Gotcha!

Imagine
you’ve spent four years fulfilling what you thought were the requirements of
your major, minor, or certificate, only to receive a thick envelope from the
office of the university registrar less than two months before graduation. You
open it and find that you’ve been “audited” by someone who doesn’t
believe you’re really finished.

            A number of seniors at the
University of Rochester have received such stomach-flops this semester.
Psychology and English double major Kara Rozansky was told that she hadn’t
completed her Primary Writing Requirement. “Are you kidding me?” she
says. “I helped people in three, maybe four psych classes write their
papers. I know APA format — I’m good to go.”

            In Rozansky’s case, paperwork from
an exemption she received her freshman year was overlooked. Rozansky, who works
as a writing fellow and recently wrote an honors thesis, had to make several
trips to the Academic Support counters in Lattimore Hall to correct the error.

            Health and Society major Kira
Epstein received a letter that said she hadn’t fulfilled her major’s
requirements. She tried to fix what she knew was a glaring error via e-mail,
but was told that she had to come to Lattimore in person. “I had to wait 45
minutes and the meeting took six seconds,” Epstein says. “She looked
at my transcript and the requirements and said that I was fine.” Epstein
was erroneously audited again a short time later, with a message that
requirements for her business management certificate were incomplete.

            University registrar Nancy Speck
estimates that 20 percent of this year’s senior class received bad-news letters
in March. As panicked, annoyed students made corrections, the number of
students actually in trouble dropped to less than 10 percent. “At the end
of the day, it’s always less than 10 percent,” Speck says. “There’s
always an opportunity to get [problems] cleaned up.”

            One more wave of thick envelopes
will enter student CPU boxes on May 12 — four days before graduation.

—
Jennifer Weiss

Corner
store no more

Plans
are in the works for a new business at the corner of Park Avenue and Colby Street, and it’s not a corner store.
According to Sib Pettix, president of the Culver-University-East Neighborhood
Group, the former long-time home to the beloved local grocery Fred & Rogers may soon become a
gourmet wood-oven pizza shop similar to Veneto at 330 East Avenue.

            The potential owner, who has
experience as a chef a 2 Vine, “is proposing a very nice place,” Pettix says.
In fact, Petix says, he plans to spend nearly $20,000 on renovations to the
interior of the building. And during the warm-weather months, there will be
space for outdoor seating.

            The main concern right now is
parking. “He’s going to have to apply for a waiver and go through that process
with the city,” Petix says.

East
End benevolence

Mike
O’Leary is excited about the changes with this year’s East End Festivals, scheduled for June 18, July 23, and August 13.
Besides going back to working with Infinity Radio (as opposed to Clear
Channel), the East End Festival will now donate proceeds to charity.

            “We’ll be giving money to Camp Good
Days & Special Times,” O’Leary says. “We’re guaranteeing $5,000, hoping for
$10,000.”

            The East End itself will benefit as
well.

            “We’re also going to give a $5,000
donation to the neighborhood to try and do some kind of neighborhood
beautification,” he says. “This’ll give us an opportunity to give back to the
neighborhood, to give back to a charity.”

            Because the festival has lost a good
deal of its sponsorship funding as well as advertising money from the city,
this year a $1 cover charge will be added. O’Leary doesn’t see a problem. He
also addresses the misconceptions.

            “People don’t have any clue what it
costs to operate a festival,” he says. “Between police, clean up, security,
staffing, bands, we spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 per
festival. And if it rains, I’m still paying most of that out.”

            “Do we make money?” he asks. “Yes.
Are we apologizing for that? No. A lot of people think we get rich. The
perception is that everybody is incredibly wealthy. If that were the case, I’d
be down in the Bahamas chasing a grass skirt.”

            And there’ll be plenty of skirts to
chase (grass or otherwise) right here, as O’Leary expects some 20,000 patrons
at each festival.

Correcting
ourselves

In
his Gut Instincts review of The Mediterranean Cuisine (City, April 28-May 4) Adam Wilcox incorrectly referred to “dolma”
as an Arabic word. According to Chambers English Dictionary, “dolma” is of
Turkish origin; the same word is used in Greek.

            Also, in last week’s “Say what?”
interview with Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson, we listed the wrong website
address for the Regional Innovators’ Participation Network, which is sponsoring
a May 12 panel discussion on the Renaissance Square project. The correct
address is www.ripn.info.

This article appears in May 5-11, 2004.