Thanks Guys

So, I signed up for the dinky little school offered insurance because mine ran out when I turned 24.  I have some pre-existing stuff, so nearly my only hope of ever being insured now will be through the school or a prospective employer.  Obviously, RAs at the Aacademy don’t get any benefits at all.

Therefore, I got my little insurance sheet from my mom when it applied in the mail and trekked down like a good little student to the Office of the Registrar to get it validated so I could have money for some prescriptions.  The exchange went a little bit like this:

ME: Hey, I need to have this signed for my insurance.

DUDE: Okay.  Usually we do that ourselves and just fax it.  Is that okay?

ME: Sure.  Do you think it would be faster? It has to get there by the 30th or I won’t get any coverage.

DUDE:  We can try, but really it’ll just get there when it gets there.

ME: Well, I really need to have it there by the 30th.. could you maybe put a note on it or something?

DUDE: Seriously? A note’s not going to do anything.  If you wanted it to get there in time, you shouldn’t have come 9 days before it was due.

ME: I didn’t get it until a day or two ago..

DUDE: Not according to the date on the letter

ME: (at this point stunned into silence by his utter inability to understand that snail mail takes a while to get places.  I really did get it like a day or so before.) …. Okay.. so no note even to make me feel better?

DUDE: (frustrated) It’ll get there when it gets there! (walks off)

Well, guys, it never got there.  That exchange was three weeks ago.  You had more than enough time by now to get it there.   I got a letter from the Insurance company two or three days ago saying my coverage was denied because they never got validation from the school.  Now I owe a bunch of money for my prescriptions and you guys are a bunch of dicks.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the dude just crumpled up my paperwork and tossed it into the trash.  Argh.

Yeah, They Bite

So I sat here for like a half hour trying to think of how I was going to talk about the bed bug problem in the dorms.  As most of you know, a lot of the buildings in SF get bed bugs because they are old and hard to keep up.  The Academy is especially weird about how they take care of the problem, though.  Of course, they will check you into an “emergency” room where you are encouraged only to have belongings which you have washed and are clean.  I’m surprised they do that at all, actually, what with their track record of handling student affairs.  Anyways, I happened to be one of the lucky few who was moved into a dorm, and then awoke with a neat clear little line of bites running down my arm.  I called the RD, who is also my boss, and informed him I was covered in itchy bites from my new room.  Impossible, he says, because this room was already checked for bed bugs.  He decides to come take a look at my arm himself.

Here is a slightly washed out picture of my trophies:

After suggesting that I might have scabies instead and telling me that maybe I should get tested before they do anything, he finally admits that they should have the room checked anyways.  Really?  That looks like scabies?  I spend the entire day bagging up my stuff and trying to close the building out at the same time.  Then I’m moved to a temporary room to await the cleaning of my old one.  Luckily, a couple days later I left for a pre-planned vacation, so I didn’t have to stay in the new room for more than a couple days.  That happened on Monday, the 31st.  The room was finally fumigated and heat treated on June 10th.  I wouldn’t be allowed back in several days after that fact as well.  I have heard other accounts of some students waiting up to a month to get back into their rooms, so I consider myself lucky that it was only two weeks.

If you happen to be a student who finds bed bugs in your room, The Bed Bug Registry Is a rockin’ site where you can upload your finds in an attempt to warn others. I found one account that I mentioned above from a somewhat disgruntled 1080 Bush resident whom I deeply sympathize with.

Disabled What?

As many of you local San Franciscans know, the Academy has a pretty impressive flotilla of buses at its disposal.  You would think, since  they have so many then, then they could easily accommodate their disabled students.  Unfortunately, that’s apparently not true.  Recently, a student came to me with a story of her twisted ankle, which turned into a journey of frustration and (literally) pain.   At Berkley, you get driven around on an awesome little golf cart if you can’t get to class yourself due to sudden injury.  As a University, the Academy is responsible for making sure their students are able to get to their classes.  Maybe not of their own laziness, but if you have a disability, you have the right to be accommodated.

After having my new friends journey described to me, I decided to see just how hard it would be to get to the Academy’s appropriately named “Classroom Services”, which handles students with disabilities.  Here is my journey in pictures.

This first image is pretty self explanatory, from the first page head to Current Students option that got cut off at the bottom of the image.

From MyAcademyArt, go to Coursework Support, and then click on the Academic Resource Center.  This doesn’t make any sense.  Why isn’t this under Student Services?  How does coursework support have anything to do with a kid with a broken ankle?

Here you will get to the Academic Resource Center, which is pitched to the RAs (Resident Assistants) as a resource for tutoring for failing students.

All the way at the bottom of the page, hidden behind a sign labeled “beware the leopard” is the fabled Obtaining Disability Services.  Go there and you will be able to charter a handicap bus with wider seats and lower access so you don’t have to crutch yourself up the three and a half feet worth of normal bus stairs.

It doesn’t seem too bad, but my new friend apparently had quite a bit of trouble finding it because it wasn’t intuitive.  I also contacted the head of Classroom Services out of curiosity, because the RAs aren’t told to send anyone there.  Each of my managers, when asked, had no idea where to send her.  Even the head of the department didn’t bring up the service when asked for resources. (Kind of  vague, but you guys just gotta trust me on this one.)  Also, when I asked the Director of Classroom Services why their site is so hard to get to and why none of the Housing Department heads know where to send disabled students, she said some students are too proud to look up “disabled” in the Academy search engine.  Yep.  It’s not that the Department is being lazy and not communicating with the other Departments, it’s that our students are too proud to look up “disabled” on the internet.

I tried it.

Hmm.. interesting.  11 results total and NONE OF THEM GO TO ACADEMIC RESOURCES OR CLASSROOM SERVICES.  Thanks for being so on the ball, Academy.

What happened to my new friend, you ask?  She finally found Classroom Services.  They chartered a nice handicap bus for her so that she didn’t have to walk a quarter mile on crutches with a broken ankle.  On the day of her class, she waited a full hour for that bus.  She missed that class.  She called Classroom Services.  They apologized and said tomorrow they would definitely send a bus.  The next day, she waited another hour for another bus that never came.  She ended up having to walk several blocks on crutches because the normal buses don’t go to a couple of her buildings.  She was never apologized to and there was never a reason given for why no one came.

What We’re All About

For those of you who have stumbled onto this site, hi!  Welcome to our little corner of the internet.  As some of you may have gathered based off of the name, this blog is dedicated completely to all of the stupid stuff that is perpetrated by the Academy of Art University.

Now, before you get all up in arms, this isn’t a hate site.  Well, okay, yes it is.   However, I’m not going to sit and waste my time complaining about the students and somehow blaming everything that the academy does on them.  Being a former student and employee of the Academy myself, I understand that there are a lot of dickheads going to this school.  Yes, A LOT.  Despite that, for every ten dickheads there is one kid who went there with the hopes of becoming a real artist, worked their ass off, got several thousands of dollars in debt, and did everything they could to get to that dream they had been looking for.  Some of them didn’t realize the Academy is incompetent, some of them didn’t care.  I’m not going to hang around and complain about every single student, because it would be an utter disservice to the few hardworking students who went to this school and cared about their grades and being good people.

How do I know these kids?  I happened to be a Resident Assistant in one of the buildings.  Yeah, a narc.   In the time that I spent underneath the Academy’s oppressive thumb, a few little kernels of hatred were born in the depths of my bowels that never quite passed; much like the horrible cafeteria food they fed me.  So, got stupid shit the Academy is doing that’s pissing you off? Let me know.  I’d love for this place to be the one-stop-shop for all prospective students so that they can know just EXACTLY what they are possibly going to go through.

On that note, on with it!