Madeleine Coles
News Editor
For a little less than a month, documents including newspaper articles, press releases, audits and reports pertaining to ISU have been published on a website with the domain name fixisu.org.
The creators of the website are Century High School senior Max Dale and his father Dan Dale, a physics professor at ISU.
According to Dan Dale, the website began when another faculty member mentioned that she had been considering writing a book about the administrative situation at ISU. From there, Dan Dale and other faculty members began collecting information until the wife of a different faculty member offered to purchase a domain to use as a central repository for the documents that had been collected.
Max Dale then set up the website, which began publishing information in mid August, and quickly gained traction.
“We had talked about doing this for quite a while,” Max Dale said. “This was born out of tons and tons of political conversations in regard to university politics.”
According to Dan Dale, much of the inspiration for the website was the level of discontent among faculty members.
“I think it’s fair to say there’s a lot of frustration amongst the faculty,” Dan Dale said. “The hope is that we can make this a better university. I personally think that the best way we can increase enrollment and make this university successful is to have a better product…and the only way to do that in my mind is to address the issues. Identify them, address them, fix them.”
His son added that the information put forth on the website is also important for both current and prospective students.
“With all the reorganizing of departments, I feel like there’s a lot that may make the student feel like they’re not getting the best education that they can,” Max Dale said.
According to Dan Dale, examples of that can be seen right in his own department of physics. He said the physics department goes through a new chair and dean every two years on average, and there is currently no official chair of the department. He also said professors often don’t know their teaching schedule until right before semester starts.
“It’s constant administrative chaos,” he said. “I think it’s impacting the quality of the product we can present to the students.”
Their hope is that the website will gain enough traction and attention to actually make a difference in the way the university is run.
Since it’s been up around six different faculty members have contributed information to the site, according to Dan Dale. He said that they try to post any information they believe would be of interest to students and faculty alike.
Max Dale added that there is a place within the website where anybody can submit a link or information to put on site.
“If people feel like they’re not being represented well on the site, they 100 percent have the opportunity to interject with what they have to say,” Max said.
“Of course, we don’t guarantee we’ll put it up,” Dan added.
The site currently contains news articles about Herb Maschner, the former ISU professor accused of sexual harassment, editorials criticizing ISU president Arthur Vailas and the raw file of the audit report detailing the misuse of funds at the RISE Complex, among other documents and reports.
“In my view, there’s been kind of a lack of accountability,” Dan Dale said. “There’s the cliche that sunshine is the best disinfectant. If we can get [this information] out there, people can see it, they can see what’s happening, and there’s a chance that we can improve this place.”
Max Dale added that the information contained within the site is not exhaustive, and the site is meant to be just one source of information.
“We don’t have any delusions of grandeur,” he said. “We don’t want people to think that this is the only place where they can get ISU news. We want this to be a launch pad for people to do their own research, find their own information and develop their own opinions.”
Both father and son stated that the end goal of Fix ISU is right in the name.
“I think that if we could really make this a first rate university, I think it would be a go-to destination,” Dan Dale said.
