Bureaucracy likes the internets, too!
Columbia continues its recent trend of improving old things by re-doing them in Century Gothic with the launch of the new Lerner website. Even though the new site is the color of a failing kidney, information is streamlined and aesthetically pleasing—like this handy map of Lerner’s innards. And this insultingly oversimplified guide to booking space. If it only it were as simple as the vague, minimalist Clip Art suggests it would be!
Speaking of navigating a rocky bureaucratic disaster, the office of housing is sponsoring a “contest”. They’re looking for students to volunteer their rooms for a virtual tour to be completed in time for spring’s housing lottery. The “winners” will receive an unspecified amount of Flex points added to their accounts. The deadline of the “contest” is 11/16, so all interested parties should probably start removing drug paraphernalia and illegal residents as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Tags: housing, lerner, the internets
16 October 2007 @ 12:22 PM · 6 comments
on 
the 8th floor isn’t “Offices”, it’s where Counseling and Psychological Services is based. I wonder if they were trying to be sensitive – not everyone wants their friends to know that they are going to CPS. But it’s hard to imagine a crueler place to make difficult to find…
that map is crap. It doesn’t even bother to differentiate between offices. It also doesn’t bother to tell you whats on the east side of a floor and whats on the west (which are arguably different floors). It indicates that the ramps continue to the 8th floor (which they don’t. They stop at 5). The only thing crappier about Lerner than this map is the design process used to create Lerner itself
• the first link doesn’t work
• the second link only works if you’re signed into Gmail. Also, lots of websites are older than that, meaning your example sucks.
• the website is in Verdana or Arial, not Century Gothic (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lernerhall/ui/all.css)
The logo “Alred Lerner Hall” is clearly Century Gothic. Compare http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lernerhall/ui/images/lerner-hall.gif to http://www.identifont.com/samples/monotype-imaging/CenturyGothic.gif
Stick that in your stylesheet and amoke it.
can answer this:
Say I want to enter this “contest”, but my room is decorated to the point of actually being wallpapered. Does this comply with all the regs, or am I a fire hazard?
that website is actually pretty good looking. also, the history of lerner is interesting. event requesting isn’t that simple, but i’d say this is a net win for the bureaucracy.