Entered on 2002-01-30 at 8:51 a.m..

"She's on the rampage, Pip"

I know that some of you were wondering how long it would take me to find something to 'fix' over here. Well I've found several things and have finally been pushed over the edge by the latest feet of Beaurocratic garbage. Enough so, that it has caused me to actually write an article for the magazine here. The whole thing started before I arrived at Cranfield, when there was a hostile take over of the College of Aeronautics by the School of Mechanical Engineering. The funny part about this is that the CoA was taken over because it had more money and prestige than the SME. They called this hostile take over a merger, and things have been going down hill ever since. Slowly but surely, all of the power the staff members of the CoA had is being usurped by staff members of SME. And one by one policies at the CoA are swtiching to the way things are done at SME.

This merger has most of the research students scared silly because one of the "policies" embraced by the head of SME (and now the head of SoE) is hot-desking for students; the deplorable policy of not providing research students with their own desk and storage space. Nope research students at SME are provided a locker, a la highschool, and may use any of the desks provided for students. I think there are four students to every desk. Needless to say they are not provided computers. Anyway, we CoA students are rather frightened that we will be next. All I have to say is that the moment I don't have a place of my own anymore, either a great student protest will occur at Cranfield, or I'll be on the first plane home.Knowing me most likely the former.

So what is it you ask that has driven me over the edge? Quite simply, it is a change in cookie policy. Every day at 11 and 4 here, we have a tea break. Now for a long time there has been a tea bar in the forum, where students and staff can buy, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, cookies, chocolates, soda and juice at really reasonable prices. Yesterday we were informed that a decision had come down from on high that the tea bar wasn't allowed to sell cookies any more. What kind of idiot manager has nothing more important to do than to decide what we can and cannot sell at our tea bar? This idoit is the head of our school, the man who embraces hot desking.

But wait, it gets better. My invetigation for my article revealed that not only are the cookies going, but so is everything that doesn't require boiled water. We will now have to purchas all of our stuff from the vending machines (at a higher price). Why you may ask? Simply put the auditors want to reduce the number of petty cash boxes we have floating around the hanger.

Sometimes I want to just want to repeatedly bang my head against a wall until the world begins to make sense.

Oh, brownie points for anyone who email's me the title and author of today's title.

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