This is a work of satire.

In the never-ending pursuit of ingenuity and innovation, UMBC emerges as a truly avant-garde thinker in their approach to economic and environmental welfare. By shutting off the water supply to all students, they hope to save both time and money.

“It’s pretty clever,” said sophomore Lumpy McGee, who is studying psychology. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. What they don’t say is that if you don’t lead the horse to water, then it doesn’t even need to worry about drinking in the first place.” The hope is to reduce the time spent thinking about water and increase the amount of time thinking about other more important issues, like worrying about the grade of an already turned in assignment whose results are beyond the student’s control.

Some students are not as convinced as McGee about the benefits of this change. “I complain enough as is,” said Milky Breath, a junior who refused to state his major. “I can barely manage to fit in all of the complaints about my classes, my friends and my sleep deprivation. Throw thirst into the mix? No thank you.”

Despite this, Breath did begrudgingly admit that he was curious to see what it would be like to complain about a lack of water, and how fast it would take for his complaints masked as jokes to get worn out and downright irritating.

Students are not the only ones who are being denied water — trees, bushes, grass, flowers and anything with even the slightest trace of green in it will begin their strict no-water diet immediately. Coupling the onset of winter with this drought will likely lead to the death of anything bright or green on this campus.

Furthermore, the library pond will be drained, so students no longer need to suffer the presence of the adorable little goslings that brighten everyone’s day and distract them from other things they could be worrying about.

While it is nice to see UMBC intimately concerned with the students’ well-being, the economic motive is certainly in contention. It is easy to ask, “how much money could one save by eschewing life’s most intimately precious resource? Is water even that valuable?”

The truth? No, water is not that valuable, not in the slightest.

That forces us to confront the uncomfortable reality that perhaps there is no real financial motivation after all. Perhaps not much can be gained in terms of adding weight to UMBC’s wallet. But when we look at the facts, the university is ultimately a business and, like all businesses, their purpose is to strive for the betterment of the world.

While the feelings about this change are not altogether positive, it is certainly nice to see that UMBC is willing to take a risk and try new things for the students’ well-being. Mistakes do happen, but with the feedback from the students and a little bit of luck, this complete shut-down of the water system will not be one of those mistakes.

Older relatives may require more care than family or neighbors can provide. This seminar is a helpful first step to determine what kind of care is needed.

Join Inova EAP for this FREE Webinar on November 20th! 

Visit:  www.inova.org/eap 
Member Login User Name:  UMBCEAP
Password: 360231

Once logged in, click on 'Online Seminars' - click on 'View All' - title ‘Caring for Aging Relatives.'

Students received word on the morning of Monday, Oct. 22 that heating would be unavailable throughout most of the buildings on campus. UMBC’s community was further informed that while classes were still scheduled to operate, students should dress warmly to brace for lower-than-normal temperatures in classrooms.

A campus-wide alert from Facilities Management said, “A mechanical fitting on our High-Temperature Hot Water system at the Central Plant failed, [resulting] in the need to turn off the system.” The notification continued, “The impact of this failure is the inability to heat campus buildings that rely on this system for generating heat … as well as the Chillers producing chilled water.” Out of all the buildings on campus, only True Grit’s dining hall and the residential buildings, with the exception of Erickson Hall, had functioning heat. The Facilities Management team assured the UMBC community that they were working on the problem in conjunction with contractors to try and restore the system.

Despite the lower temperature in class, junior Etienne Anu, a biology major, recalled, “I didn’t feel any different. I just had my jacket on.” On the other hand, junior English literature major Julia Tallon said, “I had one class in the Chemistry building that was very cold. The table was freezing.” When asked what he thought about the whole heat ordeal itself, freshman biology major Al Hernández commented, “It felt a little weird that there were still classes [because] we had no classes for the water outage.” He continued, “[It’s] like heat doesn’t seem like a necessity.”

However, by 6 p.m. on Monday evening, the facilities management team sent out an alert letting everyone know the system had been brought back to order. Despite the heat restoration, the chilled water system was still not up to speed, meaning there would be none available, including for the use of campus laboratories.

Students who returned to UMBC this fall were greeted by a new version of the myUMBC website. The updated website features a smooth new homepage with bright colors anchoring the background. Even with the fancy new look, the change brought some disappointments for the students who had grown accustomed to the former version of the website.

The website redesign is just one of the efforts this semester to rebrand different aspects of UMBC’s image, from a new logo to new merchandise. The remodeled homepage has a new layout in addition to the new color scheme, which has created a less than seamless transition for students who liked the simplicity of the old layout.

Chanler Harris, a senior ancient studies major, critiqued the new website, saying, “With the new version, some stuff is hard to find. I miss the old guide because now I go to click it and just think ‘I don’t know what this is.’”

Harris also expressed the belief that the transition to the new myUMBC would have been easier all at once instead of happening in stages. The stage-by-stage rollout for the updated myUMBC added another layer of confusion for many students because some of the hyperlinks on the modernized version simply take you back to the old website, which has been dubbed “myUMBC Classic.”

It is great to offer an alternative to the current website, but students should not have to scroll and find the option to switch back; the current website should not be hard to understand in the first place.

Students enjoy the new style of the website but have real difficulty navigating it. The aesthetic appeal of the new site should not be prioritized over the functionality and ease of use that the old website got right.

Pramuk Mohanlal-Vargas, a sophomore studying global studies and music, said, “I actually enjoyed the old myUMBC more than the new one. It’s just a little too much for me. The old one was more simple, and it was difficult to make the transition between the two.”

People use myUMBC for many different aspects of their education, their pursuit of employment and their communication. Their efforts to utilize these resources are hampered by the fact that they cannot successfully manage the website that is supposed to guide them through their inquiries and searches.

Updates should mean forward progress and improvement. Rebranding is a fine choice and students appreciate new ideas, but it is important that their opinions are heard before changes are made. With the current regard for the new version of the website, myUMBC would be better off reverting to the old form.