Talk:University of Massachusetts Amherst

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[edit] Sourcing your edits

Some information in this article or section is not attributed to sources and may not be reliable.
Please check for inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.

Thank you everyone who has helped edit this article.

In a lot of recent edits, in-line sourcing has been moved to "External links". In my opinion, this is not beneficial to the reader, as it makes it difficult to find where content comes from. Wikipedia's own style guides note that there are serious issues with using footnotes/endnotes, and would appear to come out in favor of at least partial citations in the text.

I recognize that previous in-text citations did not follow the guidelines for citing in text, for example this section on Residential areas links to the Housing website where much of this information is from, but in the most recent version of that very section, there are few sitations, and no mention of the housing website in the external links.

Future edits should take care to not remove citations as they exist. If there is a problem with the citation, do not delete it- this is standard Wikipedia policy. If there is a problem with certain passages- for example, the other day, someone added the entire mission statement of the Take Back UMass group- you shouldn't delete the entire thing, but simply correct it.

Again, thank you all for helping out. Good luck on finals, and happy holidays!

Vvuppala 05:24, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

External links are different than sources. Links to the housing home page or the athletics home pages are also not great sources. Sources should be links to specific articles or pages which supply specific facts for the article. Wikipedia style is to either link them inline (with no link text, so they appear as a number), or as an endnote using the ref templates. This article has no endnotes. I agree that we should cite more sources, but please don't act as if I was removing sources - I was just moving external links to the bottom of the article. Trust me, external links belong in the "external links" section. Think of it this way: External links are resources where readers can get more information. References are sources that are used to support facts in the article.
I noticed you wrote a section about the riots and the Higgins controversy. I'm disappointed that you appear to be only focusing on negative aspects of UMass and controversy. I NPOV'd the Higgins thing, but I don't think we should add it to the article at all. There is always some SGA controversy going on here. This article shouldn't be used as a forum to attack the school or specific SGA members. UMass isn't perfect. But this article doesn't get any better when detractors keep coming here and piling on the criticism. I still don't think that Take Back UMass is any more notable than any other student group.
It's odd that you haven't tried to mention Rene Gonzalez in this article. I wonder why that is. Rhobite 22:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I am familiar with Wikipedia style. However, I believe that removing the housing link deviates from Wikipedia convention of fix not delete information. A section that details housing on campus should make note of the Housing Services website.
I would encourage you to look at the fact that when I wrote the section, I commented it out of the article, and prefaced it with "Work in Progress" or somesuch message. I'll be honest, I got here after the Higgins contraversy, I am writing the section as I research it, so if it incomplete, it is not because I'm trying to bias it. If you have something to add to it, by all means, do. I haven't the slightest idea who Rene Gonzalez is, but I'll look into it. I hope that's alright?
I don't want to give you the impression that I'm hear to tear down the school I work for. I was editing the history section, and thought that the contraversy issue would best be dealt with in the history section than having its own section. Certainly UMass has had a lot of proud moments in its history, and I'm sure the article will eventually cover them. I think that any discussion of UMass history would be incomplete without mention of the contraversies. UMass, over its history, has had many many contraversies. Students have taken over Whitmore and New Africa House, they have denounced administration officials, (Joann Vanin, and Mike Gargano are not the first). It is part of the University's legacy, and makes it unique amongst college campuses.
I look forward to continuing this conversation, but I've got RA duty, hope I've straightened things out a bit? Vvuppala 23:19, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I think that the entire section should try to come closer to NPOV. I haven't been a student at Umass for a couple years, but a whole section afforded to recent campus political squabbles seems a little unneccessary. I wouldn't know how to edit it without axing almost the whole section, since I am not that familiar with the campus since I left. More is devoted to the history of the campus in the last 2 years than the 75 years before WWII. I realize that recency grants some degree of primacy, but really now. Cnkimpel 04:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
and that's nothing to say about the somewhat evident anti-administration slant of the section. I flagged it. I hope someone who is a little more privvy to what's happening right now, and a touch more objective could shed some light.Cnkimpel 04:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


I covered the Whitmore takeover (at least, the RA Union one) for the Collegian -- I was actually locked in with the protestors and the then-Vice Chancellor. As for Rene Gonzalez, anyone who went to UMass in the late 90s and possibly today (he still pops up) probably heard him yelling into an megaphone at least once or twice. Rene is a very, ahem, out-spoken activist for a wide-variety of causes, and a fixture at most on-campus protests and demonstrations. He frequently comments on various UMass webboards. I'm not sure if he is still active on campus. He was a STEPC undergrad, not sure what his grad studies were. -- Ken Campbell. '02

[edit] "Most violent campus" controversy

An un-logged-in user deleted this section, with the edit comment "outdated and irrelevant."

A November 2005 news report is hardly "outdated."

The question is, is this relevant? I'm not sure. I didn't put it in, although I did have a hand in sourcing it properly. I happen to think it probably is relevant.

Is it neutral? Is it a factual description of what ABC said, and of UMass' rebuttal?

Did ABC ever retract its statements?

Is there any reason for removing it other than its being uncomplimentary to UMass? Dpbsmith (talk) 21:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm on the fence about whether it should be included in the article. In general I don't think we should add every bit of criticism of the school to this article. And news magazines produce these shock stories all the time. On the other hand, the report was kind of a big deal - it did get a lot of coverage in the Collegian this semester. I don't know. I do think it is placed much too prominently in the article. There are three sections for the school's history, and one whole section is devoted to a single TV report. Too much coverage. I can confirm that the description is accurate, but there is a problem with the citation.. it just reads "UMass violence". Rhobite 04:07, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Fixed the citation.
I agree that it's overemphasized; my fault, not sure how to remedy it; it takes a few sentences to summarize the charge and the UMass rebuttal.
The history was: an anon added an unattributed throwaway remark to University of Massachusetts asserting simply "The University of Massachusetts-Amherst has the highest crime rate of any university in the country." It was removed as unsourced; I found a source, expanded it, and put it back. I then realized it was specific to the Amherst campus and belonged here, not in the UMass system article. I moved it here without thinking too much about how to integrate it into the article, and it looks as if I bungled moving the reference.
Along the same lines: an anon added the sentence to the University of Massachusetts article, "Students at the Amherst campus refer to the school as "The Zoo" or "Zoo-Mass Slamherst," according to sophomore Mike Shulman." Well, Mike Shulman is not exactly a verifiable source, and again this is a reference to UMass Amherst, not the UMass system. I did, however, feel, that the "Zoo Mass" moniker is sufficiently well-known that not to mention it at all would be whitewashing, so I dropped in what looked like a well-informed and balanced description from a book on sport marketing.
It, too, is probably out of proportion at the moment. My inclination is simply to hope that balance will be achieved through natural expansion of the history section.
Does the "most violent" stuff belong in history, or should there be a section on "UMass Amherst in the news"—near the end of the article—that could be used to collect factoids of that sort? I think I'll try that and see how people react. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I think the new placement is much more in line with the report's importance. Thanks. Rhobite 16:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Removed "This is a flawed theory since counting only the on campus residents would actually increase the crime rate on a per student basis" after the quote from after the quote by O'Malley. While it is true that this would increase the crime rate on a per student basis, UMass Amherst has a higher percentage of on-campus students than most other universities and this would effect the results. So a university of the same size as UMass Amherst with fewer students on campus but with the same on-campus crime rates would be portrayed as having much lower rates than UMass Amherst, even if they are the same. (Tdmg 06:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC))

Also, the quote "Many students believe that UMass received this ranking because of Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Michael Gargano's alleged requests to the University Police that police resources be concentrated on the enforcement of alcohol and marijuana laws, instead of on violent crimes, crimes against property, and crimes against public order" is internally incoherent and is uncited, so I am removing it until it is cleaned up and cited. (Tdmg 06:19, 20 March 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Privatization Plan

I was hoping someone could put a mention of the plan (was it about two years ago?) to privatize UMASS. This has been attempted at numerous times, and may happen someday.

[edit] Regional Improvements

I had no idea what to title this, just that I wanted to clarify something.

Before I registered for an account, I clarified the upgrades to surrounding roads in the History section. Some of the information on the surrounding routes was at best ambigiuous and at worst wrong. I felt that I should report these edits here. While I am no accredited historian, my hobby is tracking the histories (amongst other things) of Pioneer Valley roads and I felt that misinformation should be corrected. At some point I will expound on these a little more, but I had to remove the references to US 5 and I-91, since I-91 was planned and built before the UMass Amherst boom and US 5's traffic problems at the time were as much through traffic as was UMass traffic from Springfield. The roads directly impacted by UMass were 9 and 116, and their improvements required clarification.

kefkafloyd 06:47, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] student of color?

There is a reference to the leadership or president addressing a student of color and telling them to go to a community college if they don't want pay for housing at Umass! This has no source, and seems totally irrelevant, other then to try to prejudice the reader. So what if the person, without any proof mind you, was "of color"? What releveance does this have? I'm taking it out. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.192.100.171 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Expansion Plan

"Classrooms are often filled to capacity, and past capacity in some cases." This is pointless. It should be removed. Might as well say, "Students often learn at this university. Some students learn a lot." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.25.62.3 (talk • contribs).

Wrong. Have you been to class? There's a correlation between class size and the quality of the course--things such as the difficulty one has taking notes or seeing while sitting in an aisle, the unbearable heat in some cases, the difficulty of hearing in general amidst the added noise, and most greatly, the difficulty having any sort of dialogue with a professor during a class. Certainly, this can nearly all be avoided by sitting in the front row, but that doesn't solve the problem for most people. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.238.23.171 (talk • contribs).

  • It is not a fact that classes are filled beyond capacity. The fire-code requires they not be filled to capacity. However they are often filled TO capacity and a 450 person lecture hall with 450 students there does cause a great deal to sit in the aisle. Classroom seating bears a resemblance to aitline seating, with the exception of the fact that you don't have assigned seats which causes people to prefer to sit in an aisle to climbing over 40 people to get to the open seat in the middle. As an aside however most classes are on TU and Thu with a 30 minute break between them which is sufficient time to get to class early and get a seat. Please sign your post with 4 tilde in the future. UmassThrower 21:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

P. S. if you don't want a crowded classroom pick a hard major :-) my classes are never more than 45 students and often less than 25. No one goes to class by the 2nd month of the semester anyways. UmassThrower

[edit] IT section POV

Both the section on SPIRE and OWL seem to mostly be complaints about the systems, and are markedly lacking citations. They could probably be combined and trimmed down to a single, concise paragraph. Thoughts? Slackingest 19:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures of the campus

The article needs a lot more pictures of the campus. Can we find some quality pictures of the stadium for the athletics section and maybe pictures of each housing complex for each housing section? A picture of the old chapel would be good and/or a picture of the minuteman statue. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AnalogKid (talk • contribs).

There are plenty of quality pictures available on the UMass webpage. For the last few months there have been a significant number of new pictures rotating on the mage page, but those pictures are always available. (Tdmg 04:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Organization section

I have started this section but dont have enough time to add enough information. Can anybody please add organization structure of this university?. Leotolstoy 03:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Schools and colleges

I have redone this part from http://umass.edu/umhome/academics/schools.html. Please add individual school/college pages (and if possible department pages. I will create cs dept one in next few days). Leotolstoy 04:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I have a feeling that pages on individual departments at UMass are likely to get WP:AfDed as non-notable. Please consider creating them on UMassWiki (where they are most welcome) and linking to them from this article. --Neurophyre(talk) 01:30, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Some of the departments are undoubtably notable (polymer science, computer science etc). Not sure if the credit passes upto 'school' level. It makes sense to have pages for those departments at least. Leotolstoy 18:38, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, some are, some aren't. Good luck with it, and information on any and all of them is always welcome on UMassWiki. --Neurophyre(talk) 06:52, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] McDonald and Milne blockquote

Is this actually part of the quote?

This nickname has also carried over to other schools in the UMass network, drawing distaste from those students, who do not wish to be associated with the Amherst campus, or their reputation.


--Neurophyre(talk) 01:13, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Can somebody remove the quote and condense it to a couple of sentences? Leotolstoy 13:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editors needed at UMassWiki!

Hey folks. As you all know, this article is getting extra-huge. Splitting off various topics may run afoul of notability guidelines -- for example, various residential areas probably don't merit their own article on Wikipedia and would likely be deleted. On the other hand, it's good to describe things in detail and offer as much useful information as possible.

Well, there is a place where all useful, interesting and fun information about UMass Amherst is welcome. That place is UMassWiki. I founded UMassWiki over a year ago. It's picked up steam since then and a lot of information has been added, but there are still a lot of gaps. The skeleton is all there in terms of categories and lists, but we still really need people to fill in those red links and expand all the stubs.

Aside from being a useful compendium of information about UMass Amherst and the surrounding area which is far more in-depth than this Wikipedia article can ever be, one of my hopes for UMassWiki is to be a fun resource as well. The criteria for inclusion of information is less strict on UMassWiki, and I'm really hoping to pick up some of the lore and legend that makes UMass what it is, for instance legends and ghost stories about dorms, trivia about certain buildings, and facts and tidbits about the surrounding towns that would never cut it in a "professional encyclopedia" but are interesting and useful to the UMass community.

Please consider contributing to UMassWiki. It's a well-maintained wiki, open edit (no account needed!). My ultimate goal is for the wiki to become a resource useful to every segment of the UMass community, from high school seniors researching schools to current undergrads and grad students to alumni looking to relive a bit of the past. We can only accomplish this together with help from wiki editors like yourselves. --Neurophyre(talk) 21:34, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

The need for editors is even more pressing as I've left UMass. UMassWiki is serving 45,000-90,000 pages a month during session and at least one class per semester is using it to do collaborative homework, but the main portion of the site needs more information and improvement. I have less time to tend to it now that I'm gone. Wiki enthusiasts, please help. http://www.umasswiki.com/ --Neurophyre(talk) 09:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

I think this article needs to be cleaned up. Buildings and Layout section is too large and contains lot of insignificant information. Labs section needs to have more information (It is after all a research university). See the article on cornell (which was recently a FA) on how to make this a better article. Leotolstoy 21:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the article is suffering from bloat at this point. Sorry if I'm sounding redundant, but info that may be insignificant on Wikipedia is likely fine on UMassWiki, so I'd urge anyone doing cleanup to consider relocating minor details as opposed to simply deleting them. As far as some of the bigger subsections, they may merit splitting into separate articles. --Neurophyre(talk) 21:59, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Just curious. Who runs umasswiki?. Who pays for it? (or where does all the money go?) Leotolstoy 22:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I run it and pay for it under the umbrella of my business. See http://www.umasswiki.com/wiki/UMassWiki:About :) --Neurophyre(talk) 02:30, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Finally I was able to do a clean-up. If anybody thinks I have deleted something that was useful, please correct it (Dont do a revert, add the missing information). Leotolstoy 19:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Universities not Schools

I think that we may be doing more harm to the structure of this article by refering people to the Project Schools guides for article standards on school when it should really be linked to the Project Universities guides. I am involved in either project, but prima facie it looks like we should hold by the University standards. I will not change anything unless people follow suit in further discussion, but note that even the School Project's article starts off with them saying "Project members also make some suggestions about how to organize school articles (excluding colleges and universities)." This should be looked into before people start wasting their time restructuring this article. Tdmg 04:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GLBT Privacy

This may be a small issue, but I think the author of this article should not have pointed out which floor of Mary Lyon is the 2 in 20 floor in the "Northeast" section of the article. Wikipedia can be seen by too many people, and for safety reasons I think that information should be private. I think this information is somewhat secretive on campus for this reason. I propose removing the words "in the fourth floor" from this section of the article. -Katie, a freshman at UMass—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.19.87.130 (talk) 21:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC).

I think we should take this as a verifiability issue. Is this information available from a reliable, public source, or was it added by someone who just happened to know? The Storm Surfer 20:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Go down that road, and this article is going to shrink drastically. --Neurophyre(talk) 11:07, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Well (perhaps unfortunately), that's how Wikipedia is supposed to work. The Storm Surfer 19:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Court Case Info removed from History Section

I removed the following from the History section of the page. While it may belong on this page, it certainly does not belong in the history section. Cosentino 21:36, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

In 2007, an undergraduate student filed, in the United States district court, Springfield, Massachusetts, claims against UMass alleging the university and particularly a graduate student, Jeremy D. Cushing, teaching assistant, unilaterally breached an agreed upon fall 2006 Philosophy 161 syllabus's contractual terms by arbitrarily reducing a 92.1 numerical semester average to a final grade award of C; this occurred in contravention of the syllabus's sectional grading scheme. Mr. Cushing, in an e-mail to the student, annouced that he did not like the way the class fared according to the present grading scheme, so he revised it to measure a different outcome. Once the new outcome produced a 84 in plaintiff/student's favor, he then decided askance to this method to issue a final grade of C. The case remains active in federal district court as 07:cv-30015-KPN.

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