Through the last seven months my alma mater, Eastern Michigan University, has been in the national news and not for good reasons. The interest in the university has seemed to pick up especially today with President John Fallon being fired for his handling of the Laura Dickinson case.
I was amazed when I went to Google News and saw all the people with things about the story including a TV station in New Hampshire. Who in New Hampshire cares about EMU.
Clearly something went wrong where information was withheld from the public and that is a complete no-no. Jim Vick, who was very popular among students, was placed on leave because of the case much to the dismay of students who promptly created a facebook group calling for him to be reinstated.
Needless to say this is a very messy case with a lot of people to blame obviously for what went on.
Besides the problem of the case, EMU faces more serious problems with the need to find another president to lead the school back on the right path. Fallon seemed to be unliked by many from conversations I've had with my aunt - who works in the Admissions Office at Pierce.
Fallon was supposed to be the guy to fix this. As I was graduating, I remember he was just getting set to be hired in as the new president, taking the reigns over from the popular interim president Craig D. Willis - who might I add was loved by students because he was commonly seen at all kinds of events across campus. Before him, there was the whole drama with Samuel Kirkpatrick and the building of the President's House - or mansion as it is known - located next to Walgreeens and the Convocation Center on Hewitt.
I remember my days as student journalist and the scandal with the funds used for the President's House constantly being in the news. It was such a big deal that Steve Wilson from Channel 7 came down as part of their Problem Solvers series where they so called tried to dig to the bottom of problems.
The bottom line is the past two administrations (not counting Willis) have failed at handling situations which has produced a lot of negative views about EMU - which in turn is bad for recruiting students
This afternoon I was browsing on the comments on the Detroit Free Press story announcing the firing where people were leaving absurd comments talking about how things at Eastern haven't been right since they changed their mascot from Hurons to Eagles in the mid 1990's. WHAT?? i didn't know sports had an affect on this
More pressing were people leaving comments on how they would never attend EMU or send their son or daughter to the school. Or that Eastern has a low graduation rate and is a "ghetto" school because of all the killings or that it wasn't safe at all.
I find it funny about these comments considering I lived on campus for four years and never experienced any kind of problems at all. My final two years I lived a good 10/15 minute walk from the main parts of campus and never had any kind of confrontations. On my walk to campus I passed the Towers (the complex where the murder took place) on a daily basis.
To me there is nothing wrong with the school and its a perfect place to get an education, and I've met some lifelong friends from my experience at the school. Many of those friends have been exchanging emails and links about all the stories coming out about whats been going on.
Granted during my college days I used to promote the school in a positive manner as a tour guide and orientation leader, but that isn't any reason I'm defending the school. The school seems to hasn't handled situations right in the past and lets hope things move forward. Eastern isn't a bad place or "ghetto" and has a lot to offer.
Here are more links to stories on the firing. Many of the sites have in-depth coverage about the whole situation
Detroit News - Updates with information about Vick and Cindy Hall being fired
Ann Arbor News - Geoff Larcum's blog about the situation
CNN
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