Talk:University of Missouri/Archive 1

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Contents

Resource

I have been compiling a list of FAQs, Urban Legends and such at Mizzou and would like to share with you all what I have so far. If any of you have better info such as the best cell phone services for on and around campus, best late night food places, more info on the urban legends, let me know. Here is is Mizzou FAQ Thanks!

ZOUpedia

The Missouri Students Association is working to create a MU Wikipedia site. It will be called ZOUpedia. If you are interested in helping out please e-mail me. MRSFGC@Mizzou.edu. MrsfgcMrsfgc

Red Campus?

Okay, am I the only one who's NEVER heard this "red campus/white campus" stuff?

Red campus is the part of campus (mostly around the quad) made up of red bricks. White campus are the building near the Union made up of white bricks. Now you know.

Sam Walton

Ok, I'm wondering why there is no entry under alumni for Sam Walton. I am in the middle of writing a report on Sam and his impact on America through Wal-Mart and, out of curiousity, I followed the link for UOM - C to this page. It struck me as funny that someone so influential (good or bad, reguardless) was not listed. Ferrett 17:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Controversies

Would it be possible to get some information on controversies and criminal activities the school has been accused of or done?

POV in Residence Hall Association

I'm reverting this:

The Missouri Residence Hall Association is among the best in the nation. Current President and Vice President Justin Ginter and Jennifer Williams have worked wonders with the relationships between the Association, higher powers and actual residents.

I'm sure Justin and Jennifer are great people, but this statement is highly POV. Adam 22:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

University of Missouri redirected to University of Missouri–Columbia

See the University of Missouri System talk page for discussion.—Lazytiger 15:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Stacked MU logo vs. the seal

The MU stacked logo is much more readily associated with the Columbia campus than the System-wide seal. The seal should be reserved for use on the System page.—Lazytiger 17:36, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

The system seal as with other flagship university's has evolved from the university. The UMC seal is on all diplomas issued, and is prominently displayed on the side of Memorial Stadium Faurot Field along with the words to the alma mater. The seal is the formal emblem of the university and should be displayed in the leader space of the article. The stacked logo is informal and should not replace the seal in the leader space. BCV 01:22, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Quote: "The University of Missouri–Columbia has one logo. It consists of the letters MU stacked within a stylized shield..." (emphasis mine). You are not wrong to say that the seal represents the MU campus, but it represents all UM System campuses equally (and is on all diplomas), whereas the stacked MU logo is definitively referring to the MU campus. And it is most certainly not informal; it is the logo used in all official MU correspondance—the seal is not. I'd like to keep the infoboxes clean and simple (and uniform among all the UM campus articles), using the seal only for the UM System article and using only the stacked MU logo for the MU article.—Lazytiger 02:19, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Lets compromise and include both, such an arrangement has been used on the Baylor University article. Just about every Big XII school article has its university seal displayed in the leader space and I can understand your point regarding the stacked logo. BCV 02:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
But can you also understand my concern for wanting to keep the infoboxes uniform across all the UM campuses? Putting the seal in with the MU logo (let alone the stylized box) is throwing a monkey wrench in the uniformity. Can't we reserve the seal for the UM System page? Using the seal for the MU campus is more of a legacy thing; it has long since been reassigned to represent the entire system. To be fair, it should then be placed in every campus' infobox, but I get the feeling you don't want that any more than I do. MU shouldn't get to hoard it.—Lazytiger 02:42, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if you can understand my concern for wanting to include the seal as is done with the other Big XII schools also for the uniformity argument. While I agree the system uses the seal; the seal is still displayed on campus at locations not associated with the system but solely associated with MU, again the stadium which was renovated about seven years ago chose to prominently display it. If the seal was on the phase out, why not just put the stacked logo on it instead? The best approach to collaboration is to compromise which I have not problem doing here. BCV 02:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Uniformity among the Big 12 schools is going to be much harder to accomplish than within the UM System. For one thing, not all of the Big 12 universities' articles have received an equal amount of attention; I would hardly call them uniform at all compared to the uniformity that I created for the UM System articles. Also, not all schools in the Big 12 are systems and therefore any seal or other logo associated with those schools do not have any complications to deal with. Even among the ones that are systems, they do not necessarily regard all their campuses as being of equal standing the way the UM System does. I never implied that the seal is going anywhere, only that it is freely associated with all four campuses, not just MU. Yes, MU does use the seal around campus, just as any of the four campuses in the UM System are free to do; that does not indicate that MU is entitled to a greater association with the seal. Mostly though, I'm just annoyed that you're messing up what I thought was a nice uniform look for the infoboxes.—Lazytiger 03:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Another important point that I noticed while looking at the other Big 12 schools' articles: a lot of them use seals, so I understand your desire to use a seal for MU's article. However, the UM System campuses simply do not have campus-specific seals like many universities do. Unfortunate reality. The UM System has instead chosen to use its one and only seal to officially identify the System, and logos rather than seals to officially identify its campuses.—Lazytiger 03:51, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Well the seal was in the leader since last August - May 1st so it is not making a drastic change. Again its a compromise, so let's please not get into an edit war. BCV 04:01, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Don't skip over all my points of validity in favor of bogus legacy. The fact that the seal was there from August to May doesn't make it correct, and I'm not quite sure how we are compromising on anything. Not having the MU logo is not an option as it is the sole (non-athletic) identity unique to the MU campus. Adding the seal is unfair to the rest of the campuses that have equal claim to it, and under no circumstances should it be displayed alone in the MU article. Not to mention that I've stated my annoyance with the breaking of uniformity that you've introduced. To me, the "compromise" is that the seal is displayed on the System page and nowhere else. It's not like I'm disowning the seal; I'm just insisting that it be put in its one and only proper place. Could we get a third party opinion here, please?—Lazytiger 04:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Obviously the compromise is displaying both, the seal was displayed prior even with your consent has you uploaded the current version and then removed it in favor of the MU logo and I believe the seal should be displayed as it is the seal of the University of Missouri established in 1839 in Columbia. It is used on campus to identify Mizzou not the system in such locations as the stadium and in Memorial Union, these are not bogus claims. BCV 05:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
What it boils down to is that as of 1963 upon creation/renaming of the other campuses, MU does not have greater claim to the seal than the other campuses. In the context of Wikipedia, either all of the campus articles should include the seal or none of them. I obviously favor none because it looks a hell of a lot cleaner. I think the two symbols as you've placed them (with the colored box) looks gaudy. Plus if none of them use the seal, it leaves the seal unique to the System article (which is prominently linked in the first paragraph of each campus' article), thereby firmly establishing its true place and keeping a clean and consistent look for all the System article infoboxes. Making the MU infobox consistent with the other Big 12 campus articles is not going to be possible and certainly hasn't been achieved with the latest edit. I'd like to get some other people's opinions on the matter. Consensus will rule. Do we want an ugly infobox or a clean one?—Lazytiger 13:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I changed the infobox to what I consider an acceptable compromise. I'm willing to live with it if you are.—Lazytiger 13:57, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

hyphen vs. en dash

I agree that an "en" dash would be the proper punctuation for the University's name. In fact, I changed every instance of it in each Wikipedia article for all four UM campuses. However, I contacted MU's Office of Communications about the issue and was told that the official stance is that it is a hyphen (with no space before or after), not a dash. If you look at each campus' webpage, you will see that Columbia, Kansas City, and Rolla all clearly use a hyphen with no space. St. Louis uses a hyphen with space, which was probably an incorrect decision by whoever created the website (which was recently redesigned). Furthermore, I have put in a request to have all four campuses article names changed (moved) to not have spaces around the hyphen.—Lazytiger 17:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree about the spacing issue and tried weeks or months ago to move the page myself but was blocked by an edit history on the target page. But as for the hyphen vs. en dash ... there's absolutely nothing to discuss. The hyphen is not properly used here. If it is that way on the school's web page, it's because of an ill-informed or ignorant graphic artist or web designer. Same goes for any info supposedly coming from the Office of Communications, which likely was supplied by an undergrad work study student without a degree in English education (which is what backs up my changes, BTW). Now seriously, quit changing it. Please? ⇒ B.Rossow talkcontr [[Tuesday]], [[May 9]], [[2006]] @ 17:40 (UTC)
We're going to have to fight about correct vs. official here, because we're not arguing what's correct. The en dash is correct. But it's not official. So the question is, for Wikipedia use, should it be grammatically correct or in line with the official name? As far as the official source, the person who told me it's a hyphen is Niki Stanley, who is the project manager of the Web Communications staff. I'm not privy to her proficiency in English mechanics, but regardless, I doubt she had anything to do with this decision. If MU used incorrect mechanics on my diploma, does that mean my degree is invalid? I hope not. Seriously, why the hell do either of us care anyway? And why did you pop up all of the sudden after I changed it to a dash and then back again? Prior to yesterday, it had been a hyphen for I don't know how long. It seemed OK with you then.—Lazytiger 18:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm guessing you probably changed it from a unicode en dash (–) to an html en dash (–), rather than from a hyphen, but I could be wrong as I'm not inclined to waste my time checking. Either way, it caught my eye and unless you've got some documentation in writing that can be shared showing that as an official policy the University of Missouri knowingly, intentionally uses blatantly incorrect punctuation in its official business, I think we need to go with inarguably correct punctuation rather than the supposedly "official" word from a web designer who I'm quite certain isn't authorized to speak for the school with regard to such matters. And as for your diploma, I'm guessing it doesn't use either. If it does, that would be a much better source for determining what's "right" rather than a web designer who likely wouldn't know an en dash from a hyphen if they were placed side by side. ⇒ B.Rossow talkcontr [[Tuesday]], [[May 9]], [[2006]] @ 18:34 (UTC)
We're on the same side here; I agree with all your reasoning for using a dash. I'm somewhat of a grammar nazi myself, but in this particular instance it's conflicting with my official-use naziism.  ;) But as you mentioned, it's really questionable as to who has determined that the hyphen is official. I'd rather not dig deeper to reveal that there's someone stupid at MU. I'm done. Make everything dashes.—Lazytiger 19:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Done! :-) ⇒ B.Rossow talkcontr [[Tuesday]], [[May 9]], [[2006]] @ 20:27 (UTC)
Well, maybe I would rather dig deeper. I wrote back to Niki asking if whoever decided that a hyphen is the official punctuation realizes that it unquestionably should be an en dash. And whether that's just a Web Communications policy (which in itself is bad enough) or if it's University-wide. I'll take a look at any official written correspondence I have from MU when I get home tonight. My hunch is that it will be totally inconsistent, thus concluding nothing. BTW, do you have any issue with moving the UM System pages to the hyphen without space?—Lazytiger 20:42, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
To be honest, I don't think this is the kind of thing to be wasting people's time with, least of all yours and mine. I hardly think anyone is going to notice or care whether it's a hyphen or a dash except a handful of people and, with all due respect to whoever it is, I doubt the top person at the university knows the difference. Let's stick with what's correct unless you've got really strong objections. As for the spaces in the article names, I'm 100% in favor of it. As I indicted above, I tried quite awhile back to make the page moves myself but couldn't as a non-admin. Shold be straightforwrd and non-controversial, but if you need a second opinion to make it happen just say the word. ⇒ B.Rossow talkcontr [[Tuesday]], [[May 9]], [[2006]] @ 22:11 (UTC)
I mentioned to her in my email that I know it's something most people wouldn't even notice let alone care about, but it does make it look like a major university doesn't even proof-read its own name. I put in a request to move the pages, so if it happens it happens. Or not.—Lazytiger 22:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The en dash is correct! Not many people know about this because they think hyphens and dashes—especially the en dash—are the same. —RJN 07:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


Nuclear Reactor

I will be making an article on the University of Missouri Research Reactor Center as a part of a university research reactor series. The organization of UM article doesn't seem conductive to the insertion of this link, so could someone add a brief sentence and a link to this article in whatever format you see fit? Thanks!theanphibian 05:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Done, thanks for your work. Grey Wanderer | Talk 04:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! You guys seem to have no university template btw. How sad. theanphibian 05:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Also taken care of: Template:Mizzou. Grey Wanderer | Talk 01:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

space or no space

In regards to having the space after the dash or whatever it is to avoid having "Missouri" moved down to a second line above the info box, that actually varies by browser. For us non IE users, Missouri is moved down to a second line with the dash and removing it will actually correct that for some browsers. But since I guess IE is still, unfortunately, the standard, then we'll go with it.

Didn't see this discussion before my last minor edit; I removed the space again thinking it was an error. In my browser, the text is all on one line and it looked goofy with the space, but switching to a different browser made it go to two lines. I see what was being said about "Missouri" being forced to the second line, but I guess I don't have any problem with that and I'd rather not have the arbitrary space there to address what I consider a non-issue that in fact creates a new issue, at least in my browser with my settings (screen resolution, font size, Wikipedia skin, etc.) ⇒ B.Rossow talkcontr [[Thursday]], [[May 11]], [[2006]] @ 13:59 (UTC)
My two cents: in Safari, which is what I use 95% of the time, if there's no space "Missouri–Columbia" ends up on the bottom line. (Update: it seems this behavior is different between Safari 2.x and 1.x. 1.x drags both words down; 2.x breaks after the dash.) So that's why I put the space. When I saw the edit removing the space, I happened to be using Firefox. In Firefox (on Win or Mac) there's just enough room without the space to keep it on one line. I figured there would be differences with other browsers and I thought the space would be the best solution. Although now I'm thinking that putting a <br> in there might be the best solution. I'm also taking uniformity between the other UM campuses articles into consideration. It would be nicely uniform if "University of Missouri–" was always on the first line and then the campus city was on the second. Sigh... way too much mental power has been put into this.  ;) I'm out.—Lazytiger 16:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Sweet. Nightstallion moved all the UM System pages, but he did better than removing the spaces around the hyphen—he changed it to a dash. I'm not sure how all the unicode/special characters work in the URL (in Safari it just shows up as a dash, but in Camino it puts %E2%80%93 in the URL). I hope it doesn't make the URL annoying to most people, but at least it's grammatically correct!—Lazytiger 03:21, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

MU rather than U of M

I seriously doubt that avoiding confusion with the U. of Michigan is the sole reason that MU is called MU rather than U of M. It probably stems more from the fact that MU was historically called Missouri University. Regardless, let's not resort to referencing other schools in the very first sentence of MU's article.—Lazytiger 17:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

What Mizzou programs are nationally known?

I'd like to include a little blurb in the intro paragraph about what Mizzou programs are nationally known. The J-school need not be mentioned here... that's pretty much a given.  ;) But what other programs do you feel are Mizzou's strong points? I put biology, medicine, veterinary medicine, and agriculture, but it would be nice to be more specific. Maybe half a dozen things at most. Thanks!—Lazytiger 04:51, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Verification of staff numbers

The numbers listed in the infobox were pulled from here: http://www.umsystem.edu/ums/about/facts/#columbia I'm guessing that the very high number of staff could be attributable to the MU health system employees, if they are included. MU is also the largest research institution in the state. Regardless, these are the official published figures. The number of full-time employees stated at http://www.missouri.edu/mufacts.htm is even higher: 12,143. I chose to use the uniform figures that were reported directly by the UM System for all four system campus infoboxes.—Lazytiger 03:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

President Brooks

Just to let the editors of the MU article know, I added a new article about Stratton D. Brooks. He was the president of the University of Oklahoma from 1912-1923 and the president of MU from 1923-1931. The article mostly concerns his tenure at OU but I encourage any of you to add what you can concerning his presidency at MU.--NMajdan•talk 20:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Notable faculty

I've added a stubbish list of notable faculty members (past and present), with just a few people I can name off the top of my head to get things started. Would be great if anyone else could add to the list! Adam 21:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Splitting Alumni unto seperate article?

The list of notable alumni is getting rather large. Would it be appropiate to create it's own article and leave this main article for the university itself? --Stevehrowe2 16:36, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Many other universities have separate articles for their alumni, so I don't see any reason why you can't start a new article for Mizzou's.—Lazytiger 18:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Mizzo Pride points

someone might want to use info on this website: http://www.missouri.edu/about/pridepoints.php --12.210.207.105 22:16, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Presidents of the University

This list is a little misleading, because what used to be the President of the University is now more akin to being the chancellor of the Columbia campus. There needs to be a break in there showing when the UM System was created and list chancellors after that time. Presidents after the UM System was created (or a complete list, if you prefer) should probably be listed in the UM System article.—Lazytiger 05:11, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

yes your right, I'll get on that. Perhaps we should list the presidents on the system page as well. Grey Wanderer | Talk 04:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

What's so impressive?

I've always been a little unsure of why it's boast-worthy that Mizzou is "one of only six public universities in the country with medicine, veterinary medicine, law, engineering, and agriculture schools all on one campus." I know Mizzou boasts about it on its website, and it's been repeated in this article (in two places). But really, what's so impressive about having all of six randomly selected programs on one campus? Does it really need to be mentioned in the intro as a defining attribute of the University?—Lazytiger 20:55, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

  • I agree in the fact that I'm not really sure what the big deal is. I'm more impressed that, according to the New York Times, Mizzou ranks 7th in the nation in the number of graduates who are chief executive officers of companies listed in the S&P 500 index. But at the same time, I don't see anything wrong with leaving the "one of only six..." fact in the article. I think it is noteworthy enough to be there, just not as boast-worthy as it gets made out to be sometimes.
    • I'm not saying it should be taken out of the article altogether, just that it doesn't need to be in the intro paragraph(s). It's already repeated in the Academics section. The only reason I bring it up at all rather than just deleting it is because I know that the intro paragraphs get rewritten all the time, while the rest of the article is barely touched. I don't want it to keep coming back.—Lazytiger 01:05, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, perhaps we ought to just mention it in the academics section. I'm kinda indifferent really. Grey Wanderer | Talk 04:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Either way to me, but I think its notability lies in the fact that there are only 6 "public", not private, universities who can claim this. From an administrative perspective, considering it is in part funded by tax payer money, it is indeed a feat to pull this off. The fact that there are only 6 lends credibility to this fact. I would assume every public school would want this in there accolades if they could. ThorX 23:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm not going to comment on whether the "schools on one campus" fact should be removed from the intro, but to try to answer the initial question as to why that matters. As for the school of medicine and school of veterinary medicine, since they are on the same campus they can work together for research purposes more easily. The faculty/staff of each can more closely coordinate research projects that cross both schools. For example if someone in the Med School wants to do and animal study they can easily access the Vet School while at another university where the two schools were 100 miles apart, that might be harder to do. As for the other schools I don't know specific examples for why being close is good, but that should kinda answer your question Lazytiger. Breakyunit 03:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Sources

Guys we need to get some better sources added, and then cited in this article. I love MU, but this article is very much in need of cited references. I will leave it as is for now, but if it is not better in a couple weeks I'm going to throw a citation template up. ThorX 23:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Photos

I am a current student of the university and I have begun to take pictures of all the academic buildings. I will begun uploading them shortly. I want MU to have a wiki page that rivals that of Michigan and UT. If anything, I feel that we should model our page after their's.

I'm going to try to take some pics around campus and Columbia when the weather improves too. Breakyunit 03:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Cyclotron

We should create an article about the new cyclotron Mizzou bought this year and installed this month (August). Here's some info on it. Breakyunit 03:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I would integrate that information into the University of Missouri Research Reactor Center article (which also needs to be expanded) BlueGold73 12:58, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it should be placed in the reactor article. Grey Wanderer | Talk 13:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)