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February 17, 2005

Castle in the Clouds

Just added a new category, “Castle in the Clouds”. It's about Covenant College, my alma mater. There's a lot of stuff going on up there on Lookout Mountain, and my feelings tender strength such that I should address publicly. So this category won't be too related to my normal geeky posting. Not quite politics, not quite religion, not quite geek. But quite barely legal substance. Ignore it if you wish.

Disclaimer aside, here's my proposal. We need to get a collective conversation going about Covenant. Crossman & Raymond resigning, Core changing, Residence Life & handbook changes, &c. You all know where I stand on most stuff from my student days. Justin, Ellis, Mesh, and Josiah have already posted regarding these things.

Tipping point? We should start putting some pressure the school from the blogsphere. Aggregate our posts into a group blog, perhaps. Get a conversation going, initiated by the recent alumni tip. There's no conversation happening now, and so we're left speculating and growing discontent. Between Wired Mesh, Irresponsible Journalism, and Subcurrents, we could get some attention, methinks. Goodness knows the comments on Josiah’s recent post were an indication enough. Anybody else want to join in?

Let's get NBN blogging, Anderson blogging, etc. Get guys like Derek into the mixtape. Two-way conversations are good things, and Covenant’s problem for two years has been a lack thereof. The power of blogs is that they effect changes in that nature.

Just a proposal. What say you, bloggers?

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Comments

we could do "The Covblog". Would be easy enuff.

Posted by: JosiahQ at February 18, 2005 09:08 AM

I love Noel's idea, and would love to see a "CovAlum" blog. I would contribute.

Posted by: mesh at February 18, 2005 09:41 AM

I'm definitely in. Not only has Ellis posted his thoughts on subcurrents, but he has also been e-mailing a group of alum in the DC area. I really want to establish some way of voicing my concerns that might actually be productive & helpful.

Posted by: justin at February 18, 2005 01:05 PM

Sounds like a great idea to me, but good freaking luck in getting the administration to talk. They won't talk to existing students about jack; what makes anyone thing they'd be willing to talk to the community at large?

Posted by: ryan at February 19, 2005 08:46 AM

Noel, this is a great idea and I would definitely contribute. Indeed, I already have a lot written about my concerns with the direction Nielson and Wallace Anderson are taking the college.
Scott Raymond once told me that he thinks alumni might actually have a more powerful voice than students because they can threaten to without their financial support. While this sounds very base, I plan on making use of this strategy.

Posted by: Ellis at February 22, 2005 11:49 AM

Thanks for all the support, guys!

Josiah, is it possible to do an aggregated group blog (eg grab posts from participating blogs that with a certain tag and republish them in the group blog. Or, less optimally, do a traditional group blog with multiple authors)?

Mesh, with your golden verbal flow, how could we fail to persuade?

Justin, I knew you'd be in. If we can get a broad readership, we're even more effective.

Ryan, if we google-bomb Covenant, they might start paying attention ;) As Ellis said, base, but effective.

Ellis, ah, this reminds me of last time we banded together to get the school to change...

Let's do this. Anybody else?

Posted by: Noel at February 22, 2005 11:51 PM

I missed this somehow. Are we doing it? We could host it at covblogs (get alot of trafic) but get the URL thecovblog.com and point it at like, thecovblog.covblogs.com

We'd have some solid pagerank and traffic to boot, and with all the other covenant college bloggers out there we should get some good linkage to boot.

In terms of the "googlebombing" aspect, I'd suggest we name it the "Covenant College Blog" in the title, so we'll be ganking "covenant college" ranking from the College. I think it'd work great.

If you want me to have somebody start setting it up, I can get Ron on it. Sorry its taken me so long to respond, been like 3 months. Geez.

We'd also probably want to talk editorial policy. Frankly, I want to be able to post the stories like the Crossman story.

Posted by: JosiahQ at May 28, 2005 11:40 PM

Josiah,
Yeah, I'm still game. In my mind, we'd just double covenant-ish content on our own blogs and on thecovblog. Or do original work just for it if we want. I don't really see the need for editorial policy, since we'd have 4+ authors-as-equals contributing. If I disagree with your crossman story, I make a post about that. The main point is to give an outside and collective voice to alumni. That voice will probably say contradictory things, which is fine.

So sure, get Ron on it. That's be cool.

Posted by: Noel at June 2, 2005 05:05 PM

For what it's worth, I think the project will only succeed insofar as it offers defined goals. I like the idea of increasing communication between alums and administrators, but my experience has suggested that Covenant leaders get very tense when media shows up in any form. (Like most governments, really.) I think we could only gain respect and response by be extremely professional in the sorts of conversations we initiate. In other words, verifying rumors with college officials, authenticating sources, and continually setting a tone that is, in the immortal words of Cliff W. Foreman, "lovingly adversarial."

With all that said, of course I'm in. That is what I do.

Posted by: mesh at June 2, 2005 05:16 PM

Mesh, you're right, of course. It's just that I'm lazy, and would rather have a little bit of work be wasted rather than a big chunk of work wasted. Pearls before swine and such.

Having said that, a professional tack might stand a better chance of becoming successful.

As for goals, well, this is an open thread. Here's one from a second ago: give an outside and collective voice to alumni. Others?

Posted by: Noel at June 2, 2005 05:20 PM

Yep, and I think we should have an open submission policy from other alumni. I think we should have some set of standards in terms of language, personal attacks, etc. The standard stuff, though I do want to leave room for editorial and opinion pieces, I think those are important.

Suggested categories:

news
- staff
- faculty
- sports
- alumni
editorial
some kindof personal stories from your time at Covenant
events

others?

Posted by: JosiahQ at June 2, 2005 06:29 PM

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