Talk:Livingston Campus (Rutgers University)

This is not written like an encyclopedic article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.212.22.30 (talk • contribs) 13:58, 10 November 2007

I disagree. So, what's wrong with it? RossPatterson 22:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Time to split this article

Since the article was moved from "Livingston College" to "Livingston Campus" (which was a perfectly fine and sensible thing to do) the article should be split. One should be a historic article about the founding of the college, its history, and alumni. The other should be about the physical campus itself. There of course would be links between the two, but the two topics don't really meld that well in a single article as they represent two entirely different things: an academic organization, and a physical place. Njsustain (talk) 15:22, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree, that probably would be the best thing to do. I realized this being a problem when I moved the article, but wasn't sure if there should be two seperate articles since seperate aritcles do not exist for rutgers, cook, and douglass colleges.--Rusf10 (talk) 01:35, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, you can start a trend. It's ridiculous that there are not articles for Douglass College, Cook College, and especially Rutgers College, which had a life span from 1766-2007. Njsustain (talk) 08:06, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I moved the college specific info to "Livingston College" and the Campus-specific info was left here. I also tried to remove any POV issues or things that might be considered derogatory. There may be some cleanup work to do, but I think is is what needs to happen and I hope it is not controversial.

Remember, a campus is a physical space. A college is an academic entitity that may or may not be associate with one or more physical spaces. They are not one in the same. One does not change to to another (as people pretend Douglass college did). Njsustain (talk) 12:47, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

"Kilmer" library

While the original army camp was named for Joyce Kilmer, and the campus took the name of the army camp, the library in turn took its name from the campus, not directly from Joyce Kilmer. If the library were named for Joyce Kilmer, it would be called the "Joyce Kilmer Library," but it is not. It might be nice, but it is not. Joyce Kilmer never actually graduated from Rutgers, though he did attend the school for a time, so it wouldn't really be in keeping with tradition to name a university building for someone who is neither an alumus nor a benefactor, nor a famous faculty member, administrator, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Njsustain (talk • contribs) 07:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

An interesting exception is Lucy Stone Hall. From RU: "Named after Lucy Stone, the founder of the New Jersey Woman's Suffrage Association. Born in Massachusetts in 1818; died in Massachusetts in 1893; graduate of Oberlin College; married to HB Blackwell in 1855; lived in NJ for 12 yrs; founded NJ Women's Suffrage Assoc. in 1867; engaged in frequent protests against the discriminatory laws and practices of that era. Source: Catalogue of Building and Place Names at Rutgers." Brianlowy (talk) 17:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Apr. 23 '09 changes

The changes today were varied and odd. The info about the college "becoming" a campus is incorrect. These two concepts are two completely different and separate issues. There can be a campus, a college, both, or neither... they are not mutually exclusive nor inclusive terms. The street naming issue may be correct, but needs to be added to the existing info, not replace it, since it has no references either. The info about the consolidation of colleges is both myopic and beyond the scope of the article... it involved only some of the schools of the university, and the associated discussion was not relevant. As for "the Rock"... I have no idea where that came from... this was never an official designation of the campus and I've never even heard of it in my 32 years here. Anyway, these changes were basically just random and not really all that well written, and completely unsourced. If there are any parts you would like to still include, please discuss here first then the appropriate info can be added in.Njsustain (talk) 22:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

BRIAN RESPONDS: There is virtually nothing sourced in this article. In fact it is a horrible article that needs major revisions. There is more I am going to add when I have the time. Most of the history of Livingston is oral history. There is an interesting article written in 1980 by Professor Irving Louis Horowitz about the opening of the college.

Let me try to address your concerns:

(1) There are three stages of Livingston College: (1) Development and Opening (e.g., unique courses, interdisciplinary courses, new Depts [e.g., Journalism, Women Studies, Urban Studies], 1st gen students, faculty in the Quads); (2) Transition (e.g., end of interdisciplinary courses, end of pass/fair and intro of D grade); and (3) Centralization (end of the college faculty and courses, development of a few LC courses). In 2007, the college ended and now where a college was is a campus. The article on Livingston College should be separated from the article on Livingston Campus.

(2) The naming of the streets is correct because I was one of the students who attempted to get the street names changed.

(3) Centralization. Centralization took place in 1982. The five colleges in New Brunswick lost their faculty and their courses expect for some fellows and a few courses. When Centralization (the modified Wheeler Plan) was proposed and passed there was discussion of closing the colleges--that was a major concern. There were faculty and students who stated at the time that it was a matter of time before RU shut down the colleges. Any piece on LC without a discussion of centralization is missing a major part of its history. Just look at the Medium.

(4) The Rock--that was an unofficial name of the campus. If you have been there fore 32 years, I can't imagine how you never hear it. I will be eventually putting in the nicknames for the individual quads.

BTW, if you have been there for 32 years, I am sure we have met each other somewhere. Brianlowy (talk) 17:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianlowy (talk • contribs) 16:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Brian, I'm not going to argue with you about who is right and who is wrong. If you don't have verifiable sources, anything you change is going to be deleted. I've worked a long time on this article, and if you don't approve of things because there aren't sourced, that's fine, but be aware that unsourced info can and will be deleted. If you can't work cooperatively with other writers and can't admit that people may know additional or more things than you do, then you have to follow the exact rules... and that is that anything unsourced will be deleted.Njsustain (talk) 18:04, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, I don't know your name unless it is NJsustain (though I doubt it). You have no sources whatsoever in your piece, so it is just as valid as mine. Where are your verifiable sources??? It is not your article. I don't care how long you have worked on this article, you do not have ownership of it. How can you have an article about the rock and not mention its first dean, interdisciplinary studies (unusual at the time), the purpose of the college, etc???

We can go back and forth. What is your source of knowledge? Look, if you would like I can simply start tagging this article with every Wikipedia violation and eventually it will disappear or we can find a compromise. Your choice. Brianlowy (talk) 18:58, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Too bad

This was a nice little article, and someone had to come in and decide it was his way or the highway. He couldn't add his perspective... he had to get rid of everyone else's perspective, then screams when people disagree with him, yet still won't cite any sources. He won't follow the etiquette nor the rules of Wikipedia.

Sadly, a fitting legacy to Livingston College.Njsustain (talk)

COMMENT FROM A 82 LC GRAD: A few weeks ago we has an alumni event with some professors talking about the history of Livingston. This page came up and it was NOT viewed positively. I was seen as bias against Livingston and a joke. So I decided to look at it. It is a joke. It needs lots of work. You get no sense of what Livingston was like. Livingston was colorful--this page is bland. So much is missing. The tone is blah.

It appears he knows the rules here because he got you on the revert x 2 rule. One more revert by you and you would not be able to edit for 24 hours.

Wikipedia is all about edited it. He edited, you edited.

You use the word "people" but for the past 6 months you two are the only ones who edited. I am going to try to get other alums to edit this page and hopefully we can get a good page that is worthy. The problem is that there are no sources, You didn't use them, Brian didn't use them, I don't have them. How do we verify students trying to get academic credit for having sex? Yet we knew about that and even Professor Schocket mentioned that a few weeks ago when he spoke.

If the person who made these edits is what his name is here, maybe if you knew him it might explain what he did or does. Brian graduated in 82. I had a class with him where he actually wrote a paper on the history of Livingston just to annoy the professor who didn't like Livingston.

When we all got our Who's Who Among American Students (which he got), he also got a special award from Dean Jenkins for beating a dead horse because of he fought centralization even after he lost. I never knew whether he was persistent or stubborn, but you could talk to him. Maybe he is fighting reorganization again.

I am not sure though he is who he is because who would use their real name here--that would be stupid.Rulc82 (talk) 03:42, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey rulc82, It may be stupid, but all the Wikis I have edited before had nothing to do with places where they might know me, so a little while ago, I decided to change my user name and just use my real name. Contact me through the usual places. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianlowy (talk • contribs) 10:37, 25 April 2009

You seem to be missing the point: This is an encyclopedia... not a fan site for alumni. It is supposed to be about the facts, not spinning a negative or positive view on Livingston College. Clearly you are not a neutral party. You're free to make all the "glory of Livingston's heydays" websites you want, and even link to them on Wikipedia... but it can't BE the Wikipedia article. You need neutral third party sources, not, or at least not exclusively, Livingston Alumni websites or publications. Believe it or not there are people besides Livingston Alumni who were around during its existence and actually care about presenting a neutral, factual history. This doesn't include, for example, deleting information about the attempt to rename the streets in the late 80s because that wasn't YOUR personal experience on the matter. This was a perfectly fine little article which presented the FACTS. If you want to spin it to a certain POV you'll have to do it with verifiable third party references. Njsustain (talk) 07:57, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I take it you have never took a history class, read a history book or been to an event where it was reported in the media. If you had you would realize that there are no neutral facts about events. Check out history books on the constitutional congress--same event, different facts. Check out the class of 1958 from Central HS in Little Rock (desegregstion). Check out books on Columbine HS!!! History is biased--that is a fact! It is like trying to write a Wiki about Etiquette that is neutral! BTW, I would hardly call Irving Louis Horowitz's piece from. Where do you get the quote: "glory of Livingston's heydays"--I see it no where.

Sure you can write a Wiki about what buildings are on a campus, that is fine, but boring. Thanks for splitting the page. I hope rulc82 will add his/her 2 cents as well as others.Brianlowy (talk) 15:37, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct, I have never taken a history class, never read a book of any kind, and have never been to any event of note. That was sarcasm. As is "glory of Livingston's heydays." Quotation marks are used for things other than quoting. I think there's an article about in on wikipedia. It might be useful to look it up. However I won't make a personal attack though by saying something like, "I take it you have never taken a course on grammar, nor read or written anything of note."

Also please note that Wikipedia standards require accuracy, not exciting text. Whether an article is boring or not is a matter of personal opinion. The information here needs to be encylopedic, i.e. useful, not necessarily leisure reading. You may disagree with the way Wikipedia works, but that is neither here nor there... you can't add things to an article just because you want to make it sound more interesting... this isn't Fox "News" (note the use of quotes for sarcasm).Njsustain (talk) 15:54, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

We are Wikipedia! Sure there are administrators, but we are the ones who create, write, edit, critique, etc. Wikis. Everything I wrote was accurate and would be easily verified by looking through copies of the Medium. Do you actually think that Professor Schocket's comments were less accurate or verifiable because they were oral as opposed to Professor's Horowitz's comments which were published in Urban Education Journal? Do you think Steven Spielberg's project interviewing Holocaust survivors on film is less accurate than a book?

You can be interesting and not be Fox News. But Fox News supports my point--reporting of facts is always opinionated/biased. The very decision of what to report or even whether to report is biased (see the different reporting of the so-called Tea Parties). I may think that Fox is not accurate and you may agree, but that does mean we are correct or that it is true.

FYI, even though I can't recall taking an course on grammar other than those we take in elementary school, I have written several things of note, many of which have been published. Sorry to disappoint you. Now, if you would bother to actually look at the context of the statement about reading a history book or reading about an event you were at, you might have understood my point or even answered the question.Brianlowy (talk) 04:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Ummmm.... You totally missed the point of my comment... it was sarcasm. I realize you have read and written things, and did take English courses... it was in response to your ridiculous accusation that I had never taken a history course or had never attended an event of note. And just to preempt any other ridiculous questions you have, yes I have been published in presitgious journals and have written a book. Anyway, I'll stop here as you seem to be oblivious to the point of these comments (and not just mine.)

P.S. All this talk was for the memory of Livingston COLLEGE, so where are the edits to THAT page? Hopefully upcoming.Njsustain (talk) 20:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Njsustain: It appears that I have upset you so much that you are not reading my comments, but simply trying to — for lack of a better term — strike back based on something I did not say. I am sure if we had this discussion face-to-face, it would be totally different and you would probably answer the questions I asked. I am sorry that I upset so. Again, thank you for splitting the page. If you are interesting in the history of LC, stayed tuned to that page and enjoy — or not! Too bad I don't know who you are, I would love to read something you wrote; I enjoy reading things from my collegues at Queens College where I am an adjunct and from the courts where I earn a living (whatever that is these days).

I wanted to add that I don't pretend to be an authority on the ins and outs of Livingston College. It really doesn't matter to me what is said about it (as long as its accurate). My interest is in the history of the campus itself and its place in the University as a whole. I think splitting the article would take care of this (as discussed above). The article about the campus can stick to the "boring" facts, and the article on the College can be more focused on that. Obviously no one wanted to do the work up until now to split the article. If someone could do that it would be beneficial to everyone. Njsustain (talk) 08:17, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Again, thank you for splitting the article. Brianlowy (talk) 15:37, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Folks, let's not forget that Wikipedia has a very clear position on Point Of View. You can (and should if you haven't) familiarize yourselves with the details at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:No original research, but the gist of it is that both Brianlowy and Njsustain are correct. Personal knowlege and recollection have no place in Wikipedia, and claims ("facts" to some, "lies" to others) in contention must be supported by clear citations from reliable sources. When those reliable sources disagree and when there is no "mainstream" position on them, both positions should be presented in a balanced and neutral fashion. Rulc82 asks "How do we verify students trying to get academic credit for having sex? Yet we knew about that and even Professor Schocket mentioned that a few weeks ago when he spoke.", and while that's a good question, it's immaterial - Wikipedia doesn't care what we know, it cares what can be verified from sources. Wikipedia doesn't care that in my first year, 1976, you could still take Tai Chi for credit, though we mourned its relegation to a non-credit "club sport" deeply.

BTW, Jenkins was a mensch. He did everything he could to bring Livingston College back to what it started as and had veered away from under Mesthene. But the picture he paints of things like faculty in residence halls was already a thing of the past when he took over as Dean. With the exception of a few special groupings (e.g., the Puerto Rican Culture House), the Quads and the piece of the Towers we had were just student housing, similar to any other university. RossPatterson (talk) 16:15, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with opposing points of view... but I do have a problem with one admittedly unsourced point of view being not augmented with, but rather displaced by another unsourced point of view (i.e., this was not a case of "how about if I add a few things" but rather "my way or the highway" aggressive editing). The unwritten etiquette is that people look the other way at unsourced factual information if it is otherwise written to WP standards and there's no reason to bring the info into question... but when push comes to shove, yeah, we have to stick to the rules. I guess it's good that some people do care about the subject enough to make a stink about it. Anyway, can we move on now... and most importantly... faculty in residence halls? Ich. I don't know who that would be worse for, the faculty or the students. I still have a copy of the Medium from around 1987 with a review of statues on the campus, including the "Dean Jenkins statue." Njsustain (talk) 16:39, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Ross: Bob Jenkins was indeed a mensch. I spent quite a bit of time in his office and always enjoyed working with him. Hey, how many people do you know that had their college dean at their wedding?!? When Bob talks about LC, is it accurate? If someone repeats it using him as a source (comments published somewhere), is that verified? If we don't take seriously oral history, we will have problems with the history of American Indians and the Constitutional Congress (e.g., recently found notes from Madison seem to contradict much of the oral history from others at the Congress that was turned into written history; I just heard a discussion by historians who question the accuracy of Madison).Brianlowy (talk) 04:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Brian, you're missing a key point. The first sentence in Wikipedia:Verifiability captures it clearly: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true." Oral history has a hard time fitting that criterion, and rightly or wrongly, material that cannot be verified has no place in Wikipedia. RossPatterson (talk) 11:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Ross, I appreciate that first sentence. But the second sentence explains (at least to me) the significance of the first sentence: "Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or the material may be removed." It is suggestive. In fact, you will find many pages that talk about ignoring the rules, being creative. Some wonderful nuggets from Wikipedia: "Don't follow written instructions mindlessly, but rather, consider how the encyclopedia is improved or damaged by each edit." "The spirit of the rule trumps the letter of the rule. The common purpose of building a free encyclopedia trumps both. If this common purpose is better served by ignoring the letter of a particular rule, then that rule should be ignored." That is where I am coming from — that is my key point.Brianlowy (talk) 13:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

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