Make the SA Candidates Hear You

This Friday, February 19th, WRGW News will be hosting the first official Student Association Debate at 7pm in the Marvin Center Ampitheater (3rd floor).  From Director Jared Pliner:

Today, it is my distinct privilege to announce that WRGW News - a division of WRGW/GWRadio - will host and moderate the 2010 WRGW News - Student Association Debate for the very first time in the station's 81-year history.

We are excited for this wonderful opportunity to serve and inform the GW community this election season, and it is my hope that this will become an annual tradition for many years to come.

The debate will be in two parts, the first featuring EVP candidates Jon Binetti, Logan Dobson, Josh Goldstein, and Rob Maxim and the second featuring SA Presidential candidates Jason Lifton and Xochitl Sanchez.  Pliner, along with Assistant News Directors Dan Keylin and myself, will ask the candidates questions in a typical debate format.

But more importantly, we'll be allowing you, the students, to ask questions of the candidates.  They can be about anything: what do you care about?  What bothers you about GW, or the way the SA works?  What do you want next year's administration to do for you?  It is important to make sure the candidates are aware of your stances on the issues so that you can hold them accountable and make them earn your support.

Even if you don't have a particular question you'd like to ask, this debate is still an excellent opportunity to find out about the candidates and their platforms before going to the (online) polls on February 24th and 25th.

And if you can't make it to the debate in person, you can listen live and follow our live blog of the event.

Hope to see you there,

Alexander Laska
Assistant News Director
WRGW News

Great job, GWBlogspot team! w00t!

Over 200 people watched it live on GWBlogspot...

People viewed it in the US, Spain, Canada, Germany, Austria, Venezuela, and other countries around the globe (seriously!)...

Students chose the questions, not just before the event but in a liveblog DURING the event...

What was it? The historic GWBlogspot SA presidential run-off debate, streamed live tonight!

Watch the number of viewers grow...


And grow...


And grow...

It's obvious that word kept spreading and spreading throughout the hour-long debate. Over 200 people watched in all -- as many as 73 or so at any given time. Pretty friggin' awesome.

And there was vibrant chatter at the liveblog (which you can still check out). Many questions asked during the debate came from students' comments in the liveblog -- the essence of bottom-up democracy. Plus, there were some great cameo questions from the Colonialist and GW Ballroom Society.

Props to Neha (the super-duper moderator), Farhan (the stealthy director), Evan (the timekeeper), Nick and Stephen (the liveblog vetters), Lucy/Daniel/Paige (who liveblogged and promoted the debate), Andrew (poster designer), Katelyn (debate announcer and question gatherer), and Owen (logo designer).

I do believe this is the most historic moment in GWBlogspot's history (and heck, in GWU's online history) since January 28, 2008:

Sound off: RateMyProfessors.com

Everyone has used it. That wonderful resource for students taking a class with an unfamiliar professor. What I'm referring to, of course, is www.RateMyProfessors.com. If you haven't been acquainted with the site, check it out. At the very least, you will be amused. At best, you will learn something about a future professor that will either incline or disincline you to take his or her class.

From the site:

RateMyProfessors.com is the Internet's largest listing of collegiate professor ratings, with more than 6.8 million student-generated ratings of over 1 million professors. Each year, millions of college students use the site to help plan their class schedules and rate current and past professors on attributes such as helpfulness and clarity. Online since 1999, RateMyProfessors.com currently offers ratings on college and university professors from over 6,000 schools across the United States, Canada, England, Scotland and Wales with thousands of new ratings added each day.

I must admit, I always check it before signing up for a class and have found the reviews to be, on the whole, correct. I like to think that, perhaps, it has made my college experience thus far more enjoyable and helped my ability to learn by assisting me in picking classes with professor I know I will be able to work with.

In addition to checking the site, I reciprocate by ranking my professors after every class is finished. I am not a believer in free-rider-ism.

Most of my friends do the same thing as I do, but I know some who scoff at the very idea of an online clearinghouse for professor reviews. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, I suppose, but it's hard for me to imagine life without this wonderful site.

Below this blog post is a link to a comment section, and I want to make this post interactive... I want your opinion on this sometimes-contentious issue between students and certainly amongst students and faculty.

So tell me: if you are a user of RateMyProfessors, what do you think of it, what are some of your experiences? If you aren't a user, what are your initial impressions of the site? Will you start using it? Does it offend you? It's open season in the comment section. Have at it.

It's your turn to sound off. Let's turn this soapbox into a dialogue.