It has come to my attention that there is a slight division between the staff and students. More noticably that little tab at the top of the default blog page which will switch you over to the student blogs. What is to be found over yonder rainbow? A few sturdy blogs riddled with advertisement bots and a somewhat dead community.

Unbeknowst to you, the student blogs used to thrive with juvenile life back during the era of Vicky and sQ- when they had students who had to make blogs to get their course credit. Of course this lead to less than quality blog posts from those who were not inclined towards blogging but it was the nature of the beast. Now that that shining era of proliferating student blogging is over, I find myself examining the very nature of the blog site. Here are a few facts that are laid out before us.

1) The staff blogs come up as default whenever someone visits the site

2) The student blogs are riddled with advertisement bots that the staff blogs seem oddly immune to.

3) Vicky and sQ no longer run classes with students who blog (more importantly, Vicky isn't at UCT anymore)

There are some reasonable assumptions I can make from these facts, feel free to correct me as I go along. First, I assume the staff blogs predate the existance of the student blogs. I assume that Vicky and/or sQ (or some relevant predecessor) one day decided they had a brilliant idea in that they could start a course that uses blogs as a medium or is about blogs. However, there is a worry that students, for the most part, will not contribute meaningfully to the already established blog site. The solution is to create a seperate student blogging area and so our friendly blog site administrator made it so.

Now Vicky and sQ have abadonned their student bloggers to their own devices. This has lead to the dying off of the majority of the blogs or migration of student blogs to sites such as the varsity newspaper website. The few students who put effort into quality blog posts are still left, still blogging but without an audience, save the advertisment bloggers. On that note, the appearance of advertisement bots and their exclusivity to the student blogs leads me to believe that perhaps our friendly neighbhorhood blog site administrator has stopped maintaining that section of the blog site. I can't blame him to be honest.

Getting to the crux of my lengthy point here... It seems to me that there is no longer any reason for the student blog site to exist. Rather there should simply be a UCT blog site for staff and students alike The worry of the staff of juvenile bloggers littering their side of the website is no longer there by virtue of there being no more courses that force blogs upon students and as such, the very few student bloggers you will get will be there willingly and be aspiring for qualitative force amongst the inhabitants of the UCT blogosphere.

At risk of sounding revolutionary- Let us share this public space as academics, students, tutors, staff and post-graduate students. The very last thing that we, at UCT, should be doing is taking part in acts of segregation. No matter how minor it is.

If this doesn't fly, i'll simply remove it and seek out an appointment with Tony, our friendly neighbhorhood blogsite administrator.