to share pictures through Twitter.

Ultimately, we all have immense influence today, with the availability of blogs, Flickr, and Twitter.  I didn’t do much, but it takes little time to make these connections through social media.  You can get out there and make a name for yourself doing what you enjoy in no time at all.  Or you can get out there and spread the good word about what your company or government is doing.  It is so easy.  Go out there and try it. </Big Conclusion>

A copy of the column is after the jump.

I would like to take the time to respond to Jeremiah Johnson’s Aug. 21 letter, “SGA crucial to Key changes, campaign.” Johnson’s letter made me laugh when I read it because our student government association has done absolutely nothing to “Save the Key.” Johnson did create a group on Facebook that did bring to light the issues with The Key to many students, but that is the extent of anything that even remotely could be contributed to our illustrious SGA.

Let me review the history of The Key for Mr. Johnson. In March 2006 the University administration decided to immediately take offline copies of The Key that included grades from 1999 through 2006. The Black Tie Party previously had downloaded these pages and made them available again on their own Web site. SGA did not make these grades available, but instead linked to the Black Tie Party Web site while stating they had “Saved the Key.”

In April 2006, University President Michael Adams said SGA would now be responsible for The Key. In those 17 months, which grades has SGA made available for students?

SGA has put online grades for four semesters, the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years, in two separate locations.

And the 2006-2007 grades available were incorrect initially and remained that way for over a month until they were corrected by the University.

Now SGA won’t even link to the one place where students can find all The Key grades (UGAkey.com), and instead they have made a link to their shortened-version of The Key impossible to find on their Web site. You would think SGA would want to show off The Key they worked so hard to save.

Myself and several others decided to create UGAkey.com, and we asked SGA representatives for the all of the recent grade data for The Key. They refused to give it to us.

We were told students wouldn’t trust an independent Web site for The Key and that if we wanted the grades, we would have to make The Key available through the SGA Web site only.

The problem with this is the grade data is an open record, protected by the laws of the State of Georgia. We filed a request with the University, which was legally obligated to give us the grade data we sought over the objections of our SGA.

Is this the type of student government we need at this University, one that works against students gaining access to the full Key while touting they have done the most to “Save the Key?” I think not.

Say what you want, Mr. Johnson, but SGA actually has worked against those wanting to make The Key available for their fellow students. While you were cursing at The Red & Black’s coverage of SGA’s amazing effort to “Save the Key,” some students have worked tirelessly to make it available again.

Chris Lindsey is a senior from Grayson and co-founder of UGAkey.com.

I am a little disappointed in the R&B in this story and some other issues, but I will post on those later today.

Right now, I am off to my first class of this new semester.

*UPDATE – August 17, 2007*

I’ve decided not to write another post about this sad article by the Red and Black. Every experience I have ever had with the R&B has been very disappointing. Suffice it to say, I will not work with the Red and Black again.

PS – At least Athens World gave us a good review. And it looks like they actually looked at the site before writing their post.

I completely understand the author’s purpose in writing this, but I think the piece would have been much better if it had focused on the how racism downtown affects minority recruitment efforts, instead of legal matters.

Here is a copy of my letter:

Totten treads worn trails with column

Mr. Totten, it seems you have brought up the same subject that is discussed in The Red & Black every spring.

In fact, last April I wrote a very similar letter to the editor when someone else complained about the possible racist treatment of some at the bars downtown.

I would like to reiterate my point: a private business can have whatever policy it wishes regarding who it serves. This is not illegal, as you seem to believe it is.

I also would like to offer you the same advice I gave a year ago: you are free to open your own establishment where you only let in people wearing silver chains, black shoes, mohawks or whatever quality you wish.

You have this right, as does every other owner of a private business.

CHRIS M. LINDSEY
Junior, Grayson
Political Science

And while I must say I appreciate the Red and Black for publishing this letter, I wish they had written a better byline.