The Positives:
After Hurricane Irene delayed the beginning of the school year for everyone, I’m glad that we are all able to be back on campus and even happier that the campus sustained minimal damage. Despite a few downed trees and some minor roof leaks, things were cleaned up quickly enough for students to come back to campus by Tuesday. I know having to go back home was an extreme inconvenience (especially for the freshman who had just moved in), but the university did what it needed to do to keep us safe, and everyone worked hard to make sure students could move back as soon as possible.
Whenever a new school year starts, it’s nice to come back to school to see all of the construction and updates done around campus. If you haven’t already, go check out the remodeled campus bookstore. It’s bigger, reorganized, and contains a café and computers for student use. Also, the Kaplan parking lot was repaved, and a new walkway was put in for students. Maxcy Hall received a facelift this summer as well, and many of the residence halls were improved.
The Negatives:
I don’t know how many of you have checked out the new insideUNH, the new student UNH portal to all things UNH. The concept is a good one, but the one thing I feel needs to be improved is that it needs a universal login for all of the links available on the portal, not just some of the links.
Last week, when I went out to my car, I found two promotional flyers melted to my windshield. These flyers literally needed to be scrubbed off, because they could not be removed cleanly. I know many students had this problem that day, and though the incidents were reported, it should not have happened. I don’t know if the flyers were put there by someone who works at the particular establishment that was being advertised or if it was a student from UNH who is their representative on campus. Either way, cars are personal property and should not be touched. If those flyers had melted on the actual body of the car as opposed to the windshield, more damage would have been done.
The Battery Charge:
After taking a look at insideUNH, I noticed that the portal lets you have access to your UNH email, Blackboard 9 account, and Matrix account. However, when you click the link, the system makes you login again. If Matrix, Blackboard 9, and insideUNH all require the same login and password, you shouldn’t have to login a second time. I know the argument can be made that “it’s for security reasons.” However, if that is the case, the system should not let me click on the email icon, bringing me into my email, without the need of logging in, especially when the email login and password are different.
