This is a website dedicated to Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, the esteemed, and highly respected president of RPI.

More specifically, this page is about bumper sticker campaign for her impeachment.

 

Update: We have been asked to meet with Dr. Jackson and/or the Provost to discuss our issues with her administration. We're not sure if we should take her up on this invitation yet. You can weigh in with your opinions on whether or not we should meet with her by emailing us. Also, if you have any issues with the colour scheme on our webpage, please use ctrl-a to make it more readable (tip from an avid reader).

Graduate Student Tuition Policy

    This past year she has enacted a graduate student tuition requirement, no matter how many credits the student takes. So in effect the graduate students have to pay for full-time credits no matter what. There were meetings in which professors and students were allowed to voice their opinions on deaf ears. The thing is, Dr. Jackson had already put the motion into effect and the meetings were only to squelch protests by the RPI community. The graduate student community even had 559 signatures on an online petition, but Dr. Jackson completely ignored it.

    Everyone thought this was a bad idea, even the Poly. Most departments on campus pay for the students' tuitions. Now, they had increased the fee that the departments had to pay, resulting in less money to go towards research. Dr. Jackson said that the tuition policy was supposed to encourage students to graduate faster and to bring in more money for the school. Instead, departments were finding it difficult to fund new students and research projects. It has been brought to our attention that at least one department on campus has lost part-time students due to the new policy. Many smaller businesses in the area who send their employees here are not willing to pay the higher tuition fees. These part-time students can only take one class at a time (three credits), but must pay full tuition regardless. Some sources have suggested that even a large company like GE is having second thoughts about sending employees to RPI.

    This new graduate student policy is really geared towards hurting the graduate students and their departments. According to the plan, graduate students pay about the same tuition as undergraduates. One major flaw in this plan is that graduate students are only allowed to take up to 15 credits, while undergraduates are allowed to take up to 21 credits for the same amount of money. I don't quite think this is fair. Everyone pays the same fee, but graduates aren't allowed to take the same amount of credits. Now, it's true that graduate students can't really expect to take 21 credits in a single semester. That would just be suicide. That's why the graduate tuition should be lower in accordance with the number of credits you can take.

Happier Students

    Happier students on this campus? Not according to the Princeton Review. This year, RPI was rated #5 for least happy students (in a nationwide survey of 345 colleges and universities). Maybe this coincides with the recent policy changes? Also, it should be noted that RPI ranked #3 in the "Election? What election?" category, #6 in "More to do on campus," and #16 in "Professors suck all life from materials." So really, we have lots of clubs and movie nights (sometimes up to three times a week), but that has more to do with student organization, and less with Dr. Jackson. I guess her idea is that if everyone is busy watching movies and joining clubs, then they have less time to be outside staring at the utter wasteland that has become our campus.

Campus "Beautification"

    Our campus is really quite sad looking. One gate that used to be the main entrance to campus has been closed off for construction of a new building. RPI is tore down some houses to build a parking garage, and also ripping up a scenic hillside for another building. It must be horrible to visit here and see all the construction. Dr. Jackson probably sees it as "progress" but we'll see what happens in the wintertime when construction comes to a standstill and leaves gaping, unsightly holes in the ground all around campus. What really irks me is that they only started this construction in the MIDDLE of the summer. They could have started construction in the spring before school let out and have done much of the work during the summer, but they are only starting it now, when school has come back into session.

    Let me make a correction to this. They began the work in mid-May, but stopped their work to put up a fence and pave the field by the Academy School lot. Also, they dug up the ground behind the MRC and Cogswell and then left it to collect water for the rest of the summer under the premise that it was an archeological site and should be left alone. With all the West Nile virus going around, that probably wasn't a good idea. Then, after they finished making the West Nile nursery, they started to rip up the hillside next to the infirmary. Then they left it for a while to sit in the rain and breed more West Nile mosquitoes. Anyone who was around this summer can corroborate this.

A tidbit from a concerned student:

Third, the area behind Folsom library got named officially one of the ten most romantic spots in New York State in 1996, you might find this in the archives of the Poly.

Now, we're destroying one of the officially beautiful places in Troy. Good job Dr. Jackson! We don't need romance at RPI. We should be studying hard to graduate early, since we won't be able to afford to stay here in a year. Unfortunately, we can't find the article since the Poly's online archive only existed since January 10, 2001.

Money Issues

    Did you know that Dr. Jackson has someone announce her presence in meetings? She's only the president of the Institute, not the Queen. I think that's really pretentious of her to have someone announce her. I also hear that she has a financial advisor who gets paid about $200,000 a year, when the previous Institute president only paid his financial advisor about $80,000. Also, unconfirmed sources tell me that the esteemed Dr. Shirley Jackson raised her own salary to $375,000 a year, while some staff received yearly raises that were less than inflation. Maybe all our tuition and fees are going towards her announcer, financial advisor, and her salary raise.

Graduation May 2002

For those of you who couldn't make it to graduation, it snowed. We're talking SNOW. The year before, graduation occurred at the Pepsi Arena. This year, graduation was planned to be outside by the fieldhouse. In Troy, in the springtime, this was a bad move. There was no back up plan and students were forced to stand outside in the snow in ponchos handed out by the administration. No one saw Dr. Jackson waiting in the snow for hours. In the end, half the parents were denied in-person access to the ceremony due to the decreased capacity of the fieldhouse. Most of the graduates that we knew were pretty pissed off. Though the Poly would have you believe that the graduates were happy and smiling in the snow, and that Dr. Jackon's 'quick' thinking saved the day, it was rather obvious to us that most people were extremely unhappy with the situation. These parents had sent their kids here and paid tons of money. Then they were denied being able to attend their kid's graduation. That's just not fair. The Poly included this ridiculous article in the student orientation edition. Unfortunately, it's not online and we don't have our copies anymore. Anyone who has one, please email us.

One student sent this to us:

I know a few people that graduated, but I also worked Graduation with RPI Ambulance, so I have a few stories of my own about graduates getting sick, cold, and very upset.

They must have been really "happy" to graduate in the snow.

The Stickers

As a direct result of the feeling of absolute helplessness, some disgruntled students have concocted a BUMPER STICKER plan. We're charging $1 per sticker for printing costs and $1 for shipping and handling (more info below). We are also greatly appreciative of donations, no matter how small. We are not making any money off these stickers. We're doing this to spread the word on Dr. Jackson.

The Poly

We were contacted by Nievalyn Cummings (news editor of the Poly) for an email interview. She wrote us the following email:

 Tuesday, 2 Sep 2002 22:01:04

1. How long ago did the group come to form?
2. What is your mission?
3. How many members do you have?
4. What are your long-term and short-term goals for the campaign?
5. What do you realistically expect to gain?
6. Have you attempted to contact any officials, either the Board of
Trustees, the President and her cabinet?
7. If so, what has been the outcome? If not, why not?
8. How are you making your cause known to students?
9. How does one join your group?

If you could please have these responses to me asap it would be greatly appreciated. I would like to include this story in this weeks poly and to do so I need them by Tuesday at 2. Thanks in advance.
Nievalyn

 

Understandably, we thought that she was planning to publish the article in the September 3rd issue since she explicitly said that she was going to publish it that issue. Therefore, we rushed our response to her by Tuesday morning. We noted that there was NO article in that Wednesday's Poly. We therefore sent her an email asking stating that we assumed that there would be no article in the future and asked her why she did not tell us she wasn't going to publish it right away. Now, today we received another email from her with the following:

 Wed, 11 Sep 2002 17:58:17

It's not that I've changed my mind. I do indeed want to report on your story but I need to do it the proper way. So I have to talk to Administration about your site and other student issues as well. I  will not be devoting an entire article to you as a promo for your cause. I am looking into talking with other students and making it something of a performance review of Pres. Jackson's term thus far. So it's not that  I've decided not to run it, but more so that it's not as simple as just putting your answers in an article and calling it news. I have to investigate more to truly bring the story out. Thanks.

Nievalyn Cummings
The Polytechnic
News Editor

Our response was the following:

Fri, 13 Sep 2002 20:39:57

Nievalyn-
Sorry about that we were under the impression you were going to write it right away since you said you had to have our response by 2pm. Therefore our response was rushed now you are giving everyone else a long time to respond??? You make it sound like we expected a full article when we didn't really expect anything. If you are going to do this sometime in the future would you be so kind as allowing us more time for our response as it would be more fair to us? Since you said we had to get you the response to your questions immediately we were just wondering why we needed to rush we weren't trying to put you on the spot about writing an article. In truth, the website has already received quite a bit of exposure. It is not like we want you to write a promo. As it would seem you aren't understanding us we are a little uncomfortable with your writing the article at this point. You are writing on information from two weeks ago that will make it wildly inaccurate as the situation has changed to date. Perhaps you should rethink writing an article based on old information unless you want to write it based on old and rushed information. Such an article would greatly reduce our opinion of the quality of journalism in the poly. Thank you for your consideration.

We would like to say that she was the one who approached us about doing an interview. We simply wanted to know why she had asked us to rush our response and then she didn't print anything at all, and didn't even tell us. We weren't expecting a big "promo" since the Poly was the one who printed the "article" on how everyone was SO happy at graduation May 2002 (see above). Where was the proper investigative journalism there?

By the way, click here for a discussion with the editor from RPIWatch.org

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Who are you?
A: We are concerned students who cannot divulge our identities due to fear of repercussions from Dr. Jackson and her people.

Q: How can I get a sticker?
A: We have devised a new payment plan through C2it.com. The email address to use is impeach_shirley@yahoo.com.
Please send money to this account, noting your address and the number of requested stickers. Unfortunately, since we'll be mailing the stickers through US postal mail, we'll need to charge $1 for envelopes and stamps. If you order the stickers in bulk, we may have to charge more shipping and handling. Once we verify the payment, we'll send out the sticker(s). Be sure to email us if you'd like more details.

Q: Why haven't you answered my email yet??
A: We're students too, so we are busy trying not to fail out so we don't do Dr. Jackson's work for her.

Q: How can I join the Disgruntled Students Association?
A: Every disgruntled student at RPI is already a member.

 

 

Further the cause and let's convince everyone to...

IMPEACH SHIRLEY

 

Disclaimer: Statements on this page are opinions and not necessarily those of GeoCities, RPI, or the author. If someone should use a sticker in an offensive way, we are in no way responsible for their actions. We do not encourage destruction of public or school property. In other words, don't stick it anywhere where you might get in trouble. If you do, we're not responsible.