Advocating open source in universities

So, here is a nice piece by Annelies Kamran, a graduate student at the City University of New York Graduate Center, arguing that the school should move to Linux as its OS of choice. The piece was written in response to recurring problems with the disaster-prone systems that faculty and students constantly seem to be struggling with at the CUNY Graduate Center. Last year, when crisis situations were occurring frequently, there was a golden opportunity to set things right, and a minor movement brewed at the Graduate Center (I wrote an email or two, suggesting we find free software replacements for the most popular user applications). Unfortunately, any plans to do so were shot down by the intransigence of University administrators, who according to a systems manager at the Graduate Center, didn't want to have to change their calendars (tied to Outlook as they were) or learn a new email client.

Silly me, I thought the university was about the students and faculty first.