<p>Koker, by admin do you mean a specific administrator, as in Don Ostdiek? Or do you mean the administration at-large? Either way, I think that it is a bit much to throw a hissy fit and say that the administration (or a particular administrator) has a bad relationship with students. (Or are you being really ignorant and saying that Leebron is the administrator who fined the students?)</p>
<p>If you are talking specifically about Dean Ostdiek, then he was just following procedure. Those students are lucky that they escaped with only a fine and not anything worse. While I enjoyed the prank email and its lighthearted nature, the students were violating Rice IT’s acceptable use policy. You can’t reasonably expect an administrator who is part of a bureaucracy to not do his job because of the spirit of the violation. Under certain circumstances, this could also be construed as a violation of the honor code, since these students were trying to pass themselves off as someone else. I’m not suggesting that this should be taken before the honor council, but I am saying that before complaining about the students being punished at all you should stop to think about how it could have been worse.</p>
<p>And if you’re talking about the administration in general, then I think that you have unreasonably high expectations. People ridicule Leebron for only having a single office hour two or three times a semester, but the fact that he has open office hours at all is amazing.</p>
<p>What people don’t realize is that “the administration” is not a unified body plotting against students; it is a bureaucratic machine made up of individuals with individual purposes, and it somehow works to make the school function. Sometimes that bureaucratic machine spits out decisions that students find objectionable, but for the most part it works in our favor.</p>