Hey :D I've been writing my newsletter lol, students wil lap it up lol. Lol
M
The first newsletter
For the past 5 years I have sent out an email Newsletter every Monday evening to all staff at UCL. However, said staff has informed me that I should probably pretend to care about the students here at UCL, so I have cobbled together this email in order to maintain the illusion. I do not propose to make it weekly, mostly because that is far too much effort, but I'll do it a couple of times this term, if I can remember.
As you all know, UCL is a pretty smashing university: we're near the top of about 5730 league tables (but we all know they're bunk really, especially when they rank us below LSE), we have loads of international students handing us cash like they're rock stars and we're Columbian drug dealers, we have loads of postgraduates doing much the same thing, and then we have some UK students because we have to. However, finances are tough, especially when there’s £700,000 to be spent giving us a shit logo and an even shittier slogan, or perhaps a new sheep for the back garden. The Browne Report has suggested tuition fees of £7,000, and there will be 40% cuts to higher education. UCL has made no decisions yet as to its likely response, and will do so only once the actual funding package has been confirmed ~there is a long political path still to be travelled — and only once we have undertaken widespread consultation within UCL about the options available to us. However, we will most likely be screwing even more money out of you than we ever did before, so hold on to your overdrafts, it's going to be a tough ride!
Enrollment 2010 — and Portico
Basically, our enrollment system is nothing really that special, but I thought I'd write about it anyway, just to fill some space in this email. I hope it worked efficiently for you and that you felt well-supported in your early days here; I'd hate for it to be any more difficult for us to squeeze money out of you.
As for Portico, I have met hermits in the Congo jungle who have programmed more efficient systems to sort out everyone's modules, but we're still going to use it, because we can't afford any good IT technicians. In the mean time, I'm going to write something faintly contrite and patronising, so, yeah, I apologise for it not working very well, we'll get our chaps onto it straight away!
Lunch hour lectures
UCL is buzzing like a bee on Viagra when it comes to pointless shit with which you can fill your day, and our lunch hour lectures are the perfect way to eat up your time to the point where you repeat several years and give us more tuition fees. There are two special lectures every week, on Tuesdays and Thursday from 13:15 to 13:55, in the Darwin Lecture Theatre. Our first one, from guest speakers May Dupp and Dr. Mai Rapport is on the topic: Carrots, pine trees, and grandfather clocks: phallic symbols through the ages. It's a lovely excuse to talk about willies in a serious fashion, and you'll probably have a giggle, and forget that you're going to leave this university with £25,000 of debt, minimum. Fun and larks!