Imagine a typical day — you take the Metro to and from work. You go out to lunch, then maybe run a few errands in the evening, and call people during the day. You swipe your SmarTrip card in and out, and use the Visa for most of your purchases. All throughout the day, you’re leaving clues about your actions and whereabouts. Metrorail knows precisely when and where you get off the train. Your bank can track your location and buying patterns by looking at your purchase history, and the phone company knows who you called, from where, and for how long.

All that is a given — but here’s what should be slightly scary. What do you do at the office all day? Seeing that some people spend more time with MS Word than their spouse, I’m going to assume you’re a heavy Internet user. Now, take a look at some of the more revealing keywords searched for by AOL users. (last year, AOL ‘mistakenly’ released about 2GB worth of queries, all keyed to user ID#s). Some are funny, some are disturbing, and some reveal things that you should not know (warning: not for the easily offended).

Now, these days AOL is only a marginal service with a steadily dwindling subscriber base. How many of you enjoy sharing pictures on flickr, bookmarks on del.icio.us, or use a service from Yahoo, such as news, games or horoscopes? You guessed it — they’re all owned by Yahoo. They’re tracking you.

Take Google — everybody’s beloved, do-no-evil Internet titan. They’ve already come under scrutiny for the amount of user information they collect — and now they want to index your home. Taking my tongue out of my cheek, I google a couple dozen times daily from the Firefox search toolbar. Google Finance is too sexy to live without. I get an increasing amount of tech information (documentation, howtos, etc) from Google Groups. How many of you rely on Google Maps (yay! Google knows where you live), or Gmail (adsense is not magic — they actively sniff your email to serve up contextual ads)?

It may not seem like much at first glance, but all those bits and pieces of correlated user data add up very, very quickly. I’d wager the Internet knows more about you than you do yourself.

Don’t think this information is private to the purveyors of the Internet either — some of the big buzzwords of Web 2.0 are ‘collaboration’ and ’sharing.’ In other words, you’re encouraged to be open and social. Being able to mine someone’s del.icio.us account can tell you a lot about the person, and it’s almost all open to the public. Facebook users should know the dangers of too many incriminating pictures in public. (Remember last year’s uproar over the Facebook news feed?) Sometimes unintentionally public information can be put to sinister uses — you can search for valid credit-card numbers.

All the major Internet players have said they’re very careful about safeguarding user data. I believe them for the most part — what else am I going to do? The Web and Josh Allmann are hopelessly intertwined. I like to think I’m hedging my privacy bets somewhat by using different services — I download email, ad-free, directly to my desktop client. I use Live Local for my mapping needs. (I’m still waiting for drag-and-drop rerouting… hurry up, Microsoft!) I use Yahoo for, uh, horoscopes and stuff. But the reality is, the landscape of the Web is changing before our very eyes — information disclosure is something we’re going to have to get used to.

I do admit — were I in these companies’ shoes, I would have an Orwellian curiosity about that ream of information in my hands. The aggregate statistics coming out of it would be very interesting, at the very least. I’d like to know what they are!

Today, President Davila officially named Dr. Stephen Weiner as the new Provost of Gallaudet University.

While the President may be the public face of Gallaudet, the Provost will be the architect and driver of neccessarily sweeping internal changes over the next few years. At least, I hope — and so do many other people — that the changes to come are sweeping. Not to belabor my previous points, but academic and admissions standards do not fix themselves. Neither do retention and graduation rates. Budgets do not grow magically. It’ll take a real Provost to make students realize they shouldn’t be out drinking with me during finals week.

I wish Dr. Weiner the best of luck in his upcoming years as Provost. A lot needs to be done to pull Gallaudet out of the rut it sits in now… it is imperative that he acts accordingly. We’ll all be watching.

If a refresher is needed on this series, check out my previous posts on the finalists for the Provost position: William Marshall, Joseph Innes and Stephen Weiner.

Dr. Steven Weiner has applied for the Gallaudet presidency twice, once last spring for the 9th president vacancy that Dr. Jane Fernandes won, and again for the Interim President position that went to Dr. Davila. If excellent public speaking skills is a valued criteria for a top college administrator, it’s easy to see why Dr. Weiner continues to struggle. A communications professor though he may be, a gifted public speaker he is not. Where’s the stage presence, the charisma, the effortless delivery? Those qualities are essential for the public face of an University, the president, but it’s up to the search committee and President Davila whether those qualities are also important for a provost.

His responses to some questions at the end of his presentation were awkward, with tangentially relevant analogies. He lapsed into the “I don’t know, but I’ll ask the community” behavior that has been documented before. Maybe the guy just doesn’t think well on his feet. Perhaps that was part of his appeal. Dr. Weiner was the people’s Provost — his presentation was the most well-attended, taking place in Elstad Auditorium, a venue probably twice as big as Swindells (where Drs. Marshall and Innes presented). There were even a good number of students present!

Inelegance aside, Dr. Weiner still got his point across well. He recognized all the relevant issues right off the bat with a bulleted list of Gallaudet’s problems, instead of just alluding to them: academic rigor, accreditation, the budget, civil discourse, and shared governance. He even had a few ideas of his own thrown in, such as upgrading the library — but it would probably be wise to hold off on that until the more pressing issues have been resolved.

What were his proposed solutions? Leverage current programs, create a center for assessment to provide guidance for apparently everything from the budget to student performance, and focus on improving the first-year experience. One thing is for certain — whoever is selected as provost will build a new “center” on campus; perhaps Dr. Weiner should append “For Excellence” to his assessment center to be consistent with his peers. He also had a thorough plan for grad student inclusion. His “360 degrees of diversity” idea tried to expand the definition of diversity to include diversity of opinion, communication and basically everything that makes a person unique.

While a few original ideas were presented, I couldn’t help but feel that I was sitting through a retread of what’s already been said. I know all the big buzzwords on Kendall Green now — academic rigor, think tanks, Centers for Excellence. It is worth nothing that even though the Provost job was advertised in at least ten professional publications, the finalists are all Gallaudet employees. All three have been at Gallaudet for a very long time, which does have a tendency to promote group-think — an echo chamber effect. Why no new faces to inject fresh ideas into a somewhat moribund administrative bureaucracy?

(For background on this series, see my first and second posts.)

Engagement was the word of the day yesterday, according to Dr. Joseph Innes, finalist for the Provost position at Gallaudet University (see my previous post for details on the position and other finalists). If he gets chosen as Provost, that’s a word faculty, students and staff will be hearing a lot. Engagement: the cure-all, the miracle tonic, the answer to declining recruitment, retention and admissions standards. According to Dr. Innes, if Gallaudet faculty and staff were to engage students during the entire span of their pre-to-post collegiate careers, with a slant towards bilingualism, diversity and inclusiveness, a lot of things would be fixed. I may be wrong, but aren’t schools already supposed to do that?

One thing I have to credit Dr. Innes for, is that he knows his audience. The majority of the search committee are faculty and staff, as were the people in the auditorium. One person came up on stage during questioning and asked how many students were present; I could only see three hands up from where I was sitting. To win the job as Provost, he must win over the fac/staff, and his presentation was tailored accordingly — “I see myself as your advocate when dealing with the President,” he said. He promised them leadership and support. He acknowledged fac/staff dissociation from the administration and the University in general. Dr. Innes’ proposed solution to this? Engagement of fac/staff, of course.

Does all that sound somewhat insubstantial? I’m inclined to think so. There was no emphasis on academic rigor (to borrow a phrase from Dr. Marshall). Dr. Innes proposed a University Without Walls that would expand learning to outside the classroom — to use an example of his, the local welder could come and show students how to fashion art from metal. Is this a vocational school? Do we really need a generation of deaf welders? He talked of re-conceptualizing institutions on campus, such as Gallaudet Research Institute (GRI). Cool, but if someone could define re-conceptualize for me, that’d help.

In contrast to Dr. Marshall, Dr. Innes came the closest I’ve seen a Gallaudet administrator acknowledge that Gallaudet is known more for its social life than its academics. He actually mentioned the word ‘protest’ and talked about healing at length, which I had thought was taboo. He was ‘more ASL,’ if that’s a big sticking point for you. Although I like Dr. Marshall’s way of emphasizing the digits of the year so much, I might adopt it for myself. One hand over the other — there’s a video of it.

Although I don’t think the other finalists were allowed to watch each others’ presentations, the level of similarity at times was almost grin-inducing. It’s like they took the same class in bureaucracy together or something. Dr. Marshall has a vision for an “academic campus culture,” Dr. Innes calls it a “culture of learning.” Same rose, different names. Dr. Marshall wants a Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Dr. Innes wants a Center for Excellence in Innovative Thinking. Dr. Marshall wants a brain trust, Dr. Innes wants a think tank.

I guess if you’ve sat through one provost presentation, you’ve sat through them all. Or maybe not — stay tuned for my report from today’s presentation by Dr. Steven Weiner.

Gallaudet University is hosting presentations by three of the finalists for the Provost position. Yesterday, William Marshall outlined his plans for the University. But first, here’s a brief rundown on the Provost position and its recent history at Gallaudet:

The Gallaudet Provost serves as the chief academic officer and provides overall leadership and direction to the division of Academic Affairs, including the College for Liberal Arts, Sciences and Technologies, Graduate School and Professional Programs and Student Affairs. The Provost has been heavily scrutinized in the last year and a half. Dr. Jane K. Fernandes, who was the Provost at the time, was selected as the next president of Gallaudet University. Dr. I. King Jordan then appointed Dr. Michael Moore as interim provost of Gallaudet University as Dr. Fernandes stepped down to prepare for her appointment as president. We all know what happened to Dr. Fernandes. In January 2007 Gallaudet announced that they would begin the search process for a new Provost. The finalists are Dr. William Marshall, Dr. Joseph Innes, and Dr. Steven Weiner. All are current Gallaudet employees. For more details on the presentations and the selection process, visit the official press release.

Presenting to a full audience of faculty, staff and a smattering of students yesterday, Dr. Marshall gave off the aura of a seasoned career administrator – impeccably organized, carefully modulated, and precisely timed – he finished within two minutes of his allotted speaking time. His presentation reflected his long tenures at MSSD and Gallaudet, and of his understanding of the underlying issues. Instead of dwelling on fluff topics like cultural identity or audism, he acknowledged the host of issues that Gallaudet would be facing during the next few years. Most universities do not typically have this breadth of concerns – sure, student dissent might be a problem on one campus, retention on another, flat funding on yet another, but I can’t think of any other schools that have so much to tackle in such a short time.

The priorities of Dr. Marshall fall under three categories – curriculum (”The heart of the University”), mission, vision, values (”The soul of the University”) and structure (”The body of the University”). He spoke of creating an “academic campus culture,” brain trusts, Centers for Excellence. He stressed the moral as well as the practical – leaders, he said, need heart as well as a good head. They need to provide “not only the steak, but also the sizzle.” He asked whether Gallaudet was proud of the incivility, intolerance of opinion, and lack of trust on campus. He turned to Harvard for inspiration, proposing a “general education” philosophy that I’m still trying to understand – but Dr. Marshall says it’ll help retention, so okay. He mentioned plans to reinvigorate the Clerc Center by exchanging ‘best practices’ among grade school educators, addressing a few concerns that were brought up during open questioning about what could be done preemptively to increase the English fluency of incoming freshmen. Is Dr. Marshall up to the task? It seems like it… but I’ll wait to pass judgment until I’ve seen the other two finalists speak.

The absence of a strong showing of students was surprising, considering that the protesters, many of whom were students, were what compelled the Gallaudet Board of Trustees to expel Dr. Jane Fernandes as the next president of Gallaudet. Does the lack of a student presence demonstrate a lack of interest in the process of operating a University? It could be argued that this is nearing finals week, but that didn’t deter protesters from abandoning their studies in the spring and fall of 2006.

Regardless, there is a definite, palpable sense that the next few years are going to make or break the University. I ran into a friend before the presentation – he had just gotten some papers from Cal State Northridge detailing the transfer of his existing credits from Gallaudet. I asked him if he really was going to switch schools. “If Gallaudet loses its accreditation, what else am I supposed to do? I want my degree to be worth something.”

Disclaimer: Josh Allmann is a student at RIT, and has no affiliation with Gallaudet University.

I’m struggling to find words to describe my feelings after watching last night’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode. Angry, indignant? Nah. Alexandria Wailes can use her voice all she wants.

Impressed? You bet. I applaud Law & Order for bringing to the forefront police issues that have been sensitive with the deaf community – attorney-client privilege, the expectation of being handcuffed in front, etc.

Amused? Greatly. I especially enjoyed the bit where our archetypical suffering playwright, Larry (played by Darren Frazier) was demanding a deaf cop, judge and jury. I got a few chuckles, albeit incredulous, out of the scene where the detectives question the perpetrator’s cousin about having a deaf baby. (I couldn’t find the name of the actress – anyone care to fill me in here?) Such gravity was put on the fact that “a new deaf person in the community” was a cause for celebration. I could be wrong, but I hope that’s exaggerating the general consensus among deaf parents.

Was I bothered? To be honest, maybe ever so slightly. All the while I was mirthfully watching Larry and Tommy, our ultimate antagonist (Garrett Zuercher), a tinny voice in my head was reminding me that this episode is being beamed into millions of peoples’ homes – and for many, this will be their first (and perhaps only) exposure to deaf culture. As far as first impressions go, this one isn’t exactly flattering.

I’m not going to put the blame on the writers – they wrote for television, and did an excellent job of caricaturing the super-D side of our community. Like all caricatures, however, there’s an element of reality behind the gross distortions and half-truths.

Hearing people (and hopefully deaf people, too!) who saw that episode probably recoiled at Tommy’s motive for killing Dr. Mallory (Jack MacGruder), the CI doctor – the preservation of the deaf way of life – but is that so far-fetched? Most hearing people would, at first glance, not understand the very real concern some deaf people have for preserving their lifestyle. Are you concerned about deaf culture vanishing?

What about the episode’s sheer reverse-audism? With the sense of superiority and entitlement I’ve observed from some in this community, I honestly think that’s a bigger problem than vanilla ‘audism.’

Oh, and there’s the not-so-subtle homage to the Gallaudet protests. I’d go on, but I didn’t set the TiVo in time to review – I wasn’t expecting the episode to be this good.

It doesn’t matter what you think personally, it doesn’t matter whether this-or-that article/blog post/TV show/news blurb is right or wrong, what matters is that’s what’s getting pushed to the people. That’s the message the unwashed masses are going to receive about our community. And a lot of times, it’s not all gross distortions and half-truths.

Sigh. Time to send off my subscription to the Weekly Standard.