Editorial: Time to ante up
Ambition is a great thing in a student organization. It gives those who run the organization the drive to improve and expand. The Student Information Network has sought to grow in leaps and bounds. Its staff has attempted to incorporate streaming audio and video, work with the College's television stations and organize class elections. SIN's ambitions, however, seem to have blinded its staff in regards to the necessity of taking care of one of its fundamental goals -- maintaining a website.
Since students returned from summer break, SIN has been in a state of disrepair. For weeks, students were faced with an unusable version of last year's blue, green and white design. Finally, in September, phase one of SIN's latest redesign was launched. It was little more than a collection of links with very limited content, lacking just about all of SIN's previous services. SIN representatives told The Flat Hat that phase two of SIN's redesign, which would include old features such as the rideboard and housing center, would be launched in early October.
It's Nov. 16 and there is still nothing of substance. SIN representatives also said that that the rest of the site would be completed throughout the remainder of the semester. Given SIN's current track record, that claim is highly suspicious.
SIN officials claim that the redesign has taken so long because they are rebuilding the site from the ground up and were faced with delays due to their organizing of this year's freshman elections. If they wished to totally rebuild the site, it should have been completed over the summer, or a functional temporary site should have been created. As for the latter claim, it's been over two months since those elections were completed. It shouldn't take this long to reorganize SIN's workforce.
The current version of SIN only offers three services: SIN Radio, SIN News and the Election Service -- for elections that happened in mid-September. It's other three offerings, the College's events calendar and access to the temporary directory and webmail are simply links back to other College sites.
Meanwhile, some of SIN's best features, most notably the rideboard, the calendar, menus for local restaurants and the virtual marketplace, have been missing all semester. The rideboard has already been missing for one holiday break and doesn't look like it'll be up for Thanksgiving. The SIN calendar once allowed students to have easy access to the dates and times of club meetings and student events. The College's calendar is a poor substitute. In addition, with the end of the semester approaching fast and no sign of the virtual marketplace reappearing, there's no reason to expect that students will be able to exchange books or sell other goods online.
Lack of a functioning site hasn't stopped SIN from publicizing itself, though. SIN has endeared itself to the administration and arranged for events such as press conferences and sessions with groups of freshmen at orientation. SIN has been given privileges that are allowed to no other student organizations. For instance, the staff has been given permission to have advertisements on their webpage.
Incredibly, SIN has even managed to make itself the default page whenever anyone logs on to a computer in a campus lab, replacing the new, upgraded College page. SIN is still a student-run organization. By making SIN the default page, the College shows favoritism to one organization over the host of others that have their own pages; we attend the College of William and Mary, not the College of SIN. Furthermore, by replacing the College's page with SIN, the school has replaced a visually appealing and functional page with a skeletal version of SIN.
All of this might be acceptable if SIN had a decent product to promote. Unfortunately, they don't. If College officials are still using SIN as an example of the College's work in the 21st century, they should try navigating the site. SIN's employees are paid to write code and the organization is given a generous budget. Therefore, it's remarkable that the College hasn't taken some action to find out why its investment hasn't paid off this semester.
Regardless, it's time for SIN to produce something that students can use. It once was a viable tool to improve campus life. Students miss that. The Student Information Network has been sorely lacking in information lately. Pretty soon it will be lacking students willing to give its staff the benefit of the doubt.
Editorial Board
Rob Margetta, Editor
Lisa St. Martin, Managing Editor
Dan Miller, Associate Editor
Sara Brady, News Editor
Belle Penaranda, Variety Editor
Kelley Kaufman, Opinions Editor
Kimberly Eavenson, Opinions Editor
William Clemens, Reviews Editor
Laura Terry, Sports Editor
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