We’re staring down the smoothly bored barrel of our bleak and depressing future. We are being lead down a path that I have in the past written out against vehemently. As an organization we’re hamstrung by a hodgepodge of different systems. Wreckage of previous leaders and their half-finished attempts at systematic unification when it comes to a core communications channel, it has drained us of both will and funds.

I speak of Merit Mail, powered by the unwanted wasteling Zimbra.

Today I faced a problem. A student complained that their email from their account with us, a business unit is being replied to and those replies are being routed not back to their business unit account, but rather to their student account. It’s as if we were all struck by God at the Tower of Babel and there isn’t any clairity for any of us. I’ve fought this fight before and I’ve lost. I’ve lost my position on this topic quite soundly and now all I do is sit on the sidelines and scream and throw virtual rotten vegetables down the hillside, uncaring on who is struck by my missiles. When it comes to this, I’m an East Campus Timon.

People are getting whiffs of change in the wind. Something is coming and we can all sense it. There is a dragging sluggardness when this particular issue arises. I personally have dealt with this demon by caging it in the net of my humor, with a deft tool, schadenfreude.

I’m on pins and needles. I can’t wait for our organization to begin. I have played the modern Cassandra, preaching a future agony and much like mythic Cassandra, nobody is actually listening. I see it more and more often, decisions made and positions taken based on what I refer to as the tyranny of the Academy. There is a giant rift between the two primary groups, the Academy and the Staff. We have different goals, different driving forces at play within our groups and one is listened to while the other must follow along.

I used to rail against the coming darkness, the cost of it, the bleakness of it – like being consumed by the Iad Ouroboros. A future of retrograde progress, unwarranted risk and a legal bog of eternal stench. Today I had to help someone not in my department with a mind-numbing interface problem. Mix this with the complaints and questions of what is coming and my resistance to face what is coming is actually turning over on itself and I find myself actively supporting this new development. A sense that in some way these people deserve what they are so aggressively pursuing.

I wonder if this is what Cassandra felt when her dire predictions came true. Did she sit back and softly chuckle to herself? Told You So.

I can hardly wait. Hah.