By Wesley Strong
Throughout my tenure here at CCSU, I have seen a great many things. Some have been pleasing and exciting, while others have made me question being a student here. It is with that in mind that I present to you the 10 dirtiest secrets that CCSU doesn’t want you to know. I have been at CCSU for five years as a student leader, activist, senator, and outspoken proponent of ideals that provide freedom, justice, equality, and knowledge to the campus and the world. As someone who adamantly believes in Freedom of Speech, as I feel that foolish people and racist should be called out for the imbeciles that they are, I feel like stretching my legs and going for a quick jog down “Truthiness” (© 2007 Steven Colbert) Lane. CCSU is by far one of the most corrupt, backwards, and horribly totalitarian educational facilities I have ever seen, as you will clearly understand. Ready…Drum Roll Please…..
10. The CCSU President has a liquor cabinet in his office. That’s right ladies and gentlemen. Pres. Jack Miller, President of a Dry Campus where you can be tossed out of college for having liquor in your dorm room, has alcohol in his office. I wish we could have alcohol in my office. The even worse thing about it is that when the Women’s Center needs money for a speaker, they have to beg while Miller freely spend money on other activities – which I will go into later. Women as the major victims of male alcoholism have to beg for money for women’s programming while your president breaks a rule that all of the students are supposed to follow. So the next time that the RAs come to your room looking for beer, send them to President Miller’s office, I’m sure they’ll find a jackpot.
9. Your classroom may have asbestos! That’s right, if you are like me and take classes in DiLoreto, Willard, Barnard, or Davidson, your classroom might have asbestos in it. But of course it was more important to build the fountain in the middle of campus several years ago instead of fixing that problem. If the campus tours ever went through DiLoreto, then no one would come to Central. Keep in mind that President Miller has made it his calling to spend $21 million ($21,000,000) on improvements to the athletics fields while you are taking classes in asbestos. Priorities?
8. It has been brought to the attention of the Devil’s Advocate staff that at least twice the administration under President Miller has hired people to fill positions that were not selected by the search committee. Not to say that this is against their power to do so, but in these two specific occasions we found instances of suspicious behavior. One was in the hiring of Business School Dean Siamack Shojai. Shojai, as some may already know was recently involved with some racist comments on a Persian language TV station directed at a speaker that was brought here this semester – I will explain that later. Also, there was a replacement hired a position in Institutional Advancement who was below the qualifications of several candidates presented to the administration by the search committee. Also, it is crucial to mention that when the faculty questioned President Miller he retorted saying that they couldn’t do anything about it because, “I wasn’t voted in, and I can’t be voted out.” Well, news flash Jack, you were and you can.
7. In response to the several incidents that occurred under Mark Rowan’s rule of the infamous “Recorder”, the administration tried to put together several groups. First was the Journalistic Integrity Task Force, which was a farce and certainly provided to integrity whatsoever. Second was a project idea put together by Dr. Margaret Toston. Dr. Toston’s Idea was to put together a group of students to work on “diversity programming”. I was offered a spot on this committee only to find out that it was a farce as well. The aptly named Project Diversity might as well have been named Project Disaster or Project Administration take-credit-for-student-work-while-controlling-it-to-make-sure-it-doesn’t-do-anything-at-all. This is how the administration controlled it. Selected to head the project was the head of campus ministry Mr. John Campbell who was only a part time faculty member. Mr. Campbell had the idea of holding an event at the beginning of each semester where all the students can gather and meet with faculty, administration, and each other outside while having a barbeque or other social event. It was his idea specifically that we would prevent people from asking tough questions or criticizing the administration on anything and he said that we would remove students who “caused problems”. If that isn’t a blatant violation of the Freedom of Speech, I don’t know what is, but it obviously isn’t the first time that has happened. The problems that exist here at CCSU cannot be solved by simply bringing everyone together and having a giant group hug. Mr. Campbell wanted to avoid being upfront, public and in people’s faces about the problems that aren’t just a problem here at CCSU, but in the country, and the world. We held a speak out against racism in the fall semester of 2007 and neither Dr. Toston or Mr. Campbell showed up. We were only graced by the presence of President Miller for the first 5 minutes – of which all was him talking.
6. One secret that may ruffle some feathers is the willingness for CCSU’s Student Government Association to be hypocritical. The SGA – which I am a part of – is more than willing to pay for food on our retreats and sometimes even at our meetings, while we actively discourage other clubs from doing so. This winter we went on a retreat that cost over $5000.00, which is larger than most club budgets. Keep in mind that this money comes from your pockets and we easily could have got away with spend 10% of that for a retreat to address the same issues.
5. One short secret that I find interesting is the fact that SGA is guaranteed no real power. The SGA, the body through which students have representation and a chance of getting their voice heard, is empowered by the University President Jack Miller, who maintains absolute authority on what the SGA does. President Miller has the right to veto any singular action done by the senate to which the senate can do nothing about. While most modern forms of government have “checks and balances”, however useless as they may be, they still exist. In the current setup, any action done by the SGA can be overturned by the President and the SGA cannot do anything about. High Five for Democracy.
4. Though this secret is not so much a secret as it has been reported on before, it has never been mentioned in this way. Going back to Dean Siamack Shojai, Dean Shojai attended a lecture given by world renowned scholar, author, and Professor Trita Parsi. Parsi had written a book called Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel, and the United States. Shojai, who seems to be an adamant supporter of the rule of the Shah in Iran, spoke out after the talk saying that it was “not an academic talk” and that we were being “propagandized by the Iranian Government”. Shojai of course had not read the book published by Yale University Press, one of the premiere academic publishers. The Shah of Iran for those that don’t know was a Dictator who was supported by the United States and used military violence to suppress his opposition, which is not much different than recently executed leader Saddam Hussein. Shojai continued his assault on Mr. Parsi by speaking on an Iranian radio station the next day, supporting the Shah and calling Parsi a “half-breed” and using other racial slurs. This was confirmed by three professional translators who are regularly used by the government for translation, as well as by Rhada Karmi the premiere academic in Persian Farsi – the language the radio show was in. The administration paid for their own translation, which as can be expected depicted Shojai as giving “harsh criticisms”, but not using racial slurs. Well apparently our government has a lot of records that were not translated correctly, because the costly translations attained by Norton Mezvinsky apparently weren’t more reliable than the administration’s. But its okay because Mezvinsky was “biased” while the administration had no interest in preventing itself from looking racist – which it is.
3. This secret is especially disturbing. As a member of SGA and a student activist I find it to be beyond consequential as it certainly speaks to the world we grow up in. SGA regularly gives out money to student organizations. This one session was particularly disturbing as the SGA fought for four weeks over giving one club no money while we did not fight about another club that received no funding. The SGA fought for four weeks to help the Ice Hockey Club to attain funding , a club dominated by white males from well off families. In the meantime, there were only a few people who said anything about the fact that SGA gave no money to the Latin American Student Organization (LASO). We fought for four weeks to give funding to a club that got the funding from somewhere else anyways. Not only did the Ice Hockey Club have more strikes against it, but they had been told of these several times and still had not addressed them. The club has private banking accounts to hold fundraised monies, something that is against CCSU policy and a rule that all other clubs abide by. Aside from the fact that the club is selective and doesn’t allow people on the team who want to learn how to play the sport, but can’t make the cut to learn in another way, the club has also repetitively booked buses, hotels, and made other expenditures outside of normal regulations and has continued to do so after being told not to. The only offense by LASO was that they overdrew on their account last year. If this isn’t structural racism, I don’t know what is.
2. To brighten up the last point, when the Ice Hockey Club went to the office of President Jack Miller and asked for money, they were given it while when President Miller was asked for money by members of LASO, they were denied. Miller had also previously given money to the Equestrian Club, which isn’t necessarily of consequence aside from showing that Ice Hockey wasn’t a special case.
1. The dirtiest secret about CCSU may surprise you or it may not. If you transferred to Central it certainly won’t. It has been brought to my attention that CCSU purposely denies credits being transferred from other universities as a means of making more profit. I have been told that CCSU deliberately denies as many credits as they can from transferring so that they can maximize their profit. This information given to me by a CCSU transfer student who was told by the person in charge of transferring credits that they were given the directive to limit transferred credits so that the individual would have to pay more to Central in order to graduate. As a school that many go to in order to graduate after spending much more money at other schools, Central immediately puts the transfer student in a position that will allow the institution the ability to suck every last penny out of the menial amount of money you may have for college. Central’s Motto certainly doesn’t hold true here.
Start with a Dream, Finish with an education on Racism, Cover-ups, Extortion, and blatant disregard for Human Life (© CCSU 2008). Now I wish you all farewell as this is my last semester in this racist, sexist, asbestos ridden, school that steals from the working class while giving us nothing in return except a measly piece of paper and an empty wallet. To the administration; the above listed reasons are why student turnover at CCSU is so high.
I hope this can shed some light on CCSU for some folks who see some of these same things occurring on campus.
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