Anonymous 
...or at least that's what George Seifert, former coach of the 49ers said when he finally retired. You have to step back and take a breath and decide what it is that you want, what your perspective is.
I am posting this in CU, and what I hope is that it doesn't attract some sort of flame posting, but having stepped back from things and took "a fresh" look, breath, change, whatever it means, I am going to approach things not from a place of personal criticism but from a place that I know I genuinely care about this aspect of CD, the people that also care about it, Dannika, Lexi, Bebe G, etc...
Nadir did a fantastic post talking about where things were headed months ago and asked for some response from people. Some great things were created to automate class postings, etc, the teachers lounge was added...
As some of you know, as the other Deans disappeared and the Provost became busier and busier with Shipyard and other projects like Fishtown, etc, helping expand and achieve the vision Nadir and the management crew had for CD and beyond...I stepped in to help provide, not necessarily control over the sim, but support for the players. We had taken a spiraled dive, frats started were cast aside, sororities were fractioning, there was a lack of instructors which are essential.
I devoted nearly all my time to campus, trying to create storylines that would weave many facets of college experience into play, give people both from campus and off reasons to come, etc. I encouraged others who also cared about the campus to invest in and around it, adding their own wrinkles, whether innocuous or deviant to CU. I taught twice, while not entirely personally satisfying it meant a lot to the players who were, and still are, starved for that interaction...
I was notified I would no longer be Dean, that the position wasn't needed. I tried a couple of times to have conversations about a vision on how to make the sim great, and was either ignored or told that it would be taken care of, or that others were handling it. I ran into a wall that was "you aren't one of us". Ideas were met with indifference, control, now taken away from me, was not offered, and increasingly I was reduced to just being told to leave a notecard, often with no result.
Now, thats perception for sure, and people might actually care about the college, and I know I can be a pushy guy, a forceful person who can be a little brash at times, and I am certain, over text, that comes out in different ways some often, not intended. There is also the chance that people felt I was trying to dig my mitts in for my own gain, that I wanted a little kingdom. Actually, I only stepped up in the face of an obvious vacuum, for obvious needs. New people need someone with answers and a little control, there has to be authority figures playing roles with some control. There have to be actual RP managers that can manage the roleplay, advancing students by their group title up a year or being able to "hire" a new teacher. People who spend time around campus and can update furniture or see opportunities to make things a little better. At my job I am all about continual quality improvement, and there is such a great amount of stuff that would make CU great, that can't be done anywhere else because the connection to CD is so vital....
And I could go on, really, so hopefully, what I am trying to say is, I don't want power, I want to see the sim be successful. I want it to be more successful than just "its there if you want to use it" and i think people invested in it...they know what needs to be done. I was never supported in that, and actually, I was turned away. I'd be lying to say that didn't sting or make me feel like I was putting effort into something that as my piece got smaller and smaller, as a constant show of unappreciation. And I'm human, and I was investing a ton of my free time into holding something together, you want to be appreciated for that on some level, because you are working in someone else's world to make their world better, you think you're benefiting everyone.
SO....in my time off, this is what I have learned. If CU is going to be successful it needs to have:
1. A foundation of people willing to play instructors/teachers/and yes...a dean or two. People willing to make this their full time avatar for the most part. people willing to create a culture at CD. STUDENTS will follow.
2. Student event planners (which they already have)
3. a more friendly non-forum based way of knowing whats going on on the campus. A readerboard that any passerby can see there is some stuff going on they might want to stick around for. There has to be visible evidence that campus is clicking or they move on to somewhere like Hillcrest which has all that.
4. I haven't seen how much tuition is lately, but if its over 100L's its too much if you want to rebuild. You can make any lost revenue up by putting up a relatively basic dorm with rooms to rent, hell, even by the hour for the sake of roleplay.
5. You have to set some places for drugs/violence around campus, and you need to encourage finding a way to allow for some of that play to happen outside of just downtown hathian. It'd be a great background story for a turf war, truly, and have someone have to move their headquarters to BB, open a bar, and deal out of that....
Those seem like relatively simple things, and I really think some of these could happen quickly. But the first one is the most important part, and hell, writing this probably ensures it wouldn't be me, and I am okay with that. But, you have to open the tight grip of control, of absentee, not interested in the play of this area, control, and give some of that to people who are invested in the play to help it grow. You have to give that university over to people who want to play and immerse themselves in those stories and continue to make it better and better. Otherwise, its just going to take up space, because nobody wants to rent a house where they can't hang things on the wall, and if you aren't going to make it YOURS, you have to let them make it theirs.
